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Speaker 1: Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 1: When do we have crystol Lots of big happenings this
Speaker 1: morning to get into. We've got new developments with Ukraine.
Speaker 1: We have a major shakeup at CNN and definitely more
Speaker 1: going on there than what we're being told at the moment.
Speaker 1: So Jeff Sucker out at CNN will tell you all
Speaker 1: about that. Starbucks is lying to you. They are telling
Speaker 1: you that they're lifting prices because of supply chain crisis
Speaker 1: and inflation. In fact, they have record breaking profits, so
Speaker 1: that doesn't really make sense. Jeff Bezos has a brand
Speaker 1: new yacht, super yacht, super yacht. Yeah, it is so
Speaker 1: large and extravagant that he has persuaded the city of
Speaker 1: Rotterdam to deconstruct a famous history historical bridge so that
Speaker 1: his frickin' yacht can get delivered to him. So we'll
Speaker 1: tell you about that. Also, we obviously have to dive
Speaker 1: into all the things that have been happening. There will
Speaker 1: be her comments, the fallout, the response, all of those,
Speaker 1: you know, all of those aspects will get into. We
Speaker 1: also have a very interesting I'm excite about this. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it'll really be a debate, but a
Speaker 1: discussion between Bor and Cass and Freddie debo about college
Speaker 1: education and where our money as a public should be
Speaker 1: going and how we should be thinking about what our students,
Speaker 1: our young people should be doing post high school. So
Speaker 1: we will get into all of that, but we wanted
Speaker 1: to start with breaking news with regards to Ukraine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is unquestionably the biggest news in the world. Let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and put this up there on the screen,
Speaker 1: which is that the United States President Biden green lights
Speaker 1: an additional three thousand US troops to Eastern Europe in
Speaker 1: the coming days. So these are going to be countries
Speaker 1: specifically in the NATO Alliance. The deployments will be to
Speaker 1: Poland and Romania, and there are already eight thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred troops that the Pentagon had put on alert, So
Speaker 1: this is three thousand of that eight h five hundred
Speaker 1: troops that are going to go ahead and be deployed
Speaker 1: over there. So this is very very important also because
Speaker 1: many of these are people who are also within Germany
Speaker 1: Crystal who are being sent even farther east over to Romania.
Speaker 1: It's a mechanized infantry division and the Pentagon also said
Speaker 1: that seventeen hundred of the service members will be deploying
Speaker 1: from the eighty second Airborne Division from Fort Bragg to Poland,
Speaker 1: and an additional three hundred people from Fort Bragg to Germany.
Speaker 1: So these are people who are already within Europe who
Speaker 1: are moving much much further east. Obviously, this is a
Speaker 1: big escalation on the part of the United States and
Speaker 1: right House Press Secretary Jensaki talked a little bit about
Speaker 1: it yesterday at the briefing. Let's take a listen to
Speaker 1: her justification. It's still not clear though, why. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know we've been you've been addressing this here, but
Speaker 1: why now then, given that you're saying there's no new
Speaker 1: evidence that's come to light. Necessarily, it's not that you
Speaker 1: have a sense of Putin it is going to invade
Speaker 1: anymore so than you thought a few days ago. That's true,
Speaker 1: But and I just noted that that it wasn't an
Speaker 1: event because I think the way Ze g asked the
Speaker 1: question in the last day or two, or over the
Speaker 1: weekend or something like that, this has been under discussion
Speaker 1: for some time now with our NATO partners and of
Speaker 1: course within the administration. It is also true that there's
Speaker 1: no question that Russia and President Putin has continued to
Speaker 1: take escalatory not de escalatory steps. So it is not
Speaker 1: that it is one moment. Is we are looking at
Speaker 1: the events over the course of time. Yeah, very well
Speaker 1: articulated there, you know, it's just such. It's really terrible
Speaker 1: because the problem here is that the incoherence of our strategy. Now, obviously,
Speaker 1: whenever it comes to Ukraine, we're like, oh, well, we're
Speaker 1: gonna not do anything militarily if Putin invades Ukraine, well
Speaker 1: economically sanctioned. But now we're going to send thirty five
Speaker 1: hundred more troops to Poland and Romania, which is exactly
Speaker 1: why Putin is putting troops on the Ukrainian border in
Speaker 1: the first place, and only bolsters that fear. But we're
Speaker 1: not going to use those troops, don't worry. Also, the
Speaker 1: White House yesterday go ahead and put this up there,
Speaker 1: has gone ahead and said that they are no longer
Speaker 1: going to uv using the word imminent to describe a
Speaker 1: potential Russian invasion of Ukraine based upon a quote unintended message. Obviously,
Speaker 1: they're listening to the people. We told you all to
Speaker 1: listen to the actual Ukrainians, so they're not gonna say
Speaker 1: it's imminent, Crystal, but they are going to send thirty
Speaker 1: five hundred more troops to the region, escalating the tensions there. Obviously,
Speaker 1: and making it seem as if well, you know, what
Speaker 1: are they doing there? What exactly is the message that
Speaker 1: being sent? Is it to bolster a diplomatic message? We
Speaker 1: have not yet heard about this diplomatic message. There is
Speaker 1: complete incoherence around what's happening here and within incoherence, within chaos.
Speaker 1: This is why I've been concerned so much. That is,
Speaker 1: when something can happen which can spark a dramatic confrontation.
Speaker 1: Already this morning I saw the US fighters or go
Speaker 1: ahead and intercepting Russian fighters over the North Sea. This
Speaker 1: is exactly you know, these these chicken moves, and all
Speaker 1: it takes is one collision. These things come very very close.
Speaker 1: One guy kills the other guy. Now what now, what's
Speaker 1: going to happen? It can cause you know, all sorts
Speaker 1: of different ramifications. And clearly as we continue to move
Speaker 1: up the escalation ladder with this, we have no idea
Speaker 1: what is going on in Ukraine. And I mean just
Speaker 1: listen to that White House justification. Yeah, it's nonsense. It's
Speaker 1: basically like triple speak. I don't even know that's a
Speaker 1: orter for asthma, question for it. So why now getting
Speaker 1: that you aren't even making the case that Russia is
Speaker 1: escalating so effectively, Why are we escalating right now? Especially
Speaker 1: as you point out, I mean, this is not going
Speaker 1: to serve as a deterrent force, because they're very upfront
Speaker 1: about listen, this is just to back up our NATO allies.
Speaker 1: They're not going into Ukraine. I mean, they're being very
Speaker 1: clear about that, which I appreciate. But it's not a
Speaker 1: deterrent force. All it does is exacerbate the exact insecurities
Speaker 1: and upset that Putin had to start with. So it's
Speaker 1: hard to see what it accomplishes. I mean, basically, where
Speaker 1: we are right now is pretty clear that none of
Speaker 1: the attempted diplomacy has panned out. The US and NATO
Speaker 1: have been unwilling to give to an inch on any
Speaker 1: of Russia's core demands, and so you're still at this
Speaker 1: absolute stalemate. So this is an effort at this sort
Speaker 1: of like theatrical chest beating, faber rattling show of force.
Speaker 1: Where does it ultimately lead? I mean, that's really the
Speaker 1: big question that nobody ultimately knows. And I do feel
Speaker 1: really bad for the Ukrainians because their economy is getting
Speaker 1: destroyed and hammered through all of this tension and conflict
Speaker 1: as well. So I mean they're just in a horrendous
Speaker 1: situation on edge, economy sinking, caught between you know, very
Speaker 1: difficult circumstances. So I do really really feel for them.
Speaker 1: The other piece that we should keep in mind is
Speaker 1: in terms of like, hey, how people get into like
Speaker 1: let's read Putin's mind or whatever. Part of why there's
Speaker 1: this sort of escalation from him at this point too,
Speaker 1: is that domestically things have not been going all that
Speaker 1: well for him. I mean, their economy is trash. His
Speaker 1: COVID response was bad. So just as our country and
Speaker 1: our failed leader and the failed leader of the UK
Speaker 1: have an interest in sort of having some sort of
Speaker 1: conflicted distracts in their domestic woes, Putin is responding to
Speaker 1: some similar domestic incentives, although I think he also has
Speaker 1: a genuinely deeply held commitment to this reventist ultnationalist ideology
Speaker 1: of restoring the greatness of the Soviet Union. I mean
Speaker 1: it would be vary in character for a Soviet leader
Speaker 1: during a time of bad economic decline to sparkle war
Speaker 1: in this that time was Afghanistan, and before him, the
Speaker 1: Czars did the exact same thing, So I've tried to
Speaker 1: put putin in the context of Russian history. He really
Speaker 1: is just like the quintessential Russian leader. Whenever you read
Speaker 1: a little bit about it, it's kind of fascinating. The
Speaker 1: other part of all of this is a big debate
Speaker 1: here in Washington over once again, nobody tells you what
Speaker 1: exactly the Russians want. I'm not going to say they're
Speaker 1: the best good faith actors or whatever, but here is
Speaker 1: at the gist of it. They want America and NATO
Speaker 1: to say Ukraine will never be a part of NATO. Now,
Speaker 1: we the NATO Alliance and the United States have officially
Speaker 1: invited Ukraine into NATO many years ago. It never actually
Speaker 1: happened because of the geopolitical tensions that it would cause,
Speaker 1: But that kind of invitation remains the case NATO. You
Speaker 1: know official policies that Ukraine you know when it wants
Speaker 1: to or you know when the time the stars align,
Speaker 1: will become part of NATO. Well, Senator Holly came out
Speaker 1: yesterday saying, well, why don't we just give the Russians
Speaker 1: what they want? Calls on Biden to drop support for
Speaker 1: Ukraine membership in NATO. It would de escalate the situation there,
Speaker 1: and frankly, it's not like we have a lot to
Speaker 1: lose anyway. It's not like we were ever actually gonna
Speaker 1: let Ukraine into NATO at this point, given what the
Speaker 1: Russians have drawn their redline, none of what I said
Speaker 1: is all that controversial. And yet when the White House
Speaker 1: was asked about it yesterday, they basically accused him and
Speaker 1: anybody saying what I just said as parroting Russian propaganda.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen. Senator Holly was at the State
Speaker 1: today say that the you look at the presidentship sort
Speaker 1: of take NATO membership off the table for Ukraine, and
Speaker 1: then what in the US interest to do that? Do
Speaker 1: you think that sort of rhetoric or sort of position
Speaker 1: by a US senator right now has helped in this
Speaker 1: showdown between the West and Russia. Well, if you are
Speaker 1: just digesting Russian misinformation and parroting Russian talking points, you
Speaker 1: are not aligned with longstanding bipartisan American values, which well,
Speaker 1: thank you Cold War in Russia. She's not wrong that
Speaker 1: it's bipartisan. It shouldn't be bipartisan. I mean, what is
Speaker 1: so crazy about this American interests economically and militarily are
Speaker 1: not in Eastern Europe and have not been since what
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one? Why should we be wasting so much time, effort,
Speaker 1: money thirty five hundred troops It costs probably a million
Speaker 1: dollars per trup per year in order to keep those
Speaker 1: people forward deployed. Why is any of that worth it?
Speaker 1: Nobody can answer this question. The bipartisan consensus around all
Speaker 1: of this is ludicrous. And yeah, just declaring Ukraine will
Speaker 1: not be a part of NATO is nothing off of
Speaker 1: us militarily, economically, strategically, from a foreign policy, gives them
Speaker 1: what they want, and then okay, then we can all
Speaker 1: focus on what actually matters. This is the thing I
Speaker 1: just don't understand. How can possibly say that it's Russian
Speaker 1: propaganda or misinformation? To be very clear about the timeline
Speaker 1: here in two thousand and eight, we said Russia or
Speaker 1: we said Ukraine and Georgia will be a part of NATO.
Speaker 1: They take offense to that we should have a debate
Speaker 1: should they be in NATO or not. I recommend people
Speaker 1: go out and actually read about what that would entail.
Speaker 1: Do you really want to go to war for the
Speaker 1: integrity of Ukraine's borders? Nuclear war to be very specific. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't, and frankly, I think there should have been
Speaker 1: a big debate around all the Baltic states that were
Speaker 1: led into NATO a post of the Cold War. The
Speaker 1: entire part of NATO was to protect ourselves against the
Speaker 1: superpower at the time of the Soviet Union. What the
Speaker 1: hell does all of this matter in these days, Crystal
Speaker 1: Nobody can answer this question. Yeah, in power. Well, and
Speaker 1: the thing about Jansaki's framing there basically like, you're not
Speaker 1: a patriot, you don't support American values, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Look at the polls of how the American public feels
Speaker 1: about this, because they are much more in line with
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't love Holly's framing because he's basically like,
Speaker 1: let's not be hawkish here, so we can be hawkish
Speaker 1: towards China, praising whatever anyway. But listen, if you pull
Speaker 1: the American people about how intertwined they want to get
Speaker 1: in this Ukrainian conflict and whether they ultimately want to
Speaker 1: go to war for Ukraine's borders, You're going to find
Speaker 1: you've got a lot of I guess, Russian misinformation and
Speaker 1: propaganda and anti American values running through the American public.
Speaker 1: In reality, they just are much more They have no
Speaker 1: financial interest in this, like the people in this town
Speaker 1: who are on the airwaves, who are you know, at
Speaker 1: the podium who are running the show here, and so
Speaker 1: they can look at this with that actually much more
Speaker 1: clear headed and realistic view ultimately and say, listen, this
Speaker 1: is not a good situation. No, we don't want Russia,
Speaker 1: you know, invading countries and violating their territorial integrity. We
Speaker 1: don't want any of that. But are we willing to
Speaker 1: like fight and die to maintain the territorial integrity of Ukraine? No,
Speaker 1: So you know, maybe ought to have a conversation with
Speaker 1: the American people about what their American values ultimately are.
Speaker 1: To your point about the bipartisan consensus, Ken Klippenstein actually
Speaker 1: had this scoop. I think just yesterday Bob Menendez, Democrat
Speaker 1: New Jersey is also considering immediate sanctions on Russia regardless
Speaker 1: of what they do in Ukraine. You would be joining
Speaker 1: Republicans in that call. So we've got a nice little
Speaker 1: bipartisan coalition there that gets so much praise and support
Speaker 1: for the media, like you can never go wrong in
Speaker 1: the media's eyes when you're calling for more military, more tentions,
Speaker 1: more lethal aid, quote unquote. That's always praised when it
Speaker 1: comes to the media. In fact, I thought Michael Tracy
Speaker 1: had a funny tweet. He was like, you know what
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan could do right now to take the heat off,
Speaker 1: as he could just go really hard for Ukrainian territorial
Speaker 1: integrity and he'd be their golden boys. That's actually pretty funny.
Speaker 1: I will say this. The only piece of good news
Speaker 1: I saw out of all of this was that Ukraine,
Speaker 1: by its own what it actually wants, said that they
Speaker 1: were going to set up a tripartide to alliance with Ukraine,
Speaker 1: Britain and Poland. And you know what, I thought, Great,
Speaker 1: Let the Europeans handle it. It's their continent. You guys decide,
Speaker 1: you shake it out amongst yourselves. The Germans and the
Speaker 1: French are on one side, the Polish and the Britain.
Speaker 1: The Brits are more hawkish. Convene your Grand European Council
Speaker 1: and figure it out. I don't think we should have
Speaker 1: to figure it out. It's your problem. You decide what
Speaker 1: your redlines are. All of that, and okay, you know
Speaker 1: we'll back you up a little bit. I don't think
Speaker 1: our troops should be the ones who are majorly there
Speaker 1: on the front lines. Ask yourself that question. Why are
Speaker 1: there more American troops out there forward deployed in Eastern
Speaker 1: Europe than almost any other NATO country which is not
Speaker 1: Poland or Romania. How don't the Germans handle this? Let
Speaker 1: the Brits handle it. They're huge economies, they have large
Speaker 1: militaries too. Why do we have to foot the bill?
Speaker 1: This is again the same problem, which is that we
Speaker 1: have no actual bipartisan debate here in DC because the
Speaker 1: consensus is almost exactly the same. Mitch McConnell is basically saying, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm happy with what Biden has done, but I wish
Speaker 1: you would do a little bit more. Basically, what he
Speaker 1: means by that is maybe a green lights some CIA
Speaker 1: guys to go into Ukraine. This is the opposite of
Speaker 1: the debate that actually needs to happen in Washington. And look,
Speaker 1: it just tells you a lot and the Biden administration
Speaker 1: is making us all a whole lot more unsafe. And
Speaker 1: this could make the this could make the situation spiral
Speaker 1: out of control. I'm not going to say, you know,
Speaker 1: it's going to go to a nuclear confrontation. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's not a good thing for the entire world's attention
Speaker 1: to be focused on here when geostrategically and more we
Speaker 1: do not have a lot of stake about what's happening well,
Speaker 1: and the Europeans have a lot more directly, it's their
Speaker 1: problem on right now, and it would be respectful to
Speaker 1: the Europeans to actually let them take sort of the
Speaker 1: lead in this rather than us thinking that we have
Speaker 1: to run everything around the world. And you know, Russia
Speaker 1: has kind of acted in the same regard that our
Speaker 1: opinion and what we're doing is the only thing that
Speaker 1: matters here. So I think that's a decent direction, agree
Speaker 1: with all right. Jeff Zucker CNN. So the head of CNN,
Speaker 1: in a pretty stunning move, suddenly stepped down This broke yesterday.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and put this first tweet up on
Speaker 1: the screen there from Brian Stelter. Jeff Zucker just announced
Speaker 1: his resignation to a stunned CNN. What he lays out
Speaker 1: here leave his tweet up on the screen for a moment,
Speaker 1: is that while they were investigating Chris Cuomo's tenure at CNN,
Speaker 1: Zucker was asked about a consensual relationship. This is per
Speaker 1: his statement with his closest colleagues, someone I've worked with
Speaker 1: for more than twenty years. I acknowledge the relationship evolved
Speaker 1: in recent years. I was required to disclose it when
Speaker 1: it began, but I didn't. I was wrong. As a result,
Speaker 1: I am resigning so effectively, he admits that he's been
Speaker 1: having this long time, consensual from all appearances, affair, And
Speaker 1: as we kind of get further through the day, it
Speaker 1: turns out that this was Nobody was surprised by the affair.
Speaker 1: Apparently it was one of the biggest open seats everybody
Speaker 1: all of New York. Everybody knew, I mean, and they
Speaker 1: both ultimately ended their marriages over the affair. And also,
Speaker 1: I want to say, like I mean, I don't personally
Speaker 1: really care about the affair. This wasn't some junior level
Speaker 1: like twenty three year old producer like Matt Lower was into.
Speaker 1: This was another sort of senior level person. So, yes,
Speaker 1: he's the head of CNN, there's some power dynamic thing whatever.
Speaker 1: But from what I can tell, this was relatively coequal
Speaker 1: people having consensual relationship. So then you start to go, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not surprised by the affair, but why are you
Speaker 1: resigning over it now? So put a pin in that
Speaker 1: for now. We had to laugh at Brian Stelter's reaction
Speaker 1: to this. Go ahead and throw this up on the screen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he describes Jeff Zucker as larger than life. He's a
Speaker 1: pioneering figure at CNN for nearly a decade. Now it's resignation.
Speaker 1: It's stunning this newsroom in the news industry. Of course,
Speaker 1: Stelter has been the most reliable CNN propagandist and lackey
Speaker 1: oh yes, for Zucker. In fact, there's some calls this
Speaker 1: boarding for Stelter to be fired over this as well,
Speaker 1: because I mean, his whole job supposedly is to be
Speaker 1: media watchdog. And when you're in that position, you're supposed
Speaker 1: to be not just watching other outlets and criticizing them,
Speaker 1: which he's very comfortable doing, but you're also supposed to
Speaker 1: be holding your own people to account. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: a very difficult and uncomfortable job to be in, but
Speaker 1: that's the job you signed up for. And so if
Speaker 1: this was total open secret, and if there were you know,
Speaker 1: if it helped her get promotions, and if there was
Speaker 1: some tie in with what was going on with Cuomo. Well,
Speaker 1: this is stuff that Brian Stelterer, If you knew about it,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to be breaking as a media reporter. So
Speaker 1: it's funny that even in this moment he's feigning such surprise.
Speaker 1: There's no way he didn't know. He obviously knew this
Speaker 1: was ultimately going on. Put the next piece up on
Speaker 1: the screen, because this is interesting. This is where it's
Speaker 1: all about, folks. Yes, So here's so when you start
Speaker 1: to go okay, so consensual affair, everybody knew about it.
Speaker 1: Why is he getting Why is he leaving now? Why
Speaker 1: is he being pushed out now? While it turns out
Speaker 1: the woman that he was involved with, Alison Gallist, had
Speaker 1: been Governor Cuomo's communications director before becoming executive vice president
Speaker 1: at CNN, So it starts to look like there's some
Speaker 1: direct tie in with the treatment that you know, kid
Speaker 1: gloves treatment of Cuomo, how he was allowed to stay
Speaker 1: on the air for so long, how it took so
Speaker 1: long for there to be any accountability whatsoever. And of
Speaker 1: course Chris Cuomo came out swinging and hired lawyers and
Speaker 1: said he was taken legal action to try to get
Speaker 1: the rest of the money on his contract because he
Speaker 1: thought he's eight fi million dollars as he thought he
Speaker 1: was terminated unfairly and even sort of alluded to like
Speaker 1: there's going to be some other things that come out.
Speaker 1: So it looks like Cuomo, Chris Cuomo, former CNN anchor,
Speaker 1: maybe having his revenge here and that there may be
Speaker 1: a lot more going on underneath the surface here than
Speaker 1: just a longtime, open secret, consensual affair. So as I
Speaker 1: understand it, I've been asking around to some people in
Speaker 1: the know, and the phones are going hot right now,
Speaker 1: I can tell you. So this is basically what has
Speaker 1: been happening, which is that that open secret affair was
Speaker 1: being weaponized by Chris Cuomo's legal team, and legal team
Speaker 1: apparently in a recent meeting with WarnerMedia and Discovery was like, hey,
Speaker 1: how can he say that it was an inappropriate relationship
Speaker 1: of Chris and his brother whenever the boss has been
Speaker 1: screwing one of his executive vice presidents, who herself was
Speaker 1: a former communications director for Governor Andrew Cuomo. And that's
Speaker 1: a's realty good point. And if you're such a good
Speaker 1: there with all kinds of communications that look very bad
Speaker 1: for everybody involved, right, And it's such a good point,
Speaker 1: Crystal that actually there was a leak about a month ago.
Speaker 1: I'm frankly embarrassed. I didn't even know about it. It's
Speaker 1: from a gossip website called Radar Online. That's go ahead
Speaker 1: and put this up there on the screen where they
Speaker 1: said CNN bosses Jeff Zucker and Alison Gollis left their
Speaker 1: marriages after alleged romantic affair and a cozy arrangement dragged
Speaker 1: into the Chris Cuomo scandal. So what they allege actually
Speaker 1: within this piece, and I think it's pretty obviously planted
Speaker 1: by Chris Cuomo's legal team in retrospect, is that what
Speaker 1: they point out is that the relationship between Zucker and
Speaker 1: Alison Gollist. Part of the issue is that part of
Speaker 1: the reason why Zucker may have been so soft on
Speaker 1: christ in the first place is that she, given her
Speaker 1: previous relationship with Governor Cuomo, was like, hey, come on,
Speaker 1: it's his brother, you know, you know, Andrew, her former boss.
Speaker 1: And given that she's literally sleeping with her boss, this
Speaker 1: is also seems important. And so all of this culminated
Speaker 1: ultimately in the kid Glove's treatment, which led to the
Speaker 1: months and months of bad behavior by Cuomo and ultimately
Speaker 1: for him to play that role of going ahead and
Speaker 1: getting involved in the defense and lying to CNN's bosses.
Speaker 1: And what actually makes this so significant beyond the actual
Speaker 1: story by itself, is this morning, what we are learning
Speaker 1: is that there was a meeting last night between the
Speaker 1: head of WarnerMedia, Jason Kaylar, and the CNN DC bureau.
Speaker 1: Now at this meeting, the CNN's journalists are freaking out
Speaker 1: and apparently asked him did the punishment really fit the crime?
Speaker 1: Did you really not know well? And these people were
Speaker 1: Jake Tapper, Caitlin Collins, and Jim Acossa. Let me tell
Speaker 1: you well why it was those three people. And this
Speaker 1: is from what I know having asked around about how
Speaker 1: Zucker ran his network. He looked at his talent like
Speaker 1: his family, as in any criticism of them, including Chris Cuomo,
Speaker 1: was like an attack on him. He took it very personally.
Speaker 1: He protected them from network higher some criticism and all that.
Speaker 1: They're freaking out because and they want to revenge for
Speaker 1: their boss because now the battle acts could be coming
Speaker 1: because what have I told you guys previously, Discovery CEO
Speaker 1: hates CNN. He thinks that they are a huge problem.
Speaker 1: And Discovery is the new owner of CNN, the new
Speaker 1: bosses of CNN. They do not like many of the
Speaker 1: talent there. They've actually been eyeing a shake up for
Speaker 1: a long time. And Zucker was the chief proponent for no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, we got to keep the Trump Russia
Speaker 1: Gates madness exactly. He was the buffer. So now that
Speaker 1: he's out, they their next are on the line. This
Speaker 1: is a big problem for everybody involved. So look, sleazy media,
Speaker 1: Shenanigan's going up. Look, yeah, their consensual relationship like whatever,
Speaker 1: But there's some pretty creepy stuff that has been revealed.
Speaker 1: We'll put this up there. Put the tweet. So these
Speaker 1: are memoirs from you actually read and I forgot about
Speaker 1: this second from Katie car So. Katie Couric wrote this
Speaker 1: very dishy memoir which actually was very interesting. I did
Speaker 1: a whole monologuetten it if you guys want to go
Speaker 1: on and check it out, which actually you all were
Speaker 1: very interested in, which I was a little bit surprised with. Anyway,
Speaker 1: when she was at ABC and she was working with
Speaker 1: Jeff again, he made a push to try to bring
Speaker 1: in this woman whom we now know he was having
Speaker 1: an affair with Alison as like a PR person, and
Speaker 1: Katie already had a PR person. She's like, why are
Speaker 1: you forcing this person on me? Like I'm good? And
Speaker 1: they had a meeting that was sort of uncomfortable, and
Speaker 1: Alison actually said to her, I don't want to force
Speaker 1: myself on you, and she's like, okay. And she also
Speaker 1: reveals in that piece that the two had moved their
Speaker 1: families in next to each other. She actually had bought
Speaker 1: the apartment above him and his family, And Katie sort
Speaker 1: of leaves it to readers to glean what's going on there,
Speaker 1: and she just says, like, I was very uncomfortable with
Speaker 1: the relationship because she was close friends with Jeff Sucker's wife.
Speaker 1: Then the sort of kicker of this little anecdote she
Speaker 1: tells is that Zucker is up for the job at CNN.
Speaker 1: Big job. You ask Katie for recommend it. Can you
Speaker 1: put in a good work? Can you help me get
Speaker 1: the job? I promise they'll be a slot for there.
Speaker 1: He gets the job. Number one, there never was a
Speaker 1: slot for Katie. That favor was never returned. Number two,
Speaker 1: he never called her. The very first hire was Alison
Speaker 1: Alison so to, and it does speak to the point
Speaker 1: also this being just like everybody knew that this was
Speaker 1: going on, and it wasn't a problem for him all
Speaker 1: these years. It's only now with whatever whatever was happening
Speaker 1: behind the scenes with the Cuomo incident, that this really
Speaker 1: became an issue for him now. Listen, Zucker was planning
Speaker 1: to later on step down from this position at CNN
Speaker 1: once the merger was complete, so that was a little
Speaker 1: ways into the future. But this is obviously extraordinarily abrupt
Speaker 1: and at a time a huge transition for CNN right
Speaker 1: now as well. I mean, they're trying to get this
Speaker 1: totally laughable, pathetic streaming thing up and running, which was
Speaker 1: also his baby, which is his baby. The latest news
Speaker 1: on that is that they're giving Don Lemon a show
Speaker 1: on there, which is just like, you know, how do
Speaker 1: you dilute yourself into thinking that this is going to
Speaker 1: work because Don Lemon not only does his show on
Speaker 1: CNN not do very well, but he had that podcast
Speaker 1: from when we found out he had that podcast with
Speaker 1: Chris Cuomo. They did that like handoff, which no one
Speaker 1: even knew about or listened to until it became relevant
Speaker 1: to the scandal, So you know, then already it's been
Speaker 1: proven in the alternative media ecosystem, this person has no cachet,
Speaker 1: no audience, no one cares what he has to say,
Speaker 1: and yet you put him into the streaming lineup. So anyway,
Speaker 1: it's a time of great transition at CNN as it
Speaker 1: is an MSNBC and somewhat to a degree at Fox
Speaker 1: News as well, So for him to abruptly leave is
Speaker 1: really a big deal. And you know, from the people
Speaker 1: I know that work at CNN as well, they say
Speaker 1: the same thing about he's very hands on with his talent.
Speaker 1: You know, he has very like sort of personal relationships
Speaker 1: with the hosts and the anchors who are there. So
Speaker 1: if you've spent invested all this time sucking up to
Speaker 1: Jeff Zucker to ensure your place in the CNN hierarchy,
Speaker 1: and now suddenly, without any warning, he's gone, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: sure there are a lot of anchors who are feeling
Speaker 1: very exposed right now, not knowing who's going to replace him,
Speaker 1: and not knowing how they'll be judged in the just
Speaker 1: like cold harsh light of hey, what are your ratings
Speaker 1: like and how are you delivering for the bottom line,
Speaker 1: not necessarily even the ratings there crystal, which is that
Speaker 1: the image of CNN is a black mark for a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are at Time Warner and with WarnerMedia,
Speaker 1: the people who are at higher ups in Hollywood, they
Speaker 1: don't want to deal with it because they know that
Speaker 1: it attacks regulatory scrutiny, that yes, with news comes power,
Speaker 1: but comes controversy, and they don't want controversy. Controversy is
Speaker 1: bad for business. This is part of the reason why
Speaker 1: Fox was spun off. Fox News was spun off from
Speaker 1: the rest of the Fox Empire and was sold off
Speaker 1: to Disney. Was specifically because neither side wanted to deal
Speaker 1: with the other and they had to deal with boycotts
Speaker 1: and all this stuff. So you know, if I was
Speaker 1: one of those people in the CNN Washington bureau kissed Jucker,
Speaker 1: Jeff Zucker's ass for the last five years, yeah, I'd
Speaker 1: be freaking out a little bit right right now. And
Speaker 1: look for me, it's just a little bit of a
Speaker 1: karmic justice. I've watched some people flourish in this town,
Speaker 1: people like Jim Acosta become Chief White House correspondent, correspondent
Speaker 1: under the auspices of Jeff Zucker who steered the country
Speaker 1: in that direction, rewarding his clownish, idiotic behavior, giving him
Speaker 1: his own show, turning him into a national celebrity at
Speaker 1: the detriment of the entire country with the shenanigans that
Speaker 1: they pulled under the Trump years. So this is just
Speaker 1: a small, small measure of justice. And I'm really looking
Speaker 1: forward to what the New Discovery people are going to
Speaker 1: be doing. I just can't wait to And when this
Speaker 1: story initially broke, I was sort of playing on my
Speaker 1: commentary to be that of all the things that Zucker
Speaker 1: has done that's has been evil and wrong, like consensual
Speaker 1: sex scandal between someone who's more or less at your level, right,
Speaker 1: you know, where there's not a lot of like power
Speaker 1: pressure whatever. That's like the least of whatever his sins
Speaker 1: were at the network. But if what's really going on
Speaker 1: here is it's because of how he handled the Cuomo thing,
Speaker 1: that actually is oh, that is a worthy reason for
Speaker 1: him to ultimately be fired, even though I mean all
Speaker 1: of these people are rutten to the core. I mean,
Speaker 1: think of what they've done to this country, and you know,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump was a horror show for this country, and
Speaker 1: Jeff Zucker openly admitted being part of helping to deliver
Speaker 1: him to the White House. So he's so culpable. He's
Speaker 1: as culpable as anyone in the just totally toxic, destroyed,
Speaker 1: divisive political atmosphere that's been created over the past number
Speaker 1: of years. So to see him get his comeuppance for,
Speaker 1: you know, especially if it is because really of what
Speaker 1: happened with Cuomo, I mean that that is actually just
Speaker 1: and the other thing on that radar online, that sort
Speaker 1: of gossip rag that had this story of or so back.
Speaker 1: The word is that Cuomo's people were shopping the story
Speaker 1: to a lot of outlets and they're the only one
Speaker 1: that would pick it up because they were afraid. Everybody's afraid.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why these things don't come out long
Speaker 1: before when they're quote unquote open secrets. It's because all
Speaker 1: of these outlets do the calculation of, like, is it
Speaker 1: worth it to get the story and then face the
Speaker 1: ire of someone who's incredibly connected, incredibly powerful, not just
Speaker 1: in media but in politics too, who has you know,
Speaker 1: a streak for revenge, and everybody calculated over many years
Speaker 1: that hey, it's just not worth it. So that's why,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't hear about it till now. Well,
Speaker 1: the bell tolls for the Jeff Sucker. I will say
Speaker 1: the only good thing he ever did in his life
Speaker 1: is he did green light Fear Factor with Joe Rogan.
Speaker 1: He's the one who made Joe Rogan a household name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, it's file. Actually, within the span of two years,
Speaker 1: he green lit two shows, Fear Factor with Joe Rogan
Speaker 1: and The Apprentice with Donald Trump. So what an impact
Speaker 1: on history this man has had. Wow? Incredible. All right, guys,
Speaker 1: this story really pissed me off. It's very revealing of
Speaker 1: what's actually going on in the economy right now. Go
Speaker 1: ahead and put this tweet up on the screen. So
Speaker 1: Starbucks sends out this missivel we're gonna have to We're
Speaker 1: forced to raise prices due to inflation and supply chain issues. Maybe,
Speaker 1: but also, by the way, their profit last quarter went
Speaker 1: up thirty one percent. They just gave their CEO a
Speaker 1: thirty nine percent race to twenty point four million dollars.
Speaker 1: And if you dig into that New York Times article
Speaker 1: that Dan Price there is linking to I mean, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what they say. They say. The identical thing for
Speaker 1: the last three months of last year, the company's profit
Speaker 1: scored thirty one percent to eight hundred and sixteen million.
Speaker 1: Revenue grew to eight point one billion. That's a nineteen
Speaker 1: percent jump compared with the same quarter a year ago.
Speaker 1: And also, by the way, this isn't the first time
Speaker 1: that they raised prices. They also raise prices back in October.
Speaker 1: So it just shows you it doesn't fit together that, oh,
Speaker 1: we're under such pricing pressure we have to raise Probably
Speaker 1: we're really sorry, but what can we do. And also, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, we're raking in record profits, so at
Speaker 1: least some portion of the price increase is just because
Speaker 1: they can. They raise prices in October twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: And by the way, again they cop to this, they
Speaker 1: admit to this, they say it all all on their
Speaker 1: earnings call. They raise prices in October twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: they found that it didn't affect demand. Their customers were
Speaker 1: still showing up. Demand for expensive not that great coffee
Speaker 1: was still very, very high, and so they thought, hey,
Speaker 1: we got away with it once we're able to lift
Speaker 1: prices and get a record breaking profit margin, we're going
Speaker 1: to do it again. And this as we've been trying
Speaker 1: to demonstrate to you, and Matt Stiller had a great
Speaker 1: piece on it. This is a crucial piece of the story.
Speaker 1: It's not the whole story, it's a crucial piece of
Speaker 1: the story of why prices are going up in key
Speaker 1: sectors across the economy. The Prospect actually has a fantastic series.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and put this next tear sheet up
Speaker 1: on the screen, fantastic series about what is really going
Speaker 1: on with inflation and proposing some novel solutions. I mean,
Speaker 1: there won't be novel to you guys, but novel to
Speaker 1: the DC establishment about how to fight inflation other than
Speaker 1: just trying to like destroy the lives of the working
Speaker 1: class so they have no money to spend. And antitrust
Speaker 1: is a big part of that fight. Why because when
Speaker 1: you have monopoly pricing power, it means that you can
Speaker 1: use an excuse something like inflation to lift your prices
Speaker 1: and to price gouge. And that is in fact what
Speaker 1: we have seen in sector after sector, especially when it
Speaker 1: comes to food, especially when it comes to gas, when
Speaker 1: it comes to housing, when it comes to a lot
Speaker 1: of things that really hit the bottom line. The last
Speaker 1: thing that I want to point out that I think
Speaker 1: is really interesting is you know how Biden did that
Speaker 1: sort of like teppid calling out of the meat packing industry,
Speaker 1: which is one of the worst defenders in terms of
Speaker 1: massive consolidation, huge price spikes. They're the only ones that
Speaker 1: are benefiting consumers are paying very high prices. None of
Speaker 1: that is getting passed down to the ranchers who were
Speaker 1: actually raising the cattle that go into the system. Well,
Speaker 1: the mere threat, according to the Prospect, the mere threat
Speaker 1: of anti trust investigation actually curbed price spikes in beef.
Speaker 1: Beef prices rose every month from December twenty twenty until
Speaker 1: December twenty twenty one, when they suddenly dropped by two
Speaker 1: point three percent, right as President Biden was putting on
Speaker 1: the heat. And a similar phenomenon occurred back under President
Speaker 1: Kennedy when he used the bully pulpit to admonish steel
Speaker 1: companies in April nineteen sixty two. The price hikes were
Speaker 1: rescinded within days. So what have we been saying for
Speaker 1: a long time. If Biden would just get out there
Speaker 1: and they just say some stuff and call these people
Speaker 1: out and have a credible threat that hey, we're going
Speaker 1: to do an anti trust investigator. We're going to look
Speaker 1: at breaking you all up if you don't get these
Speaker 1: prices under control and stop price gouging people. It actually
Speaker 1: even a little tupid thing that he did actually had
Speaker 1: a real impact here. So it's so important to understand
Speaker 1: what the full picture of why prices are going up
Speaker 1: really is. This is the power of the American presidency, Crystal.
Speaker 1: People really do not understand just how powerful the bully
Speaker 1: pulp it is. You know, this story broke this morning,
Speaker 1: so I wanted to make sure I could highlight it
Speaker 1: for everybody that Shell's profits have actually gone up to
Speaker 1: historic proportions. Wow, even though they claim that the price
Speaker 1: of oil and natural gas is at an all time high.
Speaker 1: So once again the price is high for you. Your
Speaker 1: balance sheet screwed. Shell balance sheet high also, Crystal, where
Speaker 1: do you think that they're going to be investing. There
Speaker 1: are hundreds of millions of dollars in extra profit that
Speaker 1: they made this year. Is it going to be in
Speaker 1: new drilling, Is it going to be in expanding infrastructure.
Speaker 1: Is it going to be in any thing profitable for
Speaker 1: the rest of the country or for themselves. No, all
Speaker 1: of it is going to buying back their own shares
Speaker 1: in order to increase the price of their freaking stock dividend. Now,
Speaker 1: once again that's within their rights. But here's the problem. Here,
Speaker 1: here's the problem with the American economy. You pay more,
Speaker 1: they claim that they're transferring the price to you, their
Speaker 1: profit goes up, they buy back their own stock. Then
Speaker 1: they use that in order to juice the dividend for
Speaker 1: their stockholders, increasing the overall price of which they borrow
Speaker 1: assets against of which they don't have to pay any taxes,
Speaker 1: and everybody gets rich except for you. That's how it's
Speaker 1: all rigged, and this is why it drives me crazy.
Speaker 1: Same with the stock example, which is okay, let's say
Speaker 1: they have the profit. Fine, then at least you have
Speaker 1: to use it in order to make the pros of
Speaker 1: oil go down in the future. Do you know the
Speaker 1: amount of subsidies that these people get. It's unbelievable. In
Speaker 1: the tax code in Texas, drilling right, tax benefits, write offs, appreciation, bought,
Speaker 1: the entire judiciary system right, ran everything right, like all
Speaker 1: stacked forward, and they still use it in order to
Speaker 1: buy back their own stock and increase the dividend price
Speaker 1: while everybody else gets screwed. The price of oil and
Speaker 1: gas continues to go up, their profits continues to go up,
Speaker 1: and nobody is investing in making sure that any of
Speaker 1: it goes down. Sound familiar, same thing whenever it comes
Speaker 1: to Starbucks. And the reason I'm focusing on the gas
Speaker 1: story is because what that's fifty percent of all incuation?
Speaker 1: Part that is the number one increase for average Americans. Man,
Speaker 1: the costco gas lines these days are very long, and
Speaker 1: I get it. This is why, because it's a huge
Speaker 1: line item increase for a vast majority of families. And
Speaker 1: how many people know this? Why is the president not
Speaker 1: decrying this every day? You know what, I'm just a
Speaker 1: freaking guy on YouTube. Actually a lot of people know it.
Speaker 1: I mean we thought, we saw that poll that majority
Speaker 1: of Americans understand that corporate greed is a big part
Speaker 1: of inflation. But yeah, I mean, this is one of
Speaker 1: those examples where you know, the Democrats, the one thing
Speaker 1: they're great at is coming up with excuses for why
Speaker 1: they can't do anything. Oh, Joe Manchibro, Kirsten Cinema, the Republicans, Oh,
Speaker 1: the PARLIAMENTARIANSO. It's just really hard. This is something that
Speaker 1: you have a lot of control over. I mean, first
Speaker 1: of all, just the executive branch. In terms of anti
Speaker 1: trust enforcement, you have a lot of levers you can
Speaker 1: pull there. But just in terms of the bully pulpit
Speaker 1: we've seen now, it seems like it works somewhat with
Speaker 1: beef prices. Do that more. I mean, that's like one
Speaker 1: hundred percent in your control. All they did is like
Speaker 1: put out one little press release and did like one
Speaker 1: little press conference, and that was it. It stopped the rise.
Speaker 1: Every single month for a year, beef prices had been rising,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly they do that and drops two point
Speaker 1: three percent. And just so you know that we're not
Speaker 1: cherry picking here, a couple of Oh it's just Shell
Speaker 1: or it's just Starbucks. Food and water Watch put together
Speaker 1: a bunch of statistics about some of the key sort
Speaker 1: of monopoly power in different sectors, especially with regards to
Speaker 1: food and gas. They crunch the numbers on the oil
Speaker 1: companies and found exactly what you're laying out there. Their
Speaker 1: profit margins are through the roof, and yet they're telling
Speaker 1: you all, we have to charge you this much for gasoline.
Speaker 1: You look at Purdue in terms of food prices, meat prices,
Speaker 1: their profits are up twelve point seven percent. You look
Speaker 1: at Cargill seventeen point three percent. Within the grocery industry,
Speaker 1: Walmart is up about seven percent, Kroger is up eight percent,
Speaker 1: Costco is up nine percent. So this idea that, oh,
Speaker 1: they're just under so much pressure that they have to
Speaker 1: pass on higher prices to you is largely just bullshit,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to these large monopoly players who
Speaker 1: have so much control, almost an iron fisted control, over
Speaker 1: these markets. They're just lying, and they're telling their investors
Speaker 1: the truth, which is that we've found we can raise
Speaker 1: prices and get away with it. So that's what we're
Speaker 1: going to keep doing. Point to another one. UPS yesterday
Speaker 1: posted a three point one billion dollar fourth quarter profit,
Speaker 1: surpassing analyst expectations, and they're going to be increasing their
Speaker 1: dividend by fifty percent. This is a supply chain company, right,
Speaker 1: there's some deliver our stuff. They're always sending us an email, Oh,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be delayed because of supply chain. Three point
Speaker 1: one billion they're putting in the bank and all what
Speaker 1: these UPS drivers, you know, the unionized one's doing okay.
Speaker 1: But we're hearing some rumblings about what might happen in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. I would tell you guys to go
Speaker 1: ahead and take note of that same XOM just once
Speaker 1: again so you know I'm not cherry picking. Xon is
Speaker 1: also up, you know, going to be increasing. Their share
Speaker 1: price is up six percent on the news, and they're
Speaker 1: also going to be resuming a ten billion dollar stock
Speaker 1: buy back over the next two years. Crystal, you are
Speaker 1: you guys sensing a theme here? Price goes up for you,
Speaker 1: they use that in order to jack up the price.
Speaker 1: And it's not all of it. There's definitely supply chain concerns.
Speaker 1: Like don't get us wrong, but what what's going on
Speaker 1: behind the scenes is making sure that only they and
Speaker 1: the richest people in the country continue to get richer
Speaker 1: while they actually do it directly at your expense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in this case, that's the most disgusting part. The other
Speaker 1: reason the stock buy back thing is really important is because,
Speaker 1: I mean, part of what we saw leading into the
Speaker 1: pandemic is all of these big companies got huge tax
Speaker 1: break under Trump. They were flushed with cash, and they
Speaker 1: used it rather than investment or saving it or any
Speaker 1: you know, making sure that they weren't in a fragile position.
Speaker 1: A lot of them used it for stock buybacks, and
Speaker 1: then when the pandemic hit, you add a lot of
Speaker 1: industries that were in very vulnerable positions. The airlines are
Speaker 1: a perfect example of that, where then you know, they're
Speaker 1: these two big defail companies. They've got their lobbyist position
Speaker 1: to get their custom written bailouts, and I you know,
Speaker 1: supported the airline balance to make sure that the weaker
Speaker 1: stay employed. But part of the story is that when
Speaker 1: they irresponsibly use this money just to juice their own
Speaker 1: wallets and the wallets of their investors, that puts them
Speaker 1: in a precarious position for if there is a market downturn,
Speaker 1: which you know a lot of analysts say that we
Speaker 1: may well have. So that's the other piece of this story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, all right, So let's go what does the
Speaker 1: logical conclusion of all of us lead to to these
Speaker 1: very very rich folks, what do they spend their money on. Well,
Speaker 1: this is just a symbol of everything wrong in the world.
Speaker 1: Let's put it and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 1: And I love I specifically got the Washington Post right
Speaker 1: up of this because I wanted to see what they
Speaker 1: included and what they didn't. Given that Bezos owns it,
Speaker 1: Rotterdam will be dismantling part of a historic bridge so
Speaker 1: that Jeff Bezos's massive yacht can pass through. Not a joke,
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos is four hundred and seventeen foot long, three
Speaker 1: mossed yacht can now pass through the waterway sometime this summer,
Speaker 1: according to the spokesperson for the city, the Conning Shaven Bridge,
Speaker 1: I think Coning means king, so something like that will
Speaker 1: be had to be partially dismantled because the yacht, which
Speaker 1: has cost an estimated five hundred million dollars in the
Speaker 1: nearby city of all al Blasserdam, Sorry Hollanders, which is
Speaker 1: I guess you guys still build great ships. So that's
Speaker 1: why Bezos chose you needs to be able to pass
Speaker 1: through the city of Rotterdam to eventually get through that.
Speaker 1: But the city's historic steel bridge has a clearance of
Speaker 1: just over one hundred and thirty feet. Now, just to
Speaker 1: give you an example of this bridge, it was built
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty seven. It was a railway bridge, one
Speaker 1: of the very first kind in Europe. It was actually
Speaker 1: decommissioned in ninety four after it was replaced by a tunnel,
Speaker 1: but it was declared a national monument, and the bridge
Speaker 1: actually underwent a major restoration in twenty fourteen because they
Speaker 1: said it would not be dismantled again at the time.
Speaker 1: That's what they said, and yet they have now agreed
Speaker 1: that they will be dismantling the bridge in order for
Speaker 1: the yacht to be able to pass through. The only
Speaker 1: not insult injury is that yes, bezos will be paying
Speaker 1: for the dismantling. I guess that's fine. But just this
Speaker 1: symbol of a historic bridge which was once the pride
Speaker 1: of the Netherlands to be partially dismantled and reassembled after
Speaker 1: they said they wouldn't do it anymore after it was restored,
Speaker 1: just so the guy's yacht can get from the shipyard
Speaker 1: to the open sea. What else? It's a billionaire the
Speaker 1: women five million, five hundred million dollar yacht, the most
Speaker 1: one of the most expensive yachts in the history of mankind.
Speaker 1: In fact, this yacht, let's put this next one up there,
Speaker 1: cost five hundred million dollars and is so big it
Speaker 1: actually requires a little support yacht in order to track
Speaker 1: it and follow it around, which includes like helipads and
Speaker 1: all sorts of other crazy stuff. The existence of the
Speaker 1: yacht was actually first reported by Brad Stone in his
Speaker 1: book about Amazon. But this really yeah, so it was
Speaker 1: all kept under wraps. A lot of this was never
Speaker 1: even supposed to hit the public. And thanks to brad
Speaker 1: for uncovering it to the world. Just exactly this half
Speaker 1: a billion dollar yacht and what this thing looks like.
Speaker 1: This puts Bezos on par in gaudiness with Mohammed bin
Speaker 1: Salmon of Saudi Arabia at least. So he is probably
Speaker 1: the largest sailing yacht in the entire world. Wow. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's bested them, He's bested them. He's a sultan,
Speaker 1: He's a king. He's certainly the sultan. He certainly sees
Speaker 1: himself that way. The whole world is his playground to
Speaker 1: be done with as he wishes. Just compare that with
Speaker 1: the treatment of people like Dai Kwon Smith who we
Speaker 1: covered here, who was made homeless, lost everything, forced him
Speaker 1: to a homeless shelter because he was fired by Amazon.
Speaker 1: What was his crime union organizing? Or think about the
Speaker 1: treatment of Chris Mall's. Or think about the treatment of
Speaker 1: literally any Amazon worker who is out there hustling, either
Speaker 1: at a fulfillment center, in the warehouse or driving delivering packages,
Speaker 1: having to pee in a bottle in order to make
Speaker 1: it on time. And then this man and oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, I mean, his tax rate way lower than
Speaker 1: what you or I or any of you people out
Speaker 1: there listening pay, and you know, making sure that that
Speaker 1: continues to be the case. It's just a perfect symbol
Speaker 1: of where we're at. I mean, this is the type
Speaker 1: of stuff that when we look back on this era
Speaker 1: and we think of it as a new, even more
Speaker 1: decadent Gilded Age, these are the types of signs and
Speaker 1: symbols that we will point to of the just disgusting
Speaker 1: large s of the richest among us, who really see
Speaker 1: themselves as masters of the universe, who can, you know,
Speaker 1: use people's bridges, historic bridges as playthings. I also thought
Speaker 1: it was really interesting the justification of the city. They
Speaker 1: said that they were doing this. They weighed whether or
Speaker 1: not to do it. They said, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: there's the economic importance and employment due to the construction
Speaker 1: of the ship. On the other hand, our concern for
Speaker 1: the bridge itself. And of course it came down on
Speaker 1: the side of quote unquote preserving employment, which I think
Speaker 1: is also the very symbolic of the way that our
Speaker 1: economies are just like centered around catering to billionaires. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you blame them, they want to keep their historic
Speaker 1: shipbuilding industry a lot, right, It's not their fault. This
Speaker 1: isn't the city and this is the buying that everybody
Speaker 1: ends up in. Is like, you know, because these people
Speaker 1: have so much power and control, and this is just
Speaker 1: on you know, a small scale, like one little narrow example.
Speaker 1: But because they have so much power and control, you're
Speaker 1: just subject to their whims, right, So you know, that's
Speaker 1: why when you had the Amazon headquarters competition, you had
Speaker 1: all these cities just like throwing themselves at Amazon, one
Speaker 1: of the richest companies in the entire world, and they're
Speaker 1: out offering up hundreds of millions of dollars in stuff. Leave,
Speaker 1: come and create some jobs, have to honestly, that's right,
Speaker 1: I mean, so it really says it all. This is
Speaker 1: just a little microcosm of how our whole system is
Speaker 1: structured around the whims of these disgusting people who have
Speaker 1: rigged the system so that everything good times are to
Speaker 1: their benefit, christ are even more to their benefit. They
Speaker 1: get further and further and further ahead and do everything
Speaker 1: they can to try to leave the rest of the
Speaker 1: population behind me. I forgot to mention about the bridge
Speaker 1: is actually bombed by the Nazis in nineteen forty and
Speaker 1: you know, I mean this that's the other you know,
Speaker 1: this is the symbol of the bridge being dismantled for
Speaker 1: these purposes. That's for it was declared and national monument.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a huge bridge. Like just to
Speaker 1: give people an idea, we showed the picture previously. There's
Speaker 1: like a square part in the middle that goes up
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty feet. This thing is so big
Speaker 1: it came in pass through it. And you know, by
Speaker 1: the way the Washington Post they left that Nazi part
Speaker 1: out just so really aware. Yeah, interesting, was it intentional?
Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, it's funny, right because when
Speaker 1: he owns the paper and he owns this And I
Speaker 1: just found out actually this morning that the Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King Junior Library has a new auditorium that they will
Speaker 1: be unveiling today and that auditorium is the Jeff Bezos
Speaker 1: Auditorium at the Martin Luther King Library. And as some
Speaker 1: people will have pointed out in the later parts of
Speaker 1: his life, Doctor King, one of his furthest one of
Speaker 1: his new causes on top of civil rights after accomplishing
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, was
Speaker 1: actually wealth inequality and wealth disparity. It was the central
Speaker 1: thing that he was preaching in the nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: And is it. What does it tell you the Jeff
Speaker 1: Bezos Auditorium at the Martin Luther King Junior Library, because
Speaker 1: our city here in Washington is basically for sale. I
Speaker 1: mean they're pointing to the fact that the Bezos Auditorium
Speaker 1: is a symbol of how Washington is basically letting corporations
Speaker 1: come in and basically run the game. I mean, we're
Speaker 1: talking about how the Bezos Auditorium and several other places,
Speaker 1: including TikTok and others, are naming historic areas here in DC.
Speaker 1: It really is just disgusting, Crystal, because you know, now
Speaker 1: we have the whole Washington Commander's thing, the whole city
Speaker 1: and the government is based on for sale to a
Speaker 1: lot of these people. Bezos, of course, owns the largest
Speaker 1: home here in the Washington, DC area. I mean I've
Speaker 1: walked past it. It's three homes joined into into a
Speaker 1: single thing. It's one hundred million dollar converted mansion and
Speaker 1: the reason why, specifically to project power and inspire fear
Speaker 1: amongst lawmakers here in this and to whitewash your image
Speaker 1: and been done. Yeah, exactly, which why you you know,
Speaker 1: give Vin BEZOSDOTI two and Barack Obama nobamba one hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars. It's nothing for him. There is some good news, though,
Speaker 1: which is that the Amazon Labor Union, new union that
Speaker 1: was formed specifically for the purpose of trying to organize
Speaker 1: Amazon workers that our friend Christian Smalls is involved with,
Speaker 1: they filed for a union election now at a second
Speaker 1: Amazon warehouse on Staten Island. That warehouse is known as
Speaker 1: l d J five is a sorting center with fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred workers according to a roster that a reporter got
Speaker 1: last month. So this comes on top of the other
Speaker 1: Staten Island warehouse that Chris Mall's was originally file fired from.
Speaker 1: They also just gathered enough signatures to trigger a union election,
Speaker 1: which of course comes on top of the redo that
Speaker 1: they're having in Best Maralabama. Listen, you wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: bet that any of these one organizing efforts are going
Speaker 1: to work out, just because we know how long the
Speaker 1: ads are, We know the power and the weight that
Speaker 1: you know, someone like Bezos and his company can throw around,
Speaker 1: the threats, the bullying and intimidation, the surveillance, all of
Speaker 1: that stuff, I mean in the all right rigging, which
Speaker 1: is what they found in Best Mora, Alabama. But just
Speaker 1: like what we're seeing with Starbucks, once you have when
Speaker 1: it's when it's more than just one, once you start
Speaker 1: to have Domino's fall and more and more union efforts occurring,
Speaker 1: it becomes harder to focus all your resources targeting one
Speaker 1: single election. It becomes a lot harder when you have
Speaker 1: more that you have to spread them out over. So
Speaker 1: the more that we see in this direction, the more
Speaker 1: encouraging it is. And I do think that, like with Starbucks,
Speaker 1: if you had one that was able to unionize, was
Speaker 1: able to successfully organize, you could start to have that
Speaker 1: same Domino effect where people take courage and say, hey,
Speaker 1: if they can do it there, maybe we can do
Speaker 1: it here. And we see the benefits that's conferring on them,
Speaker 1: We see the power they're gaining in their own workplace.
Speaker 1: So there is some positive pushback led by some extraordinarily
Speaker 1: courageous and selfless people have really put their own livelihoods
Speaker 1: on the line in order to make this happen, so
Speaker 1: something we will definitely continue to follow closely. Got it,
Speaker 1: all right, let's get to the big one, Crystal. You
Speaker 1: guys have been waiting on this one. At least I've
Speaker 1: been waiting to talk about those, because I actually do
Speaker 1: think it's a really interesting story. We'll be Goldberg. Okay.
Speaker 1: Over on the View, they were having a conversation about
Speaker 1: this graphic novel called Mouse that I guess was take
Speaker 1: pulled off of a reading list in a school I
Speaker 1: think in and it's about the Holocaust. So they're having
Speaker 1: this discussion about this when whoopee drops some very questionable
Speaker 1: historic or ahistoric remarks about the Holocaust. Let's take a
Speaker 1: listen to how that went. Well. Also, if you're going
Speaker 1: to do this, then let's be truthful about it, because
Speaker 1: the Holocaust isn't about race. No, No, it's not about
Speaker 1: it's about different but it's it's not about race. It's
Speaker 1: not about race, because it's about man's inhumanity to man.
Speaker 1: That's what it's about. But it's about white supremacy. But
Speaker 1: it's not about race. But these are white groups of people.
Speaker 1: But how do we have to but you're missing the point.
Speaker 1: You're missing the point the minute you turn it into race.
Speaker 1: It goes down this alley. Let's talk about it for
Speaker 1: what it is. It's how people treat each other. It's
Speaker 1: oh between she was about to say between white people,
Speaker 1: and that was the part that I actually found the
Speaker 1: worst is when she's like, this is between two groups
Speaker 1: of white people. So it's between y'all. So of course
Speaker 1: this goes over like a lead balloon. Everyone reminds me
Speaker 1: the Nazis definitely, they definitely thought it was a racial thing.
Speaker 1: They definitely old master race. That was the whole deal.
Speaker 1: They you know, I mean they even look to the
Speaker 1: US Jim Crow regime for inspiration of how to execute
Speaker 1: their own racist regime. So a historic She's right that
Speaker 1: it's also about man's in humanity. Dude, Yeah, that is definitely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what racism actually ultimately really is. Okay, so this
Speaker 1: doesn't go well. Obviously there's a big outcry, people freaking out,
Speaker 1: and so she goes on Colbert to try to clean
Speaker 1: this up. We would show you the clip, but we
Speaker 1: get copyright. Colbert, stop being so annoying about co super irritating.
Speaker 1: So she starts by trying to say the right things
Speaker 1: of like, I get it, I hear you. But then
Speaker 1: when it's very becomes very clear that she doesn't actually
Speaker 1: she her mind has not been changed. She really sort
Speaker 1: of sticks with her original point. She said Nazis quote
Speaker 1: had issues with ethnicity, not with race, because most of
Speaker 1: the Nazis were white people, and most of the people
Speaker 1: they were attacking were white people. So to me, I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: how can you say it's about race if you are
Speaker 1: fighting each other. So ultimately, after a pretty long discussion,
Speaker 1: it's very clear that she still really is sticking by
Speaker 1: her original point. And the more she talks about the
Speaker 1: more you realize that she really sees race within you know,
Speaker 1: what is kind of the typical American construct of black
Speaker 1: versus white, And in fact, I mean that is the
Speaker 1: primary Obviously we have all kinds of different people of
Speaker 1: all sorts of backgrounds here in this country, but throughout history,
Speaker 1: the primary binary has been between black and white. And
Speaker 1: that's where, you know, the legal codification of discrimination is
Speaker 1: based on that effect, that matrix. And so she is
Speaker 1: thinking and continuing to assert, if I can't see the
Speaker 1: skin color difference between two groups of people, then, to me,
Speaker 1: it's not racism and it's not race So she doesn't
Speaker 1: do a very good job ultimately cleaning this up, not
Speaker 1: the satisfaction of people, And let's go ahead and put
Speaker 1: this next piece up on the screen from Rolling Stone.
Speaker 1: So then they feel like, all right, we got a suspender,
Speaker 1: which is obnoxious ABC News and they put out this
Speaker 1: very like patronizing statement about Will whoopee has apologized. I've
Speaker 1: asked her to take time to reflect and learn about
Speaker 1: the impact of her comments. Ah, I know. And then
Speaker 1: the last piece let's go ahead and put the Daily
Speaker 1: Beasts tear sheet up on the screen, is that her
Speaker 1: co hoster are really pissed off that they ultimately suspended her.
Speaker 1: Multiple sources tell The Daily Beasts that her co hosts
Speaker 1: Sonny Houston and Joy Behar and Anna Navara are all
Speaker 1: furious with the network's decision here. So I think the
Speaker 1: easy part first, which is that, I mean, obviously the
Speaker 1: show we don't believe in, like canceling people and censoring
Speaker 1: people and all of this, Like a lot of this
Speaker 1: is I'm not saying her comments were correct. They were
Speaker 1: obviously a historic and ignorant, but this smearing of her
Speaker 1: as like a blanket anti Semite is also ridiculous. It's
Speaker 1: not like she denied the Holocaust. It's not like she
Speaker 1: was like, actually, the Holocaust was a good thing or
Speaker 1: those Jews really deserved it. Her she's saying this was
Speaker 1: a really bad thing. She obviously had some ignorance around
Speaker 1: the sort of dynamics, the racial dynamics that were at play,
Speaker 1: But to suspend her over this is ultimately, to me
Speaker 1: a sort of theatrical show and release. I'm with you,
Speaker 1: this is just good old fashioned boomer ignorance. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's like one of those things are like Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: whoope's an idiot sometimes. I mean, if we were gonna
Speaker 1: suspend people from the view, the view would never exist
Speaker 1: for saying dumb ignorant things. Yes, canceled the show. If
Speaker 1: this is part of the standard and what you're gonna say,
Speaker 1: I thought it was ludicrous that she was suspended for it.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, she came out with her fake apology
Speaker 1: all of this. It's clear to me her mind has
Speaker 1: been rotted by critical race theory and by a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. I actually, you know, in some ways, I
Speaker 1: feel like this is kind of a silly and semantic debate.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have Freddy de Bor and he had a
Speaker 1: good piece about this. He's like, you know, whatever you
Speaker 1: want to call it, Like, the point is the six
Speaker 1: million murders, and so what is race? Race is a
Speaker 1: system that human beings constructed as a form of like
Speaker 1: putting this group above that group. It's pretty arbitrary and
Speaker 1: invent hierarchy. Yeah, it's in a hierarchical way. And we
Speaker 1: had our version of it here, which, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: was primarily this black white dynamic, which is what will
Speaker 1: we grew up with and what she sort of has
Speaker 1: in her mind when she thinks of this is what
Speaker 1: race is. Ultimately, though, I mean, all of these ideas
Speaker 1: are invented by human beings. So I do find it
Speaker 1: a kind of semantic debate over was it racism? Was
Speaker 1: it not racism? I mean, I think we can all great, Yes,
Speaker 1: the Nazis obviously thought they were engaged in a racial project.
Speaker 1: But does someone deserve to be like kicked out of
Speaker 1: the public square and you know, shunned and suspended for
Speaker 1: two weeks because they in their mind were thinking, well,
Speaker 1: this was at its core about man's in humanity to man. Well,
Speaker 1: that is true. It is about man's in humanity to man.
Speaker 1: But that's also the core of what white supremacy and
Speaker 1: racism is about. And she missed that there are other
Speaker 1: racist dynamics that can be at play in other contexts
Speaker 1: than just black versa. That's how I saw I saw
Speaker 1: it as like privileged protection. It's like, yeah, but we
Speaker 1: you know, this is about racism here, that is about
Speaker 1: something else. So to try and compare the two, it's like, no,
Speaker 1: they're actually pretty similar. Privilege protection. That's a good way
Speaker 1: of putting it, because there was like a sort of defensiveness.
Speaker 1: It's another thing that Freddie Wright, she has a sort
Speaker 1: of like territorials specific in its own. Real racism is
Speaker 1: is about skin color. This was something else somebody else, which, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I take issue with that. Again, I think
Speaker 1: suspending her over it is ultimately Oh look, I don't
Speaker 1: think she should be suspended. Like I said, if you're
Speaker 1: going to suspend whoope, then you have to spend all
Speaker 1: of them for saying ignorant, you know, stupid stuff on
Speaker 1: the view at all times. It's just a ridiculous way
Speaker 1: in which we conduct ourselves in public. Also, this is fake.
Speaker 1: We all know it's fake for two weeks because they
Speaker 1: wanted to go away and not real too. Is just like,
Speaker 1: you know, people looking for a reason to pretend that
Speaker 1: they're outraged. Oh yeah, lot of people were gunning for her,
Speaker 1: trying to get her canceled, just because they didn't like
Speaker 1: what she said about So look, I can't stand with Goldberg.
Speaker 1: I can't stand with you either, but look whatever, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, why do we have to go to
Speaker 1: the song and dance? You know? It was interesting too
Speaker 1: because after all of this happened, they did a segment
Speaker 1: on Rogan and they actually sort of like half defended him,
Speaker 1: and I was wondering if their position would have been
Speaker 1: different had they not been facing their own Well, they
Speaker 1: have sort of cancelation the transfuctuation. Yeah, shouldn't be allowed
Speaker 1: to moderates. Yeah. Now, I've also found it interesting that
Speaker 1: there are some mainstream figures who would be the type
Speaker 1: to trash Rogan call for a censorship, and lots of
Speaker 1: other people too besides Rogan, But they're going to bat
Speaker 1: for whoopee. They know her heart, she's not an anti Semite,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, which I agree, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know, WHOOPI Goldber. I don't know if she's an
Speaker 1: anti Semite or not, but to just take these comments
Speaker 1: and smear her as some sort of like deplorable, youredeemable
Speaker 1: racist is completely you seelf. Franken said what she said,
Speaker 1: She can't be an anti Semite because she chose Goldberg
Speaker 1: for a lass. You would say something like that, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll you know what, I'm not even saying she's anti Semitic,
Speaker 1: but that's got to be the stupidest defense I've ever
Speaker 1: heard in my entire life. So anyway, if you're a
Speaker 1: public free whoope, with a little bit of like humility,
Speaker 1: let's just say that if you are on TV, if
Speaker 1: you're in the public eye for a long time, you're
Speaker 1: gonna say some that is not good. Oh, we've been
Speaker 1: doing this for a couple of years. Three years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: two hours a day, five days a week roughly for
Speaker 1: three years. That's seven Oh god, you guys are almost
Speaker 1: one thousand days roughly, give or take, so like minus
Speaker 1: the weekends. That's like eight hundred days times two hours.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, that's thousands of hours. And she's been
Speaker 1: doing a few for how she's been doing this for
Speaker 1: thirty five years. I mean, you got to have some
Speaker 1: understanding of sometimes people are going to say something double shit.
Speaker 1: It happens, you know. And the part I actually found
Speaker 1: the saddest about it is if you listen to the
Speaker 1: whole Colbert exchange, which is pretty interesting, to listen to
Speaker 1: the whole thing, and how she's clearly like she's hanging
Speaker 1: on to that No, No, the real racism is black
Speaker 1: versus white. But at the end, rather than saying I
Speaker 1: get it, and I understand why I was wrong, and
Speaker 1: so I'm going to take that into account my commentary
Speaker 1: going forward, she says, I'm just not going to talk
Speaker 1: about it anymore. So, I mean it's very clear if
Speaker 1: you watch it, she she has not made changed her mind.
Speaker 1: She still sort of stands by her point. Instead, her
Speaker 1: response is just I'm not gonna say shit about it anymore.
Speaker 1: And I find that kind of sad because I actually think,
Speaker 1: even though her view is, you know, a historic I
Speaker 1: actually think if you did have a long discussion about this,
Speaker 1: and it's an uncomfortable topic, and you had people who
Speaker 1: were experts and who could talk from a historical perspective,
Speaker 1: who could talk about the histories and origins of race
Speaker 1: and racial constructs and what that meant. If you had
Speaker 1: the space to do that, that would actually be a
Speaker 1: worthwhile and interesting conversation that I think people could get
Speaker 1: a lot out. But instead, what the response is, First
Speaker 1: of all, you could never have that conversation a show
Speaker 1: like The View because it's just too stupid. You don't
Speaker 1: have enough time to do it. But instead, what the
Speaker 1: response is from our culture is, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: just not going to touch that topic anymore. My mind
Speaker 1: isn't changed, and I'm not delving into like the complexities
Speaker 1: of it that are obviously uncomfortable for people. Instead, I'm
Speaker 1: just going to not say anything about it, which is
Speaker 1: kind of a sad respect. No, that's the wrong way
Speaker 1: to go about all this. Yeah, congratulations, cancel culture, you
Speaker 1: win again, Crystal. We're you taking a look at well, guys,
Speaker 1: this is truly one of the most ghastly and dystopian
Speaker 1: stories that I can imagine, which also perfectly sums up
Speaker 1: the times that we are living in right now. So
Speaker 1: imagine that you are going through the worst life crisis
Speaker 1: that you can possibly contemplate. Maybe you're a teen and
Speaker 1: a repressive religious household who suspects that you might be
Speaker 1: gay and you're caught between living as you are and
Speaker 1: being cut off from your family and your entire community.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're a young woman who's caught in a violent
Speaker 1: relationship and no idea how to break free. Maybe you've
Speaker 1: lost your job, you're facing bankruptcy, you're struggling with addiction.
Speaker 1: You feel that your existence on this planet is nothing
Speaker 1: but pain and despair. So in desperation, you reach out
Speaker 1: to the network of volunteers who are staffing something called
Speaker 1: the Crisis text Line. You share your darkest thoughts about
Speaker 1: the gun that's sitting in front of you, or the
Speaker 1: balcony that's outside of your apartment. What you don't know
Speaker 1: is that some of the most powerful billionaires in the
Speaker 1: world are backing Crisis text Line, and they aren't just
Speaker 1: doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. Because
Speaker 1: all of those deeply private and painful moments, while they're
Speaker 1: valuable to our tech overlords, your words, your cries for help,
Speaker 1: your personal data, it can all be packaged up and resold,
Speaker 1: a sort of financialization of your despair. Just listen to
Speaker 1: how Crisis text Line CEO, in a twenty fifteen Ted talk,
Speaker 1: describe the type of deeply personal and painful moments that
Speaker 1: are routinely shared with this service. Text is unbelievably private.
Speaker 1: No one hears you talking. So we spike every day
Speaker 1: at lunchtime. Kids are sitting at the lunch table, and
Speaker 1: you think that she's texting the cute boy across the hall,
Speaker 1: but she's actually texting us about her bolimia. And we
Speaker 1: don't get the word like or um or hyperventilating or crying.
Speaker 1: We just get facts. We get things like I want
Speaker 1: to die. I have a bottle of pills on the
Speaker 1: desk in front of me, And so the crisis counselor says,
Speaker 1: how about you put those pills in the drawer while
Speaker 1: we text, And they go back and forth for a while,
Speaker 1: and the crisis counselor gets the girl to give her
Speaker 1: her address, because if you're texting a text line, you
Speaker 1: want help. So she gets the address, and the counselor
Speaker 1: triggers an active rescue while they're texting back and forth,
Speaker 1: and then it goes quiet twenty three minutes with no
Speaker 1: response from this girl, And the next message that comes
Speaker 1: in says, it's the mom. I had no idea and
Speaker 1: I was in the house we're in an ambulance on
Speaker 1: our way to the hospital as a mom. That one
Speaker 1: just that's the next message comes a month later. I
Speaker 1: just got out of the hospital. I was diagnosed as bipolar,
Speaker 1: and I think I'm going to be okay. But for
Speaker 1: the CEO, those interactions, those personal exchanges, that's not really
Speaker 1: what get her juice is flowing. But the thing that
Speaker 1: really gets me hot and sweating about this, the thing
Speaker 1: that really gets me psyched is the data. Six point
Speaker 1: five million messages. That's the volume, velocity, and variety to
Speaker 1: provide a really juicy corpus. We can do things like
Speaker 1: predictive work. We can do all kinds of conclusions and
Speaker 1: learnings from that data set, so we can be better
Speaker 1: and the world can be better. Naturally. I went unmentioned
Speaker 1: at that Ted talk that this really juicy corpus of
Speaker 1: data would also be sold off for profit. According to Politico,
Speaker 1: the organization's for profit spinoff uses a sliced and repackaged
Speaker 1: version of that information to create and market customer service software.
Speaker 1: In other words, your pain is literally their gain. The
Speaker 1: more desperate people who find themselves at their wits end,
Speaker 1: all the more data they can sell off to their
Speaker 1: for profit arm all legal because you've technically signed off
Speaker 1: on their fifty paragraph disclosure somewhere buried and all that
Speaker 1: legal ease, you've granted them permission to harvest and sell
Speaker 1: your pain. Who's who of Silicon Valley is involved in
Speaker 1: this effort Read Hoffman, Melinda Gates, pier O Midyar In Many,
Speaker 1: War and business frankly must be booming, cashing in on
Speaker 1: our nation's skyrocketing rates of deaths of despair. The for
Speaker 1: profit arm of crisis text line is called Loris. They're
Speaker 1: an AI customer service company with customers like Lift and
Speaker 1: Meal subscription service Freshly. Their website explains what they do
Speaker 1: with all of this financialized grief. Quote, We've baked all
Speaker 1: of our learning into enterprise software that helps companies boost
Speaker 1: empathy and the bottom line. If that's not late stage capitalism,
Speaker 1: I really don't know what is billionaires feasting on the
Speaker 1: pain of a nation to further enrich themselves. I truly
Speaker 1: have no words for how disgusting all of this is.
Speaker 1: I really shouldn't just pick on crisis text line, though
Speaker 1: financialized despair is really one of America's top products. After all,
Speaker 1: you'd be hard pressed to compete with the opioid merchants
Speaker 1: of death that Purdue Pharma, who similarly capitalize on the
Speaker 1: despair of the blue collar, jobless folks out in Appalachia,
Speaker 1: to the tune of billions of dollars. I mean, Big Pharma.
Speaker 1: They really do consistently take the cake for sheer sociopathy,
Speaker 1: don't they. Right now they are actively denying billions around
Speaker 1: the world access to a life saving vaccine because letting
Speaker 1: go of their patent rights would leave their profits merely
Speaker 1: at historic levels rather than astronomical levels. And of course
Speaker 1: we can't leave out the war profiteers over at Raitheon,
Speaker 1: North Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Moore. Raitheon CEO in particular
Speaker 1: recently delighted in the escalated tensions in Ukraine and the
Speaker 1: South China Sea and drone attacks and the UIE telling
Speaker 1: his investors quote, all of those things are putting pressure
Speaker 1: on some of the defense bending over there. So I
Speaker 1: fully expect we're going to see some benefit from it.
Speaker 1: Hooray for war, Go pandemic, go to the Moon's suicide rate.
Speaker 1: When there's a profit to be made off of pain,
Speaker 1: war death, sickness, addiction, guess what you're going to see
Speaker 1: more pain, war, death, sickness, and addiction. And I confess
Speaker 1: I've become more and more radicalized as I've really contemplated
Speaker 1: this state of affairs. The core rot that we track
Speaker 1: here will only recede once we have a system that
Speaker 1: actually values and incentivizes humanity, meaning and flourishing rather than
Speaker 1: profiteering and profiteering alone. But the good news is we
Speaker 1: don't have to overthrow the entire system to deal with
Speaker 1: this particular exploitative nastiness. We could start by just banning
Speaker 1: this particular shit. And by this shit, I mean surveillance capitalism,
Speaker 1: whereby our tech oligarchs buy and sell you as a
Speaker 1: product rather than trying to serve you as their customer.
Speaker 1: Crisis text line is a particularly gruesome example of how
Speaker 1: corrosive this practice is. But it's the same business model
Speaker 1: as Facebook and Google and all the other social media giants.
Speaker 1: It's easy to have the illusion that you are the
Speaker 1: client being served by this product or not. As Johann
Speaker 1: Hari lays out and stolen focus, your every click, your
Speaker 1: rageful post, your thirst trap, your petty squabble, all of
Speaker 1: that is being mined and being sold. Your very being
Speaker 1: in essence as a person is preyed on, surveiled, packaged,
Speaker 1: and shipped off to the highest bidder. And of course,
Speaker 1: the more they're able to enrage and distract and incite you,
Speaker 1: the more time you spend on their sites, the more
Speaker 1: they're able to profit. Their very business model is to
Speaker 1: steal your time and warp your mind so that they
Speaker 1: can sell the fragmented pieces of you to other oligarchs.
Speaker 1: And this makes it all so much worse because they
Speaker 1: aren't just selling you, They are actively warping and shaping
Speaker 1: you to be angry and distracted and addicted, and to
Speaker 1: perform your duties as the good little consumer that they
Speaker 1: care about. If you want to understand how a country
Speaker 1: could have so much wealth and yet be racked by
Speaker 1: so much misery, addiction, anger to spare, just ask yourself
Speaker 1: who stands to profit off of that state of affairs.
Speaker 1: As long as there's money to be made off of
Speaker 1: your pain and your sickness, these gouals will make sure
Speaker 1: that's exactly what we keep producing. Can you imagine anything
Speaker 1: more dark than taking? And if you want to hear
Speaker 1: my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a Premium subscriber today
Speaker 1: at Breakingpoints dot Com. All right, Sager, what are you
Speaker 1: looking at? This pandemic should have been a wake up
Speaker 1: call for all of us. It's not a coincidence the
Speaker 1: United States has fared so badly whenever it comes to
Speaker 1: coronavirus deaths compared to the rest of the world. Now,
Speaker 1: the media is going to have you believe that it's
Speaker 1: all because of larger proportional unvaccinated population, and while yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a factor, the truth is a lot more intuitive.
Speaker 1: We are fat and deeply unhealthy as a country, with
Speaker 1: major underlying health problems that make any illness, not just
Speaker 1: COVID a ton more dangerous to our entire population. There's
Speaker 1: been almost no discussion of this, both before the availability
Speaker 1: of vaccines and even nearly one year afterwards. The New
Speaker 1: York Times analysis of the why the US has more
Speaker 1: cumulative debts per one hundred thousand does not mention obesity
Speaker 1: one time, underlying health conditions, comorbidities, nothing. They just blame
Speaker 1: higher deaths on the lack of booster shots amongst the elderly,
Speaker 1: and once again, yeah, that would help for sure, But
Speaker 1: why are so many of these people so sick? They're
Speaker 1: going to be hospitalized and die from COVID in the
Speaker 1: first place. If you actually look beneath the surface, the
Speaker 1: answer is staring all of us in the face. The
Speaker 1: official numbers for twenty twenty one are in and sadly,
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand Americans died of diabetes for a second
Speaker 1: year in a row. It is no coincidence that this
Speaker 1: occurred in the last two years during a pandemic, and
Speaker 1: that from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty, diabetes deaths went
Speaker 1: up by an astounding seventeen percent. From that baseline, they
Speaker 1: grew another fifteen that's just deaths. The latest figures show
Speaker 1: that eleven percent of the entire US population has diabetes.
Speaker 1: That's insane. Even worse, the new report finds that one
Speaker 1: third of Americans will develop some form of chronic illness
Speaker 1: disease in their lifetime. And in fact, while everyone has
Speaker 1: been obsessed with COVID, a lot of people have been
Speaker 1: dying for all sorts of reasons, almost all of them
Speaker 1: related to bad health. In fact, J. Scott Davidson, he's
Speaker 1: the CEO of One America, an insurance company, finds that
Speaker 1: they have the highest death rates that they have ever
Speaker 1: seen in the history of the life insurance business up
Speaker 1: forty percent, with a massive number of these deaths not
Speaker 1: even COVID related. So, just to give you an idea
Speaker 1: of how bad this is, per the insurance companies own models,
Speaker 1: they believe a one in two hundred year catastrophe would
Speaker 1: be associated only with a ten percent increase in deaths.
Speaker 1: So this is four times worse than a one in
Speaker 1: two hundred year event. This is once again no real explanation,
Speaker 1: no way COVID can just explain that the response to
Speaker 1: COVID can though, our lockdowns and our misery induced environment
Speaker 1: has created a country in the last two years where
Speaker 1: some of the biggest threats to your life, chronic illness
Speaker 1: and bad underlying health has exploded. Mental health, obviously, is
Speaker 1: one that barely needs an introduction. US overdose debts are
Speaker 1: up twenty eight percent in a single year, topping one
Speaker 1: hundred k for the first time. Vast quantities of Americans
Speaker 1: are dying from illness from drug overdose, bad health conditions,
Speaker 1: and the conditions of their daily lives are getting worse.
Speaker 1: In fact, while I was researching this, I found that
Speaker 1: food is when food is more expensive that people eat
Speaker 1: a lot more unhealthy stuff. That's why some of the
Speaker 1: poorest people in the country are actually some of the fattest.
Speaker 1: Many coronavirus restrictions are still in place, discouraging in person
Speaker 1: gathering that also feeds the mental health crises. It's even
Speaker 1: worse for kids. A recent study given by our idiots
Speaker 1: over at the CDC even they found that between two
Speaker 1: and nineteen, the percentage of obese children and teens has
Speaker 1: increased to a whopping twenty two percent. That means nearly
Speaker 1: one in four children in this country are not just fat,
Speaker 1: but clinically obese. The study specifically school clobes as with
Speaker 1: lack of nutrition and exercise, cites that as the major
Speaker 1: cause of a three percent increase in a single year.
Speaker 1: Who wants to bet that number went up even more
Speaker 1: even though we don't have the data just yet, And
Speaker 1: as I have covered in previous monologues, the neurodevelopmental effects
Speaker 1: on children for two years of the pandemic restriction, they're
Speaker 1: already well known. You add all this up and it's
Speaker 1: a catastrophe, not only because we know that COVID actually
Speaker 1: attacks fat that sells themselves, making you way more vulnerable
Speaker 1: to the disease if you are overweight or obese. But
Speaker 1: because being overweight or obese exacerbates your chances of getting
Speaker 1: sick from almost everything, almost all of this is ignored
Speaker 1: by the media and even more importantly, by the CDC
Speaker 1: and health authorities in their real recommendations. Look, vaccination was
Speaker 1: a tremendous scientific achievement. It dramatically reduced the rates of
Speaker 1: hospitalization and death. It saved perhaps hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: elderly people from an almost certain death. We cannot take
Speaker 1: that away nor diminish it. But from this point, for
Speaker 1: emphasis alone on vaccination after eighty five percent of the
Speaker 1: US adult population has already gotten a dose is foolhardy,
Speaker 1: and in fact it is downright dangerous. People are dropping
Speaker 1: dead daily from bad food, from bad lifestyle. None of
Speaker 1: this is even being addressed by the government. My impetus
Speaker 1: for writing this was not only the release of the
Speaker 1: diabetes death study, but of Biden's apparent plan to renew
Speaker 1: his cancer moonshot a cure for cancer sometime in the
Speaker 1: next couple of decades. Now, Look, I of course want
Speaker 1: to find a cure for cancer as soon as possible.
Speaker 1: I think it's time we wake up, though, to a
Speaker 1: killer that's taking away so many people right now. In
Speaker 1: addition to that, and it's actually going up. We need
Speaker 1: to change government policy around food and lifestyle incentives to
Speaker 1: get people moving again. Exercise is a literal miracle drug
Speaker 1: that we have forgotten in favor of SSRIs and insulin medication.
Speaker 1: When Mother Nature gave you all the tools that you
Speaker 1: need right now, much of this can be accomplished on
Speaker 1: an individual basis, but that is still expecting too much
Speaker 1: for people who are in very dire straits. When I
Speaker 1: see the numbers of people dying from diabetes and from obesity,
Speaker 1: I see people who don't have to suffer and do
Speaker 1: so because of a system of incentives, a lack of knowledge,
Speaker 1: and the government, and that's where they come in. They
Speaker 1: are focused right now on boosting the entire US population
Speaker 1: in curing cancer. We need to update our priorities now
Speaker 1: and move with the times because we have a crisis
Speaker 1: right before our eyes. Now. We better do it now
Speaker 1: because soon enough we're going to be too fat to
Speaker 1: actually do anything about it. We won't even remember what
Speaker 1: the before times look like. And that's a really scary thought.
Speaker 1: I mean, those diabetes numbers one hundred thousand twenty seven percent,
Speaker 1: and if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. We
Speaker 1: know that the audience really likes right left panels, and
Speaker 1: we decided to have a discussion here on Breaking Points
Speaker 1: about college for all. So we brought in the executive
Speaker 1: director of American Compass or in Cass and Freddie Debor
Speaker 1: is the author of the Cult of Smart and he's
Speaker 1: got the Freddie Debor substance, So we encourage everybody to
Speaker 1: go and check those out. Gentlemen, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us. We really appreciate it. Nice to see
Speaker 1: you guys. Thanks for having me absolutely oren. I mean,
Speaker 1: the impetus for this segment is you guys put out
Speaker 1: a statement over at American Compass about college. We're all
Speaker 1: kind of break that down both about what you put
Speaker 1: out and give us, you know, kind of the case
Speaker 1: against why that's a good idea. Yeah, sure, thanks for
Speaker 1: mentioning that. You know, we've kind of been doing two
Speaker 1: things I think that have come together on the topic.
Speaker 1: One is a lot of work on just asking what
Speaker 1: is the purpose of public education. It feels to us
Speaker 1: like in recent decades, we've come up with this mindset
Speaker 1: that the whole point of public education is to get
Speaker 1: everybody into college and you know, then into some job
Speaker 1: that requires a college degree in ways that I think
Speaker 1: just harmed most students, most families, most communities, and so
Speaker 1: on the one hand, reminding people we really have to
Speaker 1: actually ask that question, what is this for? At the
Speaker 1: data on how our current system is working. You know,
Speaker 1: the reality is that a very small fraction of students
Speaker 1: are actually successfully going high school to college career. Most
Speaker 1: fall out somewhere along that pipeline, and outcomes for them
Speaker 1: are just not very good. So I think the time
Speaker 1: is really right, and I think most people are really
Speaker 1: recognizing the time is right to rethink what is this
Speaker 1: all for? What are we trying to do here? Freddy
Speaker 1: just react to that and lay out your viewpoint a bit,
Speaker 1: because I think part of the obsession, the neoliberal obsession
Speaker 1: with education, college education in particular, it kind of glosses
Speaker 1: over a whole host of other societal ills and it
Speaker 1: puts it back in the personal response, Well, if you
Speaker 1: just try hard enough, if you just get that college degree,
Speaker 1: if you just take on those tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars of debt that are going to be with you
Speaker 1: for a lifetime. Then everything will be good in society.
Speaker 1: So what is your view here? Well, yeah, I'm also
Speaker 1: opposed to college for all for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 1: The simplest is simply economic. They're in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: the National Bureau of Economic Research put out a paper
Speaker 1: which I think is kind of under discussed. It's by
Speaker 1: Claudia Golden and Lawrence Cats and it looked at from
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety to two thousand and five, so a really nice, big,
Speaker 1: robust data set of what influences the college wage premium
Speaker 1: over time, so the amount that a college graduate makes
Speaker 1: relative to someone without a college degree. They find that
Speaker 1: it's a product of supply and demand. In other words,
Speaker 1: it's a question of a ratio between the number of
Speaker 1: jobs that require a college degree and the number of
Speaker 1: people who are actually getting college degrees. And to quote
Speaker 1: a specific sentence, overall, simple supply and demand specifications do
Speaker 1: a remarkable job explaining the long run evolution of the
Speaker 1: college wage premium. I mean that just makes sense, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, you sell labor in a market, and within
Speaker 1: that market, you're always going to be constrained by supplying
Speaker 1: demand issues. So if we push more and more and
Speaker 1: more people into the pipeline, inevitably you're going to find
Speaker 1: that there are gluts of people who have the degree,
Speaker 1: and the premium that we're trying to get these people
Speaker 1: is going to be eroded further down. I don't think
Speaker 1: that it's only that the educational benefits are only a
Speaker 1: matter of scarcity, but I do think that everybody is
Speaker 1: always going to be running against this fire hose of
Speaker 1: people we're trying to shove into the system over time
Speaker 1: as that goes on. And as Orn said, of course,
Speaker 1: the other side of this is that not everybody has
Speaker 1: the same skills or abilities, and it's perverse to try
Speaker 1: to reward our system as if they do. So. One
Speaker 1: of the consequences of this intense push from the policy level,
Speaker 1: so in my book I point out that every president
Speaker 1: since at least Ronald Reagan has named college as being
Speaker 1: a Q or the key to our economic solving our
Speaker 1: economic problems. One of the consequences is that we have
Speaker 1: had a remarkable reduction in high school graduation rates over time,
Speaker 1: to the point where, for example, in twenty five years,
Speaker 1: for example, among Hispanic students. The high school dropout rate
Speaker 1: has been cut to a quarter of what it once was.
Speaker 1: I mean, that probably sounds like good news, but the
Speaker 1: problem is that there's no underlying educational data to justify.
Speaker 1: In other words, if you're having all these people graduating
Speaker 1: from high school who didn't before, you would expect that
Speaker 1: that would come at the because of some sort of
Speaker 1: underlying growth and educational outcomes. But the SAT data doesn't
Speaker 1: show it. The NAPE data doesn't show it, none of
Speaker 1: the standardized tests data show it. So in other words,
Speaker 1: we're forcing people through the pipeline. All the policy pressure
Speaker 1: resulted in people getting graduated out who were not ready.
Speaker 1: What then happens, Well, we've one of the sort of
Speaker 1: quiet stories in higher education right now is that remediation
Speaker 1: costs in community colleges have exploded because all these students
Speaker 1: who are graduating high school who should not have are
Speaker 1: showing up at community colleges without the skills they need.
Speaker 1: So it puts tremendous pressure on all elements of the system.
Speaker 1: You try to force people into a pipeline that was
Speaker 1: never designed to be for everybody. That's a really well
Speaker 1: said you know, or from a new right perspective, from
Speaker 1: your organization perspective, how are you guys thinking about this
Speaker 1: on a policy level? What should people do about this?
Speaker 1: So to speak? Yeah, I think that's exactly the right question.
Speaker 1: And what it comes down to is we have to
Speaker 1: move our resources. I mean, we spend literally hundreds of
Speaker 1: billions of dollars a year in public funding on this
Speaker 1: college pipeline, and yet if you look kind of across
Speaker 1: the street and ask what are we doing for someone
Speaker 1: who's not college bound or not going to succeed in college,
Speaker 1: the answer is essentially nothing. And so we need to
Speaker 1: change that in two respects. One part is we need
Speaker 1: to really invest in building alternative pathways. We need to say, yeah, look,
Speaker 1: some kids want to go to college, are going to
Speaker 1: succeed in college. We should certainly have high school courses
Speaker 1: that help prepare them for that. But we have at
Speaker 1: least as much obligation to have high school courses and
Speaker 1: ultimately the entire pathways that prepare people for a different
Speaker 1: route for getting them into the workforce sooner, connecting them
Speaker 1: with employers, getting them job skills, so that we say, look,
Speaker 1: if you want to head and head toward that bachelor's degrade,
Speaker 1: age twenty two. Okay, but also here's an option that
Speaker 1: gets you to age twenty with you know, three years
Speaker 1: of job experience or relevant credential and by the way,
Speaker 1: earnings in the bank instead of instead of what you
Speaker 1: might have spent. And we can do that, right, and
Speaker 1: most countries do. I think one thing that's so fascinating
Speaker 1: is to understand what an outlier America is. If you
Speaker 1: look at the OEC data, you know, most developed countries
Speaker 1: have kind of thirty five to fifty five percent of
Speaker 1: their of their high school students on these kinds of
Speaker 1: other pathways. And then OECD actually they have a footnote
Speaker 1: they say, sorry, we had to leave the US out
Speaker 1: of our data set because the US just has absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing comparable that we could even count. So so building
Speaker 1: that is one half of it. But just to make
Speaker 1: one more quick point, taking some of that resourcing away
Speaker 1: from a higher education also has to be part of it,
Speaker 1: because the reality is we've sort of set up what
Speaker 1: I call this amusement park entitlement that says, from age
Speaker 1: eighteen to twenty two, you know, you get to go
Speaker 1: to college and hang out on the quad and tailgate
Speaker 1: and whatever, and maybe there are these enrichment courses on
Speaker 1: the side. Try telling a seventeen year old, regardless of
Speaker 1: what's in their best academic or economic interest, no, you
Speaker 1: don't get to do that. We really need to make
Speaker 1: what being in college looks like a lot more like
Speaker 1: what not being in college looks like, and just give
Speaker 1: all young people a more realistic and sort of equitable
Speaker 1: experience that's going to help focus them on actually preparing
Speaker 1: to preparing for adulthood. What do you think of that, Freddie,
Speaker 1: Because I mean from a policy perspective, I actually don't
Speaker 1: know what your position is. I personally think we should
Speaker 1: have free public college. I think we should have free
Speaker 1: I think we sho would have widely available apprenticeships. I
Speaker 1: think we should have free trade school. I think we
Speaker 1: should have free community college so that people obviously coming
Speaker 1: out of high school are able to obtain the skills
Speaker 1: in whatever direction actually suits their personality and their skill
Speaker 1: set to be able to exist in function in the
Speaker 1: working world. What is your view of that and what
Speaker 1: is your response to what Orren had to say. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I think the kernel of my book, if
Speaker 1: you wanted to break it down to the one individual
Speaker 1: sort of thought that was most playing on my mind
Speaker 1: when I devised my book and when I decided to
Speaker 1: read it was the sense that there's many more ways
Speaker 1: to be a loser in twenty first century America than
Speaker 1: there are to be a winner. That we have a
Speaker 1: profoundly narrow sort of sense of what it means to
Speaker 1: be someone who is living a life that is enviable
Speaker 1: or that is the sort of respectable. I often when
Speaker 1: I talk about these things in the promo from my book,
Speaker 1: for example, there's a lot of people who sort of
Speaker 1: look back to NAFTA, and they look back to globalization
Speaker 1: and say, well, this is the problem that we undercut
Speaker 1: the manufacturing center, we undercut the unions, et cetera. I
Speaker 1: think that's a complicated conversation. It is not true that
Speaker 1: we don't make things in the United States anymore. In fact,
Speaker 1: we make more stuff in the United States than we
Speaker 1: ever had before. But because of automation, because of technological growth,
Speaker 1: we just need to employ far fewer people. But anyway,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter. We're not going back to a
Speaker 1: pre NAFTA, pre W two whatever world. That's just not realistic.
Speaker 1: And if we did our economy we could track to
Speaker 1: the point where it would be self defeating. But I
Speaker 1: do think that there does have to be a real
Speaker 1: effort to make people understand that, you know, the trades
Speaker 1: are a big, capacious thing. I mean, I'm always hesitant
Speaker 1: to just say we need to push people into the trades,
Speaker 1: because what the trades mean in terms of the lifestyle
Speaker 1: lived by someone within that is so big and so
Speaker 1: varied that it's not actually like, oh, the trades will
Speaker 1: save us, Right, So the trades can mean being a
Speaker 1: unionized mason in Manhattan and making one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year, or the trades can be being
Speaker 1: an ununionized mason in Phoenix, Arizona making forty k year. Right,
Speaker 1: So we don't want to be too bold about saying
Speaker 1: all the trades will solve everything. But the reality is
Speaker 1: that there has to be like multiple streams through which
Speaker 1: we can get people to that life that is considered
Speaker 1: not to be a loser. Right. We have to have
Speaker 1: outs that are not academic outs in order to sort
Speaker 1: of push people along the pipeline. Other countries do this
Speaker 1: pretty well, right, So Germany famously has a multi tiered
Speaker 1: educational system where depending somewhere around thirteen, you get up,
Speaker 1: put onto a track or another for an academic track,
Speaker 1: or to go into the trades. Now tracking is profoundly
Speaker 1: controversial in the United States, in part because there are
Speaker 1: racial dimensions that are less salient in Germany. But it's
Speaker 1: also Germany has powerful trade unions who can ensure that
Speaker 1: people who go into these trades. If you go and
Speaker 1: you work at BMW, you're going to have better material
Speaker 1: conditions than you will in the United States at this
Speaker 1: at this stage in many in many professions. But there's
Speaker 1: also not this sort of baked in like trade school
Speaker 1: is for the losers, and we have to change that culture.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately that has to start at the bottom, and
Speaker 1: it's really hard to get people out of the sort
Speaker 1: of college for everyone mindset. I mean, I spent years
Speaker 1: and years in working in K through twelve schools and
Speaker 1: in various capacities, and I was amazed that, you know,
Speaker 1: third grade teachers would be telling their kids, you know,
Speaker 1: you've got to go to college someday, so you're create.
Speaker 1: You have this entire pathway through the education system in
Speaker 1: which the relentless message is if you don't end up
Speaker 1: in college right then you have failed in some profound way.
Speaker 1: So there has to be structural changes. There has to
Speaker 1: be better funding for trade schools, there has to be
Speaker 1: a willingness to consider the possibility that not everyone needs
Speaker 1: to take algebra two, et cetera. But also there has
Speaker 1: to be a cultural dimension where, you know, we recognize
Speaker 1: the the equivalent dignity of all different kinds of work.
Speaker 1: And there are opportunities, I think in the trades out there.
Speaker 1: But even that, you know, again, the growing the fastest
Speaker 1: growing sector in the American economy is not the trades
Speaker 1: broadly defined. It's also not stem which a lot of
Speaker 1: people think. It's the service economy, service sector economy, and
Speaker 1: that is again a set of jobs that many people
Speaker 1: consider low class or low status. And so to get
Speaker 1: people to take other options seriously, we have to be
Speaker 1: able to sort of confront the way in which we
Speaker 1: mark certain professions as being inherently lacking in dignity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's well said. I mean, orn, let me
Speaker 1: just push you a bit, because I've been you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like everybody is always recognized, oh, we need
Speaker 1: job retraining, and any to hear that, it's almost become
Speaker 1: like a meme online about oh well, just retrain and
Speaker 1: then the retraining never actually happens. What does that look
Speaker 1: like in practice? You know, these actual retraining apprenticeship style
Speaker 1: programs investments? Is government directed state? I mean, what would
Speaker 1: I actually be looking at physically if this were to
Speaker 1: actually materialize as a real thing you I think, you know,
Speaker 1: one thing to say is that retraining is very hard
Speaker 1: because you're talking about folks much later in life in
Speaker 1: a careers, as opposed to helping people when they are
Speaker 1: still in their earlier educational years and kind of getting
Speaker 1: off on the right track. I think what people have
Speaker 1: found in generally even with retraining, and this certainly goes
Speaker 1: for the kinds of performance we're talking about here. It
Speaker 1: all comes down to connection with the employer. If you
Speaker 1: can get somebody connected to an actual job that exists
Speaker 1: in the real world, with an employer who wants an employee,
Speaker 1: and have that employer be in the driver's seat in
Speaker 1: training the employee to do the job, that's when it
Speaker 1: tends to work. When it doesn't work is when you
Speaker 1: have a government program that says, you know, we're going
Speaker 1: to turn this kind of worker into that kind of worker.
Speaker 1: Let's get everybody into a community college, teach them how
Speaker 1: to do this thing and then trust that the jobs
Speaker 1: will be there. So really putting the employer at the
Speaker 1: center of the process, I think is key. I want
Speaker 1: to take issue with just one thing that Freddy said,
Speaker 1: and in the context of kind of being very concrete
Speaker 1: about what this could look like, tracking isn't actually controversial
Speaker 1: in America. This is something I find fascinating. Tracking is
Speaker 1: controversial with a certain sort of narrow segment of the
Speaker 1: progressive elite that sees it as sort of constraining of opportunity.
Speaker 1: But this is one of the key things we asked
Speaker 1: about in our Failing on Purpose survey at American Compass.
Speaker 1: We gave what I think is a very clear, fairly
Speaker 1: worded description and it's all on the site exactly how
Speaker 1: we asked it. You know, which of these things do
Speaker 1: you prefer, a sort of essentially single track program that
Speaker 1: tries to get everybody in the same academically intensive courses
Speaker 1: versus tracking acknowledging that people are going to be on
Speaker 1: different pathways, headed door different endpoints, and that we need
Speaker 1: to do that. In high school and tracking was more
Speaker 1: popular literally by ten to one, you know, in the
Speaker 1: middle class, it was it was ninety five percent to
Speaker 1: five percent that people prefer tracking. We even for fun,
Speaker 1: we asked half the sample using the word tracking, and
Speaker 1: half the sample we use the phrase diverse pathways, which
Speaker 1: is somehow supposed to be more fashionable. People couldn't care less.
Speaker 1: It is common sense and it's because it's people's lived
Speaker 1: experience at this point that there is no alternative to tracking,
Speaker 1: unless you're going to get everybody an individual tutor. No
Speaker 1: matter what, we are going to have tracks. The problem
Speaker 1: with our current system is we only have one track.
Speaker 1: It is a track designed for the upper upper middle class.
Speaker 1: It is working for a very small segment of the population,
Speaker 1: and everybody else is left behind. So there's no question
Speaker 1: we need to get political leaders more comfortable understanding that
Speaker 1: they can say this because it's not only true, it's popular.
Speaker 1: There's no question we have to confront you know, the
Speaker 1: like the folks at the Atlantic who write endless articles
Speaker 1: calling track, you know, the new segregation, when it's of
Speaker 1: course exactly lower income and often non white families and
Speaker 1: kids who are most left behind by this system and
Speaker 1: have the most to gain by getting more options. And
Speaker 1: so what that looks like in practice is you say, look,
Speaker 1: you know we have all this money we spend sending
Speaker 1: kids off to leafy college campuses. That's an institution that
Speaker 1: makes sense for some people as they transition to adulthood.
Speaker 1: For most people, the institution that's best equipped to help
Speaker 1: people transition to a productive career is an employer. And
Speaker 1: so we should be willing to say, look, a essentially
Speaker 1: call somebody a trainee, which is a definition just like
Speaker 1: a college student. It's somebody who's spending time on the job.
Speaker 1: It's spending time in formal training. And an employer who
Speaker 1: takes on a trainee should get the same ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year that we give to a college campus
Speaker 1: to take on a student. And if you did that, now,
Speaker 1: the first thing a lot of employers would do is
Speaker 1: they would turn around and ask community colleges to set
Speaker 1: up the right formal training programs. But then the community
Speaker 1: college's customer wouldn't be the eighteen year old who doesn't
Speaker 1: know what he wants. It would be the employer who
Speaker 1: knows exactly what he wants. And I think that's again
Speaker 1: much more the sorts of systems that Freddie's describing in
Speaker 1: other countries that work, well, that's what we have to
Speaker 1: do here. But it means getting comfortable with the idea
Speaker 1: of tracking, the idea that people are going to be
Speaker 1: on different pathways, have different aptitudes, getting comfortable with the
Speaker 1: idea that employers have to play a role. And then
Speaker 1: last thing I'd say, because this is the thing I
Speaker 1: agree with Freddie very strongly on, is a cultural point.
Speaker 1: Getting comfortable with the idea that being on a non
Speaker 1: college track and headed off to some career that's not
Speaker 1: in management consulting in New York City isn't losing right, Like,
Speaker 1: a huge part of the argument against tracking is what
Speaker 1: if there's some kid out there who could have gone
Speaker 1: to an Ivy League school and then become a management
Speaker 1: consultant who instead ends up being, you know, a very
Speaker 1: successful general contractor and leader in their own community. Like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, you know, our upward mobility and equal
Speaker 1: opportunity are broken. And that's just not true. And that
Speaker 1: is part of the mindset that we need to get
Speaker 1: out of and recognize that the whole point of public
Speaker 1: education is communities investing in their own young people, preparing
Speaker 1: them to take on the burdens of caring forward the
Speaker 1: prosperity of that community and that's what we should be
Speaker 1: asking our schools to do well. And this is a
Speaker 1: deeper problem with a society that basically only values people
Speaker 1: according to their market value and what the market says
Speaker 1: that they're ultimately worth. Freddie, I'd love for you to
Speaker 1: respond to that point, but I also want to hear
Speaker 1: your thoughts on the student debt cancelation debate, because part
Speaker 1: of why I support some level of student debt cancelation
Speaker 1: is because a lot of these kids were sold to
Speaker 1: Bill of Goods. I mean, you have Freddy's gotten, I
Speaker 1: mean Orn's gotten numbers here that are really interesting about
Speaker 1: how fewer than one in five students actually go from
Speaker 1: high school to college to career. Half of those who
Speaker 1: even go to college never complete a degree. So you
Speaker 1: have a lot of people who were had it forced
Speaker 1: on them like college is the only worthy avenue. If
Speaker 1: you don't go to college, you're a failure. This is
Speaker 1: the only way you can succeed in the world, and
Speaker 1: it just ultimately wasn't the right path for them, and
Speaker 1: now they're saddled with all of this debt for their
Speaker 1: entire lifetimes. Yeah, I mean, I think to begin with it,
Speaker 1: just the reason why I favor some form of college
Speaker 1: for a variety of reasons, but of some sort of
Speaker 1: college of debt loan forgiveness is because we have to
Speaker 1: acknowledge that a huge portion of that loan debt is
Speaker 1: never going to be paid back no matter what, like what,
Speaker 1: people are going to die with a ton of this debt.
Speaker 1: If you look at the numbers, there's just a huge
Speaker 1: number of people who have a debt where there's no
Speaker 1: realistic way in which they will ever pay it back.
Speaker 1: And so like the government is going to eat that
Speaker 1: debt in one way or the other. The question is
Speaker 1: like when and how and how humanly can we make
Speaker 1: that happen. But I just think that if we're going
Speaker 1: to attack the college affordability crisis again, like I think
Speaker 1: people underestimate the degree to which you know, we think
Speaker 1: about colleges. Kids who go to elite schools and they
Speaker 1: spend four years there and it's far from home, and
Speaker 1: they are, you know, getting a liberal arts education, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Most college students go to colleges that except essentially every
Speaker 1: student that applies. Okay, so it's quite rare for colleges
Speaker 1: to reject more students than they accept. They are going
Speaker 1: to school. The primary number one reason, far and away
Speaker 1: is for the school they chooses location. Okay, so something
Speaker 1: like i'vn't looked at the number in a little while.
Speaker 1: With something like eighty percent of college students go to
Speaker 1: school within thirty miles of where they grow up, So
Speaker 1: they're not shopping, they're just going to the local school
Speaker 1: that they can get into, and they spend a lot
Speaker 1: of their first couple of years remediating the stuff they
Speaker 1: should have learned in high school. And that's a big
Speaker 1: part of the reason why many of them take five
Speaker 1: or six or plus years to graduate. And so the
Speaker 1: what the upper middle class kids have right is college
Speaker 1: is like this broader thing which it's an opportunity to
Speaker 1: spend a few years figuring out who they are and
Speaker 1: what they want to do right. And they're able to
Speaker 1: do it because they're subsidized by their parents. They're able
Speaker 1: to figure out who am I, what am I actually
Speaker 1: good at? Where do I want to apply myself. They
Speaker 1: are often or almost always, those kind of kids still
Speaker 1: on their parents' health insurance from that period. If you
Speaker 1: look at low income students, they're paying everything out of
Speaker 1: their pocket or they're taking on loan debt that loan
Speaker 1: aid will run out eventually, and what happens for a
Speaker 1: fair number of students is that they just literally run
Speaker 1: out of federal relief student aid so that they can't
Speaker 1: continue their education and they have to work at the
Speaker 1: same time, often in the hopes that the work will
Speaker 1: give them meaningful health insurance. Mean, many colleges, you can
Speaker 1: get some sort of health coverage, but it's not actually
Speaker 1: health coverage in any meaningful sense. Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: want people of all income bands to have that period
Speaker 1: to find where they need to go in the economy
Speaker 1: where they can be productive and contribute for the best
Speaker 1: of everyone. Right, But in order to do that, you
Speaker 1: have to sort of give them the affordances of being
Speaker 1: able to figure things out. Right. The employer sponsored healthcare
Speaker 1: system that we have is a big part of the
Speaker 1: problem here because they are not They don't feel that
Speaker 1: they have the latitude to move jobs or to figure
Speaker 1: themselves out because they're not going to have health insurance
Speaker 1: if they're not working for an employer who offers it.
Speaker 1: But then, finally, and I think this is super important,
Speaker 1: is you just have to get off the credentialing treadmill. Okay,
Speaker 1: like so many people feel pressed to go to college
Speaker 1: because they feel like it's a requirement to get a
Speaker 1: good job now, and in many many places it is right.
Speaker 1: But if you look at a graph of the amount
Speaker 1: of master's degrees that are held in this country, it
Speaker 1: is astonishing. The growth in the number of people with
Speaker 1: master's degrees is absolutely astonishing. The universities love them because
Speaker 1: they're big cash cows, and that these are people who
Speaker 1: are working in jobs where there's no intrinsic reason for
Speaker 1: them to need that degree. But what they do need
Speaker 1: is a way to distinguish themselves against the rising words
Speaker 1: of people with ba's that if the more that we
Speaker 1: we just keep shoving more people into the college pipeline,
Speaker 1: the college diploma will become like the high school diploma, right,
Speaker 1: in which case it's just a thing that you have
Speaker 1: to have, and it no longer confers a meaningful wage advantage.
Speaker 1: And so at some point employers have to ask and say, okay,
Speaker 1: does this sort of entry level white collar job working
Speaker 1: for Nationwide Insurance, or for to be a bank teller
Speaker 1: at Wells Fargo, whatever, all these jobs that are sort
Speaker 1: of these low level white collar jobs or pink collar jobs,
Speaker 1: do they really need the college degree, because usually when
Speaker 1: they look looking for the college degree, they're just using
Speaker 1: it as a signaling mechanism to say, Okay, this person
Speaker 1: could get out of bed and go to class and
Speaker 1: do their homework and they have those kind of soft
Speaker 1: skills and that's what's really valuable to us. But that
Speaker 1: is a hideously inefficient system if you're actually thinking that
Speaker 1: what you're in college to do is to get that education.
Speaker 1: So until they're is a willingness by employers to say,
Speaker 1: you know what, we don't need all the you know,
Speaker 1: everyone who works for us to have a BA. You're
Speaker 1: going to have all this pressure on the system. If
Speaker 1: we can sort of bring down say okay, you know what,
Speaker 1: not all jobs need to be a some colleges will
Speaker 1: end up closing. I mean, I think that's inevitable in
Speaker 1: the next fifty years anyway. But there's got to be
Speaker 1: a sense that not everybody has to have that particular
Speaker 1: piece of paper. Yeah. I think this has been very,
Speaker 1: very very good for the audience. I personally learned a lot.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have links in the description to books, the polls,
Speaker 1: the substacks, all of that where they can find you. Guys,
Speaker 1: really appreciate your time. Thank you, Thanks guys, Thanks great,
Speaker 1: Thanks to see you jens Man. That was awesome, Crystal.
Speaker 1: We should do that more often. Yeah, it's difficult, logistically difficult,
Speaker 1: but man, it is awesome. Always learn a lot. Thank
Speaker 1: you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've been mentioning this this week. It's just
Speaker 1: such a reminder, Crystal. You know, literally while we were
Speaker 1: doing this show, multiple other artists are coming out on Spotify.
Speaker 1: The New York Times, Rock Sande Gay now is boycotting Spotify.
Speaker 1: All of these people huge boycotts that are being led,
Speaker 1: and look, it's only a matter of time in my opinion,
Speaker 1: until some thing gives way somewhere. We'll see already other
Speaker 1: artists are apparently recruiting Taylor Swift. It's just a reminder
Speaker 1: they could come at us anytime. The only way we
Speaker 1: survive with full knowledge and we don't sensit ourselves is
Speaker 1: you guys through our premium subscription. So thank you so
Speaker 1: much for all of you who show up for us
Speaker 1: every day, who support us in the way that you do,
Speaker 1: because you know, watching these things cascade through popular culture.
Speaker 1: It is a warning. It's a warning shot across about
Speaker 1: at folks like us. We will continue to say whatever
Speaker 1: the hell we want, don't worry about that. But the
Speaker 1: only way we're able to is because of you. So
Speaker 1: thank you. Yeah, thank you guys so much. We love you.
Speaker 1: We got some great content for you posting this weekend,
Speaker 1: so make sure you stay tuned and check that out
Speaker 1: when it drops, and we'll see you guys back here
Speaker 1: on Monday.