Speaker 1: Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We have an amazing show
Speaker 1: for you today. We are back in beautiful Washington, DC.
Speaker 1: What do we have, Christal? Indeed we do, and thank
Speaker 1: you to everyone who tuned in for the live stream
Speaker 1: on New York City. We had a blast. The comments
Speaker 1: on it were really positive, so we'll be looking for
Speaker 1: more opportunities to do that stuff like that. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a fun format. I think people enjoyed sort of
Speaker 1: how we switched it up in the show today. All right,
Speaker 1: big moves with regard to Elon Musk and Twitter and
Speaker 1: total media freak out about the whole thing, which is
Speaker 1: very revealing in many ways. We also have some new
Speaker 1: comments from Joe Biden's polster who helped him to win
Speaker 1: the presidency, saying that this is the worst political environment
Speaker 1: for Democrats that he has ever seen, which I think
Speaker 1: is just, I mean, pretty undeniable, but for him to
Speaker 1: admit it, he had some amazing interesting comments here. Also,
Speaker 1: movement on the stock band for members of Congress will
Speaker 1: tell you what the sort of sticking points are and
Speaker 1: where that lies in the process. New news about CNN
Speaker 1: Plus and you guys know how much the wheels are
Speaker 1: already coming off big layoffs and budget cuts already planned.
Speaker 1: We also have Jordan Cheriton in the show for an
Speaker 1: update on union efforts and union busting efforts over with Amazon. Okay,
Speaker 1: a couple other announcements for you here, guys. First of all,
Speaker 1: we are not going to do a normal show on Thursday.
Speaker 1: We will have content to post every single day like
Speaker 1: we normally do. I unfortunately, have suffered death in the family,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to be tending a funeral. And it
Speaker 1: is soccer birthday. Yeah, that's right. So and Marshall is
Speaker 1: not a Marshal Talan. So we just said, you know what, guys,
Speaker 1: We're going to call it this. Yeah, we tried our bust,
Speaker 1: but we're going to record a bunch of extra stuff
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Speaker 1: guys really Yeah. And by the way, guys, we have
Speaker 1: some other announcements coming up this week, new partnerships. We're
Speaker 1: continuing to look into more people and more content, more people,
Speaker 1: more folks in the circle of friends here over at
Speaker 1: breaking points, extended universe, the extended family here, so stay
Speaker 1: tuned for that. All right. With all of that, out
Speaker 1: of the way. Let's get to the very latest in
Speaker 1: terms of Russia's war in Ukraine. President Biden making some
Speaker 1: new comments, continuing to up the rhetorical anti in ways
Speaker 1: that I personally find to be less than productive. Let's
Speaker 1: take a listen to his latest comments. I called the
Speaker 1: genocide because it's become clear and clear that Putin is
Speaker 1: just trying to wipe out the idea of even being
Speaker 1: able to flee in Ukrainian and the evidence is mounting.
Speaker 1: It's different than it was last week. The more evidence
Speaker 1: that's coming out of the literally the horrible things that
Speaker 1: the Russians have done in Ukraine. So here's the trajectory. Guys.
Speaker 1: You remember, first President Biden made some comments off the
Speaker 1: cuff that Putin was a war criminal. Then he sort
Speaker 1: of codifies it, puts on official statement, really leans into that,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't just, you know, one sort of flippant comment.
Speaker 1: Then he says he wants him to actually be tried
Speaker 1: as a war criminal, is something that our own war
Speaker 1: criminals have never subjected themselves to. And now we are
Speaker 1: moving up the chain of rhetorical escalation here saying that
Speaker 1: what Russia is engaged in Ukraine is in fact genocide,
Speaker 1: and just to put the definition of genocide out there,
Speaker 1: because sometimes we throw these terms around loosely without really
Speaker 1: thinking through what they are and what they mean. It
Speaker 1: was a Jewish Polish legal scholar who coined the term
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty four, and he said that the term
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily signify mass killings. More often, genocide refers to
Speaker 1: a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations
Speaker 1: of the life of national groups, so that these groups
Speaker 1: wither and die like plants that have suffered uplight. I
Speaker 1: think that certainly could apply to what is happening in
Speaker 1: Ukraine right now, So I'm not saying that the term
Speaker 1: is inaccurate in terms of you know, Putin has clearly
Speaker 1: not just a war on Ukrainian soil and a desire
Speaker 1: to annex parts, if not all, of the country, but
Speaker 1: also really denies that Ukraine is even a thing. So
Speaker 1: there is some justification here. But the broader picture, as
Speaker 1: we always try to point out, is that look, ultimately,
Speaker 1: we want there to be peace, we want there to
Speaker 1: be a negotiated settlement, we want there to be an
Speaker 1: end to the violence. And it's very clear from the
Speaker 1: present's words and from the administration's posture that they're not
Speaker 1: really interested in that and saga we talked last week
Speaker 1: in New York about ron Klain also made some comments
Speaker 1: on a podcast. He said, I don't want an exit
Speaker 1: ramp for Vladimir Putin. I don't think that's our concern.
Speaker 1: Our concern is punishing the Russian aggression and defending the
Speaker 1: rights of the Ukrainians to have the kind of future
Speaker 1: that they deserve. No one is denying the Ukrainians deserve
Speaker 1: to be free, they deserve peace, they deserve all of that.
Speaker 1: But when you don't want an exit rant for Vladimir Putin,
Speaker 1: that means you don't want peace. That means you actually
Speaker 1: want Ukraine to continue suffering. And we're going to bring
Speaker 1: you some more reports on the civilian casualties here. You
Speaker 1: want this war to continue because you're more interested in
Speaker 1: punishing Russia than ultimately reaching a settlement here. Yeah, and look,
Speaker 1: the words of a president matter. That was the very
Speaker 1: first thing that Joe Biden said whenever he was running
Speaker 1: for president in twenty nineteen. You can all go back
Speaker 1: and watch his announcement video. But here's the problem. The
Speaker 1: enduring legacy of never again is burned into all of us,
Speaker 1: and I think that's a good thing. I actually do.
Speaker 1: Post World War Two, we decided that it was a
Speaker 1: just cause that four hundred thousand Americans died in order
Speaker 1: to restore both peace and Europe and to stop the
Speaker 1: genocide of Hitler and the Nazis. The greatest regret of
Speaker 1: the United States in the nineteen nineties is that they
Speaker 1: didn't do anything whenever it came to the genocide in Rwanda.
Speaker 1: And that is why at the time, if you go back,
Speaker 1: the Clinton administration refused to use the word genocide. There's
Speaker 1: a famous clip of Susan Rice refusing to use the
Speaker 1: word from the podium at the State Department. And the
Speaker 1: reason why was because if we acknowledged it as a
Speaker 1: quote unquote genocide, that would require and compel action on
Speaker 1: behalf of the United States. So there's actually a two
Speaker 1: pronged problem here. If this is a genocide and we
Speaker 1: do nothing about it, then that begs the question why
Speaker 1: are we doing Why aren't we doing the maximalst approach?
Speaker 1: Why are we not bombing you know, whichever Russian contingent
Speaker 1: is responsible for the war crimes in Bucha? Why are
Speaker 1: we not, you know, taking out chemical weapons factories or
Speaker 1: denigrating the Russian ability to wage war. Now, there's a
Speaker 1: grand strategic reason we're not doing that. It's because Russia
Speaker 1: is a nuclear power, and because doing so would very
Speaker 1: likely invite a major escalation between a war between NATO
Speaker 1: and the United States. And so Biden needs to choose
Speaker 1: his words more carefully towards an actual strategic aim. Instead,
Speaker 1: he's speaking aimlessly. Putin is a war criminal, this is
Speaker 1: a genocide, and he doubles down on genocide. The thing is,
Speaker 1: I don't think it is aimless. I think it's very intentional,
Speaker 1: because they don't have any intention of bringing this thing
Speaker 1: to a close. I mean, that's just become increasingly clear.
Speaker 1: At the beginning, I was sort of fifty to fifty
Speaker 1: whether it was just you know, they're just reacting and
Speaker 1: bubbling through and it's all response to whatever's happening in
Speaker 1: the moment. But I think it's become increasingly clear that
Speaker 1: their only goal here ultimately is to punish Russian aggression
Speaker 1: to the point that Putin gets pushed out of power.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what Biden let flip in that famous
Speaker 1: moment that you know they kind of cleaned up, they
Speaker 1: kind of walked back, and then he kind of also
Speaker 1: leaned into I think that was revealing what the true
Speaker 1: aim is here, and I think that that's foolish. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's going to happen, and ultimately I think
Speaker 1: it's going to contribute to even more Ukrainian suffering. And
Speaker 1: so that's really the issue here is I think that
Speaker 1: the US administration is really actively standing in the way
Speaker 1: of peace at this point and guaranteeing that we are
Speaker 1: going to enter this new Cold War era of a
Speaker 1: new Iron Curtain and a new world divided and a
Speaker 1: new conflict and competition, which is wonderful if you're an
Speaker 1: arms dealer or weapons manufacturer. You know, it's wonderful. For
Speaker 1: the news here in this country, it's, you know, their
Speaker 1: greatest dream. But it's a disaster if you actually care
Speaker 1: about a sort of you know, if you actually care
Speaker 1: about peace, it's ultimately a disaster. Yeah. To me, it's
Speaker 1: all about ambiguity, which is that whenever Biden leaves terms
Speaker 1: open like genocide and war criminal, he is inviting a
Speaker 1: position of the United States in order to use military force.
Speaker 1: This is something that we all know in our DNA. Rightfully,
Speaker 1: we're good people. We don't want to see people massacred
Speaker 1: across the planet. But when you use rhetoric like that,
Speaker 1: and by the way, it's not just me saying that.
Speaker 1: I've heard even from many even quote unquote like moderate
Speaker 1: type interventions. Marshall is one of these people, and he
Speaker 1: was denigrating the Biden ministry. He's like, you can't say that,
Speaker 1: because if you say that, you are saying the United
Speaker 1: States should be bringing the full force of its power.
Speaker 1: We have shameful times in our legacy, turning away Jewish
Speaker 1: refugees in the nineteen thirties in order to not antagonize
Speaker 1: the Hitler regime. I mean, remember, like, these are things
Speaker 1: which we've all been taught correctly in graduate school as
Speaker 1: a black mark. And so when you, as the president
Speaker 1: of the United States and the leader of the free world,
Speaker 1: use this type of rhetoric, you justify and actually open
Speaker 1: yourself up to the question, well, why are you not
Speaker 1: taking direct military actions in order to stop this? And
Speaker 1: we know why that answer is and we should acknowledge that, right,
Speaker 1: that's right, and that's why you see actually a majority
Speaker 1: of American people saying we're not doing enough, even though
Speaker 1: we have taken extraordinary actions, both in terms of the
Speaker 1: weapons support, the intelligence support we've provided that, the training
Speaker 1: we've provided the Ukrainian military over years and years now,
Speaker 1: and of course the economic warfare that is of almost
Speaker 1: unprecedented scale that we have launched against Russia at this point.
Speaker 1: That's how you get to a place where you can
Speaker 1: have taken all of those extraordinary, in some of them
Speaker 1: I think foolish and morally wrong actions, and still have
Speaker 1: people feel like, yeah, but you're not doing enough. It's
Speaker 1: because from the beginning of this conflict you've had a
Speaker 1: certain contingent here in Washington who was perfectly willing and
Speaker 1: comfortable to say this is World War two again, this
Speaker 1: is putin again, this is you know, to throw round
Speaker 1: language like genocide, which, as you said, you know, Americans
Speaker 1: are good people. The country has not, certainly the leadership
Speaker 1: has not lived up to the values that America is
Speaker 1: supposed to be all about. But the American people buy
Speaker 1: and large really do believe in, yes, those values and
Speaker 1: support those values. So when you casually use those terms,
Speaker 1: it does absolutely open the door for people saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: then why aren't we doing more? Why aren't we isn't
Speaker 1: this a just cause? Why aren't we using our men
Speaker 1: and women to stop the atrocities? Right? And look, I
Speaker 1: mean I just have to repeat it again, which is that, Yes,
Speaker 1: what can happen in Ukraine is horrific. Can what's going
Speaker 1: on there is like catastrophic? And Biden's not descriptively wrong
Speaker 1: whenever he says that Putin does not acknowledge Ukrainian identity sovereignty. People,
Speaker 1: this is a long time coming in the history of
Speaker 1: not just Russia, many of the subordinate peoples to Russia.
Speaker 1: I mean, I actually just saw a fascinating thing today
Speaker 1: about Russian troops from eastern Siberia who are Buddhist. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like and they're being conscripted and deployed to Ukraine. Really,
Speaker 1: what do these step people have an interest in fighting
Speaker 1: in Ukraine? Yeah, it's like, this is ludicrous. So many,
Speaker 1: many people have different types of ethnic groups have long
Speaker 1: suffered under the Great Russian thumb. However, that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that we should risk a nuclear war in order to
Speaker 1: try and intervene within that country. And when you use
Speaker 1: language like this, I'll just repeat it again. The words
Speaker 1: of a president legitimately do matter. And just so you
Speaker 1: know it's bipartisan, because President Donald Trump also called it
Speaker 1: a Tenna side the day after, and he called it
Speaker 1: a holocaust previously and on his rhetoric, and we should
Speaker 1: call on there. So when you have the two leading
Speaker 1: political figures in the United States, depresses me to say
Speaker 1: that they're the two, but they are of the two factions,
Speaker 1: and the president the former president likely next president. You
Speaker 1: put that together, it's not a good situation for US policy,
Speaker 1: and you have to understand the broader implications of the
Speaker 1: machine that that wears up here in DC. But yeah, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: the last thing I want to say about this too,
Speaker 1: is just on the hypocrisy front. Of course, we've talked
Speaker 1: about a lot about Saudi and Yemen, but if you're
Speaker 1: following the news out of Israel, how you can apply
Speaker 1: the term genocide to Russia's aggression against Ukraine and not
Speaker 1: what Israel has been doing to Palestine for decades. I
Speaker 1: don't think you're applying an even standard there where it
Speaker 1: comes to those things. All Right, latest from on the ground,
Speaker 1: there are some big news from the Ukrainian side and
Speaker 1: also some very big significant news from the Russian side.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the Ukrainian side. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. So an incredibly significant
Speaker 1: Russian warship called the Muska sunk in the Black Sea.
Speaker 1: Now the Ukrainians and the US say that Ukrainian missiles
Speaker 1: hit and sank this warship. The Russians say, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it caught fire. You guys had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 1: And then the ammunition exploded, and actually, like it was
Speaker 1: just it just happened. It really wasn't you guys. I'll
Speaker 1: let you decide what you think actually happened here. But
Speaker 1: let me tell you why this is so significant. This
Speaker 1: is the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet. It was
Speaker 1: being towed to port when stormy seas caused it to sink.
Speaker 1: That's according to the Russians. That's their version of the story.
Speaker 1: And why it matters so much is this was a
Speaker 1: five hundred and ten crew missile cruiser. It was a
Speaker 1: symbol of Russia's military power. It led the naval assault
Speaker 1: on Ukraine. So it's been very significant player in terms
Speaker 1: of this particular war. Some analysts are saying this is
Speaker 1: more of a symbolic blow than it is actually a
Speaker 1: sort of military tactical blow, although the tactical blow matters
Speaker 1: as well because this is the largest vessel, the biggest
Speaker 1: Russian warship to be sunk in action since World War II,
Speaker 1: so that's kind of the symbolic blow. But on the
Speaker 1: actual tactical blow here, smaller vessels were the ones that
Speaker 1: were actually conducting the bombardments of Ukrainian cities, but this
Speaker 1: ship was providing them with wide area air cover. It
Speaker 1: had longer range missile defense systems, so it was able
Speaker 1: to provide air cover for these smaller ships that were
Speaker 1: actually due the bombardment. So there's kind of a dispute
Speaker 1: over how significant it is in terms of the direction
Speaker 1: of the war, but there's no doubt that this is
Speaker 1: definitely symbolic blow to the Russians. And there was kind
Speaker 1: of a freak out on Russian State TV purportedly over
Speaker 1: the fact that this ship was sunk. This obviously with
Speaker 1: something that the Russians could not hide from their people,
Speaker 1: even though they're trying to spin their own version of
Speaker 1: events here, and so on the one hand, there was
Speaker 1: the Russian State TV. They were sort of freaking out
Speaker 1: about it, but they were also saying this was an
Speaker 1: attack on Russia herself, and this was causing them to
Speaker 1: use the words war more frequently. And so there's also
Speaker 1: concern that this is sort of being used to prepare
Speaker 1: the Russian population for a broader conscription, calling up of
Speaker 1: more military age men and saying, listen, now we have
Speaker 1: to like fully commit ourselves to this war in Ukraine,
Speaker 1: whereas before, of course they've been spinning it as this
Speaker 1: limited special military operation, right, And actually this morning we
Speaker 1: bear the consequences of what that looks like, which is
Speaker 1: that Russian missiles struck this morning the city of Leviv
Speaker 1: in western Ukraine at least seven people. But the reason
Speaker 1: that Leviv strikes are always important is that is the
Speaker 1: major conduit of NATO weapons into Ukraine. And also it's
Speaker 1: a direct shot at many of the civilians and others
Speaker 1: who had fled. It invites significantly also more escalation on
Speaker 1: behalf of the Russians. It is so embarrassing for them too.
Speaker 1: They're supposed to be this great power. Their Russian fleet
Speaker 1: has long been a complete joke. We all found that
Speaker 1: out in Syria when it would like steam this disgusting,
Speaker 1: you could basically watch its smoke, you know, try and
Speaker 1: get all the way over to Syria in order to
Speaker 1: try and project naval power. But it just shows you
Speaker 1: that things are not going well for them at all,
Speaker 1: and they are becoming an embarrassment on the world stage militarily,
Speaker 1: which invites its own problems. Let's go and put this
Speaker 1: next one up there on the screen around the retreat
Speaker 1: from Kiev and what people have found, which is that
Speaker 1: more than nine hundred the associated press please, more than
Speaker 1: nine hundred civilian bodies found in the Kiev region. So
Speaker 1: the bodies of more than nine hundred civilians were discovered
Speaker 1: in the region surrounding the capital, most of them who
Speaker 1: were fatally shot, in indication that many people were simply executed. Now,
Speaker 1: to be fair, this does come directly from the Ukrainian
Speaker 1: police and the head of the Capital Regional Police Force,
Speaker 1: so look, they also have an interest in discussing this.
Speaker 1: That being said, I don't disbelieve photos of literal dead
Speaker 1: bodies in the ground, and it just shows you how
Speaker 1: much of a tragedy that war really is. But finally,
Speaker 1: and this is the try to present a very balanced
Speaker 1: picture of exactly what's happening here. Put the next one
Speaker 1: up there, please us on the screen, which is that
Speaker 1: the city of Mariopol is very much on the cusp
Speaker 1: of falling almost completely to Russia. There are some heroic
Speaker 1: stories that are coming out of the Ukrainian soldiers there,
Speaker 1: basically saying that they're going to fight to the death
Speaker 1: in holding that city, and really it reminds me of
Speaker 1: some of the Soviet campaigns against the Nazis, when many
Speaker 1: of the Soviet soldiers would willingly sacrifice themselves and say, look,
Speaker 1: we know we're going to die, and then they would
Speaker 1: you know this famous story I remember Dan Carlin's Hardcore
Speaker 1: History where they scribble on the side of the building
Speaker 1: and say, let it be known that the soldiers of
Speaker 1: whatever fought to the death for their country. So really
Speaker 1: heroic story coming out from the Ukrainian defenders, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't change the grand strategic situation, which is that it's
Speaker 1: very likely that Mariopol will fight to the Russians, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean it's going to be incredibly costly. Some
Speaker 1: of the defenders themselves saying we are doing this in
Speaker 1: order to pin the Russians down here, make them sacrifice
Speaker 1: every possible man, and they say they will fight to
Speaker 1: the end of every block of the city. Is going
Speaker 1: to have to be so, you know, Russia, you're going
Speaker 1: to find out what we had to find out the
Speaker 1: hard way in Fallujah, what we had to find out
Speaker 1: in urban warfare. It's hell. It costs a ton of lives,
Speaker 1: and when you face a devoted enemy, as the Ukrainians
Speaker 1: are in this situation, it's going to be a bad
Speaker 1: time for you. But that doesn't mean that they aren't
Speaker 1: willing in order to incur that cost. That's right. And
Speaker 1: just to put some of the numbers on this, I
Speaker 1: believe Maria paul is a city of about four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand people. Remaining in the city is only
Speaker 1: about one hundred thousand people. That's still a lot of
Speaker 1: lives there, and the only known remaining resistance left in
Speaker 1: the city in terms of armed resistance to the Russians
Speaker 1: are sort of holed up in this steel plant and
Speaker 1: Mariopol is This would be the most significant victory of
Speaker 1: the Russians thus far in this war. It's very strategically important.
Speaker 1: That's why they have devoted a lot of resources to
Speaker 1: Mariopol from the very beginning. It's been under a seven
Speaker 1: week siege. The humanitarian conditions on the ground are horrific.
Speaker 1: You know, people couldn't get in food, medicine, electricity, water,
Speaker 1: just mass suffering throughout the city. And the reason it
Speaker 1: would be so significant is because it would allow them
Speaker 1: to fully secure that land corridor that we've the land
Speaker 1: bridge we've been talking about from the beginning to the
Speaker 1: Crimean peninsula where they obviously already had sort of taken
Speaker 1: over that they had seized from Ukraine twenty four and
Speaker 1: it would deprive Ukraine of a major port and some
Speaker 1: of its prized industrial assets. So, as I said, you know,
Speaker 1: this would be an incredibly significant victory from the Russians.
Speaker 1: It would be their most significant victory tactical victory here
Speaker 1: in this war thus far. And it appears that Mariapol
Speaker 1: at this point is all but lost, as that heroic
Speaker 1: resistance does continue. This has potential implications also for the
Speaker 1: peace process. And this is according to President Zelenski. Let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and put his tweet, this tweet up on
Speaker 1: the screen. He's saying that negotiations with Russia would come
Speaker 1: to a halt if the Ukrainians defending the port city
Speaker 1: of Mariopol are killed and defeated. He says, we are
Speaker 1: not bartering using our territories and people. The language I've
Speaker 1: heard from him most recently is very adamant that they're
Speaker 1: not willing to give up any of their territory in
Speaker 1: the east of the state. And Ukrainian Foreign Minister told
Speaker 1: CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday that the situation Mariapoul
Speaker 1: was dire and heartbreaking, that it could have significant implications
Speaker 1: on peace negotiations with Russia. Here's his quote. He says,
Speaker 1: after Bucha it became particularly difficult to continue talking with
Speaker 1: the Russians. But as my president mentioned, Maria Paul may
Speaker 1: be a red line. So as these continued atrocities unfold
Speaker 1: and the Ukrainian sufferer more losses, both of their civilian
Speaker 1: population and their soldiers, of course, it makes it more
Speaker 1: difficult to sit down at the negotiating table and be
Speaker 1: able to come to some sort of a resolution here.
Speaker 1: And Putin himself has said that a second offensive is
Speaker 1: likely to launch in the eastern part of the country.
Speaker 1: So things look not really not good in terms of
Speaker 1: what's happening over there. Really thinking about everybody in Mary
Speaker 1: Paul today, all right, let's go ahead and move on
Speaker 1: to Elon musk and to Twitter. So on Friday, during
Speaker 1: the live show, we had the breaking news that Elon
Speaker 1: Musk had offered fifty four dollars per share to Twitter
Speaker 1: and that Twitter was considering it. We can now bring
Speaker 1: you the news that Twitter has rejected that offer with
Speaker 1: a so called poison pill. Let's go ahead and put
Speaker 1: this up there on the screen. So the Twitter board
Speaker 1: adopted this poison pill after must forty three billion dollar
Speaker 1: bid to buy the company. Now it's a little complicated,
Speaker 1: so let me just try and explain it to the
Speaker 1: best of my ability. The way that these poison pills
Speaker 1: work is that they were invented in the crazy hostile
Speaker 1: takeover days of the nineteen eighties, where the Twitter board
Speaker 1: says that if any person or conglomerate accumulates more than
Speaker 1: fourteen point nine percent of Twitter stock, they will begin
Speaker 1: issuing millions of more shares to broader public investors. The
Speaker 1: reason this matters is that the Musk offer is a
Speaker 1: per share offer, So what it would do is a
Speaker 1: it would dilute the stock, but b what it would
Speaker 1: do is make it much more of an expensive ability
Speaker 1: in order to offer to buy the broader company, especially
Speaker 1: whenever you create millions of shares out of thin air.
Speaker 1: It would significantly inflate the purchase price and make it
Speaker 1: much more difficult in order for Musking them to acquire
Speaker 1: the company. Now, this has spawned a lot of discussion
Speaker 1: around corporate governance, shareholders and more. And the way that
Speaker 1: we have to understand this is, while yes, it matters
Speaker 1: as to who the broader shareholders are, publicly traded companies
Speaker 1: are subject to the governance of their board of directors.
Speaker 1: Those board of directors, despite owning less than two percent
Speaker 1: of the entire company, which is less than Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: which is less than you know, even Vanguard and many others,
Speaker 1: still have the ability to reject and determine the course
Speaker 1: of action for the company. And it really raises a
Speaker 1: lot of questions of like, okay, like how exactly these
Speaker 1: things run seems a little ridiculous, you know, when you
Speaker 1: think about ownership and then corporate governance. But it's a
Speaker 1: long standing corporate practice in order to try and reject
Speaker 1: hostile takeover efforts. Apparently Netflix did the same thing when
Speaker 1: Carl Icon tried to run a similar thing on the
Speaker 1: company back in twenty twelve. That's the most recent example
Speaker 1: of a tech company kind of rejecting these hostile takeover
Speaker 1: type bids. Let's put the next one up there on
Speaker 1: the screen, because what you can see is that there's
Speaker 1: also a lot of behind the scenes shinanigans which are happening,
Speaker 1: which is that Musk himself now is no longer the
Speaker 1: major Twitter large shareholder. Now Vanguard Group actually upped their
Speaker 1: steak in the company all the way up to ten percent.
Speaker 1: Now we don't exactly know the reason why Vanguard has
Speaker 1: decided to up its steak. It does seem very much
Speaker 1: in direct reaction to Elon Musk, and perhaps it's an
Speaker 1: effort to perhaps influence the board more and perhaps show
Speaker 1: that they are allies in the system. It just look,
Speaker 1: many of these board members and black Rock and other
Speaker 1: large shareholders don't have any interest in Elon Musk taking
Speaker 1: over the company, and you know, not unfairly. Because the
Speaker 1: one thing I do want to say is this, Musk
Speaker 1: gave an interview on Friday where he said, quote, I
Speaker 1: don't care about the economics at all. Well Twitter, He's like,
Speaker 1: I view this as a editorial project of which I
Speaker 1: want to protect free speech. I don't care about the
Speaker 1: business of the company, So if you're a shareholder, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's not the best thing. At the same time, Musk
Speaker 1: is offering you a buyout, and it's kind of hilarious
Speaker 1: that Twitter's board is actually being advised by Goldman Sachs
Speaker 1: in terms of how in order to defeat all of this. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out that Goldman Sacks itself has a cell
Speaker 1: rating on Twitter and says that the price target on
Speaker 1: it should be thirty dollars. So by their own analysis,
Speaker 1: the Twitter as a company in a business is terrible,
Speaker 1: and using Musk's metric, he's offering you insane to overpay
Speaker 1: I mean not just overpay, almost double what Goldman Sachs
Speaker 1: says that the company is truly worth, which is kind
Speaker 1: of hilarious. So you put it all together. The Twitter
Speaker 1: board then has outright rejected it. We don't yet know
Speaker 1: how this is going to play out, though things inside
Speaker 1: of Twitter are a bit chaotic. However, we do know
Speaker 1: this that Musk has said that there was a plan
Speaker 1: B that he said that was on the stage. He
Speaker 1: said he is looking to work with possible other shareholders.
Speaker 1: So this saga is not over. Yeah, I think the
Speaker 1: best way to think about it is Marshall made this
Speaker 1: point during our live stream. I thought it was excellent,
Speaker 1: which is that this is like him buying a newspaper.
Speaker 1: He wants to look at this thing. He's like, I
Speaker 1: have a vision for Twitter. I don't only care about
Speaker 1: the business. It's actually kind of a terrible business if
Speaker 1: you look at it, right, And so this is the
Speaker 1: vision of the world that I want to see. Well,
Speaker 1: And there's so much that's fascinating about this. I mean,
Speaker 1: first of all, like, as I've said before, I sort
Speaker 1: of view all these billionaires the same, but there's a
Speaker 1: lot of partisan filtering of which billionaires people like and
Speaker 1: which ones they're comfortable with. And we're going to get
Speaker 1: later to like the media freak count over this that
Speaker 1: you certainly did not see when Bezos was buying watchings,
Speaker 1: for example. But I think if you do think of
Speaker 1: it in that framework of this is like buying a newspaper,
Speaker 1: then people start to understand more like, oh, then this
Speaker 1: isn't just purely a money making venture. Because that's what
Speaker 1: makes this so unusual is usually when you have these
Speaker 1: hustle takeover bids, activist investors, all of these activist shareholders,
Speaker 1: all of these things, it usually is about I think
Speaker 1: this company from a financial perspective is being run. I
Speaker 1: think we could make more money here, not like I
Speaker 1: think their values are wrong. And so you have this
Speaker 1: complicated mix of like ideology and financial incentives that makes
Speaker 1: the picture confusing for people to understand whose motives are what.
Speaker 1: In that livestream interview that you reference, Elon Musk spoke
Speaker 1: to the TED conferences, so orange whatever, I can't believe
Speaker 1: it's so wrong. I know I think of the same
Speaker 1: thing as like, oh, we're still doing this anyway. He
Speaker 1: spoke to TED twenty twenty two in Vancouver in a
Speaker 1: livestreamed interview, and he partly laid on his vision for
Speaker 1: making Twitter's algorithms more publicly accessible, something I would certainly welcome.
Speaker 1: Limiting content moderation something else I would certainly welcome if
Speaker 1: it's done in a consistent and you know again, transparent way.
Speaker 1: He acknowledged he's not sure that he's actually going to
Speaker 1: be able to pull this thing off and by Twitter, though,
Speaker 1: he did say he has sufficient assets to fund the
Speaker 1: deal if accepted. You know, most of his assets are
Speaker 1: tied up in equity in his companies, so you probably
Speaker 1: have a big tax event if he had to, you know,
Speaker 1: you'd have to like sell a stock whatever and have
Speaker 1: an actual tax event and pay some taxes. That's not
Speaker 1: a bad thing. But must did say there is a
Speaker 1: plan B if his initial offer to buy the company
Speaker 1: and take it private, which he called his best and
Speaker 1: final offer, is rejected, but he isn't saying what that
Speaker 1: plan B ultimately is. So, you know, the big thing
Speaker 1: to take away from the poison pill that's been adopted
Speaker 1: here and Musk's comments from you know, directly from him
Speaker 1: is that this is far from a done deal, whether
Speaker 1: or not that he's ultimately able to pull this off
Speaker 1: and ultimately able to you know, take over Twitter. And
Speaker 1: he wants to take it private, by the way too.
Speaker 1: That's the other plan here, And I completely believe him that,
Speaker 1: you know, his motives have to do they are not
Speaker 1: just directly financial. And so yeah, if you're a shareholder
Speaker 1: and you're just in it for the money, even if
Speaker 1: you don't care at all about content moderation or free speech,
Speaker 1: if you're looking at this guy who's going to take
Speaker 1: it over and he's like, I don't really care what
Speaker 1: the return ultimately are, yeah, you're probably not going to
Speaker 1: be too excited about that. Yeah, and you know this
Speaker 1: is keeping with his behavior. I actually read over the
Speaker 1: weekend reread actually two thousand and I think his seventeen
Speaker 1: book a biography of Musk elon Musk, Tesla, SpaceX in
Speaker 1: The Quest for a Fantastic Future. I highly recommend it
Speaker 1: if you want to kind of understand how Musk ticks.
Speaker 1: This is long standing in his behavior. If you look
Speaker 1: at SpaceX, for example, he refuses to take the company
Speaker 1: public because he does not want SpaceX subject to the
Speaker 1: same whims of Twitter of Tesla as you've seen with Tesla,
Speaker 1: like short sellers, quarterly earnings. He's like, you cannot plan
Speaker 1: for the future the realistic company whenever you're subject to
Speaker 1: the whims of the stock market. So even though Tesla
Speaker 1: and then SpaceX I think is worth like seventy something
Speaker 1: billion dollars, refuses to take the company public exactly for
Speaker 1: this reason it doesn't want to be subject to the street.
Speaker 1: So he has a long standing kind of love of
Speaker 1: private companies. And the only reason even wanted Tesla to
Speaker 1: go public in the first place because at the time
Speaker 1: he actually needed the money and has long hated kind
Speaker 1: of Wall Street's machinations all behind the scenes. Anyway, it's
Speaker 1: interesting and fitting with his worldview. But let's go to
Speaker 1: the next part of this because it's hilarious. Put this
Speaker 1: up there on the screen, please, which is that the
Speaker 1: members of the Saudi royal family are very upset by
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's offer. Here is what Prince Alouied Talal says.
Speaker 1: I don't believe the proposed offer by Elon Musk comes
Speaker 1: close to the intrinsic value of Twitter, given its growth prospects,
Speaker 1: being one of the largest shareholders the Kingdom, and I
Speaker 1: reject this offer. Yeah, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia rejecting
Speaker 1: our offer. Elon replied, let's go ahead. Put this up
Speaker 1: there because there's a lot to say, and it reveals
Speaker 1: a lot about our broken financial system and some of
Speaker 1: the Saudi influence I've talked about here. Interesting. Just two questions,
Speaker 1: if I may, how much of Twitter does the Kingdom
Speaker 1: own directly and indirectly? Number two, what are the Kingdom's
Speaker 1: views on journalistic freedom of speech? I think we all
Speaker 1: know the answer to that question. You know this is
Speaker 1: we didn't even put it together until this all happened.
Speaker 1: But Brian Fogel's docum mentory The Dissident showed me that
Speaker 1: a massive proportion of Saudi citizens are on Twitter, right,
Speaker 1: and the reason why is if they have anonymity, and
Speaker 1: a lot of Saudi politics happens in terms of Twitter discussion.
Speaker 1: There are you've experienced, yes, oh yeah, yeah, they're very racist.
Speaker 1: You can figure that out. But the mom's issue fatwas
Speaker 1: on Twitter. It's really become a central part of Saudi discourse.
Speaker 1: And the reason that MBS and the Saudi government were
Speaker 1: so obsessed with Jamal Kashogi and other Saudi dissonances is
Speaker 1: because they have big Twitter followings. They were living here
Speaker 1: in the West and some of their stuff was re
Speaker 1: entering Saudi discourse and bringing dissonance against the Kingdom. Now
Speaker 1: the Kingdom has responded by you know, if you think
Speaker 1: Russian troll farms are bad, the Saudi troll farms are
Speaker 1: a whole other level. They're always like, and I've experienced
Speaker 1: this first time. They're like, MBS is the greatest, you know,
Speaker 1: and they'll call me some darky or whatever whatever people
Speaker 1: are saying about Indians these days. I don't even know
Speaker 1: what the slur is. No particularly care, So thank god
Speaker 1: I live over. But what you can see in their
Speaker 1: reaction is that the reason why Crystal I realize that
Speaker 1: they have such a large stake in Twitter and are
Speaker 1: on the board of directors is because they need to
Speaker 1: control the political organ through which their politics is mediated
Speaker 1: in their country. And I can't believe it because it
Speaker 1: cuts directly against the original promise of Twitter. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about in my monologue about free speech, about
Speaker 1: the ability of the Internet to serve as dissidents. So
Speaker 1: to allow these Saudi despots, these people who chop people's
Speaker 1: heads off and treat women in ways that you can't
Speaker 1: even believe, to own an American publicly traded company and
Speaker 1: then try and work against in our system, our financial system,
Speaker 1: to protect their hold over seventy million people and a
Speaker 1: huge proportion of the world's oil supply. This is the
Speaker 1: most corrupt view as to how legal this all is.
Speaker 1: I in the Kingdom reject your offer. How about we
Speaker 1: reject the Kingdom. That's my answer. First of all, Okay,
Speaker 1: do we need to have a Taylor Lorenz style public
Speaker 1: airing or how you have been bullied online? Let me
Speaker 1: know if you're able to contuct with this diagram here's
Speaker 1: my plan. I just never want to go back to
Speaker 1: the Gulf. Sorry, people, your country self, don't reach you.
Speaker 1: That's all. It's very revealing because this the saudis having
Speaker 1: a gigantic steak in a company that obviously central to
Speaker 1: their discourse, with more significant for us, it's our discourse.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is where elite opinion gets made, which
Speaker 1: is why you know there's such a freak out over this,
Speaker 1: and why Eline is so you know, interested in what's
Speaker 1: going on with Twitter. Our Twitter is really the hub
Speaker 1: of elite discourse and opinion making in the US. And
Speaker 1: so the fact that the saudis having a major steak
Speaker 1: and being, according to them, the like one of the
Speaker 1: largest shareholders that goes by without any very little kid. Hey, whoa,
Speaker 1: that's a big problem exactly. But that's sort of like, ah,
Speaker 1: we're okay with that, because I guess they're much more
Speaker 1: comfortable with any regime of censorship than they ultimately are
Speaker 1: with a regime of actual free speech. And to your
Speaker 1: point about how focused the Saudis have been on Twitter,
Speaker 1: I had forgotten this until this whole incident. Remember they
Speaker 1: had there were a couple of Twitter employees who were
Speaker 1: arrested Saudi spies as they were Saudi spies. Yeah and so,
Speaker 1: and they had access to all kinds of, you know,
Speaker 1: data that should be kept private about users who are
Speaker 1: on Twitter who may have been critical of the Saudis.
Speaker 1: So they were accused by the Justice Department of using
Speaker 1: their positions, their access to Twitter's internal systems to aid
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia by attaining information on American citizens and Saudi
Speaker 1: dissidents who opposed the policies of the kingdom and its leaders.
Speaker 1: So again, I think it's revealing as to which sort
Speaker 1: of directionally which ideologies American elites very threatening. The cozy
Speaker 1: relationship with Saudi obviously is always there, and somehow they
Speaker 1: get a pass on all their wars and atrocities and
Speaker 1: human rights violations because of how much money flows through
Speaker 1: American pockets coming from the Kingdom, and just the utter
Speaker 1: corruption of all of it, I think is what's really
Speaker 1: on display here. It disgusts me, It really disgusts me.
Speaker 1: And I remember confronting that with Brian Foegol's documentary The
Speaker 1: Dissonant This guy, and we had him on the show.
Speaker 1: By the way, people can go back and watch it.
Speaker 1: This guy created one of the best documentaries in the
Speaker 1: history of Netflix, Icarus One an Oscar made. The Netflix
Speaker 1: documentary team makes this incredible documentary on Jamalka Shogi the
Speaker 1: Killing exposing the Saudi regime, and nobody will buy it.
Speaker 1: Netflix pass Amazon Prime. Jeff Bezos' company, who was Jamalka
Speaker 1: Shogi's boss, passes on the documentary for his streaming service.
Speaker 1: Why because he wanted to buy souk dot com in
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia, which is their online retailer. It's repulsive to
Speaker 1: me watching the way that anti Saudi dissonance is just
Speaker 1: completely squeezed out and nobody talks about it, and you know,
Speaker 1: good on Elon. Look. I don't know what his motivations are,
Speaker 1: but at least here people need to realize how much
Speaker 1: power the Saudis have in our country. And it's a
Speaker 1: very good a good reminder, especially you know, in the
Speaker 1: midst of all of these task high gas prices. But
Speaker 1: speaking of Bezos, we could not let this slide, which
Speaker 1: is that the media freak out when it's not one
Speaker 1: of their billionaires who wants to control elite discourse. Is
Speaker 1: just been chef's kiss. So let's put this up there
Speaker 1: on the screen, we put together a little highlight reel
Speaker 1: for all of you. Here's from the Los Angeles Times,
Speaker 1: which by the way, is owned also by a billionaire
Speaker 1: biotech billionaire Elon Musk's paradoxical vision of running Twitter less democracy,
Speaker 1: more freedom. Did they say the same whenever a billionaire
Speaker 1: bought their paper. No, that's exactly right. Let's go to
Speaker 1: the next one. This is from The Guardian. To be fair,
Speaker 1: the Guardian is not a billionaire owned in control. They
Speaker 1: just have a cringe ideology. This is from Robert Reich,
Speaker 1: the former US Labor Secretary, who says that Elon Musk's
Speaker 1: vision for the Internet is dangerous nonsense. He says that
Speaker 1: the Russian people know little about Putin's war on aggression,
Speaker 1: so of course he has to start with Russia. He says,
Speaker 1: pundits assume the Internet would open a new era of
Speaker 1: democracy and all of that. But again he's pointing to
Speaker 1: the pervading objection amongst elites. Musk's Twitter by is that
Speaker 1: more moderation is needed in order to have more democracy,
Speaker 1: which is really incredible, Like when you think about it,
Speaker 1: the people are not and should not be exposed to
Speaker 1: all sorts of ideas we as the elite, should mediate
Speaker 1: what is disinformation and what is not? What is misinformation
Speaker 1: disinformation and what is not. And then we use those
Speaker 1: definitions in order to control the public discourse on these
Speaker 1: tech companies, in order to control overall public opinion. That
Speaker 1: is the opposite of democracy. And yet look closer and
Speaker 1: they just say the quiet part out loud. The next
Speaker 1: one here, I love this. Elon Musk's vision of free
Speaker 1: speech will be bad for Twitter. Now he says. This
Speaker 1: is by Ellen Powe, you know, the former CEO of
Speaker 1: Reddit famously you had to get run out of it it
Speaker 1: and the bad companies here exactly, which is published straight
Speaker 1: out of the Bezos Amazon Washington Post, and points to
Speaker 1: how the need for more moderation and more content controls
Speaker 1: are necessary for a free country. And she tries to
Speaker 1: cast it as bad for the business. And here's one
Speaker 1: of the best things about Elon's extraordinary wealth. By my account,
Speaker 1: he's worth two hundred and fifty seven billion dollars. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. He doesn't care about the money. So when
Speaker 1: you don't care about the money, and yeah, people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: this might be bad for the advertisers. He doesn't care.
Speaker 1: He just wants people to be able to use it
Speaker 1: and not be censored whenever they're speaking. And look whether
Speaker 1: that would bear out under his leadership. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: We obviously need to see that, but I'm willing to
Speaker 1: suspect that it's going to be better than what it
Speaker 1: currently is. And you know, another bezos Washington Post columnists
Speaker 1: put this one up there, Max Boot quote, I am
Speaker 1: frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon
Speaker 1: Musk acquires Twitter. He seems to believe that on social
Speaker 1: media anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more
Speaker 1: content moderation, not less. This is why I hate they
Speaker 1: define democracy only in terms of things that I like
Speaker 1: and not things that others. Well, Max boots one is
Speaker 1: my favorite, because I mean he just puts it out there,
Speaker 1: Democracy equals content moderation. It was like I thought our
Speaker 1: democracy had a whole free speech thing to it, Like
Speaker 1: that was kind of a core a while we were
Speaker 1: in and all that project we're supposed to be committed
Speaker 1: to here. And of course free of course speech has
Speaker 1: limits that we've long recognized. Right, it's not absolutely anything goes,
Speaker 1: but you know, we have started to hem in and
Speaker 1: hemin and hem in what is allowed. And then when
Speaker 1: you do that, ultimately what you're doing is handing more
Speaker 1: control over to the billionaire class, over to the people
Speaker 1: who own these platforms and the people who influence the
Speaker 1: billionaires who own these platforms. And that's my objection to
Speaker 1: this whole thing. I mean, I just see listen, so
Speaker 1: many people are viewing this through the lens of like
Speaker 1: which particular billionaires they think aligned with them ideologically, when
Speaker 1: what the real takeaway from all of this should be
Speaker 1: is whether you like Musk, whether you like Bezos, whether
Speaker 1: you hate all of them, the fact that you are
Speaker 1: allowing this very small class of billionaires to control things
Speaker 1: that are so essential to our democracy as speech. That's
Speaker 1: the big problem that we're facing here, and that should
Speaker 1: be something that everyone could come together around and say,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we shouldn't be just like left the
Speaker 1: whims of whichever billionaire happens to buy up the public
Speaker 1: square this time, right. That's the big issue that I
Speaker 1: have here. And so as we're going through all these
Speaker 1: different articles, it's just noteworthy that, you know, when it
Speaker 1: was Bezos buying the Post or other billionaires buying other newspapers,
Speaker 1: a lot of times these people were comfortable with it.
Speaker 1: It also reminded me remember when Bernie made those comments about, Hey,
Speaker 1: maybe the Washington Post doesn't like me because it's owned
Speaker 1: by Jeff Bezos and I want to raise his taxes,
Speaker 1: And there was a total meltdown. There was outrage. The
Speaker 1: liberal commentariat was up at arms. How could you say
Speaker 1: that about the Washington Post? And how dare you sir?
Speaker 1: And then when it comes to, you know, someone that
Speaker 1: they are less comfortable with and has a at least
Speaker 1: purports to have a different ideology that they do, then
Speaker 1: suddenly they see the risks and the problems of billionaire
Speaker 1: ownership here. Personal favorite was Washington Post saying, quote, this
Speaker 1: is Elon Musk at peak billionaire in the Washington Post. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: peak billionaire is when the richest man in the world,
Speaker 1: who is Jeff Bezos, buys the Washington Post in order
Speaker 1: to influence political das. I think both of you're washing
Speaker 1: o peak billionaire. That's my thing. It's like, let's apply
Speaker 1: an even standard here and recognize that. Look, do I
Speaker 1: think that we're probably more likely to get better content
Speaker 1: moderation out of Elon Musk and Twitter as a private
Speaker 1: company than we do under whatever the dude's CEO's name
Speaker 1: is now, Agarwall Yes, I do. I do think. But
Speaker 1: the problem is leaving these incredibly consequential issues to the
Speaker 1: whims of billionaires. That's the problem. And so you know,
Speaker 1: there's a reason why elites are so freaked out by
Speaker 1: this because I think what all of this has reminded
Speaker 1: us and revealed once again is how important Twitter is
Speaker 1: to elite discourse. And so this is a real battleground
Speaker 1: for them where they want their ideology to have be
Speaker 1: enforced by the leadership of Twitter, versus having it be
Speaker 1: you know, truly open and people allowed to say some
Speaker 1: things that you don't like. And by the way, if
Speaker 1: your goal is to you know, get Donald to keep
Speaker 1: Donald Trump on office again, I don't think by censoring
Speaker 1: him ultimately you've done yourselves any favors. Yeah, okay, guys.
Speaker 1: Interesting pulling commentary from Biden's polster John anzelone, let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and put this up on the screen. There was
Speaker 1: a lot here in this conversation. I actually listened to
Speaker 1: the whole thing this morning. Written up in Politico playbook,
Speaker 1: Biden's polster who came up with his winning strategy in
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty election, says, this is now the worst
Speaker 1: political environment or Democrats of my lifetime. There was a
Speaker 1: lot here that he said and angelone. So here's his deal.
Speaker 1: He's he really sees himself as like coming from a
Speaker 1: white working class, kind of a DC outsider, even though
Speaker 1: he really is a DC insider. He lives in Alabama
Speaker 1: right now, he's working on a race in Nevada. He
Speaker 1: sees himself as like separate and apart from the sort
Speaker 1: of DC chattering class, and his commentary tends to be
Speaker 1: like it's that sort of thing where he'll say a
Speaker 1: lot of things you're like, yeah, this guy gets it,
Speaker 1: this guy gets it. And then he'll say one thing
Speaker 1: where you're like, wait, what that totally contradicts everything else
Speaker 1: that you just said. So that's kind of who he is.
Speaker 1: He really came up with not just Biden's general election strategy,
Speaker 1: also the primary strategy. He had this idea of ri
Speaker 1: you can sort of ride out Iowa, New Hampshire and
Speaker 1: even Nevada, even though no one's ever done that before,
Speaker 1: and we'll make it all about South Carolina and Super Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Of course, he had the assistance of the media coming
Speaker 1: in for Joe, everybody dropping out, Barack Obama and or Veening,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. But he really sort of saw
Speaker 1: how those ships were ultimately going to fall. So a
Speaker 1: few things that he said here that were very noteworthy.
Speaker 1: First of all, on his prediction for twenty two, he says,
Speaker 1: it's the worst political environment I've lived through in thirty
Speaker 1: years of being a political consultant. And there's a big
Speaker 1: difference between losing seven and ten seats in the House
Speaker 1: and getting your ass kicked and losing thirty five to forty.
Speaker 1: He believes they might still have the ability to keep
Speaker 1: the Senate. I think the only thing that could possibly
Speaker 1: save them at this point is if the Republicans nominate
Speaker 1: a bunch of like completely unelectable people, which they have
Speaker 1: the possibility they've proven themselves able to do before you
Speaker 1: can see, you know, Todd Achin and Roy Moore, if
Speaker 1: you need a reminded minder of how that ultimately goes.
Speaker 1: He also says what Democrats need to do is number one,
Speaker 1: voters are always asking what have you done for me lately?
Speaker 1: And he decries the fact that on economics Democrats really
Speaker 1: haven't delivered it. Says they really need to get something done,
Speaker 1: whether it's a skinny build back matter or something that
Speaker 1: actually speaks to voters' concerns. Imagine that crazy idea. He
Speaker 1: also says that they need to lean into a populist
Speaker 1: message on taxes. He says, we're scared of our own
Speaker 1: shadow on taxes and efing makes no sense. People do
Speaker 1: not begrudge people making a lot of money and getting wealthy.
Speaker 1: People have a problem and are pissed off about them
Speaker 1: not paying any effing taxes. And why as a party
Speaker 1: we don't elevate that in our messaging is beyond me.
Speaker 1: The last part of this that I thought was really
Speaker 1: interesting as he talks about the myth of Latino voters
Speaker 1: and says something that should be obvious to literally any
Speaker 1: human being, which he says, listen in DC, among Democrats,
Speaker 1: they think you only talk to Latino is about immigration,
Speaker 1: like immigration is the twelfth issue they're concerned about. Guess
Speaker 1: what they're concerned about the same things everyone else is
Speaker 1: concerned about. It's about the economy or inflation, or healthcare
Speaker 1: or schools. So you know what I would say to
Speaker 1: all of this, Because then he goes on to have
Speaker 1: some commentary that's in line with like, the left is
Speaker 1: the problem. Well, you've just outlined something here in the
Speaker 1: tax ris messaging that comes directly out of the left
Speaker 1: leg of the party and is being steinmied by the
Speaker 1: corporatist moderate wing of the party. And so I think
Speaker 1: he's absolutely right in the fact that there are obvious
Speaker 1: directions that Democrats could go in to seize the messaging
Speaker 1: and put Republicans in a very difficult spot, and they
Speaker 1: just don't do it. Yeah. I mean, look, I think
Speaker 1: the cultural left is the problem, but I mean they're
Speaker 1: dominant amongst the establishment left, which is part of this
Speaker 1: why they're so unpopular. It's like when you have cultural
Speaker 1: leftism and then terrible economic policy. And this is what
Speaker 1: always irritates me is there's no ability to set break
Speaker 1: out the culture left policy and economic Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: I don't disagree with you. And what's interesting too about
Speaker 1: what he says is that Republicans do a much better
Speaker 1: job of branding Democrats than Democrats do of Republicans. We
Speaker 1: don't do a good job of branding. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: because what they try to do is brand Republicans is
Speaker 1: cultural extremists, when in reality, they're more than in today
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, they're like roughly dead center at
Speaker 1: least when you compare it to what the dominant cultural
Speaker 1: liberalism is. It's on economics that they're all the way
Speaker 1: out here at like twelve percent. And yet when they
Speaker 1: don't do a good enough job of talking about that
Speaker 1: and putting them in those types of positions, you're getting
Speaker 1: out flanked on the economy and on inflation. It's like,
Speaker 1: no wonder the Steve More Freedom Works definition of deficit
Speaker 1: reduction inflation is being is being accepted by the broad
Speaker 1: majority of the American people, when Biden himself has just
Speaker 1: no ability to articulate or do anything whenever it comes
Speaker 1: to the most pressing concerns. I mean, people should remember too,
Speaker 1: we've seen some fluctuation and gas price right now. It
Speaker 1: has zero to do with Joe Biden. What it has
Speaker 1: to do is China is locking down, and so global
Speaker 1: demand is down, and so gas is slightly down. I
Speaker 1: was talking with Rory Johnson, the guy we had on
Speaker 1: the show. He's like, yeah, there's been no structural change
Speaker 1: to US oil markets by the Biden administration under this
Speaker 1: since this crisis has begun that's crazy. It's almost two
Speaker 1: months to the day since Russia invaded Ukraine. Two months
Speaker 1: can sound like a short time, but you can get
Speaker 1: a lot done if you want to. You know, people,
Speaker 1: forget this country changed in just one hundred days. Under
Speaker 1: the FDR. There were fifteen major pieces of legislation go
Speaker 1: back in time. The Civil Rights Act eight of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four was passed after an eighty three day filibuster.
Speaker 1: That's not that long. Same with medicare, the Great Society,
Speaker 1: social Security. The history of these programs, they were conceived
Speaker 1: of and enacted in a quick environment because people had
Speaker 1: a real strategic vision and grand vision for the country itself.
Speaker 1: Biden doesn't have any of that. They just release some
Speaker 1: new rule on federal leasing and lands. It's complicated, it's bureaucratic.
Speaker 1: Nobody really understands it in terms of its impact on
Speaker 1: the oil market. It may have one nine months from now, right,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? This is the point? Well, and
Speaker 1: here's the thing is, it's very hard for you to
Speaker 1: blame the left, and the left has no power like
Speaker 1: you all are in charge. This entire program, the entire
Speaker 1: economic program, the entire strategic program, the entire rhetorical program.
Speaker 1: This all comes out of Bill Clinton DLC. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the same old, same old in charge of the party.
Speaker 1: None of that has changed. So it's like, no matter
Speaker 1: who's in charge, no matter what they do, they always
Speaker 1: want to say I was the fault of the left.
Speaker 1: You all have all the power here. The left is
Speaker 1: completely impotent and has proved themselves that time and time again.
Speaker 1: So if it's the worst political environment of your lifetime
Speaker 1: and it's your dude who's in charge, and it's your
Speaker 1: guy who's running the Senate, and it's your gal who's
Speaker 1: running the house, like, when are you ever to do
Speaker 1: a little bit of soul searching and say, hey, maybe
Speaker 1: we need to maybe we need to rethink how we're
Speaker 1: ultimately approaching things here. Because yeah, listen, as we've talked
Speaker 1: about on the show a million times, if you don't
Speaker 1: deliver for people materially, if you only, if you basically
Speaker 1: put that off the table, then of course politics is
Speaker 1: going to be all about the culture war. Of course,
Speaker 1: Republicans are excellent at prosecuting their culture war case that
Speaker 1: is not the landscape that you ultimately want to be
Speaker 1: fighting on. But because Biden has basically broken his promises
Speaker 1: to every core constituency within the Democratic Party base. Then
Speaker 1: you end up with this worst of all worlds where
Speaker 1: of course the right is highly motivated to come out
Speaker 1: and vote in the midterms, and just as Obama did
Speaker 1: to the Democratic base, you've totally depressed the Democratic base.
Speaker 1: Something I think I'm going to do my monologue on
Speaker 1: for tomorrow is in this recent poll that just came
Speaker 1: out that had Biden's approval of thirty three percent, with
Speaker 1: thirty three percent in Quinnipiac, his approval rating with young
Speaker 1: voters was lower than Trump's was in the same poll
Speaker 1: during his presidency at the same time. And I want
Speaker 1: people to understand, but that doesn't mean like, oh, Republicans
Speaker 1: are picking up the young voters. No, young voters are disgusted.
Speaker 1: They're much more ideologically in line, closer to the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party's ideals. They're not like interested in either the Republican
Speaker 1: cultural positions or the Republican economic positions, but they're completely
Speaker 1: disgusted with Democrats, so they're not going to show up.
Speaker 1: I mean, you say the same thing. I'm still following
Speaker 1: the French election. You see very similar similar dynamic there
Speaker 1: where young people are like these The entire attitude of
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party establishment is complete contempt and like discussed
Speaker 1: with the young base of the party that was supposed
Speaker 1: to be the future, that was supposed to be the
Speaker 1: coalition of the ascendant. So when you consistently screw up
Speaker 1: your base, when you don't deliver for independence, when Republicans
Speaker 1: are highly motivated, yeah, you're gonna getting your ass kicked. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think they're They're going to real, real bind here,
Speaker 1: and they look they're so impotent they are. First of all,
Speaker 1: we talked about on the foreign crisis, people either feel
Speaker 1: like he's not doing enough or hasn't done enough, So
Speaker 1: there's no support for his handling of Ukraine. On the economy,
Speaker 1: it's a disaster. Inflation higher, higher, higher. He's not taking
Speaker 1: on corporate profits, not to be putting on markups, not
Speaker 1: lowering gas prices, doesn't seem generally focused on the issues
Speaker 1: that you care about. Recipe for a complete route, and
Speaker 1: he deserves it. I don't. There really is no other
Speaker 1: way to say it. Yeah, yeah, you are lying in
Speaker 1: a bed of your own making. That is very true.
Speaker 1: All right, Some interesting potentially hopeful movement guys on the
Speaker 1: congressional stock trading ban, Let's go ahead and put this
Speaker 1: insider report up on the screen. So by Parson Group
Speaker 1: nineteen lawmakers laying out three key parameters for a stock
Speaker 1: trading man. Following the House's first hearing on the issues
Speaker 1: so important that the House actually had a hearing on
Speaker 1: reforming the rules around stock ownership in Congress, they are
Speaker 1: planning to this bipartisan group is planning to pressure the
Speaker 1: Committee on House Administration to move forward on an outright
Speaker 1: ban on stock trading by members of Congress. According to
Speaker 1: a source of knowledge of the effort, you have Democrats
Speaker 1: like Jared Golden of Maine, Abigail Spanberger of Virginia. You
Speaker 1: also have Republicans like Matt Gates of Florida, Brian Fitzpatrick
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania, a very odd fellow. Is kind of a
Speaker 1: mix of folks here across the truly across the ideological
Speaker 1: spectrum too. You've got the corporate wing represented, the moderate
Speaker 1: wing represented, You've got the more progressives represented. You've got
Speaker 1: you right wings like Matt Gates represented here as well.
Speaker 1: And so the three key sticking points that we really
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure to highlight for you, because there
Speaker 1: are very different directions. This bill could go, and it
Speaker 1: could turn into something that's just like sort of the
Speaker 1: toothless virtue signal that has a million loopholes that people
Speaker 1: can get down of, or you could have something that
Speaker 1: is actually consequential and actually has a meaningful constraint on
Speaker 1: members of Congress and what they're able to do. So
Speaker 1: the first piece that is a point of contention is
Speaker 1: whether or not to include spouses and dependent children. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different potential bills floating around. Some
Speaker 1: of them include the spouses, independent children, people like Nancy
Speaker 1: Pelosi's husband, Rocana's wife, you know, the adult children who
Speaker 1: are still dependent. That piece is really important to making
Speaker 1: this thing ultimately have teeth, because if the spouses, if
Speaker 1: the husbands and wives can still trade stock, this ultimately
Speaker 1: ends up being fairly meaningless because obviously your spouse can
Speaker 1: just tell you, like, here's the inside tip that I'm
Speaker 1: learning in my committee hearings, then you go make the trade.
Speaker 1: So that's a really important part, and it seems like
Speaker 1: pressure is building in the direction of making sure that
Speaker 1: these spouses independent children are included. The other one is
Speaker 1: this question of some people are saying, like, oh, the
Speaker 1: blind trust. This is really fair because it's expensive to
Speaker 1: set up. And then you know, I can't be a
Speaker 1: member of Congress because I can't afford the fees the
Speaker 1: vast majority of your millionaires, I don't want to hear
Speaker 1: it and not to mention. And you know, credit to
Speaker 1: Abigail Spamberger, I'm not a huge fan of on this one.
Speaker 1: She's like, okay, then just sell it here that's a
Speaker 1: fan of blind trust. That's fine, just divest, no big deal.
Speaker 1: So that's the other piece, is you know, pushing towards
Speaker 1: the divestment or blind trust. And then the last one
Speaker 1: in this one also really matters, is okay, let's say
Speaker 1: you violate the Act, then what happens? Are you going
Speaker 1: to actually give give this thing some teeth so that
Speaker 1: there's a significant fine and real consequences for violating the
Speaker 1: ban on stock trading? Because what we've seen with the
Speaker 1: Stock Act, which just requires transparency, which ended up being
Speaker 1: important because it helped a Galvan and his public pressure
Speaker 1: around moving further. But when it's routine that members just
Speaker 1: don't file the stuff they're supposed to file and there's
Speaker 1: no consequence for it, what's there? It's like a two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars fine or something utterly pathetic, and no one
Speaker 1: seems to really pay attention or ultimately care of very
Speaker 1: few people. So that's the other piece, is making sure
Speaker 1: this thing has actual tea so that members have to comprise.
Speaker 1: And also, did you know that there's no public record
Speaker 1: disclosure required on whether you actually paid the fine? What
Speaker 1: kind of enforcement mechanism that's this? Nothing? Literally, this is
Speaker 1: what happens whenever they are in charge of regulating themselves,
Speaker 1: and the only check on it is our public outrage.
Speaker 1: So from the beginning layout the timeline, unusual Wales on
Speaker 1: Twitter begins publishing reports as to how exactly these guys
Speaker 1: are beating the market, which is crazy because the best
Speaker 1: paid people on Wall Street routinely do not beat the market.
Speaker 1: Then we begin talking about it here on our show.
Speaker 1: It begins to become a meme on the internet. TikTok
Speaker 1: gets a hold of it, gen Z gets really invested
Speaker 1: within the story. It becomes a ground swell, and eventually
Speaker 1: what happens is Nancy Pelosi is asked about it after
Speaker 1: other journalists. Journalists begin to do investigations into stock trades,
Speaker 1: bipartis and members of Congress she says, well, it's a
Speaker 1: free market. All of that. That was a great moment
Speaker 1: for us because obviously she looked like the out of
Speaker 1: touch ultra networth high individual that she is. A scoff moment,
Speaker 1: and the public was like, hey, screw you. You shouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to trade stocks. This became I mean, I
Speaker 1: saw Dave Portnoy talking about it. I saw people all
Speaker 1: the left talking about it. It became a real piece
Speaker 1: of the internet zeitgeist. From there, congressman had to begin
Speaker 1: to respond. John Ossoff introduces a bill, Josh Holly introduces
Speaker 1: a bill. There are now twenty separate bills that are
Speaker 1: working their way through Congress. However, the establishment is fighting
Speaker 1: back in every way that they can. We know that
Speaker 1: Joe Biden was supposed to have it in the draft
Speaker 1: vision of his State of the Union, was supposed to
Speaker 1: call for a stock band on Congress, and it was
Speaker 1: taken out us. Every other laundry list, the box thing
Speaker 1: was in that State of the Unions. Identity politics, every
Speaker 1: little identity politics, every lgbtq i A gets a little
Speaker 1: check mark. But stock band, Oh no, we can't have
Speaker 1: that whatsoever. That's what the priorities are in Washington right now.
Speaker 1: So just goes to show you, really, just shows you
Speaker 1: how powerful that the people inside are fighting back against this.
Speaker 1: And remember, the average network in Congress is well over
Speaker 1: a million dollars. Most of these people are wildly, wildly
Speaker 1: rich and successful, which is great. It's a free country.
Speaker 1: And if you want to keep making money, don't run
Speaker 1: for Congress. If you actually want to serve, then you don't.
Speaker 1: Then you have to give up that part I mean service.
Speaker 1: Do we think about what we ask the people who
Speaker 1: sign up for in the uniform? That's right, right, our
Speaker 1: service members they get paid dog like nothing. They don't
Speaker 1: get paid well, their lives are subject to the whims
Speaker 1: of the military. They have all sorts of restrictions on
Speaker 1: what they can and can't do, even outside whenever they're
Speaker 1: off duty. But we recognize it as a service, and
Speaker 1: then we take care of them after they leave the uniform.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well we should. Obviously we don't do the
Speaker 1: best burn pits, you know, VA reform, et cetera. But
Speaker 1: there's a social contract. Now with Congress. We don't seem
Speaker 1: we seem to have thrown all of that completely out
Speaker 1: of the window and let these people become wildly rich.
Speaker 1: I mean, Nancy Pelosi and her husband have increased her
Speaker 1: net worth by something like one hundred million dollars since
Speaker 1: she first entered office. That's crazy town. With active trading
Speaker 1: of options and things based upon things which are moving
Speaker 1: through Congress in which she's the Speaker of the House.
Speaker 1: It's ludicrous. But I think it's important to think about
Speaker 1: why there's been movement on this because it's so unlikely, right,
Speaker 1: because this is something that actually impacts like directly members
Speaker 1: of Congress of the ability to cash in on their position.
Speaker 1: So why is there any movement on this thing whatsoever?
Speaker 1: And I think when the snowball really started to pick
Speaker 1: up speed was actually when Kevin McCarthy said, Hey, we're
Speaker 1: going to run on this in the midterms. Yes, you know.
Speaker 1: And whether or not they're full of shit or have
Speaker 1: any credibility on like corruption ethics, whatsoever. The fact that
Speaker 1: there was this horseshoe bipartisan populous outrage about this thing.
Speaker 1: That's what made this movement so powerful, Because if it
Speaker 1: was just on the right, then Democrats would just dismiss
Speaker 1: it and ignore it. If it was just on the
Speaker 1: wa left, then Democrats would also just dismiss and ignore
Speaker 1: it because they're perfectly content to stick it to their
Speaker 1: own base all day long. But since you had it
Speaker 1: coming from all parts of the political spectrum, it made
Speaker 1: it very difficult ultimately for them to resist and also
Speaker 1: made it so that, you know, some of these members
Speaker 1: realized that it was to their political benefit to try
Speaker 1: to get out in front of it and be the
Speaker 1: face of some sort of reform effort ultimately here. So
Speaker 1: that's what made it so incredibly powerful. And I'm talking
Speaker 1: in my monologue today about Christian Small's Amazon labor union
Speaker 1: going on with Tarker Carlson and the freak out over that.
Speaker 1: But if you really want to have something that actually
Speaker 1: happens in this country, you have to have a movement
Speaker 1: that brings in some different ideological perspectives. That's the only
Speaker 1: way you ultimately really can put pressure on these people.
Speaker 1: Otherwise they just respond to their donor base, and that's that.
Speaker 1: So I think that has been such a critical part
Speaker 1: of why there's actually even movement, why you've just had
Speaker 1: the first ever House hearing, why you have so many
Speaker 1: different versions of this bill, why the provisions are being
Speaker 1: debated right now. It's one of the few hopeful things
Speaker 1: within the actual political system, and so to study this
Speaker 1: and understand how this all went down is so important.
Speaker 1: So I think the two key moments are Nancy Pelosi
Speaker 1: mask off saying, well, it's a free market. That comes
Speaker 1: because she actually subjected herself to some question, get asked
Speaker 1: the right question and actually says what she thinks, which
Speaker 1: creates this large level of outrage that causes the right
Speaker 1: to jump in on it. Kevin McCarthy saying, we're running
Speaker 1: on this on the midterms, and then you were kind
Speaker 1: of off to the races to put forward some kind
Speaker 1: of proposal that people are going to respond well to
Speaker 1: and feel like you were actually someone responsive to their needs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really is just an amazing, amazing story that we
Speaker 1: should all once again chat out to unusual whales. He's
Speaker 1: the guy who started this whole thing, and we owe
Speaker 1: him a very big debt. All right, let's move on. Finally,
Speaker 1: this is a story very near and dear to our
Speaker 1: hearts for those who are sick of hearing them talk
Speaker 1: about it. You could skip this, but this is not
Speaker 1: something that we can just simply let slide. So we
Speaker 1: brought you the disastrous launch of CNN Plus and our
Speaker 1: friend Sarah Fisher, let's go ahead put this up there
Speaker 1: on the screen reporting already big cuts now come in
Speaker 1: for CNN Plus after a slow start, So the official
Speaker 1: number of people has yet to be has yet to
Speaker 1: be acknowledged by the people with inside of CNN, but
Speaker 1: we do know now about the numbers. So to date,
Speaker 1: three hundred million dollars has been spent on the subscription service,
Speaker 1: including a sizeable marketing investment up to one hundred million dollars,
Speaker 1: and yet the start has been such a disaster that
Speaker 1: they are already planning on cutting a huge portion of
Speaker 1: the staff some of the original plans for it, and
Speaker 1: are scaling back how it's going to look. I've done
Speaker 1: a lot of reading into this, and it's amazing that
Speaker 1: the CEO of Time Warner, or sorry, the CEO of WarnerMedia,
Speaker 1: Jason Kylar, before the merger with Discovery, finally was four
Speaker 1: to admit that now the plan is in order to
Speaker 1: roll CNN Plus into HBO Max. Basically have it a
Speaker 1: standalone subscription if you want it, but really just make
Speaker 1: it bundled content while people are watching movies and whatever
Speaker 1: awesome shows are on HBO and then not have to
Speaker 1: reveal just how much of a disaster the thing really is.
Speaker 1: Because Jeff Zucker was intent on making streaming CNN plus
Speaker 1: its own standalone thing that he thought that people would
Speaker 1: pay for. And what's really incredible about this is that
Speaker 1: they say CNN executives worked with the consulting firm McKenzie
Speaker 1: to think. Mackenzie, you know, the famous consulting company, told
Speaker 1: CNN they were going to bring in two million subscribers
Speaker 1: in the United States in the services first year and
Speaker 1: fifteen to eighteen million after four years. Just to give
Speaker 1: you an idea of how bonkers this is, two million
Speaker 1: subscribers would be about five times what an average CNN broadcast, sorry,
Speaker 1: four times what CNN broadcasts is getting during prime time
Speaker 1: right now, Crystal their average is six hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: seven thousand subscribers. My math might be a little bit off, sorry,
Speaker 1: math people, but that's just how many multiples of that.
Speaker 1: And now, the rule in the subscription business is that
Speaker 1: about three to seven percent of your big audience will pay.
Speaker 1: So it's clear these people have no idea what the
Speaker 1: hell is going on. It's like the most basic understanding
Speaker 1: of how this ultimately works out New York Times subscriber
Speaker 1: bases like seven million people exactly, and they thought they
Speaker 1: were going to get eighteen million. We're gonna get double
Speaker 1: in New York Times. Yeah, like you're insane. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: love the addition to the story of mckenseick. Of course,
Speaker 1: all the greatest players are in something exactly well. I
Speaker 1: think if you've ever needed to understand how fake the
Speaker 1: meritocracy is, I think this story is the perfect example
Speaker 1: you have. You know, the highest levels of elite media figures,
Speaker 1: supposedly the greatest minds in American media trying to figure
Speaker 1: this thing out. You put it together with the brightest
Speaker 1: minds of the McKinsey consultant world, and they come up
Speaker 1: with something that is absolutely dogshit and completely insane. And
Speaker 1: the numbers like how if you had asked any just
Speaker 1: random person on the street, how this would have gone.
Speaker 1: Tell them, you're lit, here's what we got, here's what
Speaker 1: we're investing in, here's what we're spending money on. They
Speaker 1: would have been like, like, are you out of your mind?
Speaker 1: You spent three hundred million dollars on this thing. This
Speaker 1: is insane. And so we talked about the sum last week,
Speaker 1: but as a reminder of how this is actually going
Speaker 1: outside of their like highly paid consultant world. Let's go
Speaker 1: and put this up on the screen. Fewer than ten
Speaker 1: thousand people are using CNN Plus on a daily basis
Speaker 1: two weeks in two and its existence. It's, according to CNBC,
Speaker 1: fewer than ten thousand people. I cannot begin to communicate
Speaker 1: how utterly pathetic that is. If we got that, we
Speaker 1: would be a failure, a huge thing. Oh, we couldn't
Speaker 1: last beyond like the first month. If we got that,
Speaker 1: no way we'd be able to keep the life in
Speaker 1: the students about or do our We would not make
Speaker 1: payroll if that was what we were doing. Literally, if
Speaker 1: they opened up the windows at their headquarters in New
Speaker 1: York and yelled out the window, they would reach more
Speaker 1: than ten thousand literally literally true. And so what they're
Speaker 1: finding is they're learning that when they have to actually
Speaker 1: compete in the free market, guess what, no one really
Speaker 1: wants anything you have to offer. And I don't know
Speaker 1: why you didn't know that to start with. I think
Speaker 1: the other thing that it kind of reveals, too, is
Speaker 1: how fake the YouTube algorithms are. Because you see, you
Speaker 1: know the numbers that they're able to get on YouTube
Speaker 1: when when they're actually like competing in the free market.
Speaker 1: Here you see how utterly pathetic it is. So you
Speaker 1: see how sort of propped up their numbers are on
Speaker 1: YouTube as well as independent media is being surprised one
Speaker 1: hundred percent because and it also shows you the engagement
Speaker 1: also of their audience, which is that they get these
Speaker 1: fake views which are pumped out into the news tabs
Speaker 1: and the algorithms and all that stuff, but it's not
Speaker 1: actually engaged groups of people. And look, we said this,
Speaker 1: we beat that ten thousand figure within the first week
Speaker 1: of launch with fifty thousand dollars of our own money
Speaker 1: that we had to invest in this product. That is
Speaker 1: compared to the three hundred million that they had to
Speaker 1: spend in order to do less than Look, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying we're as powerful as CNN from a popular culture
Speaker 1: perspective in terms of their impact on the news. Obviously
Speaker 1: they have news gathering and all that, and I've praised
Speaker 1: many good journalists who are actually work over there, but
Speaker 1: clearly they have a major editorial problem whenever they're shedding
Speaker 1: viewers subscribers. Like I said, six one hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: seven thousand in primetime is a total disaster. Yeah, and look,
Speaker 1: it just shows you how fake this whole business is.
Speaker 1: It's rigged because what happens here. They make a billion
Speaker 1: dollars a year in profit just from being part of
Speaker 1: the cable bundle because a lot of people really like
Speaker 1: live news, But as that begins to diminish whenever it
Speaker 1: comes to negotiation time seven eight years from now on
Speaker 1: their live news property, they're screwed because a lot of
Speaker 1: people are cutting the cord. And in a cord cutting environment,
Speaker 1: you got to compete, not just with us, I mean
Speaker 1: you got to compete with TikTok, You've got to compete
Speaker 1: with Instagram, You've got to compete with whatever your uncle
Speaker 1: is emailing you. This is a true free market where
Speaker 1: you don't just have three options, you have gajillion options.
Speaker 1: And louis been very lucky that. You know, maybe people
Speaker 1: have showed up for us, but that takes a lot
Speaker 1: of time and a lot of trust. Yeah, lild it
Speaker 1: up over many years. And as we always remind you,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean they're going to give up and they're
Speaker 1: going to be defeated and we're going to win. It
Speaker 1: means they're going to try harder to rink this market.
Speaker 1: And there was already there was another piece in the
Speaker 1: New York Times trying to take Substack down a peg
Speaker 1: and all of that going on. So you have to
Speaker 1: see these things as a piece. I mean, the you know,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk Twitter story sort of fits into this as well.
Speaker 1: This whole regime of like censorship and telling you which
Speaker 1: platforms you can go on, which content sources are okay,
Speaker 1: which platforms are okay, what podcasts are dangerous? Now, all
Speaker 1: of that as an attempt to keep control over a
Speaker 1: market that they really aren't able to compete in just
Speaker 1: on their merits. And we're going to see. I mean,
Speaker 1: the Substack article from the New York Times was a
Speaker 1: perfect example of they like tried to cast it as
Speaker 1: some crazy right wing company, which you know is elevating
Speaker 1: all these horrific voices. I went and checked, okay, I
Speaker 1: actually ran. The number one person on Substack is Heather
Speaker 1: Cox Richardson, who is a huge Biden lib Number two,
Speaker 1: I think is The Dispatch, or maybe it might be
Speaker 1: Matt Taib. They switch back and forth all the time.
Speaker 1: The Dispatches is never Trump magazine. The Bulwark is also
Speaker 1: a never Trump Magazine. Then it's Matt Tyebe and Glenn
Speaker 1: Greenwald who are within the top five. But of the
Speaker 1: top twenty, the majority of the outlets are actually establishment
Speaker 1: type liberal ones. Right, Matt Iglesias is in the top twenty.
Speaker 1: Jud Legoon, the guy who's always you know, going after
Speaker 1: corps responsors of Fox News. By the way, whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a free country. He can do whatever he wants.
Speaker 1: There are several establishment, never Trump type organizations, people who
Speaker 1: have CNN contributorships, who are owners of some of the
Speaker 1: top substacks. It's just ludicrous to say that it's a
Speaker 1: right wing company. The Internet is a massive place. That
Speaker 1: means sometimes people like yours truly will succeed and we
Speaker 1: will succeed right alongside many other people who are feeling
Speaker 1: different niches. That's the you know, that's the real promise
Speaker 1: of the technology from the beginning, right, And like you said, like,
Speaker 1: I'm not like, oh, it's terrible that some like annoying
Speaker 1: resistance person is doing. I think it's cringe. But you know, Conry, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're she's obviously providing something she does history people like it,
Speaker 1: and people like it. Okay, that's cool. That's great were
Speaker 1: you know? So anyway, if you're like secure in your
Speaker 1: ability to compete in that marketplace, that's the attitude you have.
Speaker 1: And if you are like CNN and you know you're
Speaker 1: going to fail in that marketplace, then you have to
Speaker 1: you know, you got to put it down, you got
Speaker 1: to smear it, you got to try to make it
Speaker 1: so that people aren't allowed to go or talk or
Speaker 1: speak in these various forms. Absolutely right, Crystal, what are
Speaker 1: you taking a look at? Well, guys, something very related
Speaker 1: to that. Actually, something pretty interesting happened last week. Amazon
Speaker 1: Labor Union president Christian Smalls went on Tucker Carlson's show
Speaker 1: to talk about their David Versus Glide victory against Amazon.
Speaker 1: So you have the most significant labor leader in the
Speaker 1: country going on the most popular right wing show in
Speaker 1: the country. Here's how that went. It's the short segment,
Speaker 1: so I'm just going to go ahead and play most
Speaker 1: of it for you. Take a listen. Jenny Purtet spends
Speaker 1: a lot of time telling you that she's on the
Speaker 1: side of the worker. She's got modern wobbly She's the
Speaker 1: Walter Ruther of our day. And that's why last year
Speaker 1: she about to stand alongside striking workers at Amazon's Staten
Speaker 1: Island warehouse, and we're for that because they need the help.
Speaker 1: But at the last minute, Sandy cort has bailed on
Speaker 1: the whole thing, and that infuriated labor organizers, whol just
Speaker 1: want a big vote to unionize the STATNA on facility.
Speaker 1: Now Amazon is stepping up its effort to crush the union.
Speaker 1: Amazon has just banned words like union, but it's employee
Speaker 1: chat app. Christian Smalls is a union leader at Amazon
Speaker 1: and we're happy to have him joined us now. Christian,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for coming on. So were you surprised
Speaker 1: that Sandy Kurtz is alexander A Kasuk Cortez, who has
Speaker 1: said repeatedly that she's on the side of the worker
Speaker 1: against the corporation, wasn't standing with you at the barricades. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it wasn't just her, It was
Speaker 1: all of them pretty much. You know, it's not fair,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, I don't wanted to make it just
Speaker 1: between us in AOC because you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: them didn't show up, and you know, once again, we
Speaker 1: have no alwill against them. We know that whether they
Speaker 1: shoulder showed up or not, they didn't make a break
Speaker 1: our election. We just had to continue to organize. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's a weird moment because I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm on the right up, never been particularly pro union,
Speaker 1: but it does seem like Amazon needs some counterbalance, Like
Speaker 1: it's this huge company, the workers have no power, and
Speaker 1: maybe we could, I don't know, share a little power
Speaker 1: with people who work there. So that's my view anyway.
Speaker 1: So tell us where you are in your organizing efforts. Well,
Speaker 1: right now, you know, we're fighting for a contract. You know,
Speaker 1: Amazon's disputing the election results, so we're we're walking in
Speaker 1: chewing bubblegum. At the same time we're fighting for a contract.
Speaker 1: We're preparing for another election in two weeks on April
Speaker 1: twenty fifth, we're going to be voting at a second
Speaker 1: location directly across the building that we just unionized. So
Speaker 1: we're we're in the thick of a fight right now,
Speaker 1: you know, a legal battle, and you know, we just
Speaker 1: have to stay grounded and pretty much begin our campaign
Speaker 1: all over again. You'd think that Amazon would be open
Speaker 1: to a union when you as a very progressive company.
Speaker 1: Why do you think they're trying to thwart you from organizing?
Speaker 1: Amazon hasn't been unionized in this country since the beginning
Speaker 1: of its existence, and they're very anti union. You know,
Speaker 1: they want they created a system that hires and fire people.
Speaker 1: They create a system that they have full control of
Speaker 1: the working the working people. And you know, having a
Speaker 1: union obviously brings representation for the workers that have benefit
Speaker 1: the workers at the bottom like myself. Hourly associates entry
Speaker 1: level workers that don't get the rights to negotiate, So
Speaker 1: forming a union gives us the right to collect the
Speaker 1: bargain with the company, form a contract to protect ourselves.
Speaker 1: So that's exactly what we're trying to do with the
Speaker 1: Amazon labor union. We hope that we'll be a catalyst
Speaker 1: for something that will take place nationwide. Well, I certainly
Speaker 1: am rooting for you. I mean maybe if they throw
Speaker 1: some more Wolkes logans at you'll forget you can't feed
Speaker 1: your family, right, christ I appreciate you coming on. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much, Leulie. Thank you for having me. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's a lot to note here. So first of all,
Speaker 1: amazing tax rich jacket. Second of all, Tucker clearly most
Speaker 1: interested in the AOC riffed angle. And as I've shown
Speaker 1: here before, Fox News is so committed to attacking AOC
Speaker 1: that they will even temporarily pretend to support workers unionizing
Speaker 1: in order to attempt to own her. But Christian Smalls
Speaker 1: is no fool. He quickly parries that point, noting that
Speaker 1: he's got no ill will and that no politicians showed up,
Speaker 1: before moving on to the reason he wanted to do
Speaker 1: the segment in the first place, to explain to Tucker's
Speaker 1: audience why workers need unions. Second, I actually laughed out
Speaker 1: loud when Tucker described Amazon as a progressive company. There
Speaker 1: is nothing progressive about a tax dodging monopoly with a
Speaker 1: business model reliant on chewing workers up and spitting them
Speaker 1: out at a rate of one hundred and fifty percent
Speaker 1: turnover every single year. The fact that they are aggressively
Speaker 1: union busting, including using blatantly illegal tactics, should disabuse everyone
Speaker 1: of the notion that Amazon is in any way progressive,
Speaker 1: and that should be made obvious by the report Tucker
Speaker 1: sites from the intercept, revealing that Amazon was banning words
Speaker 1: like union and wage slavery and even restroom. Finally, Tucker
Speaker 1: reluctantly himself makes a pretty solid case for unionizing. He
Speaker 1: acknowledges he's not in general a big fan of unions,
Speaker 1: but that Amazon seems like it needs some counterbalance. That's
Speaker 1: what he says. He goes on to say, like, it's
Speaker 1: this huge company, the workers have no power, and maybe
Speaker 1: we could, I don't know, share a little power with
Speaker 1: the people that work there. Exactly. That's literally all that
Speaker 1: unions are ultimately about. He closes by saying, quote, I
Speaker 1: certainly am rooting for you, while making sure sure to
Speaker 1: take a shot at quote woke slogans. But you know what,
Speaker 1: if opposition to woke slogans will bring any part of
Speaker 1: the institutional right on board with unions, I am perfec
Speaker 1: quickly fine with that. Now I see this entire segment
Speaker 1: as nothing but a win. Chris quickly, Perry's the AOC
Speaker 1: beef gets straight to his message, and Tucker's large conservative
Speaker 1: audience numbering in the millions gets to hear a conversation
Speaker 1: that is overwhelmingly pro union from both the host and
Speaker 1: the guest. It is not a close call at all
Speaker 1: if you believe in the labor movement and worker power.
Speaker 1: This was absolutely wonderful to watch, but predictably, a liberal
Speaker 1: meltown quickly ensued, and the attacks on Chris were as
Speaker 1: silly as they were dishonest. So one of the folks
Speaker 1: who runs Media Matters took a single screenshot from that
Speaker 1: interview with a Chiron mentioning the AOC beef and used
Speaker 1: that to characterize the entire segment, tweeting quote, Yeah, this
Speaker 1: isn't it, before going on to explain, quote Carlson is
Speaker 1: a hateful bigot and he uses his program every night
Speaker 1: to spread his hateful bigotry. Someone like Small's appearing on
Speaker 1: his show only gives Tucker credibility he doesn't deserve. Guys, listen,
Speaker 1: Tucker is a popular host who already has a massive
Speaker 1: audience any prime time show. Christian Smalls cannot do anything
Speaker 1: about that, but he sures how can provide that large
Speaker 1: audience with some actually useful information for a few minutes,
Speaker 1: which is exactly what he did. So Media Matters dude continued, saying, furthermore,
Speaker 1: spare me the whole get the message out bullshit. On
Speaker 1: his best nights, Tucker has one percent of the population
Speaker 1: tuning in. I'd imagine it's the least likely to be
Speaker 1: swayed one percent of the population in America. There are
Speaker 1: more effective, less harmful ways to get the message out. Okay, dude,
Speaker 1: then if Tucker is so insignificant, what are you so
Speaker 1: upset about? And further, what is even the point of
Speaker 1: your project at media matters if the right wing media
Speaker 1: ecosystem is totally fringe and totally meaningless. He closes his
Speaker 1: thread with this condescending mess quote, Tucker Carlson is your enemy.
Speaker 1: And if you don't understand that, you have no idea
Speaker 1: what we're actually up against. Imagine having the audacity to
Speaker 1: chide an actually heroic working class movement leader for failing
Speaker 1: to follow your arbitrary and failing code of DC conduct.
Speaker 1: Some of these supposed allies of black and brown people
Speaker 1: sure do have a lot of patronizing contempt for the
Speaker 1: largely black and brown working class. As it turns out, now,
Speaker 1: Chris has been underestimated from the beginning. He's been speared,
Speaker 1: he's been dismissed, and he still is to this day. Listen,
Speaker 1: put your minds at ease, professional liberals. Chris Malls has
Speaker 1: got this. He knows exactly what he's doing, and he
Speaker 1: sure doesn't need your dumb ass advice. As doctor Thrasher
Speaker 1: put it on Twitter, quote, very curious how many liberals
Speaker 1: want Chris Malls, whose rising coalition is winning in arenas.
Speaker 1: They never have expect him to conform to their norms
Speaker 1: and behaviors, even as their coalitions are consistently losing. But
Speaker 1: there's also something bigger going on here. Listen. Part of
Speaker 1: the right has basically boxed themselves into a rhetorical corner.
Speaker 1: During the Trunk years, they were happy to say the
Speaker 1: words working class, pretend like they support workers while giving
Speaker 1: tax cuts to the rich and stacking the NLRB with
Speaker 1: union busters. Their support for workers through symbolic gestures like
Speaker 1: putting workers on stage at the RNC or Trump donning
Speaker 1: a hard hat and pretending to mine it had all
Speaker 1: the substance of Nancy Pelosi kneeling in Kent take clock
Speaker 1: or Amazon putting Black Lives Matter up on their homepage.
Speaker 1: But this rhetoric was basically safe so long as workers
Speaker 1: were powerless and represented no real threat to the established order.
Speaker 1: Now they're faced with the uncomfortable situation of their rhetoric
Speaker 1: about support for the working class bumping up against actual
Speaker 1: working class people challenging corporate bosses, who the right, by
Speaker 1: the way, has characterized as woke or progressive. And while
Speaker 1: Republican elites didn't mean a word of what they were
Speaker 1: saying about workers, the American people by and large actually did.
Speaker 1: That's why Americans of all political stripes overwhelmingly backed the
Speaker 1: strikers at John Deere. That's why support for unions is
Speaker 1: near record highs. That's why the number of shops filing
Speaker 1: for union elections has jumped up fifty seven percent year
Speaker 1: over year. And Tucker, by the way, is not the
Speaker 1: only right wing media figure who's offering at least modest
Speaker 1: tacit support for the Amazon union effort. Our wonderful friend
Speaker 1: and new Breaking Points partner, Max Alvarez just joined Megan
Speaker 1: Kelly for a thoughtful interview in which Megan and acknowledged
Speaker 1: both that trickled down economics was not working and that
Speaker 1: right to work was a misleading concept. The whole thought
Speaker 1: about right to work states and so on was that
Speaker 1: it would give corporate America to do right by the workers.
Speaker 1: You want to you don't want to be told what
Speaker 1: to do by the unions, do right by the workers,
Speaker 1: and you want to have to deal with this problem.
Speaker 1: And if you don't do right by the workers, things
Speaker 1: are going to go south. They're going to they are
Speaker 1: going to revolt at some point, and we're seeing it
Speaker 1: just feels to me like we're seeing more and more
Speaker 1: of that love corporations not not doing right by the workers,
Speaker 1: not wanting to take care of their staff and the
Speaker 1: way they should. And I mean, I know you've been
Speaker 1: talking about Kroger, that's a great example. Now we're seeing
Speaker 1: Starbucks big union push there. The numbers are okay. Starbucks
Speaker 1: had quarterly profit jump thirty one percent at the end
Speaker 1: of last year to eight hundred and sixteen million. That's
Speaker 1: amazing for the New York Times. Meanwhile, more than two
Speaker 1: hundred Starbucks locations across the country in some thirty states
Speaker 1: of file petitions to organize because the old trickle down
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be happening outside of the coffee pot.
Speaker 1: You're right, I mean, like in the end, it really
Speaker 1: is that simple. Like, you know, the trickle down theory
Speaker 1: was nice, it sounded good in principle. We have enough
Speaker 1: data to see now it didn't work. It didn't work
Speaker 1: for us, right, It worked for a very small few people, right,
Speaker 1: But for the vast amount of workers who, as I said,
Speaker 1: have been working longer working harder and been more productive
Speaker 1: over the past half century, and yet have seen the
Speaker 1: majority of their wages stagnate as the cost of living
Speaker 1: continues to go up. Just as recently as a few
Speaker 1: years ago, you would never hear anyone, even nominally on
Speaker 1: the right, acknowledge that unions can be good, right to
Speaker 1: work sucks, and corporate giants are abusive, and that trickle
Speaker 1: down is a lot. Never And while I'm not deluding
Speaker 1: myself that this represents any meaningful shift among elected Republican elites,
Speaker 1: it does open the door for exactly what we are
Speaker 1: witnessing among regular people right now, a newly energized, grassroous
Speaker 1: labor uprising which crosses cultural, geographic, and political divides. I
Speaker 1: might also add that the opportunity to talk about actual
Speaker 1: working class power with an ideologically diverse audience is part
Speaker 1: of what makes me so proud of this show. We've
Speaker 1: had quite a few folks who consider themselves to be
Speaker 1: on the right reach out to tell us how they
Speaker 1: are rethinking long held anti union views, and every time
Speaker 1: I see one of these messages, it absolutely delights me
Speaker 1: and would not be possible if we were just here
Speaker 1: preaching to acquire of people who share my views on
Speaker 1: the left already. Now, if the Democratic Party was worth anything,
Speaker 1: they would seize the moment. They would use this opening
Speaker 1: to press the case on labor rights. They would fight
Speaker 1: like hell for the Proact and obliterate any politician, Democrat
Speaker 1: or a Republican who tries to stand in the way
Speaker 1: of the rights of workers to organize. Make it clear
Speaker 1: the American people who actually stands with working people and
Speaker 1: who just wants to use them as political props instead.
Speaker 1: Elected Dems will settle for being marginally better than the
Speaker 1: Republicans by staffing the NLRB with non sociopass, by offering
Speaker 1: rhetorical support for union drives before quickly walking it back,
Speaker 1: of course, and the professional liberal activist class will chastise
Speaker 1: working class leaders who don't abide by their DC Code
Speaker 1: of Conduct, and Chris Mal's Amazon workers, the Starbucks workers,
Speaker 1: and many more will keep winning, whether or not a
Speaker 1: single elite actually cares to help. This was such a
Speaker 1: clear demonstration of so many of the things that we've
Speaker 1: been talking about here, Like if you and if you
Speaker 1: want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a
Speaker 1: Premium subscriber today, at Breakingpoints dot Com. All right, Sager,
Speaker 1: what are you looking at it? Well, in the year
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, it almost feels trite to do a
Speaker 1: monologue about free speech on the Internet. It often feels
Speaker 1: like everything that has to be said has been said,
Speaker 1: and it's entered the culture War years ago. It's fueled
Speaker 1: to debate fundamentally the way that we mediate conflict in
Speaker 1: our society as reflected on the Internet. But the debate
Speaker 1: comes front and center again with this year, with Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's bid in order to buy Twitter, admittedly, as he said,
Speaker 1: not for economic reasons, but to stop what he believes
Speaker 1: is too much censorship on the Internet. Now, before we
Speaker 1: mediate the conflict of today, I really think it's worth
Speaker 1: let's take a trip down memory lane. What was the
Speaker 1: original promise of the internet, so we can just see
Speaker 1: how far we have come. In nineteen eighty nine, Tim
Speaker 1: berners Lee laid out a system of interconnected computers at
Speaker 1: CEO and what would become the earliest conception of the Internet.
Speaker 1: He wrote, quote, the hope would be to allow a
Speaker 1: pool of information to develop, which could grow and evolve
Speaker 1: with the organization and the projects it describes. He adds
Speaker 1: for this to be possible, the method of storage must
Speaker 1: not place its own restraints on the information. Now, look,
Speaker 1: it's important to say berners Lee was not talking about
Speaker 1: technical constraints on information, but about the observation is still key.
Speaker 1: From the day the Internet was born, it was recognized
Speaker 1: that placing restraints on information, not allowing it to flow freely,
Speaker 1: would disrupt the promise of sharing across a distributed network.
Speaker 1: This promise was alive in the nineteen nineties vision of
Speaker 1: the Web, and it was with the explosion of decentralized
Speaker 1: protocols and anonymity on the Internet where centralized choke points
Speaker 1: for information did not exist. But that couldn't last forever.
Speaker 1: As humanity onboarded to the Internet in millions by the month,
Speaker 1: it became a mess. Finding stuff became a real problem,
Speaker 1: and thus began the first moves at organization. First were
Speaker 1: walled gardens, but eventually they were supplanted by Google, a
Speaker 1: simple index of the Internet. The indexing system was brilliant
Speaker 1: in its regard, but of course what Google discovered is
Speaker 1: that when you become the index agent for the Internet,
Speaker 1: you get to control the index and what people see.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, we had a centralized jokepoint. More importantly,
Speaker 1: we had a vision of what would come for the web. Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube.
Speaker 1: All of them involve a platform which derives value from
Speaker 1: its network effects. We get the benefit of their use.
Speaker 1: They get the benefit of everybody using it, which allows
Speaker 1: them to aggregate data and have the greatest advertising softwares
Speaker 1: known to man. But with great responsibility and power and
Speaker 1: wealth and more, came a new problem, what do you
Speaker 1: do with all this content? In the earliest days these companies,
Speaker 1: they all confronted the same problem, illegal content, controversial content,
Speaker 1: the need to figure out what to do with it.
Speaker 1: From that point came the de facto an original promise
Speaker 1: of the Internet that generally governed how platforms companies would
Speaker 1: serve and most of the humanity. We will remove the
Speaker 1: least amount of content possible and seek to have a
Speaker 1: broad trust with the public. Hence the don't be evil
Speaker 1: Google mantra. The mindset dominated Silicon Valley about a decade
Speaker 1: ago when then Twitter CEO Dick Costello famously pronounced we
Speaker 1: are the free speech wing of the Free Speech Party
Speaker 1: at the Web two point zero summit in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: That declaration was important it represented at the time of
Speaker 1: Western elites saw the promise of the Internet as one
Speaker 1: that was able to allow free exchange of ideas in
Speaker 1: authoritarian countries, which then led in soft heart to the
Speaker 1: Arab Spring protests in Egypt and Tunisia and elsewhere. The
Speaker 1: same was often repeated by Mark Zuckerberg himself inside of
Speaker 1: bay Facebook, who as a Jew, would often hold up
Speaker 1: Holocaust deniers as an example of worst types of speech
Speaker 1: that he would still defend. Homing on his platform, he
Speaker 1: said quote, I don't believe our platform should take that
Speaker 1: down because I think there are things that different people
Speaker 1: get wrong. I don't think that they're intentionally getting it wrong.
Speaker 1: It is hard to impugne intent and to understand the intent.
Speaker 1: I think as abhorrent to some of these examples are
Speaker 1: I think the reality is also that I get things
Speaker 1: wrong when I speak publicly. Humble answer there. That seems
Speaker 1: like a lifetime ago, but that was twenty eighteen. You
Speaker 1: can just see within a span a few years, the
Speaker 1: free speech wing of the Free Speech Party caved quickly.
Speaker 1: It began first a bow to foreign government pressure abroad,
Speaker 1: but eventually to social pressure here in the US, which
Speaker 1: has turned out to be far more powerful. Zuckerberg himself
Speaker 1: made that holocaust denial statement just four years ago in
Speaker 1: reference to why Alex Jones should not be taken off
Speaker 1: the platform. Well, you all know how that story played out.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, of course, really was the year that
Speaker 1: everything broke apart. The COVID nineteen pandemic gave expansive definitions
Speaker 1: of misinformation as defined by the state to the tech companies,
Speaker 1: who then you to approve a censorship regime that people
Speaker 1: had never seen before. That's how the lap league theory
Speaker 1: got censored. That's how discussions about mass and lockdowns and
Speaker 1: vaccine efficacy were quashed without even the hesitation. And it
Speaker 1: was that infrastructure that saw the unprecedented banning by Twitter
Speaker 1: of the Hunter Biden laptop story in twenty twenty, and
Speaker 1: then on January sixth, the deplatforming of Donald Trump, the
Speaker 1: sitting president of the United States. Now we see with
Speaker 1: regularity the deplatforming of accounts that are dissident to the
Speaker 1: cultural milieu, as Twitter itself is headed by a CEO
Speaker 1: that has said he sees no reason why he should
Speaker 1: be bound by the First Amendment and that harm reduction
Speaker 1: is their main concern Donald Trump was taken off, an
Speaker 1: elite panic about right wing terrorism was used to justify
Speaker 1: an even more censorious environment, and the rules continued to
Speaker 1: get bent. One of the seminal moments came around the
Speaker 1: same time when Zuckerberg, despite defending holocaust deniers right to
Speaker 1: free speech on his platform, reversed himself completely in October
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, saying his thinking had involved what was happening
Speaker 1: in enough Ti twenty twenty. By the way, that's how
Speaker 1: quickly things change. The devolution of the promise of the
Speaker 1: Internet into the chaotic mess that we have right now
Speaker 1: is a genuine tragedy for mankind. I maintain the original
Speaker 1: promise of the Internet. Elon Musk fight aside. It is
Speaker 1: worth it for all of you to consider what we
Speaker 1: lost in such a short period of time, how valuable
Speaker 1: the original idea of unrestrained information in networks can have
Speaker 1: for the future of our society. It really is worth
Speaker 1: you know, people don't go back and see some of
Speaker 1: the original and if you want to hear my reaction
Speaker 1: to Sagres's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints
Speaker 1: dot Com. Join us now. The founder of Status kup
Speaker 1: wonderful and independent investigative journalists. Jordan Chared. Great to see you, Jordan.
Speaker 1: Good to see you. Man, Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: So listen before we jump into this, you all have
Speaker 1: been doing indispensable reporting. Some of the few people who
Speaker 1: were there on the ground in Staten Island from the
Speaker 1: beginning who actually understood that Christian Smalls and his team,
Speaker 1: Derek Palmer and all the rest actually had a shot
Speaker 1: at pulling this thing off. And I want to say
Speaker 1: to our audience, you guys, this outlet really deserves your support.
Speaker 1: So tell people how to follow you, how to support
Speaker 1: you if they believe in your work. Yeah, we're on
Speaker 1: YouTube status coup coup clicked the bill for all notifications
Speaker 1: because they don't like to show us that much. You
Speaker 1: get a text when we're live statuskud dot com slash
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Speaker 1: ground reporting that statusqud dot com slash join for five
Speaker 1: bucks a month. Great. All right, So with that out
Speaker 1: of the way, let's talk about what we brought you
Speaker 1: here to talk about today, which is the Amazon union fight.
Speaker 1: And here's the lay of the land. Guys. You all
Speaker 1: know they want a historic victory at that Staten Island warehouse.
Speaker 1: They have another vote that is coming up. At the
Speaker 1: same time, Amazon has dramatically escalated the tactics, and you
Speaker 1: all had a piece upt status. Cool, let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and throw this element up on the screen talking about
Speaker 1: why the New York Amazon union victory was such a
Speaker 1: game changer. So before we get into the very latest
Speaker 1: news and their union busting tactics, just give us a
Speaker 1: little bit of the context here of why people should
Speaker 1: care so much about what is happening on Staten Island
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, I think what really is important about
Speaker 1: Staten Island is they have gone against convention and especially
Speaker 1: in organized labor, which hasn't really changed things up in
Speaker 1: the last thirty forty years. They basically did a gorilla
Speaker 1: campaign kind of like gorilla warfare, basically shunning traditional labor, advice, consultation,
Speaker 1: traditional labor that told them what you're doing is basically
Speaker 1: suicidal in terms of victory. And they are basically doing
Speaker 1: this in kind of a digital media meets barbecue kind
Speaker 1: of way, so you know, barbecues for workers, free food,
Speaker 1: snappy TikTok videos. And I think that's really reside because
Speaker 1: it's kind of like all politics is local, Well, for unionization,
Speaker 1: you really have to hit the demographic and the geography
Speaker 1: of where you're trying to unionize. Most of the workers
Speaker 1: in that massive warehouse were young people. I remember the
Speaker 1: union tep was right next to the bus stop. It
Speaker 1: was mostly like I would say, eighteen to twenty six
Speaker 1: twenty seven year olds coming off that bus. So they
Speaker 1: have very strategically done this and it's a blueprint for
Speaker 1: other Amazon warehouses or you know, workers wanting to unionize
Speaker 1: elsewhere to really if you target the demographic of your
Speaker 1: warehouse or cafe, if you you know, do things strategically
Speaker 1: and smart digitally, you really have a shot to overcome
Speaker 1: a lot of the union busting. So talk to us
Speaker 1: then about the upcoming fight. What are the central issues
Speaker 1: at stake? Is it in any different from organizing and
Speaker 1: the effort of the original union vote. Amazon is definitely
Speaker 1: escalated in the final weeks at the previous one, they
Speaker 1: actually it seemed allowed more organizing maybe because of all
Speaker 1: the complaints that were being filed against them. Here they
Speaker 1: have added more security to the parking lot, basically to
Speaker 1: surveil the organizers which are continuing to do the same
Speaker 1: type of organizing outside the warehouse. Inside the warehouse, they've
Speaker 1: already written up a couple of the union organization organizers
Speaker 1: in this other warehouse that's soon to vote for solicitation.
Speaker 1: And they've also shifted and moved some of their over
Speaker 1: two thousand dollars a day union consultants to full time.
Speaker 1: So now some of those union consultants that were parachuting
Speaker 1: in and out for the last year, they're in the
Speaker 1: warehouse all the time, pulling workers aside for one on ones.
Speaker 1: And it's really striking because of this. Most of this
Speaker 1: union busting backfired at JFK eight, but they're just doubling
Speaker 1: down on it across the street LJ five. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and that's what I'm curious of because Chris also explained
Speaker 1: to me that the workforce at the this is a
Speaker 1: sorting facility now that we'll be voting in just about
Speaker 1: a week, that the workforce is also different because it's
Speaker 1: a lot more part time. That makes the organizing challenge
Speaker 1: even that much more difficult. It means that you know,
Speaker 1: this may not be their main gig. They may have
Speaker 1: two three other jobs that they are balancing to try
Speaker 1: to make ends meet. It means that concerns are also
Speaker 1: a little bit different. What they would want to fight
Speaker 1: for in a contract is different from what was going
Speaker 1: on at the warehouse facility. So, as you pointed out
Speaker 1: ultimately with JFK eight, those union busting tactics, they not
Speaker 1: only didn't work, they seem to directly backfire. You all
Speaker 1: had video of a guy that I love. I think
Speaker 1: he's called Uncle Pat or something like that. He's like,
Speaker 1: was initially kind of not too into the union. He's
Speaker 1: a Trump supporting Republican. He got pissed off at the
Speaker 1: fact that they arrested Chris Small's and some of the
Speaker 1: other works. He ends up not just being for the union,
Speaker 1: but flipping like hundreds of votes from no to yes
Speaker 1: to make some of the critical difference down the stretch.
Speaker 1: So we saw that it really backfired over across the
Speaker 1: street at the warehouse. Do you think that it is
Speaker 1: also backfiring at the sorting facility or do you think
Speaker 1: that it's landing and gaining some traction with a very
Speaker 1: different workforce there. I believe it's backfiring because yes, a
Speaker 1: lot of these workers are part time, but again, a
Speaker 1: lot of these workers are young, and I mean Before
Speaker 1: this Staten Island victory, I mean here or there, there
Speaker 1: was media coverage, but not a lot. There's been a
Speaker 1: tsunami of media coverage now, mostly positive. So all those workers,
Speaker 1: a couple of of them spoken to that honestly weren't
Speaker 1: as plugged in to what was going on across the street,
Speaker 1: like they came to their job and left there now
Speaker 1: basically inundated in a good way of the victory across
Speaker 1: the street. Some of the workers from lg LDJ five
Speaker 1: were at the press conference I just covered last week,
Speaker 1: So I think it's backfiring. I also think, yes, it's
Speaker 1: more difficult because a lot of them are part time.
Speaker 1: But I think part of the pitch from AOU to
Speaker 1: those workers is Amazon thrives on having part time and
Speaker 1: seasonal workers that they don't have to pay benefits to,
Speaker 1: that they hire and fire at a very rapid pace.
Speaker 1: So part of having a union, a big part of
Speaker 1: our demands is making you full time and getting you
Speaker 1: those benefits. Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, in terms
Speaker 1: of the people that you've spoken to and more, what's
Speaker 1: the enthusiasm level on the ground. Is it helping the
Speaker 1: case for a head of the union vote because despite
Speaker 1: Amazon propaganda, are they getting access to better information? Yeah? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of donations have come in
Speaker 1: after ALU's victory. The Staten Island warehouse the massive one,
Speaker 1: so they have more resources now. And I think Christian
Speaker 1: Small's strategically going around the country meeting with labor leader
Speaker 1: but also speaking with you know, more collaboration with Starbucks
Speaker 1: Workers United, who is obviously having huge momentum. I think
Speaker 1: he's actually getting even more kind of strategic weaponry to
Speaker 1: tailor the message to them. And again I think these
Speaker 1: workers across the street, I mean, momentum is momentum. It
Speaker 1: cannot be ignored. So a lot of those workers. I
Speaker 1: spoke with one the other day who was just like
Speaker 1: we honestly we didn't think it was possible across the street.
Speaker 1: So now the victory there is giving a little bit
Speaker 1: more of optimism that they could win, but it is
Speaker 1: going to be harder for the reasons Crystal stated, Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, listen, if this is your part
Speaker 1: time gig and it's not, you know, you're full, like
Speaker 1: the full source of your income, that also may make
Speaker 1: you feel more comfortable to take a little bit of
Speaker 1: a risk, So that does cut both ways. The last
Speaker 1: question for you, Jordan is you know I tracked the
Speaker 1: stuff closely, and you're seeing not just the Starbucks workers
Speaker 1: their last I think four elections they won unanimously. Not
Speaker 1: a single worker voted against the union, which is incredible.
Speaker 1: We see now Apple retail stores moving filing for union elections,
Speaker 1: that's incredible. We saw Verizon retail workers winning the right
Speaker 1: to a union as well. And just the numbers, it's
Speaker 1: not just anecdotal. The General Counsel of the NLRB says
Speaker 1: that union election petitions are up fifty seven percent year
Speaker 1: over the year over year. So how's the victory with
Speaker 1: Amazon playing into this broader movement of worker uprising across
Speaker 1: the country. Yeah, I think even before Amazon there was
Speaker 1: a political factor here. I mean Amazon Starbucks workers I
Speaker 1: spoke to basically said very similar. Yeah, we got like
Speaker 1: a fourteen hundred dollars check and a kick of the ass.
Speaker 1: This pandemic. We have not gotten relief from the government,
Speaker 1: even state unemployment. A lot of workers I spoke to
Speaker 1: said they were getting letters in the mailment they have
Speaker 1: to repay their rental relief or unemployment for bureaucratic reasons
Speaker 1: or in competence. So I think there was political reasons,
Speaker 1: like you know, Paul Revere hasn't come for a lot
Speaker 1: of workers around the country from the government. And I
Speaker 1: think Amazon, in particular, if that this could be a
Speaker 1: title wave. Not to minimize what Starbucks has historically done,
Speaker 1: but if Amazon is two for two, they already have
Speaker 1: by my count, like one hundred and fifteen warehouses that
Speaker 1: have reached out, I think then you could be looking.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't want to get people too hopeful.
Speaker 1: Then the next question is when when you're going to
Speaker 1: do Walmart, which would be a herculean task. Walmart obviously
Speaker 1: is the biggest company in America. But I think if
Speaker 1: Amazon starts to see the title wave that Starbucks has,
Speaker 1: then you start looking for the biggest employer. Well, people
Speaker 1: realize with this, like, oh my god, if you can
Speaker 1: do it against Amazon, actually possible enough that it's easy.
Speaker 1: Not that they won't throw millions of dollars and fire
Speaker 1: you and Timda all that stuff, but it is actually possible.
Speaker 1: So I know Chris has said that it's not just
Speaker 1: Amazon facilities that have been reaching out to them. They've
Speaker 1: been hearing from Walmart workers, They've been hearing from Dollar
Speaker 1: General workers and other retail and warehouse workers across the country.
Speaker 1: So it really is one of the most helpful things
Speaker 1: that's going on. And just to emphasize again what I
Speaker 1: said at the beginning, listen, mainstream media obviously is completely
Speaker 1: ignorant that any of this was even happening, this ground swell,
Speaker 1: which could turn into one of the most significant stories
Speaker 1: of the decade. Jordan Charreton and his team was there
Speaker 1: on the ground from the beginning. There were some of
Speaker 1: the few that actually knew that this had a shot
Speaker 1: that took Christian Smalls and his team seriously that didn't
Speaker 1: underestimate what was going on here. And so listen, he
Speaker 1: beat the mainstream media with many fewer resources at their
Speaker 1: own game. And I really just encourage you all to
Speaker 1: support him if you're able the links. Jordan will put
Speaker 1: them all down in the description so people can find
Speaker 1: out where you guys are and how to support you
Speaker 1: if they're interested. There we go. Thank you, Jordan, appreciate it, man,
Speaker 1: Thanks so much. That's pleasure. Thank you guys for joining
Speaker 1: us so much. Yeah, thank you guys so much. That
Speaker 1: was an awesome show. It's really good to be back
Speaker 1: here in Washington. Just as a reminder, we don't have
Speaker 1: the show on Thursday due to a variety of personal
Speaker 1: scheduling circumstances, but we will be back here tomorrow on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: As always, a special thank you to our premium subscribers
Speaker 1: and especially now to our lifetime subscribers. Let's throw to
Speaker 1: the plaques there. Look at that at the end of
Speaker 1: every single show, you right there, we'll have that. We
Speaker 1: have our beautiful made in the USA plaques, which thank
Speaker 1: you so much. To our lifetime members, we also include
Speaker 1: in our credit section. We will see you all tomorrow.
Speaker 1: See you guys tomorrow.