Speaker 1: Cable news is ripping us apart, dividing the nation, making
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Speaker 1: what is true and what is false. The good news
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Speaker 1: the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage
Speaker 1: of what is sure to be one of the most
Speaker 1: pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for?
Speaker 1: Go to Breakingpoints dot com to help us out. Joining
Speaker 1: us now for our weekly partnership segment with the lever,
Speaker 1: the founder of that outlet, the one and only David
Speaker 1: Sorotiger Caesar. Hey there, so you have some very timely
Speaker 1: reporting about the Republican response to the seeming granting of
Speaker 1: their every wish and desire, which is the imminent overturning
Speaker 1: of Roe versus WAD, a project that they have been
Speaker 1: dedicated to you creating this outcome for like close to
Speaker 1: fifty years. But the reaction to it is very interesting.
Speaker 1: So you detail some of this has god and put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen. You say, McCarthy era law
Speaker 1: aimed at pro choice protesters. Conservatives and corporate media pundits
Speaker 1: want to use a red scare statute to arrest people
Speaker 1: demonstrating against the GOP's looming anti abortion victory. So just
Speaker 1: set this up for us, David. Sure, there's this controversy
Speaker 1: within the controversy, I mean, there's the leaked ruling, and
Speaker 1: then there's a lot of the commentary about whether the
Speaker 1: leak was legal or who leaked. There's also the controversy
Speaker 1: about the protests against the ruling. And just to start
Speaker 1: out here, it's worth saying that it's a pretty pathetic
Speaker 1: state of affairs in media and in politics, where the
Speaker 1: top line story is the reaction to the extremism rather
Speaker 1: than the extremism itself. But the reaction when it comes
Speaker 1: to protest, I think is something. It tells us something.
Speaker 1: The reaction has been one saying that protesters shouldn't be
Speaker 1: allowed to protest near where Supreme Court justices live. Now,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of hypocrisy about this, considering the fact
Speaker 1: that the Supreme Court itself effectively legalized protest near the
Speaker 1: homes of people who work in women's health clinics. That
Speaker 1: was a nineteen ninety ruling. In the mid nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: somehow we're supposed to forget about that. But there's now
Speaker 1: also a call by folks like Senator Josh Hally of
Speaker 1: Missouri to resurrect a sixty or seventy year old law
Speaker 1: from literally the McCarthy era that was designed to outlaw
Speaker 1: protest outside and near the Supreme Court by alleged to communists.
Speaker 1: And what Hawley wants to do is essentially use that
Speaker 1: law to and he's calling for it to arrest, detain,
Speaker 1: and jail protesters anywhere near the homes of Supreme Court justices. Now,
Speaker 1: let's be clear. You can agree or disagree with the
Speaker 1: tactic of protesting near a judge's home in a legal,
Speaker 1: peaceful way. You can say I don't think that's a
Speaker 1: good tactic. Maybe you say that is a good tactic.
Speaker 1: Wherever you come down on this. There's something deeper here,
Speaker 1: which is the attempt to criminalize basic protest dissent demonstrations.
Speaker 1: That's what's really an issue here, and trying to resurrect
Speaker 1: this law, a law, by the way, pushed not only
Speaker 1: by a sort of McCarthy era extremists, but also by segregationists. Well,
Speaker 1: and this isn't just happening at the federal level. I
Speaker 1: just saw this morning. Florida Governor Ronda Santa signed a
Speaker 1: bill today that makes protesting outside of a person's home illegal.
Speaker 1: So and he has been, you know, he has become
Speaker 1: kind of a leader in launching this type of legislation
Speaker 1: that other Republican state legislators then pick up. I think
Speaker 1: it also very much exposes the lie of the idea
Speaker 1: that the Republican Party is the quote unquote free speech
Speaker 1: party totally. I mean, I mean, these are the same
Speaker 1: people who have been running around to crying so called
Speaker 1: King Ansel culture and screaming freedom, who are now trying
Speaker 1: to quite literally criminalize protest in America. And again, I
Speaker 1: go back to this idea that you can say I
Speaker 1: don't think it's a good tactic, or you can say
Speaker 1: I think it's a great tactic. The debate over whether
Speaker 1: a kind of protest is effective is a different debate
Speaker 1: than whether the protests should to be allowed to happen.
Speaker 1: And we have a situation now where you literally have
Speaker 1: politicians trying to outlaw forms of protest. And obviously there's
Speaker 1: the other hypocrisy here. I mean, we're still only a
Speaker 1: year and a half away from since the January sixth insurrection,
Speaker 1: the violent takeover of the Capitol, and so the same
Speaker 1: party in some cases, the same politicians, and Josh Hawley's case,
Speaker 1: the guy who raised his fist a kind of egged
Speaker 1: on that insurrection and that riot, the same politicians are
Speaker 1: now trying to outlaw a kind of protest. And I
Speaker 1: think what's clear is that they're trying to outlaw kind
Speaker 1: of protest that they don't agree with. In other words,
Speaker 1: they don't agree with the message, and so they want
Speaker 1: freedom of speech for their message and not freedom of
Speaker 1: speech for other messages. And that's not the way freedom
Speaker 1: of speech is supposed to work. And I just want
Speaker 1: to add one more thing here. The first Amendment of
Speaker 1: the Constitution, not like the twentieth Amendment or the Right,
Speaker 1: the very first Amendment of the US Constitution, enshrines a
Speaker 1: right to peaceably assemble, and that's what's really at stake here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think we've also already seen in DeSantis's case specifically,
Speaker 1: how these statues are used very selectively. So he also
Speaker 1: passed a law that I think banned protest on any
Speaker 1: roadway in Florida, and that was in response to the
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter protests lo and Behold, when it was
Speaker 1: protesters against the Cuban government who were blocking a major roadway. Suddenly,
Speaker 1: for some reason, the law was not did not apply.
Speaker 1: That is not free speech. That is free speech for me,
Speaker 1: but not for thee And that's really the issue here. Look,
Speaker 1: free speech is not an easy thing to protect because
Speaker 1: it means protecting speech that you don't like. It means
Speaker 1: protecting speech that you don't agree with. The Supreme Court
Speaker 1: has issued rulings in the past of protecting a freedom
Speaker 1: of speech that even uses violent rhetoric. Now I'm not
Speaker 1: a fan of that. I don't think that's good for
Speaker 1: the discourse. I don't think that's good for the culture.
Speaker 1: But the point is that once you start encroaching in
Speaker 1: a real way on free speech, free political speech, okay,
Speaker 1: non threatening speech in the sense of non imminent incitement
Speaker 1: of violence. And that's what we're talking about when it
Speaker 1: comes to pro choice protesters. Okay, when you start encroaching
Speaker 1: on that, you start cutting away at again the First Amendment.
Speaker 1: This is foundational, And what I worry about is that
Speaker 1: we are living in a time where we are losing
Speaker 1: touch with things that are difficult to protect, ideals that
Speaker 1: are difficult to protect. Freedom of speech. I mean, here's
Speaker 1: the thing. When I see the Washington Post or media
Speaker 1: outlets saying that they want restrictions on different kinds of protest,
Speaker 1: I mean, the press, the fourth is state operates under
Speaker 1: the same freedom of speech, And it kind of blows
Speaker 1: my mind, like, do these folks really understand the laws
Speaker 1: under which they are protected and how encroaching on those
Speaker 1: laws threatens the ability of, for instance, even the press
Speaker 1: to do its job. Yeah. Also obviously the case with
Speaker 1: the silence on the prosecution of Julie A. Sanje. The
Speaker 1: last thing, David that I wanted to ask you is,
Speaker 1: you know, what do you make of the fact that, Okay,
Speaker 1: Republicans can the religious right have been building and working
Speaker 1: very studiously on this project for literally almost five decades.
Speaker 1: They now are on the verge of the cusp of victory.
Speaker 1: They're about to get the end result of something that
Speaker 1: they have been engaged in for a very long time,
Speaker 1: and they don't want to talk about it. They're upset
Speaker 1: about how it came out. They want to talk about
Speaker 1: the league. They don't want to talk about the protests.
Speaker 1: They don't want to talk about this monumental political victory
Speaker 1: that they are on the cusp of achieving. What do
Speaker 1: you make of that, Well, I mean, I think they
Speaker 1: know they have victory in hand. I mean they know
Speaker 1: that that draft ruling, if it becomes the law, is
Speaker 1: the victory they want. They don't have to talk about it,
Speaker 1: and they know talking about it is probably not great
Speaker 1: politics for them heading into the midterm elections if you
Speaker 1: look at polls on the issue. So they already have
Speaker 1: the victory, and so what they're trying to do tactically,
Speaker 1: in my view, is focus more on the controversies surrounding
Speaker 1: the victory and to try to scandalize dissent. They're trying
Speaker 1: to scandalize the outrage about this and so, and they've
Speaker 1: got a willing and complicit partner, I think, in corporate media,
Speaker 1: which I think has focused as much on the protest
Speaker 1: as much on the leak as on the substance itself.
Speaker 1: The question is whether the Democratic Party heading into the
Speaker 1: midterm elections can actually focus the public on the actual
Speaker 1: issue at hand, which is the ripping away of reproductive
Speaker 1: rights from one hundred and sixty six million women in
Speaker 1: the country. David, thank you so much for reporting on
Speaker 1: this and so many other issues. It's great to see you.
Speaker 1: It's great to see you. Thanks for having me. The
Speaker 1: rise of some new candidates in the victory of JD.
Speaker 1: Evans has a new discussion. Is the right going to
Speaker 1: change if they take power in the US Senate and
Speaker 1: in Congress come twenty twenty two. To talk about this
Speaker 1: is Orn Cassi's the executive director of American Compass. It's
Speaker 1: good to see Oran. Welcome back to the show. Great
Speaker 1: to be here. All right, So we've got an interesting
Speaker 1: new piece here that was written in American Compasses. Put
Speaker 1: us up there on the screen, taking the right off
Speaker 1: of autopilot. It's something that your organization has been focused
Speaker 1: on now for quite some time. So orin how do
Speaker 1: you kind of assess the chances of taking the right
Speaker 1: off of autopilot come November victory for the Republicans in
Speaker 1: the midterms, if that's what happens, well, I think a
Speaker 1: huge question for the right of center is what's going
Speaker 1: to happen in our institutions. You know, there are all
Speaker 1: these huge, very well funded think tanks, publications that drive
Speaker 1: a lot of the conversation, are listened to by a
Speaker 1: lot of elected representatives, and they have for forty plus
Speaker 1: years now been focused exclusively on this sort of Reagan
Speaker 1: style agenda that's kind of very libertarian on economic issues,
Speaker 1: and it just doesn't fit twenty twenty two. It might
Speaker 1: have been great for nineteen eighty two, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: fit twenty twenty two. And the question, in my mind
Speaker 1: and saying this piece really speaks to, is can these
Speaker 1: institutions change. Can an organization that's been doing the same
Speaker 1: thing for so long that takes hundreds of millions of
Speaker 1: dollars in donations from people well thinking a certain way,
Speaker 1: that hires hundreds of people who have staked their careers
Speaker 1: on thinking a certain way, can they actually say we
Speaker 1: actually have to think about things differently. And I think
Speaker 1: we're seeing some places where that is starting to happen,
Speaker 1: you know, Kevin Roberts coming in at the Heritage Foundation
Speaker 1: is a good example, but at a lot of places
Speaker 1: where we're not seeing that happen at all. And I think,
Speaker 1: you know, those institutions are going to become probably irrelevant
Speaker 1: over time, and we're going to need new ones that
Speaker 1: carry things forward. Are they going to become irrelevant? Though,
Speaker 1: because it seems to me like there are two basic
Speaker 1: problems that, you know, make it structural issues that make
Speaker 1: it difficult for Republicans to adjust course with regards to
Speaker 1: economic orthodoxy. In particular. Number one, what you pointed to
Speaker 1: the source of money backing these think tanks and the
Speaker 1: institutional right. It's a sort of you know, corporate libertarian
Speaker 1: ideology that has been a sendent in the Republican Party
Speaker 1: and frankly the Democratic Party as well for quite a
Speaker 1: while now. But then you also have this dynamic, and
Speaker 1: I think this is revealed from the JD Vance successful
Speaker 1: Senate campaign, which is that the base has been sort of, uh,
Speaker 1: the base really responds to culture war incitement. So that's
Speaker 1: that was a lot of Even though JD talked a
Speaker 1: little bit in a different way on economic issues when
Speaker 1: our reporter was on the ground asking voters what they
Speaker 1: cared about, what they were interested in, a lot of
Speaker 1: what they talked about was these sort of cultural touchstone issues.
Speaker 1: So if there's money backing the standard issue economic orthodoxy,
Speaker 1: and then you have a base that's responsive on cultural issues,
Speaker 1: it seems like there isn't a lot of incentive to
Speaker 1: change what you're doing in terms of economic orthodoxy. Well,
Speaker 1: I think those those are definitely key obstacles. The things
Speaker 1: that that give me hope, you know, are probably two
Speaker 1: in particular. One is it's absolutely true that some of
Speaker 1: these more cultural issues that you know, which tend to
Speaker 1: be really hot button and politically salient, drive a lot
Speaker 1: of energy in the base of both parties, drive primary voters.
Speaker 1: At the same time, if we believe in the idea
Speaker 1: of a realignment, and especially for the right of center,
Speaker 1: if you know candidates like JD. Vance are actually going
Speaker 1: to build the kind of popular support that that could
Speaker 1: ultimately lead to a governing majority, that that realignment to
Speaker 1: a large extent, comes down to finding working class voters
Speaker 1: who have have typically been on the left of center,
Speaker 1: who probably agree with conservatives on some of these culture issues,
Speaker 1: but feel just completely left out or ignored on the
Speaker 1: economic side. The question is how do you bring them in?
Speaker 1: And so that's a place where the economic message is
Speaker 1: incredibly important. Essentially being able to pass a threshold on
Speaker 1: the economic issues with voters who probably agree with you
Speaker 1: on the cultural issues, and so I think that's where
Speaker 1: you know, if you look at how sort of someone
Speaker 1: like JD balances his message. Of course, the cultural message
Speaker 1: is going to be hugely important in any political campaign,
Speaker 1: but the ultimate coalition, I think is likely to be
Speaker 1: one that has that economic element as well. And then
Speaker 1: I think the second piece of it is you see
Speaker 1: this incredible crossover happening now, but between the cultural and
Speaker 1: economic when it comes to big business and so called
Speaker 1: woke capital and the way these corporations are behaving in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases, and you're seeing right of center
Speaker 1: elected politicians and voters really turn against corporate interests, and
Speaker 1: to some extent, I think those interests really sort of
Speaker 1: align quite strongly with the Democratic Party at this point.
Speaker 1: So you know, you may have some institutions on the
Speaker 1: right of center. The American Enterprise Institution is probably the
Speaker 1: best example that first and foremost are are oriented toward
Speaker 1: business interests. I mean, it's right there in the title
Speaker 1: American any right. But I think even like on the
Speaker 1: Disney example, I also think it's very telling because the
Speaker 1: objection to Disney isn't the one that the left has
Speaker 1: had for many years, which is that you know, there
Speaker 1: are union busters. They pay their employees terribly, they treat
Speaker 1: their labor like crap, They make their you know, oftentimes
Speaker 1: their merchandise has been made in like sweatshops. It's not
Speaker 1: that critique, it's we don't like their stance on a
Speaker 1: cultural issue. So again, it's not really a corporate critique,
Speaker 1: it's a cultural critique. Which is why I feel, like
Speaker 1: why it seems very clear to me that the primary
Speaker 1: animating force is not a change in economic orthodoxy. I mean,
Speaker 1: Trump talked in a different way on economics, and then
Speaker 1: his biggest accomplishment was a tax cut for the rich.
Speaker 1: It's leaning into culture war issues that are easy to
Speaker 1: prosecute and don't require you to upset your donor base. Well,
Speaker 1: I think some of these culture issues are very much
Speaker 1: upsetting the donor base because they do, at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, come to down down to saying, uh,
Speaker 1: you know what, we're not going to give a free
Speaker 1: pass to corporations. And this idea that the most important
Speaker 1: thing you can do for the country is whatever corporations
Speaker 1: want you to do just just isn't true. And and
Speaker 1: so I think you're absolutely right that that some of
Speaker 1: these cultural issues are are sort of what's calling attention
Speaker 1: to some of these challenges and energizing a lot of people.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, the conclusion they're
Speaker 1: coming away with is that the old idea, you know
Speaker 1: that they often misquoted, what's what's good for general America's
Speaker 1: is good for America and vice versa. It's it's just
Speaker 1: not true on a whole lot of fronts. It's not
Speaker 1: true on the cultural front. And you know, another key
Speaker 1: point of crossover is China, where you have both a
Speaker 1: sort of willingness to cowtow politically to China, but but
Speaker 1: then also obviously an enthusiasm for for offshoring to China,
Speaker 1: both both of which are bad for Americans. And so
Speaker 1: I think all of this sort of comes to ahead
Speaker 1: in the same way, which is to say, you know,
Speaker 1: groups on the right of center that are willing to
Speaker 1: rethink orthodoxies and say, well, what does it actually mean
Speaker 1: to be conservative in twenty twenty two, and what's a
Speaker 1: policy agenda that's going to address America's problems. I think
Speaker 1: those groups and politicians are going to be very successful.
Speaker 1: I think those that have their Ronald Reagan playbook from
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two, and they're just sort of flipping through
Speaker 1: it to find the right tax cut and the right
Speaker 1: op ed that explains how wonderful business is. I think
Speaker 1: those groups are becoming irrelevant on the right of center.
Speaker 1: I hope you're right, Orrian, You're going to be one
Speaker 1: of those voices regardless, and we'll continue to highlight yours
Speaker 1: here on the show. Appreciate you joining us. Good see arn,
Speaker 1: Thank you, good to see you too. So White House
Speaker 1: Pross Secretary Jensaki has officially stepped down from her post
Speaker 1: cringee on Pierre is now moved into that slot, but
Speaker 1: on her last day, Jensaki had some comments about what
Speaker 1: her experience in the hot house of DC has been. Like,
Speaker 1: let's say, to listen, people always ask me, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure you guys get asked this too, about whether Washington
Speaker 1: is rotten, you know, whether everybody is corrupt here, and
Speaker 1: you know, nothing good happens and we all just argue
Speaker 1: with each other. And I, having done this job, believe
Speaker 1: the absolute opposite is true because I have worked with
Speaker 1: and engaged with all of these incredible people across the
Speaker 1: administration and this amazing team many of whom are here
Speaker 1: that I get to work with every day. And I said,
Speaker 1: as I said about Koream last week, these people are
Speaker 1: already the stars of the team. But they're going to
Speaker 1: be shining stars in the future, and I'll miss them
Speaker 1: a lot. Okay, So she does not believe Washington is crossier, No,
Speaker 1: think about it. She's made me believe. The opposite is.
Speaker 1: This is also someone who says that the West Wing
Speaker 1: is what inspired her to get back into politics. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I generally like to take people at their word. I
Speaker 1: guess that's been your experience as an outside observer. I
Speaker 1: would say it's been the opposite of my experience in
Speaker 1: order to see that that's the case. Also from my
Speaker 1: many friends who remain in the press corps, they are
Speaker 1: not exactly singing the West Wing too. But I also
Speaker 1: think you so, I actually think remember when we interviewed
Speaker 1: John Stewart and he was like, I told my staff,
Speaker 1: you cannot have friends, because when you meet a person
Speaker 1: on an individual basis, they can be this kind of
Speaker 1: happened to Bernie and Joe Biden. They can be nice people,
Speaker 1: they can be personally kind to you, they can show
Speaker 1: generosity to you and so I can understand why when
Speaker 1: you're in that situation and you're surrounded by people who
Speaker 1: have been personally nice to you, it's hard to separate
Speaker 1: that like human to human relationship from the overall things
Speaker 1: that they're doing and also like the system that they're
Speaker 1: operating within. And so yeah, it's not about individually like
Speaker 1: did Joe Biden call you on your birthday? It's who
Speaker 1: do you take money from, where's this ideology come from,
Speaker 1: what's it doing to people, what's the impact on the country.
Speaker 1: So that's why, you know, it's some of the most
Speaker 1: challenging situations are where you know someone personally and you
Speaker 1: see them doing something that is wrong or bad or corrupt.
Speaker 1: It can be uncomfortable to reckon with that. So when
Speaker 1: I had a great reply, they go, well, why are
Speaker 1: you taking a job at MSNBC If you think that's true,
Speaker 1: I mean, if it really is the opposite of corrupt
Speaker 1: and you have great work to do, when you're having
Speaker 1: the time of your life and you're changing the whole country,
Speaker 1: then why are you going to go work cable news?
Speaker 1: Let's be honest, Because you're gonna make a lot more money,
Speaker 1: and because lying for a living and I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that they don't all do this. Lying for a living
Speaker 1: and being a propagandist for a failing administration is not
Speaker 1: a fun job. That's that's the honest bit. So in
Speaker 1: a way, her, you know, spinning all this narrative is
Speaker 1: the opposite of really what's happening in her actual life.
Speaker 1: If it really was the most fulfilling job of all time,
Speaker 1: she would stay. I mean, I've gone back and I've
Speaker 1: read the people at the time when government is really worrying,
Speaker 1: they you have to you have to kick them kicking
Speaker 1: and screaming out of government like the New Deal guys
Speaker 1: they stayed in for years eight nine years. Same you
Speaker 1: know under LBJ or JFK. I mean, those people would
Speaker 1: have crawled over glassing, never would have left the president
Speaker 1: in the lurch if they really felt like they were
Speaker 1: accomplishing something. But here and in past administrations, the Trump
Speaker 1: administration being one the Bush administration high turnover amongst prex secretaries.
Speaker 1: When stuff gets tough, people really always leave the job
Speaker 1: because they know how full of it that they really are.
Speaker 1: A lot of people who are staffers in the White House.
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, it is a brutal job,
Speaker 1: just in terms of the hours and what it does
Speaker 1: to your personal life. So I can certainly understand why
Speaker 1: as a mother she wouldn't want to stay there forever.
Speaker 1: But a lot of people take these jobs not because
Speaker 1: of what they want to do or a vision they
Speaker 1: particularly believe in, but because they want the resume item
Speaker 1: that you know, parlays into a cable news hosting gig
Speaker 1: gig or you know, or a corporate gig like Jay Carney,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of times it's used more as
Speaker 1: a launching pad than actually the place where you're going
Speaker 1: to stay and try to try to impact the country
Speaker 1: in a positive way or further a vision that you
Speaker 1: ultimately believe. I think that would be different from the
Speaker 1: New Deal era, when you had a lot of true
Speaker 1: believers who really thought, like, you know, this is the
Speaker 1: right or the New Frontiers were the greats. Actually Reagan
Speaker 1: is another example. Man Reagan. Their staff people stayed along
Speaker 1: for a long time. So if you study, like when
Speaker 1: people really feel like they're really doing good work and
Speaker 1: all that, they stay, they don't act like this. So
Speaker 1: there you go. So on top of Megan Markle getting
Speaker 1: her show canceled, another one has bitten the dust. It's
Speaker 1: been up there, that's right. The Obamas as well. What
Speaker 1: do we got here? Hulu is passing on a Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton series. Rodham, Clara Danes, and Dakota Fanning were to star,
Speaker 1: as twentieth Century TV is shopping the project around. All
Speaker 1: of this is based upon the twenty twenty New York
Speaker 1: Times bestseller, which imagine an alternative universe in which Hillary
Speaker 1: Rodham met and dated Bill Clinton but never married him. Instead,
Speaker 1: in the Life Clinton Really Led, she goes on to
Speaker 1: thrive as a Northwestern University professor and launches an eventual
Speaker 1: presidential run. Real world events such as rape accusations against
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton and Donald Trump play out in the novel,
Speaker 1: but in vastly altered ways. Well, I'm just gonna go
Speaker 1: out on a limb and say that she would not
Speaker 1: even be in politics without Bill Clinton. That's not a
Speaker 1: sexist thing to say. I just think that she's a
Speaker 1: terrible politician. So sorry about that. Hillary, Also, I do
Speaker 1: gotta say. I mean, in terms of all these series,
Speaker 1: the one benefit in the downturn and the stock price
Speaker 1: is that a lot of the chaff is just getting
Speaker 1: completely cut out. The Obama's not getting their Spotify deal
Speaker 1: re upped. The Megan Markle animated racial series getting canceled
Speaker 1: by Netflix. Tear shed in that moment, Hillary Rodham not
Speaker 1: getting picked up, because here's the thing, all this content,
Speaker 1: it sucks. That's the part that we also know it's
Speaker 1: not actually good, and a lot of it was just
Speaker 1: vanity stuff in order to buy off politicians. Like the
Speaker 1: buddhaj Edge documentary on Amazon. I'm sure it did real
Speaker 1: big numbers over there. It's obvious why it's happening. He
Speaker 1: had a podcast to remember that, Oh yeah he had.
Speaker 1: I don't dropped out. Well, now he's a treasuries not
Speaker 1: treasure trans transportation far less important. I want to know
Speaker 1: who read this book? Yeah, I want to know too. Actually, ill, well,
Speaker 1: unfortunately I know people who read the book. Really, I
Speaker 1: was a big bestseller. The PMC ladies. They love the
Speaker 1: show all I mean, sorry, they love this book. I
Speaker 1: was looking though at the there was a new Democratic
Speaker 1: primary poll that came out that included her in the mix,
Speaker 1: and she wasn't faring too well. It was interesting. It
Speaker 1: was like Biden was number one. Here we go, Biden
Speaker 1: thirty three, Bernie still number two, seventeen Kamala below, Bernie
Speaker 1: at twelve, Warren at nine, Buddha Juedge at eight, AOC
Speaker 1: at six, and Clinton at six. So just another indication
Speaker 1: that America is not ready for Hillary. Oh well, and
Speaker 1: we never were unfortunately, so even that book, it's all cope, folks.
Speaker 1: Let's be honest. It's good that we never have to
Speaker 1: see this on Hulu. Very excited to introduce our next guest.
Speaker 1: It's John Burnt Thaal. He's the host of a new podcast.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny John. I sometimes I find out
Speaker 1: that celebrities watch the show. Usually I'm like, yeah, whatever,
Speaker 1: but with you, I was like, holy shit, I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's John Burnhal. Anyway, I know you've got a new
Speaker 1: podcast out, The Real Ones. I actually took a listen
Speaker 1: to your episode on Russia, which is part of the
Speaker 1: reason I actually wanted to talk to you. You actually
Speaker 1: have some interesting things to say, So welcome to the
Speaker 1: show and tell us a little bit about your podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, man, I am I'm I'm an enormous fan.
Speaker 1: Uh and I'm so deeply appreciative of of what you
Speaker 1: guys are doing and and and I think you know
Speaker 1: and at an age right now where it's just so
Speaker 1: hard to get sort of unfiltered and and and real
Speaker 1: and honest. Uh and and you know, just sort of
Speaker 1: fair information delivered by folks that that you know, really,
Speaker 1: I just I really feel like I trust you guys,
Speaker 1: and and I love getting my news from you guys.
Speaker 1: I love your your opinions and the discourse that you
Speaker 1: have on the show. So I'm really grateful. Look, I
Speaker 1: think for for my show. Uh Similarly, look, I have
Speaker 1: no place I have no place sort of in you know,
Speaker 1: exploring the key issues of the day. I wear makeup
Speaker 1: and say lines for a living. And I think the
Speaker 1: last thing deep sort of what you alluded to is
Speaker 1: another celebrity kind of spouting off and pontificating on the
Speaker 1: major issues of the day. You know, our job is
Speaker 1: really to tell stories. That being said, I've been so
Speaker 1: enormously frustrated with just the discourse in this country right now,
Speaker 1: and and you know, not just in the media, but
Speaker 1: but kind of all over And I think unfortunately, so
Speaker 1: much of you know, what we're listening, what we're watching
Speaker 1: is sort of this agenda based you know, sort of
Speaker 1: flag waving, this this bomb bass and this rhetoric and
Speaker 1: people just sort of trying to get people to join
Speaker 1: their side. And you know, for me, I I can't
Speaker 1: really imagine anything less American. I I think that you know,
Speaker 1: to be patriotic and to be strong is really about compromise.
Speaker 1: It's really about being secure enough in your positions to
Speaker 1: open up yourself to people that think differently than you,
Speaker 1: people that were raised differently than you, people have different
Speaker 1: backgrounds from you, political backgrounds, racial background, sexual orientations. It's
Speaker 1: what makes you know this country really wonderful. And look,
Speaker 1: I've been I've been enormously blessed in my life where
Speaker 1: I grew up and how I grew up, and with
Speaker 1: what I do for a living, that I've gotten to
Speaker 1: learn from and and and and meet all these wonderful
Speaker 1: folks that I've become enormously close with. So I've the
Speaker 1: folks that I have on my show are special forces soldiers,
Speaker 1: their police officers, their surgeons, their teachers, their coaches, the firefighters,
Speaker 1: their nurses. I really believe that when you focus on
Speaker 1: folks that really, you know, walk the walk, don't just
Speaker 1: talk about it, there's a certain kind of empathy there,
Speaker 1: there's a certain understanding. I think they're too busy, and
Speaker 1: and and and I've had too much time, you know,
Speaker 1: really with boots on the grounds and these issues to
Speaker 1: join us side. And they understand that, you know, we're
Speaker 1: all human beings and we all want what's best for
Speaker 1: our kids, and we all want our families to prosper
Speaker 1: and and and and and to make this world as
Speaker 1: good as possible. And I'm enormously enormously grateful for the
Speaker 1: folks that come on my show, and I believe in them.
Speaker 1: And as much as I sort of want less of
Speaker 1: me out there, not not not more, this show really
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with me. It's about the great
Speaker 1: folks that I bring on. Well, it actually really comes
Speaker 1: through in your interviews. Like I said, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think personally, I think most celebrity podcasts are terrible. But
Speaker 1: I was listening to this, I'm like, this guy actually
Speaker 1: ask good questions, he's letting his guests speak, he's making
Speaker 1: sure he's elevating somebody legitimately interesting, and I guess it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's fit. I mean, like I'm saying, to
Speaker 1: be honest, I've always found like a deep fascination with
Speaker 1: some of the characters. You have a real rawness in
Speaker 1: some of the people that you play. We were speaking
Speaker 1: before war. We went on the air about We Own
Speaker 1: the City, which is David Simon's I would, I guess
Speaker 1: kind of a sequel ish to The Wire in which
Speaker 1: you play a Baltimore police officer. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: give away too much, but I mean, can you maybe
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, some of the themes that we
Speaker 1: have here on our show, on your show in playing
Speaker 1: multifaceted characters which are both villainous, but you're also doing
Speaker 1: something in a social commentary which is very deep and
Speaker 1: outside of the way that the most of the media
Speaker 1: and popular culture likes to talk about these things. Yeah. Look,
Speaker 1: I think that's right. I think I think Look, who
Speaker 1: better to kind of explore these these these issues that
Speaker 1: have really gripped the soul of the country right now,
Speaker 1: these issues of recent race and policing. You better to
Speaker 1: do that than than than David Simon and George Pelcanos.
Speaker 1: They come to the work with the journalistic integrity, but
Speaker 1: trying to tell the truth. There's no agenda, there's no
Speaker 1: flag waving, and I knew with the skies there would
Speaker 1: be a certain level of access in the city of Baltimore.
Speaker 1: Because of what they've done before. It's hard. You know.
Speaker 1: The way that I really like to work again is
Speaker 1: to to to kind of dive in and to get
Speaker 1: to know the real folks. That's sort of my sword
Speaker 1: to try to tell the story as authentically and truthfully
Speaker 1: as I can. And I knew with David Simon because of,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better word, their street cred with
Speaker 1: the wire. When you're going into the Baltimore Police Department
Speaker 1: and you're saying, hey, we're trying to tell a story
Speaker 1: about sort of one of the most corrupt and vile
Speaker 1: episodes of your department, you know, it's gonna be hard
Speaker 1: to get them to kind of open up their hearts
Speaker 1: and minds and open up the doors to you. You know,
Speaker 1: For that show, I did three months of ride alongs
Speaker 1: every day in every district of the city. I went
Speaker 1: on drug raids with with the Baltimore Swat Team, And
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful to those guys and and and what
Speaker 1: I found by this approach of kind of digging into
Speaker 1: the wound of raising hen to try to tell the
Speaker 1: story authentically and without an agenda, I found that they
Speaker 1: really appreciated it. And look, I mean I think that
Speaker 1: there's no words for you know, how how vile and
Speaker 1: reprehensible and how awful uh, you know, police brutality and
Speaker 1: police corruption and the effect that that has on victims,
Speaker 1: whether it's Fourth Amendment UH violation, victims, folks that have
Speaker 1: been wrongfully imprisoned, folks that have been beaten, folks that
Speaker 1: have been killed. There's no words for that. There's also
Speaker 1: another subset of victims that I never knew about, and
Speaker 1: and and and I think it's very little focused. And
Speaker 1: that's the good uh and righteous and courageous people that
Speaker 1: take the you know, peacemaker's code, the peacemaker's oath, and
Speaker 1: that go and police our cities. Good cops suffer at
Speaker 1: the hands of bad cops. And there's no other profession.
Speaker 1: I think that you know, the the acts of the
Speaker 1: the bile acts of you know, the worst of them
Speaker 1: really just you know, changes both the career paths and
Speaker 1: just the livelihoods and the way in which people police.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's part of the thing that I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do on my podcast as well, is I
Speaker 1: think the only answer there is to weed out and
Speaker 1: single out the ones that you know are there for
Speaker 1: the wrong reasons, and they're there for corruption and have horrible,
Speaker 1: horrible issues that manifest itself in violence on the street.
Speaker 1: But let's also celebrate the great police. And I think
Speaker 1: the answers to policing will lie in the people that
Speaker 1: have community minded great police that have been there forever.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm really grateful that I got sort
Speaker 1: of a front road ticket to that. I got to
Speaker 1: make some really good friends along the way. That's great, man.
Speaker 1: I mean, it really comes through in your acting and
Speaker 1: your show, and I really think you're really having a
Speaker 1: renaissance these days. And I can attest to the audience
Speaker 1: he is one of the real ones. He's one of
Speaker 1: the good ones, not one of the ones we make
Speaker 1: fun of often on the show. So John, thank you
Speaker 1: very much for joining us. I really appreciated both your
Speaker 1: podcasts and talking to you, getting till you get to
Speaker 1: know you a little bit, and I look forward to
Speaker 1: a lot more of your work. So thank you me too.
Speaker 1: Make you've up the good work. I really appreciate you guys.
Speaker 1: Absolutely take care. We spoke about that landmark UFO hearing
Speaker 1: and joining us. Now UFO Expert Journalist in his own
Speaker 1: right is Jeremy Corbel. He's also a great documentarian and
Speaker 1: a friend. Jeremy, welcome back to the show. It's good
Speaker 1: to see you, my friend, really good to see you. Saga. Okay, Jeremy,
Speaker 1: So you have been through the new footage from the
Speaker 1: UFO hearing. Now let's dissect everything that we have first
Speaker 1: described to us exactly what we learned that is new
Speaker 1: from the hearing so far right, Okay, So everybody needs
Speaker 1: to understand that this is just the beginning. This is
Speaker 1: a benchmark. This is a moment in history that we
Speaker 1: haven't had in over fifty years. They brought two people
Speaker 1: forward top brass of our military, and to be honest
Speaker 1: with you, you know they've jumped into this recently too.
Speaker 1: Now they are in a position to know. But remember
Speaker 1: the UFO programs are often protected by special Access of
Speaker 1: Program protection. This is why Senator read was trying to
Speaker 1: get SAP status for the true UFO program that was
Speaker 1: called AWSAP Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Applications Program. So they
Speaker 1: don't know everything, but they're going to go into a
Speaker 1: closed congressional briefing. I do you know where they can
Speaker 1: talk about class that information. I do know though, for sure,
Speaker 1: that this is just the start. There are other people
Speaker 1: that are going to be testified on record. So what
Speaker 1: we saw was we saw some new footage of a
Speaker 1: UFO that shoots by a fighter plane. But the thing
Speaker 1: is is one piece of evidence is nothing. They're just
Speaker 1: bringing the public up to date with what's going on.
Speaker 1: They had problems when they were trying to slow down
Speaker 1: and like click it to show to people is really funny.
Speaker 1: They need a tech person. But ultimately they asked good questions.
Speaker 1: They said, have we ever fired on a UFO? Do
Speaker 1: we have exploitation programs? Using a different word, And of
Speaker 1: course look there were lies, obfuscation, you know, and some
Speaker 1: things they just don't know, but what that's what we expected.
Speaker 1: But the big thing here, and Representative Carson talked about
Speaker 1: this was that, you know, and he pushed the witnesses.
Speaker 1: The idea is to reduce stigma, so people like me
Speaker 1: are unnecessary. The only reason they mentioned me in the
Speaker 1: hearing is because I'm getting footage from our military that
Speaker 1: should have gone up the chain of command without people
Speaker 1: having to leak it to me. So I hope they
Speaker 1: fixed this broken chain so that we can really get
Speaker 1: to the bottom of this UFO mystery. I think that's
Speaker 1: the most important takeaway from me as well, which is
Speaker 1: just really making the normalization in the military culture in
Speaker 1: order to for it to bubble up so that we
Speaker 1: don't have to keep seeing leaked audio. I talked to
Speaker 1: a guy. Here's what he said. You know, oh, but
Speaker 1: you know, whispers and all of this. I hear probably
Speaker 1: a fraction of it, but still hear some of it
Speaker 1: from people as well. Jeremy talk to us about those
Speaker 1: lies in obfuscations, because this is important in terms of
Speaker 1: claims around past videos. What were some of the lies
Speaker 1: in the obfuscations that they told us? Right, So, one
Speaker 1: of the things is they really focused on what looks
Speaker 1: like the green triangular by angle of observation footage that
Speaker 1: was shot off the coast of twenty nineteen off the
Speaker 1: USS Russell and I obtained and released that they were
Speaker 1: playing out like the whole time. And it was really
Speaker 1: interesting because this was contained within their own classified documents
Speaker 1: that I inside of it was able to get out
Speaker 1: as unclassified, and then the videos were I obtained and
Speaker 1: released the videos. Now they were talking about how it
Speaker 1: looks like a triangle and that's because of the camera
Speaker 1: and how it put together. They were inches away from
Speaker 1: saying the lie that it was like just an effect
Speaker 1: of optics. But was what was really interesting because he
Speaker 1: really danced around the world the words about it was
Speaker 1: that he was saying that it looks and appears triangular.
Speaker 1: But what he didn't say is that in all the
Speaker 1: classified briefings, because there are other optics systems rather than
Speaker 1: just being shot through the night vision, these were non eerodynamic.
Speaker 1: They were indeed described in all caused by briefings as
Speaker 1: pyramid in shape. So they were just dancing around a
Speaker 1: few issues. But that's okay, We're going to crack it
Speaker 1: open and make sure I have more to release. That's great,
Speaker 1: and you always hold their feet to the fire. Any
Speaker 1: other information Just for the layman person out there, they're interested,
Speaker 1: you know, you and I are really excited and all this.
Speaker 1: But somebody's out there, what are their main takeaways from
Speaker 1: this hearing other than the fact that there will be
Speaker 1: more transparency like with this video or any confirmations around
Speaker 1: the report that maybe they could take away from this. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the biggest thing you can take away from
Speaker 1: this is that Congress is actually doing its job and
Speaker 1: it is holding the intelligence communities and the individuals in
Speaker 1: position to either be aware or they should be aware.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are the people supposed to be studying this.
Speaker 1: Of what programs do we have to exploit these technologies
Speaker 1: to study it? To manage what they called signal management?
Speaker 1: What is our defense capability when something is in our
Speaker 1: restricted airsplace? The takeaway is that now the public's voice
Speaker 1: has been heard and they are having their feet held
Speaker 1: to the fire. And this is a great first step.
Speaker 1: It is a first step, but it is a great
Speaker 1: first step. So what people can expect now is just
Speaker 1: a resounding response of enthusiasm from the public. And this
Speaker 1: is what's going to push this topic forward. There is
Speaker 1: so much to learn about the UFO phenomenon, the mystery
Speaker 1: of UFOs. We know maybe one percent of what UFOs
Speaker 1: represent to humanity, but we already got more information today
Speaker 1: than we had yesterday, and every day human knowledge is
Speaker 1: increasing on this issue. In UFOs have been with us
Speaker 1: since the beginning of recorded human history that we are
Speaker 1: aware of. So it's an exciting time. Man. You know
Speaker 1: I love this topic and you know I love it too. Man,
Speaker 1: You're the one who got me into it, So I
Speaker 1: really appreciate you joining us. We're going to keep listening
Speaker 1: to you. We'll stay in contact in terms of some
Speaker 1: of the new information. And I do want to thank
Speaker 1: you on behalf of everybody in the community, because I
Speaker 1: don't think that any of this would be happening without
Speaker 1: your work. Thank you much for joining us. Their appreciate
Speaker 1: it very much. I want to thank you, and I
Speaker 1: want to thank UFO, Twitter and everybody. They're really pushed
Speaker 1: for this, so I appreciate it, brother, and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to them absolutely. Hey, guys, Kyle Kolinski is letting us
Speaker 1: post some of the clips from his channel that we
Speaker 1: think you guys will really love in the Breaking Points
Speaker 1: community on our channel. Yep, let's get to it all right.
Speaker 1: So we got this article in the New York Post
Speaker 1: Goldman Sacks backed firms by entire Florida community for forty
Speaker 1: five million dollars. So this is where we're at. You know,
Speaker 1: Wall Street firms are just like, I should buy that town,
Speaker 1: and then they do. So they say there's no end
Speaker 1: in sight for Wall Street's sun Belt Sojourn. Sojourn, a
Speaker 1: pair of Goldman Sacks backed ventures gobbled up an entire
Speaker 1: rental home community in Florida. Last month for a cool
Speaker 1: forty five million fund Rise Interval Fund and Growth e
Speaker 1: Eerate seven picked up eighty seven single family properties in
Speaker 1: Bereverd County as part of an ongoing southern spending spree.
Speaker 1: Fund Rise previously snatched up a one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: unit development in Pensacola and has been pouring money into
Speaker 1: other rental developments in states like South Carolina and Mississippi.
Speaker 1: With rents continuing to soar and demographic shifts ongoing, real
Speaker 1: estate experts said Wall Street's Southern appetite will only intensify.
Speaker 1: Ken Johnson, professor of real estate at Florida Atlantic University,
Speaker 1: said firms are following population trends and investing in previously
Speaker 1: disregarded regions of the country. You are seeing more and
Speaker 1: more of this, Johnson told The Post. The attraction of
Speaker 1: Florida is the same as places like Texas and Tennessee
Speaker 1: and North Carolina. These are places people are moving to
Speaker 1: and where we can expect to see future increases in population. Florida,
Speaker 1: he said, has undergone fundamental shift in recent years, morphing
Speaker 1: from a second home and a hospitality centered economy to
Speaker 1: a year round place of business. There's reorganization of Florida's
Speaker 1: economy taking place, he said. Some critics have correlated Wall
Speaker 1: Street's embrace of single family and rental homes with unprecedented
Speaker 1: price increases over the past several years. Anecdotes about anecdotes
Speaker 1: abound about aspiring homeowners home buyers having their bids avalanched
Speaker 1: by corporate competitors with deep pockets. That's exactly what's happening
Speaker 1: around the country. Florida has seen rent spike by more
Speaker 1: than thirty percent overall, while other Sun Belt states have
Speaker 1: seen similar hikes. But Johnson argued that corporate purchases remain
Speaker 1: a drop in the bucket of overall home transactions throughout
Speaker 1: the country. He asserted that even large scale corporate purchases
Speaker 1: in concentrated areas do not confer enough market power to
Speaker 1: dictate rental prices. I don't buy that for a second.
Speaker 1: Other analysts contend that increasing mortgage rates will now spur
Speaker 1: even higher rents, with would be home buyers opting for
Speaker 1: the sidelines. Yeah, see this is this has been a
Speaker 1: problem recently. Anecdotes abound about aspiring home buyers having their
Speaker 1: bids avalanched by corporate competitors with deep pockets. We've talked
Speaker 1: about this in regards to Blackrock too. Blackrock is going
Speaker 1: around the country and buying up, you know, entire blocks
Speaker 1: or entire towns, and so what happens is these corporations
Speaker 1: swoop in, they buy a house or houses or an
Speaker 1: entire development, and then oftentimes what they do is they'll
Speaker 1: jack up the rent and rent it back to people.
Speaker 1: And I mean this, it's ugly. It's what started after
Speaker 1: the two thousand and eight subprime mortgage crisis in Great Recession,
Speaker 1: So in two thousand and eight or leading up to
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, in the crash, what happened was
Speaker 1: you had basically a totally unregulated market where instead of
Speaker 1: having a mortgage that was reliable and steady, three year
Speaker 1: fixed strate or whatever they call it, what they would
Speaker 1: do is have these ballooning rate mortgages. So somebody who
Speaker 1: doesn't make enough money to buy, you know, a big house,
Speaker 1: would go and buy a big house, and it would
Speaker 1: be like no money down at first, you pay three percent,
Speaker 1: but then eventually the interest rate would balloon and so
Speaker 1: as soon as you know, the payments would get up
Speaker 1: to eight percent, twelve percent, sixteen percent, they would default
Speaker 1: on it and they wouldn't be able the house would
Speaker 1: be foreclosed on, and so we basically had a total
Speaker 1: house of cards. We had. At the same time that
Speaker 1: that was going on, you had these bundles of these
Speaker 1: mortgages that would be sold off from company to company,
Speaker 1: and they were basically playing hot potato with toxic assets,
Speaker 1: just waiting for the bubble to burst. And that's ultimately
Speaker 1: what happened. And so we had the subprime mortgage crisis,
Speaker 1: the Great Recession. We had so many people, millions of
Speaker 1: people get foreclosed on and lose their homes. And what
Speaker 1: needed to happen was to reintroduce regulation, make it so
Speaker 1: that ballooning rate mortgages are illegal. You needed to bring
Speaker 1: back class steagal so that you know, you don't have
Speaker 1: you have a separation between commercial banking and investment banking.
Speaker 1: So in other words, when you go to your local
Speaker 1: bank and put your money in there, they're not doing
Speaker 1: casino capitalist bets with that, which you're gonna go belly
Speaker 1: up eventually. And in the wake of that, so the
Speaker 1: new trick that happened in the wake of that is
Speaker 1: Wall Street said, all right, well, the problem was we
Speaker 1: were selling these houses to people who should really be
Speaker 1: buying the houses, and we were really scamming them because
Speaker 1: we would just turn a profit and sell the bad
Speaker 1: mortgage to somebody else really quickly and run out the
Speaker 1: back door with all the money. Instead of doing that,
Speaker 1: why don't we just buy the houses directly, push out
Speaker 1: people who maybe genuinely need a house and can buy
Speaker 1: a house, but we'll pay above you know, the market rate,
Speaker 1: and we'll get the house at Goldman Sacks or Black
Speaker 1: Rock or whatever. And then so we deny them housing
Speaker 1: and then we can rent the same house back to
Speaker 1: them and jack up the rent. The economy is a
Speaker 1: total house of cars. Man, the total house of cars.
Speaker 1: And this is why you know, FTR famously railed against
Speaker 1: the money changers, Like, what is going on with these
Speaker 1: giant financial corporations other than they're just money changers. What
Speaker 1: value are they providing the economy. They're not providing value.
Speaker 1: They're pushing numbers around on a screen, and they're you know,
Speaker 1: denying people a chance at a home and pushing them
Speaker 1: out of the market and then jacking up their rents.
Speaker 1: So I mean, it's just it's a joke. It's a joke.
Speaker 1: I don't know why this is allowed. It shouldn't be allowed.
Speaker 1: It should be regulated out of existence. But of course
Speaker 1: there's no accountability for Wall Street. There never has been,
Speaker 1: There never has been. How many Wall Street bankers who
Speaker 1: committed fraud as part of their business model went to
Speaker 1: prison after two thousand and eight. I'll leave that one
Speaker 1: up to you guys to put in the comments section.
Speaker 1: So they're back on their bullshit, man, They're back on
Speaker 1: their bullshit. And this is a symptom of late stage
Speaker 1: capitalism and a decaying society. Hey, guys, our friend Marsha Kossof,
Speaker 1: he's going to be conducting interviews with experts and newsmakers
Speaker 1: for us here on the Breaking Points channel. We're really excited. Yep.
Speaker 1: Here it is, hey, Breaking Points. This is Marshall. I
Speaker 1: am joined by Charlotte Alter. She is a senior correspondent
Speaker 1: at Time. And we're talking about John Fetterman, the Democrats
Speaker 1: nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania. He's a really interesting character
Speaker 1: who could say a bunch of things about democratic strategy.
Speaker 1: Moving forward. We're also going to hit a bit about
Speaker 1: millennials and gen z's and politics. Lots of great things here. So, Charlotte,
Speaker 1: you've had some great pieces and Twitter threads on this,
Speaker 1: So let's start by introducing John Fetterman. Who is he
Speaker 1: and why does he seem to mean something bigger than
Speaker 1: just a typical Senate seat run. Thanks Marshall. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: John Fetterman is somebody who has been really present in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania politics for a while now, but I think a
Speaker 1: national audience just learned about him on Tuesday when he
Speaker 1: won the Democratic nomination for Senate. He is the lieutenant
Speaker 1: governor of Pennsylvania. Before that, he was the mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: which is a sort of a steel a former steel
Speaker 1: town that's really been down in the dumps since steel workers,
Speaker 1: since the steel industry and steel jobs left the area.
Speaker 1: And he is somebody who has kind of He's a
Speaker 1: real classic, like Pennsylvania guy. Nobody is ever gonna out
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania John Fetterman. He's six foot nine. He doesn't really
Speaker 1: like wearing a suit. He normally wears a sweatshirt and
Speaker 1: shorts everywhere he goes, which political observers like me are
Speaker 1: like mind blown, Oh my god, But voters are really
Speaker 1: voters seem to love it. I went to one of
Speaker 1: his events. I followed him around for a couple of
Speaker 1: days a little bit before the primary, and I went
Speaker 1: to one of his events at a steel workers union
Speaker 1: and I counted there were maybe like thirty people in
Speaker 1: the room, and I counted five guys there were who
Speaker 1: had both his exact same outfit and his exact same haircut.
Speaker 1: So it's like he's clearly resonating with people. And you
Speaker 1: could tell because he won the primary by thirty points
Speaker 1: against Connor Lamb, who was the sort of the who's
Speaker 1: a Congress of Pennsylvania congressman who was really endorsed by
Speaker 1: like the most establishment Democrats, Joe Biden. You know, he
Speaker 1: he'd always had a sort of like Bo Biden vibe,
Speaker 1: and Connor Lamb really was kind of seen by a
Speaker 1: lot of Washington types as the type of like clean cut,
Speaker 1: young up and comer who could win in Pennsylvania. And
Speaker 1: actually John Fetterman has really carved out a new and
Speaker 1: pretty strong path for Democrats there. You know, it's interesting
Speaker 1: because there's two questions to the Ken he winn in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania thing. There's the Kenny win the Democratic primary or
Speaker 1: Kenny win the general election. So I think if you're
Speaker 1: a Democrat looking at the let's say probable blood bath
Speaker 1: in the fall, if you're a DC type, you'd say, well,
Speaker 1: Connor Lamb is a great fit for that mid term.
Speaker 1: So how are people thinking about now at Fetterman's nominee,
Speaker 1: how he's going to play in the general. So one
Speaker 1: thing that I think people get wrong about John Fetterman
Speaker 1: because there is this line of attack on him. People
Speaker 1: think that John Fetterman is like a Bernie Sanders progressive
Speaker 1: and he's not. He did endorse Bernie Sanders in the
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen campaign, but then he went on to campaign
Speaker 1: for Hillary Clinton and he was not affiliated in the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty campaign, but he did campaign a lot for
Speaker 1: Joe Biden in the general. He's a get it done Democrat,
Speaker 1: you know. I asked him a lot of really pointed questions,
Speaker 1: specifically about specifically about Bernie Sanders's sort of like the
Speaker 1: progressive politics that he's often accused of. I said, you know,
Speaker 1: Medicare for all? Yes or no? He's like, you know,
Speaker 1: what is smart about him, I think is that he's
Speaker 1: really working hard to not to not specifically align himself
Speaker 1: with one wing of the party. Mostly because he knows
Speaker 1: that the voters don't really give a shit about that. So,
Speaker 1: for example, when I asked him about Medicare for all,
Speaker 1: if he had been a true Bernie Sanders Bernie Sanders
Speaker 1: style progressive, he would have been like, yes, Medicare for all,
Speaker 1: or bust, like we have to have medicare for all,
Speaker 1: healthcare as a human right, all of the all of
Speaker 1: the you know, arguments that you've heard in support of
Speaker 1: this position. Instead, he's like, weed more health care. Any
Speaker 1: bill that comes through the Senate that would expand health
Speaker 1: care access in Pennsylvania, I will vote for If that's
Speaker 1: a Medicare expansion, I'll vote for it. If it's if
Speaker 1: it's Medicare for all, I'll vote for it. If it's
Speaker 1: Medicare for all who want it, I'll vote for it.
Speaker 1: If it's some kind of you know way to expand
Speaker 1: Obamacare and it would be good for you know, expanding
Speaker 1: health care access in Pennsylvania, I'll vote for it. So
Speaker 1: that I think people read that as a very kind
Speaker 1: of sane and practical way to look at this issue
Speaker 1: that actually Democrats spent six months arguing about two years ago,
Speaker 1: you know, a green New deal. He's not for it.
Speaker 1: And that's interesting because you know, these people who are
Speaker 1: trying to attack him as if he is some kind
Speaker 1: of like progressive activist. He's actually only on there are
Speaker 1: only a couple issues on which he's pretty closely aligned
Speaker 1: with progressives on policy, and it's often the issues that
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania voters are especially enthusiastic about, like a fifteen dollars
Speaker 1: minimum wage, like strong support for unions, like getting rid
Speaker 1: of the getting rid of the filibuster to protect voting rights,
Speaker 1: things like that. Okay, so then I was going to ask,
Speaker 1: what is he actually kind of more progressive on you
Speaker 1: answer that, then give him what you said, though, why
Speaker 1: did he endorse Bernie in twenty sixteen. I think that
Speaker 1: he sensed and he's right that Bernie was the populist candidate,
Speaker 1: and he's a populist guy. So I think the thing,
Speaker 1: you know what, and I've been talking with Fetterman now
Speaker 1: since twenty eighteen, really like I first got to know
Speaker 1: him shortly after Trump was elected, and he was one
Speaker 1: of the first He was one of the only people
Speaker 1: who saw that Trump was gonna win Pennsylvania. I mean,
Speaker 1: the Clinton people were like, how much are we gonna
Speaker 1: win by is it gonna be five points or eighteen points?
Speaker 1: And Fetterman was like, no, no, no, this is And
Speaker 1: so I think that he, uh, you know, just to
Speaker 1: be total honesty, I never actually, you know, had a deep,
Speaker 1: long conversation with him about his thought process in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen when he made that endorsement. But I do know
Speaker 1: that he is He is definitely not a purist in
Speaker 1: the way that some people who have been in the
Speaker 1: Bernie camp since twenty sixteen are kind of purests about
Speaker 1: the Vermont senator's policy in general. He's not a policy guy,
Speaker 1: and that is I think one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: he's been so successful in Pennsylvania and why he's really
Speaker 1: on track to win every county in Pennsylvania, because I
Speaker 1: think he understands this really key thing, which is that
Speaker 1: when you go into these counties and you start talking
Speaker 1: to people, people don't come up to him and say,
Speaker 1: I only want Medicare for all and I don't want
Speaker 1: any other healthcare option. People don't come up to him
Speaker 1: and say green new deal or bust. People come up
Speaker 1: to him and say, instead, we need more health care,
Speaker 1: we need better paying jobs. And so he understands that
Speaker 1: a lot of these kind of questions of purity on
Speaker 1: policy proposals are kind of Washington invention that ordinary voters,
Speaker 1: particularly in Pennsylvania, don't care that much about. I'm glad
Speaker 1: you did all the like substantive policy parts because I
Speaker 1: do think we need to get to the shorts and
Speaker 1: the sweatshirt, because, as you said in your recent piece
Speaker 1: in Time about him, he hates talking about this, but
Speaker 1: he's not here. Obviously, Swoll get into it for a second.
Speaker 1: You have to tweet that I think speaks to this,
Speaker 1: which is you you basically said, you know, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of politicians are to start putting away their
Speaker 1: their suits and ties. So his question really relates to
Speaker 1: authenticity and how politicians think they should perform. Because I
Speaker 1: think this speaks to Federman's skill set. The question that
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people are thinking of right
Speaker 1: now isn't, like you said, policy planks. It's trustworthiness. It's
Speaker 1: is this a person who's likable like that that you know,
Speaker 1: specific dynamics. So how effective and widespread do you think
Speaker 1: we're going to see the you know what's just transitioned
Speaker 1: to sweatpants and shorts take So I think the reason
Speaker 1: that this works for betterman is because this is what
Speaker 1: he has, a look that has been his look forever.
Speaker 1: If you look back at pictures of him when he
Speaker 1: was mayor of Braddock, it's the same exact look. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's very distinctive looking. He's extremely tall, he's extremely big,
Speaker 1: he's got a bald head, he's got a beard, and
Speaker 1: he's usually wearing you know, if it's not a sweatshirt,
Speaker 1: it's like a short sleeve button down or a T
Speaker 1: shirt or like it's it's not He's very rarely in
Speaker 1: a suit, right, So I think if you took somebody
Speaker 1: who is out there wearing a suit all the time
Speaker 1: and said, you know, just start showing up in sweatpants,
Speaker 1: then it would look kind of slobby or like inauthentic
Speaker 1: or kind of fake. And I think that that's the
Speaker 1: reason that he has been so successful is that it's
Speaker 1: not like, oh, everyone can start wearing shorts and then
Speaker 1: they'll Wednesday wide in Pennsylvania. That's not the takeaway. The
Speaker 1: takeaway is, you know, if you are somebody who has
Speaker 1: you know, who was authentically connecting with people in your community,
Speaker 1: if you keep dressing that way, that authenticity will like
Speaker 1: you're in some ways. I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: read his refusal to start wearing a suit regularly as
Speaker 1: evidence that he is still connected with the people who
Speaker 1: first elected him. And I think in particular, you know,
Speaker 1: there's I'll always remember, we had lunch in twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: at Netroots Nation, which is this like very progressive conference
Speaker 1: of progressive activists, and that was, you know, shortly after
Speaker 1: Trump was elected, just ahead of the twenty eighteen midterms,
Speaker 1: and at that point the Democratic Party was basically like,
Speaker 1: we don't need white working class voters. They're two racist,
Speaker 1: white working class voters voted for Trump. You know, we
Speaker 1: can get by without them. If we just turbocharge black
Speaker 1: turnout and turbocharge youth turnout and really get all the
Speaker 1: women in the suburbs, we'll be able to win these elections.
Speaker 1: And so like, who needs those people? And John Fetterman
Speaker 1: was like, sure, maybe, but why would you want to
Speaker 1: find out? You know, and I'll never And he and
Speaker 1: his point, which I think is a really good one
Speaker 1: which more Democrats would pay attention to, is he knows
Speaker 1: that he and the Democrats are never going to win,
Speaker 1: are never going to win white working class voters in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: They're never going to get sixty percent of white working
Speaker 1: class voters in Pennsylvania. They're not going to get fifty
Speaker 1: one percent of white working class voters in Pennsylvania. But
Speaker 1: if they can get twenty percent or thirty percent instead
Speaker 1: of ten or fifteen percent, that's the difference between winning
Speaker 1: and losing in a state like Pennsylvania. So I think
Speaker 1: in some ways, the fact that he is this person
Speaker 1: with a level of authenticity that can reach some of
Speaker 1: the voters that feel like the Democratic Party isn't even
Speaker 1: trying to talk to them, but his strategy and his
Speaker 1: hope is that that is going to help lift him
Speaker 1: over the top statewide in November. I think the last
Speaker 1: question speaks to your broader work totally unrelated to Fetterman,
Speaker 1: especially because of age. You know, you wrote a recent
Speaker 1: a book a few years back that I've really enjoyed.
Speaker 1: Sager and I did a Realignment episode about it, and
Speaker 1: it's called The Ones's Been Waiting for Millennials, Young People
Speaker 1: and Politics. Yeah, right there in the back weird time
Speaker 1: for I think the book was very optimistic, and I
Speaker 1: feel as if every year since the book came out,
Speaker 1: you've been a little less optimistic, and I think Madison
Speaker 1: Cawthorne losing, you know, a few nights ago. I think
Speaker 1: at least Stephonic, who's in no danger of losing, regardless
Speaker 1: of how you to our bipartisan audience here, regardless of
Speaker 1: how you think about her her rhetoric, those bits, she's
Speaker 1: not going to transcend anything. She is a hyper partisan
Speaker 1: person for good or for ill, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the promise of I think the interviews you had with
Speaker 1: her back in twenty twenty, or did this idea of
Speaker 1: I'm this millennial, I have these ambitions, but they're going
Speaker 1: to be transcendent. So can you just give us, like
Speaker 1: the epitaphic, the latest the latest Charlotte update on whether
Speaker 1: we should be optimistic about younger people making a difference
Speaker 1: in the system. Yeah, I'm really glad that you mentioned
Speaker 1: elist upon it, because she's somebody you know. Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: What is always a risk that you run when you
Speaker 1: write a book about people who are at the beginning
Speaker 1: of their careers like I did, is that things change.
Speaker 1: You know. There's a reason that most people write like
Speaker 1: biographies once the person's kind of like retired. And my
Speaker 1: book isn't a biography, by the way, it's sort of
Speaker 1: like a snapshot in time. But what's interesting is when
Speaker 1: the book first came out, Stephanic was very you know,
Speaker 1: in all of my interviews with her for the book,
Speaker 1: she was very light. She was very She was kind
Speaker 1: of held up as an example of a young Republican
Speaker 1: who was, you know, very conservative but also working to
Speaker 1: try to find some kind of bipartisan way forward on
Speaker 1: some of the issues that millennials really care about, like immigration,
Speaker 1: like climate change, and college affordability, and literally, uh, in
Speaker 1: this span of time in between when the book came
Speaker 1: out and then when the paperback came out, she morphed
Speaker 1: herself into an ultramaga type Republican and she really lashed
Speaker 1: herself to Donald Trump. So there's really a whole chapter
Speaker 1: in the book about how earlier in her career she
Speaker 1: was kind of like tiptoeing around Trump and not really
Speaker 1: embracing him, but also not really denouncing him and just
Speaker 1: sort of trying to like twirl on the typrope a
Speaker 1: little bit. And so the paperback is updated, significantly updated
Speaker 1: to reflect a lot of the way she's changed. But
Speaker 1: the thing to remember, I think, you know, particularly about
Speaker 1: Stephanic is that she's incredibly smart, she's incredibly ambitious, and
Speaker 1: she's a Republican in New York State. So that means
Speaker 1: why does that matter? It means that she's not going
Speaker 1: to be in the Senate from New York and she's
Speaker 1: not going to be governor of New York because it's
Speaker 1: just such a deep blue state. I mean, it would
Speaker 1: be very, very difficult, a big long shot for a
Speaker 1: Republican to win statewide in a state this blue. So
Speaker 1: she knows that her her ladder upwards in American politics
Speaker 1: is through the House of Representatives. And so it seems
Speaker 1: obvious to me as an observer and somebody who watches
Speaker 1: her closely and talks to a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are are and have been close to her, is that,
Speaker 1: you know, the the calculation she made is that in
Speaker 1: order to advance within the Republican Party circa twenty one,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, you have to be a Trump Republican.
Speaker 1: And listen, that bet paid off. She is now the
Speaker 1: highest ranking Republican woman in America. She is the highest
Speaker 1: ranking millennial in Congress. She's got a straight you know,
Speaker 1: if she is in congressional leadership, she i think it
Speaker 1: would be a mistake to bet against her as the
Speaker 1: first Republican woman Speaker of the House, so I just think, uh,
Speaker 1: for her, the bet paid off. I also think, you know,
Speaker 1: you asked about optimism, I am. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I find interesting is that almost all of the
Speaker 1: people in my book are still active in politics right now.
Speaker 1: So I had kind of expected that some of them
Speaker 1: would have fallen off or lost reelection. I mean, Max
Speaker 1: Rose lost reelection, but he's running again, so he might
Speaker 1: be back in Congress. But I do think that they're
Speaker 1: I am still optimistic in the long run. I think
Speaker 1: we've got a pretty thorny couple of years ahead, particularly
Speaker 1: when it comes to democracy. But if you were too,
Speaker 1: if I was, if somebody were to ask me to
Speaker 1: bet whether American democracy would still exist in its current
Speaker 1: form fifteen years from now, I would say yes. It's
Speaker 1: kind of depressing that that's even a question, though. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think the note just to end on is
Speaker 1: I think the takeaway from once again Cawthorne and Phonic,
Speaker 1: regardless what you think about their actual politics, and you know,
Speaker 1: insert aoc here too, electing young people is not just
Speaker 1: going to in it itself address that problem, because you
Speaker 1: just see a lot of this rhetoric, especially with the
Speaker 1: people who watch shows like Breaking Points to say, like
Speaker 1: man like the Prominent or politics is that Nancy Pelosi
Speaker 1: is old, Truck Schumer is old, Biden's old, Trump's old.
Speaker 1: There's lots of older people here and so far track
Speaker 1: record wise electing younger people. If there's a tipping point,
Speaker 1: it's nowhere near there. So I think it's just important
Speaker 1: to be clear ride about those structural problems that you
Speaker 1: really get into in the book and comes through in
Speaker 1: your writing. Yeah. No, I think you're I think you're
Speaker 1: completely right. And you know, one thing I always feel
Speaker 1: that I have to clarify is, you know, the argument
Speaker 1: of my book is not that young people will save us.
Speaker 1: The argument of the book is that this generational shift,
Speaker 1: which is coming partly because your listeners are right, that
Speaker 1: our existing government is so so old, that this coming
Speaker 1: generational shift is going to usher in a new type
Speaker 1: of political paradigm. And I'm not necessarily I'm not necessarily
Speaker 1: saying that's good. You know more Madison cawthorns in Congress
Speaker 1: is not good. So I think that there are some issue,
Speaker 1: some areas in which it could be good. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, for example, climate utter, climate denialism is probably
Speaker 1: going to like be on its way out when this
Speaker 1: new generation takes over. But I also think that trump
Speaker 1: Ism has so thoroughly infiltrated our politics, particularly on the right,
Speaker 1: that I think trump Ism is a stronger force than
Speaker 1: generational change. And both things are happening at the same time,
Speaker 1: so they kind of like play off each other, and
Speaker 1: certainly in twenty eighteen they did play off each other
Speaker 1: a lot, and I I think two and twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: but I'm still, you know, twenty twenty two and twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, I am still you know, it's still unfolding.
Speaker 1: And I think that people who come through with really
Speaker 1: strong predictions about what's going to happen. I mean, listen, obviously,
Speaker 1: Republicans are favored to win to win the midterms this year.
Speaker 1: I'm not denying that. But I also think there's a
Speaker 1: lot that we don't know about how these elections are
Speaker 1: going to play out, particularly you know, Trump's had a
Speaker 1: kind of spotty track record with his endorsements, which I
Speaker 1: think is a surprise to a lot of people. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I just think we have to wait and see very well,
Speaker 1: said Charlotte. Thank you so much for joining us on
Speaker 1: Breaking Points. Thank you so much for having me, Marshall,
Speaker 1: great to talk with you. Welcome back to Breaking Points.
Speaker 1: There is another special edition of Breaking Points the Intercept.
Speaker 1: We hope to do these weekly. I'm joined here by
Speaker 1: my colleagues now, Sarah Sarota and Ken Klippenstein. Welcome you
Speaker 1: both here. Thanks for having US's good to be with you.
Speaker 1: They each have important stories this week that I want
Speaker 1: to get into. Let's start with Ken. So Ken. This
Speaker 1: week you scooped that there was a letter that was
Speaker 1: circulating among House Democrats. Maybe it's become Senate democrats as
Speaker 1: well at this point, maybe a few Republicans. But the
Speaker 1: letter was direct directed to what both the State Department
Speaker 1: and the FBI yes, calling on the United States to
Speaker 1: launch an independent investigation into the killing of Sharin Abu Akley,
Speaker 1: who is the Palestinian American journalist who has killed recently
Speaker 1: in Janeine during an idf raid. So, what's what's the
Speaker 1: status of that letter and where where does where does
Speaker 1: it fit into kind of the the US Israel Palestinian politics?
Speaker 1: Is this like how new is something like this? Well,
Speaker 1: this is really an extraordinary step and an important one,
Speaker 1: and that's sorry one by the Biden administration to take,
Speaker 1: because it's basically saying we don't think that the Israeli
Speaker 1: investigation is going to be in any sense impartial or fair,
Speaker 1: and not just that, it's a politically and legally important
Speaker 1: step to take because Srien abdu Akar was she was
Speaker 1: a US citizen, and that highlights how out of control
Speaker 1: the Israeli forces are when they do that. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, human being is a human being, it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter you know what nationality it is. But legally, this
Speaker 1: means that the Biden administration has certain responsibilities that it
Speaker 1: has to attend to. So not only are they having
Speaker 1: an FBI investigation and having a State Department review of
Speaker 1: if any laws were broken, when when what witnesses say
Speaker 1: happened was Israeli forces fired on her and killed her.
Speaker 1: And so the letter was initially circulated by Andre Carson,
Speaker 1: who's one of the few Muslim members of Congress and
Speaker 1: representative Korea. What who's on it now? Like has it
Speaker 1: been snowballing? Because I saw that some local reporters out
Speaker 1: in say the Bay Area, were saying, We're like updating
Speaker 1: in real time. Okay, now Barbara Lee is on board
Speaker 1: and then but not just limited to progressive was like
Speaker 1: it seemed like a number of like a there was
Speaker 1: a snowball effect going on. Yeah, that's what's interesting about it.
Speaker 1: When I was talking to sources in Congress about this,
Speaker 1: they were surprised at the prominence of some of the
Speaker 1: individuals who were not, you know, by any stretch of
Speaker 1: the imagination UH squad members or progressives, and the fact
Speaker 1: that they sign on to this is an indication of
Speaker 1: how serious of a you know, breach not just of
Speaker 1: US Israeli relations, but just basic humanitarian norms. I think
Speaker 1: that something like this was when you talk to folks
Speaker 1: in the region, people in the Middle East, they you
Speaker 1: mentioned this reporter. This was not a marginal reporter. This
Speaker 1: was the equivalent of like, I don't know, like some
Speaker 1: you know, person that anyone would recognize from the cable
Speaker 1: news show or something ken clip and stuff. That's exactly
Speaker 1: right of Palestine. So, you know, and I think that
Speaker 1: there's a lot No, but seriously, she more than twenty
Speaker 1: years of experience in the field in Palestine, somebody who
Speaker 1: was really an icon of journalism over there. Which can
Speaker 1: will be come on my way there yet, but yes,
Speaker 1: like give me time. Yes, I'm a tremendous reporter who
Speaker 1: most people who have watched Al Jazera English or have
Speaker 1: you know, are interested in that know immediately who they're
Speaker 1: talking about, one of the when you think about Sharen
Speaker 1: but go ahead side. Yeah, the prominence of this person
Speaker 1: who was killed, and the fact that you know the
Speaker 1: US now is asserting or you know, in this letters
Speaker 1: is asking the FBI in the State Department to you know,
Speaker 1: assert some kind of response that is going to send
Speaker 1: the message to Israel that this is unacceptable. So my
Speaker 1: understanding is that it's garnered a lot more signatures than
Speaker 1: the two co leads that I initially reported on. You
Speaker 1: mentioned this a moment ago. Bay Area news outlet KQED
Speaker 1: reported that they'd gotten I think two or three more reps,
Speaker 1: And my understanding is that there are a bunch more
Speaker 1: and they're going to keep circulating this trying to gather
Speaker 1: as many signatures as they can before they end up
Speaker 1: sending it. But I think it's going to be a
Speaker 1: very awkward from the perspective of the Biden administration. Asked,
Speaker 1: because this is something that is very clearly has broad
Speaker 1: support I think in in at least among Democrats in Congress,
Speaker 1: and to see what the administration is going to do
Speaker 1: to a government that you know, historically they have been
Speaker 1: very differential to and so I think there's actually there's
Speaker 1: a good reason for the for people to be skeptical
Speaker 1: of whether this investigation will be independent on it. Sarah,
Speaker 1: if you remember, right after she was killed, the IDF
Speaker 1: and and some of the government Israeli government leaders put
Speaker 1: out a video showing a Palestinian gunman firing down an
Speaker 1: alleyway saying like it looks it looks like Palestinians may
Speaker 1: have accidentally. They had to roll that back when when
Speaker 1: there was analysis done of it shown that actually so
Speaker 1: they were shooting down an alley that was correct, It
Speaker 1: was happening around the same time, but at the other
Speaker 1: end of the alley were IDF forces who were also
Speaker 1: shooting back. But then from out of the F there
Speaker 1: was a direct line to where accle was. There's been
Speaker 1: bellingcat who is You know a lot of people just
Speaker 1: associate with having a pro Western bias, but a lot
Speaker 1: of their work actually does cut against the other grain.
Speaker 1: Like some that you know a lot, they have sophisticated analysts.
Speaker 1: They came out and said, no, our forensic analysis of
Speaker 1: this suggests that it could It could only really have
Speaker 1: been the idea. And so then at the funeral you
Speaker 1: have Israeli police, you know, beating the mourners to the
Speaker 1: point where they almost completely dropped her casket. And so
Speaker 1: from that perspective're like, how on earth could anybody trust
Speaker 1: this government then to do an impartial investigation into its
Speaker 1: culpability here, right, And the Israeli government, you know, tried
Speaker 1: to argue that, well, the police, you know, targeted the
Speaker 1: mourners because they were respecting the family's wishes to have
Speaker 1: the funeral proceed in a certain way, and obviously that's
Speaker 1: been met with quite a bit of skepticism. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not how the right. The family did not want
Speaker 1: it to unfold, how it did. Yeah, I think anybody
Speaker 1: could watch the video and have a little skepticism about
Speaker 1: that argument. So yeah, I think your point is completely
Speaker 1: made that a lot of people would have reason to
Speaker 1: question if the Israeli government could execute a truly unbiased investigation.
Speaker 1: What was incredible, too, is if you look at just
Speaker 1: the Israeli government's response to when the police beat the protesters.
Speaker 1: Initially they were asking the plice, why are you doing this?
Speaker 1: At first their claim was well, they were waving around
Speaker 1: Palestinian flags and chanting nationalist mantras, and that was there
Speaker 1: was their stated reason for this. That's incredible, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's just to any sort of audience watching that,
Speaker 1: I mean, it goes a long way towards explaining why
Speaker 1: there is this skepticism that exists, where its what nature
Speaker 1: the investigation is going to be. And then not just that,
Speaker 1: but the video they released they actually edit, selectively edited
Speaker 1: video to make it look like someone was throwing rocks
Speaker 1: at the police, and the idea being that this was
Speaker 1: provoked the police response. I can't remember who was able
Speaker 1: to find this out, but what it showed was that
Speaker 1: the video was sort of I think it was sped
Speaker 1: up and omitted a part that made it look like
Speaker 1: a guy who was just waving his arms in frustration
Speaker 1: at how horrifying this scene was. They made it look
Speaker 1: like he was sort of you know, charging at someone
Speaker 1: or throwing something, and it wasn't the case at all. Right,
Speaker 1: And so just again and again these indications that there's
Speaker 1: not a good faith mindset on the part of the
Speaker 1: Israeli government when it comes to any sort of look
Speaker 1: into what happened here and the effort to defend that
Speaker 1: is now bleeding into and I want to talk about
Speaker 1: your story in a second, is now bleeding into democratic primaries.
Speaker 1: Just on Tuesday, you had APAC combined with the MFI
Speaker 1: Democratic Majority for Israel using mostly Republican donor money to
Speaker 1: intervene in a bunch of different primaries, including two in
Speaker 1: North Carolina. In one in Western Pennsylvania, they spent million
Speaker 1: three million dollars against Summerly in Pennsylvania, several million against
Speaker 1: Erica Smith and Nita Alam. With Nita Alam and Eric Smith,
Speaker 1: it was enough to get their opponents over at the top.
Speaker 1: In Western Pennsylvania, they were able to take a twenty
Speaker 1: five point gap and close it to a triple digits
Speaker 1: right now, and Steve Irwin is suggesting that he's going
Speaker 1: to go for a recount, like they were able to
Speaker 1: bring it that close, but we're still not to get
Speaker 1: able to get it over the top. They're now saying
Speaker 1: that what that says is that there's no support, you know,
Speaker 1: among the American people for the left anti Israel politics.
Speaker 1: Now the left argues that it's actually a pack that
Speaker 1: is long term anti Israel, because the way that they
Speaker 1: are pushing them in such a hard line direction is
Speaker 1: leading them into this into this culd, a stack of
Speaker 1: international isolation that is that is going to be detrimental
Speaker 1: long term. But setting that aside, the ads were not
Speaker 1: about Israel in either North Carolina or Pennsylvania. It wasn't
Speaker 1: as if there was a public debate in Pittsburgh over
Speaker 1: candidate who was pro Israel, wine who's anti Israel, and
Speaker 1: voters chose X Y or Z E. What kind of
Speaker 1: ads they run instead? Yeah, I mean this consistently, you know,
Speaker 1: is something that we've been seeing where the kinds of
Speaker 1: ads that they're running have really there's no indication that
Speaker 1: there's anything about Israel and politics. So it just goes
Speaker 1: to show that, you know, this sort of as you
Speaker 1: were saying repeatedly, we see like these bad faith attempts
Speaker 1: to involve themselves in American politics that you know, are
Speaker 1: not actually about their long term interests and don't necessarily
Speaker 1: help their long term interests from what it appears that
Speaker 1: they are, but instead using sort of these right wing
Speaker 1: donors to marginalize progressives often and you know, I think
Speaker 1: hacker DMFI came out and said when Summerly emerged as
Speaker 1: the victor by just a slight majority, that that was
Speaker 1: an indicator that, you know, her brand of progressive politics
Speaker 1: is not popular in the Democratic Party, which well, she
Speaker 1: emerged victorious. So I don't want to see how that
Speaker 1: that argument makes. That's sense, That's how you know, when
Speaker 1: there's this organic upswell of support for Israel, when when
Speaker 1: they have to dump millions into this and that none
Speaker 1: of the ads overtly mentioned the you know policy with
Speaker 1: respect to Israel. It's just risable on its face, I
Speaker 1: feel like. And so I also want to take a
Speaker 1: little time to talk about your story this week. So
Speaker 1: Sarah's beat for several years now has basically been the
Speaker 1: military industrial complex, and so you have a fascinating piece
Speaker 1: that that calls back to the debates that the White
Speaker 1: House Press Corps was having with the White House early
Speaker 1: in the early in the invasion, saying where are the planes?
Speaker 1: Why are we not getting you know, these fighter jets?
Speaker 1: Why are we not getting these planes? Okay, if we
Speaker 1: can't give them their plans, give them the MiGs and
Speaker 1: we'll give the planes the Polish and the Polish you
Speaker 1: could get the MiGs to the Ukrainian Why aren't we
Speaker 1: setting up no fly zones? Why are we setting up
Speaker 1: no fly zones? Zelenski and other Ukrainian officials have made
Speaker 1: so clear that what they believe they need the most
Speaker 1: is more warplanes and fighter jets. So why is the
Speaker 1: US assessing something different? Why is the US believe they
Speaker 1: know better what markin means than what Ukrainian officials are
Speaker 1: saying they need the most. It sounds like, you know,
Speaker 1: we're pretty dug in on our position when it comes
Speaker 1: to the no fly zone, when it comes to the MiGs.
Speaker 1: Despite this growing call by persison call Congress to shift
Speaker 1: a little bit, to put it blently, is Zelensky wasting
Speaker 1: his time tomorrow asking for these things? Prison cheek Congress Tomorrow,
Speaker 1: he's been pushing for fighter jets, a no fly zone.
Speaker 1: We hears some of those same reflts tomorrow as well
Speaker 1: as immistration shift, thinking shift them that at all? Actually,
Speaker 1: though calling for a note fly zoneer a NATO member,
Speaker 1: they share a border with Russia, how do we view
Speaker 1: their calls for a no fly zone? A non presidential
Speaker 1: piece of address tomorrow of course, he is expected to
Speaker 1: ask for more assistance. As my colleague noted, a lot
Speaker 1: of the US positions on that haven't changed, as you
Speaker 1: just said, when it comes to the knife no fly zone,
Speaker 1: but on the aircraft specifically, the Pentagon said last week
Speaker 1: the Secretary of Austin said they do not support the
Speaker 1: transfer of additional fighter aircraft at this time. Is that
Speaker 1: still the United States's position? Would a strike in Poland
Speaker 1: on supplies or anything really automatically be met with a
Speaker 1: military or forceful response, which would be a conversation amongst
Speaker 1: allies about how to respond. There are reports that are
Speaker 1: Russian drone made its way into Polish airspace before going
Speaker 1: back to Ukraine and being shocked at does a drone
Speaker 1: into Poland? Count former Ambassador to Ukraine and Maria Ivanovitch
Speaker 1: has been quite outspoken recently, and she said you need
Speaker 1: to mitigate risk. But it's also true that not taking
Speaker 1: greater actually comes with a risk as well, because Kuna
Speaker 1: is a bully and he only understands the strength. Is
Speaker 1: the president showing enough strength against Putin? Putin were to
Speaker 1: use chemical weapons, would it change the President's thinking when
Speaker 1: it comes to these snakes taking the nplizone off the table.
Speaker 1: But if you still know you prepared, can you give
Speaker 1: us any more details about what that threat means of
Speaker 1: severe consequences? The President obviously made the same threat last week.
Speaker 1: Is that purely economic consequences or would there potentially be
Speaker 1: a military that The answer from the White House was constantly,
Speaker 1: we don't want American forces and Russian forces in direct
Speaker 1: combat because that could lead to nuclear war. That feels
Speaker 1: like a pretty uncontroversial. God, do you even have Marco
Speaker 1: Rubio coming out in Marco Rubio in doors seeing this?
Speaker 1: You know, no no flies on that line is somewhat
Speaker 1: being held. But so you have a you have a
Speaker 1: piece this week about a push by the military industrial complex,
Speaker 1: with the support of some elements of the of our
Speaker 1: political structure, to say, Okay, you know, we can't do planes,
Speaker 1: we can't do fighter jets, can't do MiGs. What about
Speaker 1: these things that are basically fighter jets but they're unmanned? Right?
Speaker 1: So what are these reaper drones? Right? So reaper drones,
Speaker 1: I mean, from the perspective of the military industrial complex
Speaker 1: and the people that are very much in favor of
Speaker 1: sending fighter jets, they effectively can can function very similarly.
Speaker 1: They can do mass surveillance, they can do carry very
Speaker 1: intense air to ground weapons. And so if we can't
Speaker 1: get manned fighter jets to Ukraine, maybe we can try
Speaker 1: to get unmanned fighter jets Technically things, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: they're much bigger than the switch blade rones that handheld
Speaker 1: backpacked drones that we've sent, these Kamikaze drones that have
Speaker 1: gained quite a bit of fame for being sent to Ukraine.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a big missiles and like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they carry healthfire missiles which the US has notoriously used,
Speaker 1: carried by m Q nine reapers to target or indiscriminately
Speaker 1: target people in Afghanistan, in Somalia, and they've been found
Speaker 1: to harm civilians. And now there's this effort to get
Speaker 1: them to Ukraine. And this would be a significant step
Speaker 1: up in the kinds of weapons that the US has
Speaker 1: already sent and could be very provocative from the perspective
Speaker 1: of the Russians and potentially lead to that escalation that
Speaker 1: the Biden administration has been trying to avoid. And there's
Speaker 1: no American pilot in the cockpit. It's unman drone obviously,
Speaker 1: but who would man these or woman these. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the idea that's been put forth is that Ukrainian pilots
Speaker 1: could pilot. Yes, so realistic. So you know, in the
Speaker 1: US Air Force, pilots have to have at least a
Speaker 1: year of training before they can fly reapers. But General
Speaker 1: Atomics has said, well, we can expedite the training. Well motivated,
Speaker 1: they're the ones who make the reapers. Look. How motivated
Speaker 1: the Ukrainian forces have proved to be so far in
Speaker 1: the war, we can train them on a much faster time.
Speaker 1: At lazy Americans, you need a year, but a motivated
Speaker 1: Ukrainian plan. Sure, And well I'm not sure that there's
Speaker 1: been a specific timeline, but you know, I was speaking
Speaker 1: with a General Atomics spokesman who said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: before the State Department moves forward and approves this, while
Speaker 1: we're still in the negotiation phase, we could start training
Speaker 1: Ukrainian pilots now, which would be fairly unprecedented also for
Speaker 1: the way that these kinds of deals move forward. So
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's certainly this effort. We seen the press,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of beckon the administration, are are you
Speaker 1: going to move forward and do this? We've seen several
Speaker 1: think tankers that are backed by General Atomics, the maker
Speaker 1: of the Reaper, argue in the media that the US
Speaker 1: should be sending m Q nine's. We had Adam Kinsinger
Speaker 1: and a few other Democrat lawmakers send letter to the
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense asking well, what kind of timeline could
Speaker 1: we train the Ukrainian pilots on the business? The business
Speaker 1: side here is fascinating because, as you describe in your story,
Speaker 1: this company is bit on the rocks, which to me
Speaker 1: is pathetic, Like, how are you a weapons maker in
Speaker 1: the United States and you're not turning a profit? Like,
Speaker 1: come on? And the clowns from war Dogs managed to
Speaker 1: get themselves rich, so they've so there, this is their
Speaker 1: like prize baby, Like, yeah, and how much is one
Speaker 1: of these things? You said, a three hundred million bucks
Speaker 1: or something? Well, so, so one individual aircraft can go
Speaker 1: for about thirty at least thirty million. But then but
Speaker 1: then what there's also all of the maintenance and operational
Speaker 1: support and all of the structure that goes with it,
Speaker 1: which adds exponentially onto it when you're at a Toyota dealer. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: so actually worked, So these are incredibly expensive, which just
Speaker 1: goes to show that if we if the US were
Speaker 1: to approve a sale or a leasing agreement with the Ukrainians,
Speaker 1: I mean, the US government would basically have to be
Speaker 1: involved in funding this. So so yeah, So General Atomics
Speaker 1: has had frustration over the years because the US has
Speaker 1: a very strict export policy about who are not letting
Speaker 1: just anybody buy these? We're not just letting anyone by
Speaker 1: MQ nine reapers. I mean essentially, up until the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: it was understood only NATO allies could could have these
Speaker 1: because they're they're dangerous weapons. They can care very sophisticated,
Speaker 1: very dangerous missiles and be used in mass surveillance. And
Speaker 1: so during the Trump administration, as part of its effort
Speaker 1: to broaden US arm cells abroad, they eased this export policy.
Speaker 1: Who started getting them, So the UAE was approved, which
Speaker 1: is sure act responsibly, which is obviously a very big
Speaker 1: step up. Taiwan, which is a big step up. And
Speaker 1: so and so, you know, General Atomics very much is
Speaker 1: in favor of continuing to allow more and more countries
Speaker 1: to access naturally, you know. Sure, so you know they
Speaker 1: see Lockheed Martin making a ton of money selling their
Speaker 1: fighter jets to all different countries a broad Why shouldn't
Speaker 1: they have the ability right? And so there's this big
Speaker 1: fight going on on the hill and in the administration,
Speaker 1: this big law being effort to ease export policy to
Speaker 1: allow these exports to occur. So this question about whether
Speaker 1: this effort to allow the Ukrainians to have access to
Speaker 1: the m Q ninees is occurring within this broader effort
Speaker 1: to ease export posers, which feels inevitable. The idea that
Speaker 1: you're going to create these massively expensive weapons systems and
Speaker 1: then and then you're going to restrict who you're going
Speaker 1: to sell them to. Obviously you should, but there's just
Speaker 1: so much pressure to push against that. And Ken, how
Speaker 1: does this fit into the reporting that you've done on
Speaker 1: kind of the arms sales and Middle East politics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so in my reporting I focus on what's called the
Speaker 1: ISR stands for it's like the reconnaissance. Yeah, intelligence surveillance
Speaker 1: or reconnaissance. It's this fleet of aircraft from the A
Speaker 1: wax to all sorts of different things they used to
Speaker 1: It's pretty amazing what their capabilities are. They can peer
Speaker 1: deep inside of Ukraine from outside of the border. The
Speaker 1: idea being that you know, we're not going to go
Speaker 1: in Ukraine to avoid becoming labeled a belligerent, but we're
Speaker 1: going to work from outside of it and then pass
Speaker 1: intelligence onto the Ukrainians that they're able to gather. And
Speaker 1: so these is this sort of a presence that Biden
Speaker 1: has had since not even day one, Since before day one,
Speaker 1: they've been operating at the border, collecting intelligence, passing things.
Speaker 1: That's the way they were accurately able to say, hey,
Speaker 1: there's one hundred and twenty five thousand Russian troops exactly
Speaker 1: on the border. They weren't guessing exactly. And if you want,
Speaker 1: if you look at the earnings calls for some of
Speaker 1: these corporations like Lockheed, this is an area of focus
Speaker 1: for them that they identified as a as a growth
Speaker 1: sector going forward because, as Sarah said earlier, not just
Speaker 1: are you deploying these things, but you need to maintain them,
Speaker 1: which can be very experienive. Contracts are often the bigger
Speaker 1: source of revenue than even the initial sale exactly. And
Speaker 1: that's something I didn't realize until investiaand is kind of
Speaker 1: thing just how much money is involved in these things
Speaker 1: on a sustained basis not even just a one off thing.
Speaker 1: And if you look at northern Virginia and the suburbs
Speaker 1: of Maryland, like you see where that money has stayed.
Speaker 1: Like you can just you can just map kind of
Speaker 1: housing prices and the development out there. Great reporting, both
Speaker 1: of both of you, the throtic Kenklippenstein, and for everybody watching.
Speaker 1: You know, thanks for watching Breaking Points. And also I
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Speaker 1: it takes away your ability to be independent and independent
Speaker 1: media is extremely important. So thank you guys again for
Speaker 1: joining us, and thank thank you guys for watching. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: we're excited to partner with upcoming YouTuber James Lee of
Speaker 1: fifty one forty nine. He's going to explain culture, politics,
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Speaker 1: Here is his latest effort. Let's get to it. Hey there,
Speaker 1: my name is James Lee. Welcome to another segment of
Speaker 1: fifty one to forty nine on Breaking Points. Now. I
Speaker 1: am sure that many of you at this point who
Speaker 1: are well in tuned with politics, are aware of the
Speaker 1: recent controversial revelations surrounding the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation,
Speaker 1: the umbrella fundraising organization for the BLM movement. Black Lives
Speaker 1: Matter under more scrutiny over how it's spending donors' money,
Speaker 1: as a new report claims Black Lives Matter leaders use
Speaker 1: six million dollars in donations to buy a massive, beautiful
Speaker 1: California mansion. Yes, Steve, living like the rich and famous.
Speaker 1: You know, Steve, I'll be very honest with you, ninety
Speaker 1: million dollars. But they basically use Black Americans for profit, Steve.
Speaker 1: Ever since the George Floyd death, black Lives Matter has
Speaker 1: profited from the George Floyd death. What have they done
Speaker 1: for the Black community? Where are the community centers. Where
Speaker 1: is the improvement of education? They use this money for
Speaker 1: personal gain. I think for many conservatives, this news served
Speaker 1: to vindicate their belief that BLM has always been a
Speaker 1: deeply flawed, corrupt movement. But the truth, I think is
Speaker 1: much more complicated than that, As documented by journalist Sean
Speaker 1: Campbell and his expos about the BLM Global Network Foundation
Speaker 1: shady financial dealings in New York magazine, BLM has become
Speaker 1: a sort of catch all term for the current civil
Speaker 1: rights movement, and the BLM Global Network Foundation has been
Speaker 1: the most visible organization in the broader BLM movement, with
Speaker 1: the organization shown to be marketing, branding, and fundraising experts,
Speaker 1: but their actual on the ground contributions have been, I think,
Speaker 1: much more limited, and we don't really know for sure
Speaker 1: how they are spending their money. Now. I think the
Speaker 1: rise and fall of this organization, the BLM Global Network
Speaker 1: Foundation is nowhere they not just because of its attachment
Speaker 1: to the largest protest movement in American history, but also
Speaker 1: because it reveals a broader set of issues plaguing the
Speaker 1: nonprofit sector and its relationship with activism, with social and
Speaker 1: economic progress. And that's what I want to dive into today,
Speaker 1: which is the dark side of charities and nonprofits, with
Speaker 1: the goal that will all come away with a better
Speaker 1: understanding of how nonprofits can be used for questionable aims
Speaker 1: and what scrutiny you should apply to them when you
Speaker 1: read about nonprofits in the news or considered donating to
Speaker 1: one of these groups. Well, Dana, every year you file
Speaker 1: a tax return, right, Well, for a nonprofit like BLM,
Speaker 1: that's IRS forum nine ninety. It's basics, it's a bare
Speaker 1: minium that states require when you raise public money. So
Speaker 1: listen to its founder and BLM's longtime executive director, said
Speaker 1: Friday about the nine ninety and this controversy about all
Speaker 1: the charity that spent its money. I actually did not
Speaker 1: know what nine nineties were before all of this happened.
Speaker 1: The accountant handle that, like, I don't know what that is.
Speaker 1: It is such a trip now to hear the word
Speaker 1: that the term nine nineties. I'm like, ugh, it's like
Speaker 1: the triggering not a great look is being triggered by
Speaker 1: a disclosure form that all nonprofits must fill out. I mean,
Speaker 1: she was, after all the head of a multi million
Speaker 1: dollar foundation. But in my view, rather than it being
Speaker 1: an indictment on the BLM movement itself, as I think
Speaker 1: the right wing media like to portray it, and it's
Speaker 1: I think certainly not an accident that outlets like Fox
Speaker 1: News chooses to cover a story like this from mostly
Speaker 1: a culture war perspective intended to sow further division in
Speaker 1: this country. We also shouldn't ignore the broader issue, which
Speaker 1: is the perpetuation of a legal and regulatory environment in
Speaker 1: which an organization like the BLM Global Network Foundation could
Speaker 1: thrive despite repeated instances of financial impropriety and the refusal
Speaker 1: of most of the mainstream media to apply a level
Speaker 1: of scrutiny that an organization of this size should most
Speaker 1: certainly warrant. The fact is nonprofits are some of the
Speaker 1: nation's largest, most powerful organizations hospitals, foundations, universities, and churches.
Speaker 1: In the US, there are over one point five million
Speaker 1: nonprofit organizations generating over two point six trillion dollars in
Speaker 1: annual revenue, and although most like to cloak themselves under
Speaker 1: this aura of charity or altruism, they like any other
Speaker 1: organization or institution, are succeptible to corruption, waste, and abuse.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, generally speaking, there is a lack of scrutiny
Speaker 1: in the nonprofit sector all the way from the approval
Speaker 1: process to the regulatory and enforcement environment. Stanford professor Robert Reich,
Speaker 1: in his paper Anything Goes Approval of nonprofit status by
Speaker 1: the IRS, dissected the ethics of present day philanthropy and
Speaker 1: charity and found the IRS approval process for five oh
Speaker 1: one C three public charities, which is the official legal
Speaker 1: classification of what we typically refer to as nonprofits, extremely easy.
Speaker 1: Referencing the chart you see on your screen right, found
Speaker 1: that the IRS approves more than fifty thousand applications for
Speaker 1: five oh one C three status every year and rejects
Speaker 1: only a very very small number of applicants. Quote. Obtaining
Speaker 1: recognition by the RS as a public charity is an
Speaker 1: embarrassingly easy thing to do. It is hardly an exaggeration
Speaker 1: to say that when it comes to oversight of the
Speaker 1: application process to become a public charity, nearly anything goes.
Speaker 1: So getting approved as a nonprofit in the US is
Speaker 1: effectively a rubber stamp, and once a charity is set
Speaker 1: up through the IRS, is ultimately up to each state's
Speaker 1: Attorney general's office to prosecute misconduct and like pretty much
Speaker 1: every other government agency in the United States, attorney general's
Speaker 1: offices are oftentimes resource constrained and have limited oversight and
Speaker 1: enforcement capabilities, with only the most obvious and egregious cases
Speaker 1: ever being brought to court. For example, it took the
Speaker 1: California State Attorney General's office over two years of BLM
Speaker 1: Global Network Foundation not filing financial disclosures, the absolute bare
Speaker 1: minimum for a nonprofit for them to serve a delinquency notice.
Speaker 1: There's also just very little media effort dedicated to watching
Speaker 1: the nonprofit sector, and if they are, it's done to
Speaker 1: serve partisan interests. Just one example, but the Washington Post
Speaker 1: David Fahrenholt, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting
Speaker 1: on the Trump Foundation, basically had a beat devoted to
Speaker 1: investigating Trump's financial mismanagement and potential misdeeds from the time
Speaker 1: of his first presidential campaign through the remainder of his presidency.
Speaker 1: The problem I see, though, with sort of this activists
Speaker 1: or activist mindset masquerading around as journalism, is that there
Speaker 1: will undoubtedly be asymmetric focus on certain organizations based on
Speaker 1: certain politically driven motivations, and so otherwise good reporting on
Speaker 1: high profile nonprofits are oftentimes just shrouded in political theater
Speaker 1: headlines like BLM's patrise colors, slam's racist report on organization
Speaker 1: buying six million dollars socle mansion. You know, right wing
Speaker 1: organizations will have no issues amplifying the misdeeds of BLM
Speaker 1: while glossing over the Trump organization's fraudulent practices, while the
Speaker 1: more liberal news outlets will do the exact opposite. And
Speaker 1: I think this problem will only, you know, get worse
Speaker 1: as news outlets become increasingly more aligned with certain ideologies
Speaker 1: or rely on the donations and ownership of the billionaire class.
Speaker 1: This I'll get into more later. But in the cases
Speaker 1: of BLM and Trump, there was a certain political will
Speaker 1: to put resources behind exposing them. But I wonder, and
Speaker 1: maybe we should all kind of wonder, what about the
Speaker 1: cases of nonprofit misconduct where there isn't political will or
Speaker 1: it would be wholly inconvenient to a certain powerful organization
Speaker 1: or individual to investigate how much misconduct actually exists in
Speaker 1: the nonprofit sector. The truth is, we don't really know.
Speaker 1: Based on a research paper documenting fraud and corruption in
Speaker 1: US nonprofit entities quote empirical research on fraud in the
Speaker 1: for profit sector is well developed, aided by the availability
Speaker 1: of centrally compiled US Securities and Exchange Commission data. In comparison,
Speaker 1: research on nonprofit fraud has been limited by a lack
Speaker 1: of readily available centrally compiled data, leading researchers to rely
Speaker 1: on survey data or to undertake exploratory studies that identified
Speaker 1: fraud cases during a specific period. The reality is that
Speaker 1: while nonprofits often receive less scrutiny from the government, the media,
Speaker 1: and the general public, the sector as a whole is
Speaker 1: actually filled with many potential avenues for misconduct and ripe
Speaker 1: with perverse incentive that encourage unsavory behaviors. This, to me,
Speaker 1: is a huge blind spot in most discussions about nonprofits.
Speaker 1: There's this idea of the nonprofit industrial complex, popularized by
Speaker 1: a book called The Revolution will not be funded. This
Speaker 1: idea that because the nonprofit industry is so lucrative, like
Speaker 1: we discussed before, over two point six trillion dollars in
Speaker 1: annual revenue, there will undoubtedly be, as one scholar defined
Speaker 1: it quote, a set of symbiotic relationships that link political
Speaker 1: and financial technologies of state and owning class control with
Speaker 1: surveillance over public political ideology, including an especially emergent progressive
Speaker 1: and leftist social movements. To put it in simple terms,
Speaker 1: the nonprofit sector can and will be used by wealthy,
Speaker 1: powerful interest to surveil and even co opt nascent social
Speaker 1: movements that threaten their wealth and power. So the nonprofit
Speaker 1: industrial complex does not exist to create fundamental change, but
Speaker 1: rather exists to protect its own status and that of
Speaker 1: its patrons, which makes it possible for the ruling class
Speaker 1: to not only contain a revolution, but to shut it
Speaker 1: down altogether. For example, in the case of Black Lives Matter,
Speaker 1: despite huge amounts of grassroots support and engagement, nearly every
Speaker 1: corporation in America was able to co opt the BLM
Speaker 1: slogan without most of them enacting any kind of fundamental
Speaker 1: changes to their business practices, even in cases where said
Speaker 1: corporations employed an exploited, disproportionately black and brown workforce. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at you, Amazon. When BLM first published their website
Speaker 1: back in twenty fifteen, the co founders described themselves as
Speaker 1: quote trained Marxists, but by twenty twenty one they were
Speaker 1: doing Zoom events sponsored by global capitalist boot brand uugh. So,
Speaker 1: looking at the story of the BLM Global Network Foundation.
Speaker 1: It's hard not to assume some significant character flaws of
Speaker 1: its leaders, but it's also not hard to imagine that
Speaker 1: all the money and attention from corporate interests did have
Speaker 1: some effect on their tactics as well. Philosopher Mary Harrington
Speaker 1: wrote recently an unheard magazine quote, people in glasshouses are
Speaker 1: famously advised not to throw stones, And as the progressive
Speaker 1: worldview has become more monolithically elite in class terms, it's
Speaker 1: also lost its antagonism to big business. This is just
Speaker 1: an observation, my observation, but I think the in the
Speaker 1: streets activist leaders of the nineteen sixties civil rights movement
Speaker 1: look very different from the champagne sipping activist leaders of
Speaker 1: the modern BLM era civil rights movement. Right. Just something
Speaker 1: I read recently. Justin Hansford, a Howard University professor, joke
Speaker 1: that having an organization called the Black Lives Matter Global
Speaker 1: Foundation would be akin to having a group in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties call themselves civil rights. Inc Essentially everything today
Speaker 1: has been corporatized. The activists movements used to be so
Speaker 1: much more skeptical of the nonprofits because of its obvious
Speaker 1: ties to money and power. But that distress has seemed
Speaker 1: to all but disappear. Quote. Another example is Planned Parenthood's
Speaker 1: Action Fund, which reinforces and perpetuates the idea that the
Speaker 1: solution to large scale political problems is donating to an
Speaker 1: organization that then hires a lobbyist, as opposed to say,
Speaker 1: building a mass movement capable of occupying Congress or otherwise
Speaker 1: disrupting business as usual until its demands are met. We
Speaker 1: seem to have adopted a kind of leave it up
Speaker 1: to experts mentality. There's a nonprofit to day for basically
Speaker 1: every cause BLM, Planned Parenthood, or the many Ukraine or
Speaker 1: relief funds that have recently popped up, and for the
Speaker 1: most part we just kind of assume that they all
Speaker 1: know what they're doing and have the best interests of
Speaker 1: those they claim to serve in mind. So, for most
Speaker 1: socially conscious folks who want to feel like they are
Speaker 1: contributing positively to society but are also busy living their
Speaker 1: own lives, the logical conclusion is to just give money
Speaker 1: to a nonprofit and let them handle it. But the
Speaker 1: question is, can the interests of the nonprofit industrial complex,
Speaker 1: with its ties to mega foundations funded by corporations and
Speaker 1: the ultra wealthy actually aligned to the interests of the
Speaker 1: people who they claim to serve. Because one has to wonder,
Speaker 1: are these wealthy, powerful people setting up these foundations for
Speaker 1: purely altruistic or humanitarian reasons, or do these foundations serve
Speaker 1: ulterior purposes such as protecting the reputations and projecting the
Speaker 1: power of the people who run them. And perhaps no
Speaker 1: other foundation raises this question more than that of the
Speaker 1: world's largest charitable foundation in the world, the Gates Foundation.
Speaker 1: The world is on the brink of a great scientific achievement.
Speaker 1: A COVID nineteen vaccine will likely be ready by early
Speaker 1: next year. In fact, will probably have more than one
Speaker 1: I'M vaccine ready. These vaccines will allow us to save
Speaker 1: millions of lives. They'll also have another enormous benefit. They'll
Speaker 1: allow us to develop a plan for the world to
Speaker 1: globally eliminate COVID nineteen. That was Bill Gates from September
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty, speaking at an event hosted by the
Speaker 1: who called Accelerating the End of the COVID nineteen pandemic.
Speaker 1: But my question, and the question we should all be asking,
Speaker 1: is how did Bill Gates how did a billionaire in
Speaker 1: Seattle gain so much power over global public health? In
Speaker 1: an article titled with the exact same question, Slate reporter
Speaker 1: Mary Harris interviewed journalist Tim Schwab, who explains, all in all,
Speaker 1: the Gates Foundations spent one point eight billion dollars on
Speaker 1: global public health in twenty twenty alone, but that meant
Speaker 1: there were few checks or balances on what Gates funded
Speaker 1: groups were up to. If you look across global health,
Speaker 1: they're funding everybody. Nobody is more than one degree removed
Speaker 1: from the Gates Foundation, So it's really difficult to avoid
Speaker 1: the foundation's money. And that's also the case for journalists.
Speaker 1: If you're a journalist writing about global health, you might
Speaker 1: end up getting a fellowship or a grant to do
Speaker 1: reporting that's funded by the Gates Foundation. So it's really
Speaker 1: hard to overstate how much influence that gives the foundation.
Speaker 1: I think the Gates Foundation has undoubtedly fundamentally altered the
Speaker 1: image of Bill Gates right in the past, viewed as
Speaker 1: a kind of a monopolistic robber baron when he began
Speaker 1: building his riches at Microsoft, Gates is now seen today
Speaker 1: as this magnanimous humanitarian by a lot of folks, because
Speaker 1: he has bought that image through massive investments funneled through
Speaker 1: his foundation. But I think, to no one's surprise, consistently,
Speaker 1: the Gates Foundation has advocated for this kind of top down,
Speaker 1: arguably neo colonial, interventionalist policies where the so called experts
Speaker 1: from the developed world go into to the developing world
Speaker 1: to once again, quote unquote solve their problems. Schwab continues quote.
Speaker 1: The Gate Foundation is a very top down, technocratic enterprise
Speaker 1: where Bill Gates sees himself as this really smart guy
Speaker 1: with these innovative ideas and technology, and he surrounds himself
Speaker 1: with this elite cadre of highly educated experts, and it's
Speaker 1: his view that from this person Seattle, they can devise
Speaker 1: solutions to fix all the problems of the global poor.
Speaker 1: And that's a very different approach than going out into
Speaker 1: a poor nation or a poor community and talking to
Speaker 1: people and asking them what they need and what they want.
Speaker 1: I've talked about the power of capital in my previous
Speaker 1: breaking point segment, and I think it's very applicable here.
Speaker 1: This idea that in modern America, capital and the interests
Speaker 1: of capital have risen above the American nation and political
Speaker 1: authority is unable to check the power of capital. Right
Speaker 1: through the Gates Foundation, Bill Gates has successfully inserted himself
Speaker 1: at the top of this kind of complex philanthropic empire
Speaker 1: that allows him to have a major impact on policymaking
Speaker 1: regarding numerous pressing global issues, all while getting significant tax
Speaker 1: breaks from the US government. You know, Bill Gates is
Speaker 1: one of the richest people in the world. The idea
Speaker 1: that he's giving away all of his money is just
Speaker 1: not true. In fact, he's getting richer and richer every year.
Speaker 1: So should this really be considered charity? I think my
Speaker 1: point is that there should be more scrutiny of the
Speaker 1: nonprofit sector from all angles. The government needs to do
Speaker 1: more to ensure effective oversight and enforcement. The media should
Speaker 1: do more to dedicate more resources into investigating the nonprofit
Speaker 1: sector beyond just the whims of dredging up fodder for
Speaker 1: political theater or for partisan interests. And I think we
Speaker 1: can do more to follow the money when it comes
Speaker 1: to the nonprofit sector. Who is leading these groups, what
Speaker 1: might be their ulterior motives, How is my donation money
Speaker 1: being spent? But perhaps more important may behoove us to
Speaker 1: examine and think about why activism in America today is
Speaker 1: mostly mediated through the nonprofit industrial complex, and how the
Speaker 1: proliferation of nonprofits and activism has likely shifted and conflated
Speaker 1: America's values and beliefs when it comes to what we
Speaker 1: imagine could activism to be. That is all for me
Speaker 1: this time. I hope you enjoyed today's discussion about the
Speaker 1: dark side of the nonprofit industrial complex. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to know more about this topic and many others, please
Speaker 1: check out my channel fifty one forty nine with James
Speaker 1: Lee on YouTube, where I release weekly videos about topics
Speaker 1: relating to the intersection of business, politics, and society. The
Speaker 1: link will be in the description below, and of course,
Speaker 1: subscribe to Breaking Points and thank you so much for
Speaker 1: your time today. Hi. I'm Maximilian Alvarez. I'm the editor
Speaker 1: in chief of the Real News Network and host of
Speaker 1: the podcast Working People and this is the Art of
Speaker 1: class War. On Breaking Points. Today, we're going to do
Speaker 1: something a little different from the last two segments that
Speaker 1: we published here on Breaking Points, but I assure you
Speaker 1: the subject matter is no less important. I want to
Speaker 1: give everyone a heads up right at the top that
Speaker 1: we will be touching on issues and stories today that
Speaker 1: deal with different forms of abuse, discrimination, harassment, and even suicide.
Speaker 1: And I want to encourage every viewer and listener to
Speaker 1: please use the links we've included in the description for
Speaker 1: this video. If you or someone you know is experiencing
Speaker 1: the kind of distress or is involved in the kind
Speaker 1: of attacks that we'll be talking about today, and even
Speaker 1: if you yourself have managed to avoid experiencing these things firsthand,
Speaker 1: I would also encourage you to check out those links
Speaker 1: as well, because chances are you know someone who has
Speaker 1: not been as fortunate, but you can still do something
Speaker 1: to help. Because what we are talking about today has
Speaker 1: been described repeatedly by specialists, labor leaders, and workers' rights
Speaker 1: advocates as an epidemic, even if we don't treat it
Speaker 1: as such. We're talking today about workplace bullying. First, we
Speaker 1: need to define our terms. We're going to return to
Speaker 1: the term bullying itself by the end of this segment,
Speaker 1: but for now, I am asking you to try as
Speaker 1: hard as you can to set aside whatever prejudices or
Speaker 1: preconceptions you have about this word, and we all have them. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we tend to associate the term bullying with the schoolyard,
Speaker 1: not because that's the only place that bullying happens, mind you,
Speaker 1: but because that's where many of us first encounter, engage in,
Speaker 1: or have to fight off bullying ourselves. But bullying does
Speaker 1: not magically disappear when you graduate from school, and it
Speaker 1: has never ever been a problem that only afflicts school
Speaker 1: age kids and young adults. Anywhere there is a real
Speaker 1: or perceived imbalance of power that can be leveraged by
Speaker 1: one or more people over another, the potential for bullying exists,
Speaker 1: and that very much includes the workplace. Now, there is
Speaker 1: no one, rigidly defined and unanimously accepted definition of workplace bullying,
Speaker 1: and part of that has to do with the ways
Speaker 1: that bullying is circumstantially and legally differentiated from other forms
Speaker 1: of targeted harassment. In fact, while there are some stronger
Speaker 1: and broader laws in particular states, there is currently no
Speaker 1: federal standard defining, let alone outlawing, workplace bullying if the
Speaker 1: case does not involve harassment or discrimination of a member
Speaker 1: of a protected status group based on their race, color, religion, sex,
Speaker 1: national origin, age, or disability. Protections against such targeted harassment
Speaker 1: or discrimination are obviously important, but the sad fact is
Speaker 1: they do not protect the vast majority ofvictims of workplace bullying,
Speaker 1: including members of those protected status groups who are being
Speaker 1: bullied at work but can't prove that they're being singled
Speaker 1: out because of their race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age,
Speaker 1: or disability. So clearly we need to expand our understanding
Speaker 1: of what a hostile work environment looks like and what
Speaker 1: protections working people need and deserve. Again, we don't have
Speaker 1: a unanimously accepted and used definition of workplace bullying, but
Speaker 1: there are many common features in the various definitions. In
Speaker 1: the introduction to her book Surviving Bullies, Queen Bees, and
Speaker 1: Psychopaths in the Workplace, Patricia G. Barnes writes, quote, Workplace
Speaker 1: bullying is not about normal workplace conflict, petty slights, or
Speaker 1: rude behavior. Bullying can be the equivalent of a thousand
Speaker 1: pinpricks that result in a mortal wound. It involves systematic
Speaker 1: and repetitive harassment over a period of time. Typically it
Speaker 1: continues until the target is demoted, fired, or forced to quit.
Speaker 1: Bullying is an intentional abuse of power, usually by a boss,
Speaker 1: sometimes by a group of mobbing co workers. End quote.
Speaker 1: Now another often cited definition comes from the Workplace Bullying Institute,
Speaker 1: which is one of the sources that we link to
Speaker 1: in the show notes. Founded twenty five years ago by
Speaker 1: doctors Ruth and Gary Nami, the Workplace Bullying Institute is
Speaker 1: an invaluable resource that everyone should know and support when
Speaker 1: it comes to workplace bullying. As noted on their website,
Speaker 1: the Institute remains quote the only US organization that aids
Speaker 1: bullied individuals, educates the public and professionals, conducts national scientific
Speaker 1: surveys and research, provides training for unions and systemic solutions
Speaker 1: like the Healthy Workplace System for organizations and employers, and
Speaker 1: advocates for legislation like the Healthy Workplace Bill end quote.
Speaker 1: On their website, the Workplace Bullying Institute defines workplace bullying
Speaker 1: as quote repeated harmful mistreatment of an employee by one
Speaker 1: or more employees. It is abusive conduct that takes the
Speaker 1: form of verbal abuse, physical and nonverbal behaviors that are threatening, intimidating,
Speaker 1: or humiliating, work, interference, or sabotage, or in some combination.
Speaker 1: End quote. Now, if you're like me, then you might
Speaker 1: hear a definition like this and think, well, that can't
Speaker 1: be right. Because that describes shit that I've seen or
Speaker 1: experienced or even participated in at most of the jobs
Speaker 1: that I've had. Okay, then that means we have two
Speaker 1: paths that we can choose to take here. Either, as
Speaker 1: we are so often encouraged to do, we can accept
Speaker 1: this as simply the way things are, that this is
Speaker 1: the best we can do, and these types of issues
Speaker 1: are just a fact of working life, that it's not
Speaker 1: actually that bad and that people need to just get
Speaker 1: over it, get tough, and move on. Or if this
Speaker 1: definition of workplace bullying describes circumstances that most of us
Speaker 1: have witnessed or experienced in different jobs that we've had,
Speaker 1: then we can sit down together and acknowledge that we've
Speaker 1: got a really big problem on our hands. And that
Speaker 1: is certainly the conclusion to draw from a landmark twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one survey which was commissioned by the Workplace Bullying
Speaker 1: Institute and conducted by Zogbie Analytics. The survey of two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifteen adult Americans, including a subset of seven
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty seven employed Americans, was calibrated to be
Speaker 1: demographically representative of the US population writ large in terms
Speaker 1: of factors like race, gender, age, and region. The results
Speaker 1: show what the Workplace Bullying Institute describes as an epidemic
Speaker 1: that can no longer be denied, with forty nine percent
Speaker 1: of adult Americans being affected in some way by workplace bullying,
Speaker 1: which includes those who have experienced it, those who have
Speaker 1: witnessed it, and those who have instigated it. According to
Speaker 1: the survey, thirty percent of adult Americans say they are
Speaker 1: currently being bullied or have experienced bullying at work, and
Speaker 1: that number jumps up to thirty nine percent for the
Speaker 1: currently employed Americans who were surveyed, thirty four percent of
Speaker 1: the adult population say they are unaware that workplace bullying
Speaker 1: is an issue. Twenty three percent say they are aware
Speaker 1: but have no experience with it. For employed Americans, though,
Speaker 1: sixty one one percent are affected by workplace bullying and
Speaker 1: seventy three percent are aware of the problem. That's not
Speaker 1: a small, insignificant problem. That's a lot of the working population.
Speaker 1: And the results also show that instances of bullying have
Speaker 1: actually increased in recent years with the expansion of remote work.
Speaker 1: Even back in two thousand and three, an article for
Speaker 1: the British Medical Journal or BMJ by Brian R. McAvoy
Speaker 1: and John Murtaugh describes workplace bullying as quote a silent epidemic.
Speaker 1: As they write, quote, a deadly combination of economic rationalism,
Speaker 1: increasing competition, downsizing, and the current fashion for tough, dynamic,
Speaker 1: macho management styles have created a culture in which bullying
Speaker 1: can thrive, producing toxic workplaces. Such workplaces perpetuate dysfunction, fear, shame,
Speaker 1: and embarrassment, intimidating those who dare to speak out, and
Speaker 1: nurturing a silent epidemic end quote. Now what's especially and
Speaker 1: heartbreakingly telling about the silent part of this epidemic is
Speaker 1: that on one side, it's an enforced silence, because victims
Speaker 1: are bullied into keeping their mouths shut out of fear
Speaker 1: of more retaliation for speaking out. On the other side,
Speaker 1: this epidemic has been quietly boiling people alive in their
Speaker 1: own microcosmic hells because of the cultural stigma that pushes
Speaker 1: us to think that we are somehow weak or less
Speaker 1: worthy for bringing it up, that people will see us
Speaker 1: differently or think less of us, that we should not
Speaker 1: complain and just deal with it. For so many people,
Speaker 1: for so many years, even to this day, that stigma
Speaker 1: has made us collectively unwilling to acknowledge workplace bowling and
Speaker 1: it's happening to others or ourselves, even when it's happening
Speaker 1: all around us, And yet for being such a prevalent problem,
Speaker 1: it wasn't really until the early nineties that we developed
Speaker 1: a popularly accepted language for discussing the scourge of workplace bullying.
Speaker 1: While it was by no means the first or only
Speaker 1: study to address the subject, Andrea Adams's nineteen ninety two
Speaker 1: book Bullying at Work certainly became one of the most canonical,
Speaker 1: and the response to the testimonies and descriptions of workplace
Speaker 1: bullying in Adams's book was enormous for the time. In
Speaker 1: the days before social media, which has made our mass
Speaker 1: reactions to stuff way more instantaneous and visible, many readers
Speaker 1: saw and heard in those testimonies not some distant clinical
Speaker 1: condition or depictions of exceptional horrors that they could never
Speaker 1: imagine happening too or near them. Instead, what they saw
Speaker 1: was as brutal and shocking as it was unnervingly familiar.
Speaker 1: Many saw, perhaps for the first time, that they were
Speaker 1: not alone in experiencing or witnessing what others were describing
Speaker 1: In Adams's book, and they saw it in human terms
Speaker 1: through the stories of regular people like them, and those
Speaker 1: stories made their own pains and fears and resentments more real,
Speaker 1: less contained to their own heads, more connected to the
Speaker 1: struggle of others, and their once quiet individual pain got
Speaker 1: louder as part of a collective chorus demanding recognition of
Speaker 1: the problem, followed by real solutions. And we still have
Speaker 1: a long way to go to make real progress there.
Speaker 1: That's what I hope to do with the remaining time
Speaker 1: that we have. I want to show you the human
Speaker 1: stakes here, or rather, I don't want to suggest we
Speaker 1: don't already know what and who is at stake here.
Speaker 1: But I think it's safe to say that we slip
Speaker 1: into this state of resignation where we get comfortable with
Speaker 1: putting it out of sight as much as possible. And
Speaker 1: that's understandable. It hurts to look at this stuff. But
Speaker 1: the problem is getting worse and we can't ignore it.
Speaker 1: We can't ignore the fact that increasingly more of us
Speaker 1: are getting viciously ground down and abused in toxic and
Speaker 1: unsafe work environments. But here's the thing, this is a
Speaker 1: fixable problem if we don't look away from the rampant
Speaker 1: pain inflicted by workplace bullying. If we stop judging and
Speaker 1: start looking out for one another, if we have each
Speaker 1: other's backs, if we raise our voices and fight for
Speaker 1: change together, we can fix this. If you are able,
Speaker 1: I want to ask you to join me in looking
Speaker 1: head on at this problem and the disastrous and even
Speaker 1: deadly impacts it can have for victims. One of the
Speaker 1: first things to understand is that bullying can happen anywhere
Speaker 1: to anyone, even in professional sports leagues with the toughest
Speaker 1: guys in the world. Take the high profile case from
Speaker 1: a few years ago a professional offensive lineman Richie Incognito
Speaker 1: and Jonathan Martin when they were both playing for the
Speaker 1: NFL's Miami Dolphins. The sports world was shocked when an
Speaker 1: investigative report released by the NFL showed that Martin was
Speaker 1: subjected to a pattern of harassment on the team at
Speaker 1: the hands of Incognito and in fellow linemen John Jerry
Speaker 1: and Mike Pouncey, including racial slurs, horrifically graphics, sexual threats
Speaker 1: and taunts about Martin's mother and sister, and incessant hazing
Speaker 1: that went well beyond the standard locker room Joshing. While
Speaker 1: Martin was the primary target, the report also detailed routine
Speaker 1: bullying of another player and even an assistant trainer with
Speaker 1: the team. Now, in our culture, professional athletes like Incognito
Speaker 1: and Martin really exist and appear to us as so
Speaker 1: superhumanly different that they almost become less human to us.
Speaker 1: We see them as invincible, both physically and mentally, no
Speaker 1: matter how much heckling online or in person gets hurled
Speaker 1: their way as they brutalize their bodies for our entertainment
Speaker 1: week in week out. But like many of us, they
Speaker 1: too can suffer from emotional and physical distress from a
Speaker 1: pattern of workplace harassment, just like Jonathan Martin did in Miami.
Speaker 1: Martin left the team in October of twenty thirteen and
Speaker 1: checked into a schiatric facility. He officially retired from the
Speaker 1: NFL in twenty fifteen, and made headlines in the following
Speaker 1: years for social media posts that showed he was still
Speaker 1: dealing with severe ailments to his mental health. In a
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one interview with New York Times, Martin said
Speaker 1: that therapy and medication have helped control his depression, anxiety,
Speaker 1: and mood swings, but that he had made the decision
Speaker 1: to donate his brain to CTE research in the future
Speaker 1: to determine if head trauma contributed to the mental health
Speaker 1: struggles that he has lived with. Martin's case was shocking
Speaker 1: for many, but the fact that it got so much
Speaker 1: media attention forced a lot of us to recognize that
Speaker 1: there was perhaps a lot that we didn't know about
Speaker 1: the problem of workplace bullying, what it can look like,
Speaker 1: the people it can affect, and how severe those effects
Speaker 1: can be. Sadly, most instant Stan says of workplace bullying
Speaker 1: don't get that kind of attention, and that has certainly
Speaker 1: been the case, and that has certainly been true in
Speaker 1: the case of Vivian Barrett. Vivian Barrett began working as
Speaker 1: a library technician in the alban o'cun Library and Gallery
Speaker 1: at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine. It was a good job, and Vivian was
Speaker 1: rightly proud of herself to have it, as her parents,
Speaker 1: Beth and Jack Sweeney told reporters for unbc's student newspaper,
Speaker 1: The Retriever Quote, as Vivian found the library and a
Speaker 1: place to work, she got excited about that finding the
Speaker 1: library was really healthy for her and good for her
Speaker 1: end quote. A student at UMBC told reporters that Barrett
Speaker 1: was quote the first trans woman with a career that
Speaker 1: I ever met end quote, and they expressed that they
Speaker 1: really wanted to get to know her better. Unfortunately, tragically
Speaker 1: they were not able to do that. Everything changed in
Speaker 1: the fall of twenty fifteen when the library hired a
Speaker 1: circulation manager by the name of Paula Langley, who became
Speaker 1: Barrett's supervisor. According to a trove of formal grievance filings,
Speaker 1: coworker testimonies, complaints filed with the university by Vivian, and
Speaker 1: posts on her social media, all of which were reviewed
Speaker 1: by the editorial team of the student newspaper, who deserve
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of credit for their reporting. Barrett's situation
Speaker 1: at work deteriorated quickly after her new manager came on
Speaker 1: as Morgan Casey, Grace reeb and Isabel Taylor Wright quote.
Speaker 1: Throughout the following year, Barrett expressed feeling discriminated against by Langley.
Speaker 1: Multiple former staff members report that Langley called Barrett by
Speaker 1: her dead name, the name of a transgender person, the
Speaker 1: name a transgender person is assigned at birth but no
Speaker 1: longer uses after they transition over the intercom at the library,
Speaker 1: and regularly misgendered her in day to day activities. Quote.
Speaker 1: Langley didn't like the fact that Vivian transitioned. She didn't
Speaker 1: agree with that, said Perry Alexander, former AOK Library evening
Speaker 1: and weekend shift supervisor, in a recent interview with The Retriever.
Speaker 1: Langley did everything in her power to clean out Barrett's position,
Speaker 1: he said, beyond misgendering and dead naming Barrett. Former AOK
Speaker 1: Library employees stated that Langley actively removed responsibilities from Barrett
Speaker 1: and would not promote her. Quote. Towards the end of
Speaker 1: her career, Barrett and I had talks about how she
Speaker 1: believed Paula thought she was stupid and how she made
Speaker 1: her feel useless, and talked about how she didn't respect
Speaker 1: her being transgender, said Alexander in a twenty nineteen personal statement.
Speaker 1: Having worked at the AOK Library for forty years before
Speaker 1: retiring in twenty twenty one, he knew the library and
Speaker 1: its staff well, including Barrett. In his twenty nineteen statement,
Speaker 1: Alexander stated Barrett felt quote bullied and discriminated against by Paula,
Speaker 1: and had expressed this to the library administration and campus
Speaker 1: officials end quote. Vivian's cries for help were not heated.
Speaker 1: She worked to build a discrimination case against Langley, all
Speaker 1: while desperately pushing to be transferred to the gallery department,
Speaker 1: where she hoped she could find safe harbor. The transfer
Speaker 1: didn't happen. After hearing that she would not be able
Speaker 1: to transfer departments, Vivian posted a status update on her
Speaker 1: personal Facebook on October twelfth, twenty sixteen, which read, in
Speaker 1: part quote, I have to continue to suffer under a
Speaker 1: psychotic manager who hates me for no apparent reason, but
Speaker 1: it's definitely not discrimination according to the higher upsote. Later
Speaker 1: that same night, Vivian posted another status update. It was
Speaker 1: a suicide note. She was found dead later that night.
Speaker 1: The university did eventually investigate complaints made by Barrett and
Speaker 1: other library employees who filed grievances against Langley, even hiring
Speaker 1: an outside law firm to objectively assess the alleged abuses.
Speaker 1: The conclusion of their assessment was quote that the supervisor
Speaker 1: had not engaged in intentional or malicious conduct toward Vivian,
Speaker 1: nor had she discriminated against Vivian based on her transgender
Speaker 1: identity end quote. Students on campus and members of the
Speaker 1: Justice for viv coalition have questioned the accuracy of the
Speaker 1: university's commission investigation, and they have renewed calls for transparency
Speaker 1: and accountability. Bullying can take many forms, and again I
Speaker 1: stress that it can happen anywhere if the conditions are right.
Speaker 1: In a recent interview that I did at The Real News,
Speaker 1: for instance, I spoke with John Hogseeat, an iron worker
Speaker 1: and one of a number of former employees at G
Speaker 1: and D Integrated, who was laid off in a suspected
Speaker 1: act of retaliation by the company after workers voted to unionize,
Speaker 1: an infuriating story that was recently thankfully covered here at
Speaker 1: Breaking Points. In September of last year, John and a
Speaker 1: supermajority of his co workers at G and D Integrated,
Speaker 1: which is a transportation, logistics, warehousing, and supply chain services
Speaker 1: company in central Illinois, marched on their boss together to
Speaker 1: demand recognition of their union. Their demands were not met. Then,
Speaker 1: workers filed for a union election with the National Labor
Speaker 1: Relations Board and voted overwhelmingly in favor of unionizing with
Speaker 1: the Ironworkers Union in October, and as John details in
Speaker 1: our interview, given the dangerous and high stakes nature of
Speaker 1: the work that he and his coworkers did at G
Speaker 1: and D, their main concern in fighting to unionize was
Speaker 1: workplace safety. Take a listen us us guys. We stick together,
Speaker 1: We look out for each other. It was that's the
Speaker 1: strongest bunch of guys I've ever worked with, and for
Speaker 1: something to for like the safety issues that we had,
Speaker 1: it would be hell to have somebody die over that.
Speaker 1: And they wouldn't. They wouldn't even look at it. They wouldn't,
Speaker 1: they didn't care. And that that was the main thing
Speaker 1: for us going union. And I mean a lot of us.
Speaker 1: When I worked at Caterpillar, there's a lot of us
Speaker 1: two that stuck together, but not not like the guys
Speaker 1: we had here. And that's the main thing for you
Speaker 1: right there, When people stick together like that. You can
Speaker 1: hear in John's voice and you can see in his
Speaker 1: eyes how much that shop floor brotherhood means to him
Speaker 1: and his co workers. They looked out for each other,
Speaker 1: they stuck together, they trusted each other, and they didn't
Speaker 1: want to see anyone get hurt and not be able
Speaker 1: to go home to their families, but management contemptuously waved
Speaker 1: away their concerns and their rights for that matter, almost
Speaker 1: immediately after they made their desire for a union. Known
Speaker 1: workers at gen D Integrated reported retaliation from the company,
Speaker 1: including surveillance, interrogation, and threats of closing down the shop
Speaker 1: in response to the union drive, which is illegal. Since
Speaker 1: that time, workers and union representatives have filed a staggering
Speaker 1: number of unfair labor practice charges against the company. At
Speaker 1: the time of our interview, that number was around one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty and G and D has so far
Speaker 1: denied any wrongdoing on its part. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Retaliation also took the form of what I would call
Speaker 1: bullying from management. Just listen to John here talk about
Speaker 1: the ways that a certain manager would openly discipline workers
Speaker 1: by weaponizing personal information and throwing it out like chum
Speaker 1: to everyone else on the shop floor in an effort
Speaker 1: to isolate and alienate people from one another. I know
Speaker 1: because they told me when I had a little trouble sometime.
Speaker 1: I was drinking a lot and I missed a couple
Speaker 1: days word whatever. But he was like, well, he ain't
Speaker 1: gonna be able to drink like that if he ain't
Speaker 1: working here. You know, it's just he goes out there
Speaker 1: and you know, sly, sly ways of saying personal stuff
Speaker 1: to people, and then just like with uh Evan and
Speaker 1: all them about his medical stuff and all that. It
Speaker 1: just sly ways of saying stuff about people's personal stuff
Speaker 1: that nobody needs to know about. And then he's just
Speaker 1: he's like a really vindictive type of guy. He's if
Speaker 1: he I say it, if he's got a little thing
Speaker 1: for you, he'll start putting like little rumors out and
Speaker 1: stuff like that and then get people talking and then
Speaker 1: you know, he'll he'll say something like he told me
Speaker 1: this about you, and I guess you know, a little
Speaker 1: fight's going. Just stupid. Yeah, yeah, no management should be
Speaker 1: like that. Iron Worker organizer Vince d. Dinado also told
Speaker 1: me that workers at G and D tried to go
Speaker 1: to HR with their concerns and when they did, they
Speaker 1: were told that what they said would be in confidence.
Speaker 1: Then later that same day, the manager was out on
Speaker 1: the floor giving people ship for what they said to
Speaker 1: HR supposedly in confidence. Again, I'm saying this for myself.
Speaker 1: This may not be the word that John or many
Speaker 1: others would use, but I would call that bullying, and
Speaker 1: maybe that word just has taken on too much cultural
Speaker 1: baggage for us to use it, you know, to properly
Speaker 1: communicate the seriousness of what we're talking about here, because
Speaker 1: what we're ultimately talking about with these cases is abuse,
Speaker 1: and it's effect a lot of us. We're talking about people,
Speaker 1: a lot of people, people like you and me, being
Speaker 1: abused at work every day, every shift, even for years,
Speaker 1: without recourse, And that bullying can be done for many
Speaker 1: different reasons, but the methods are often very consistent. You
Speaker 1: are a group of people team up to make life
Speaker 1: hell for someone or so many people below you. You
Speaker 1: humiliate them, you coerce them, you corner them, You make
Speaker 1: them feel like they have nowhere to turn to. You
Speaker 1: make others fear what will happen to them if they
Speaker 1: step in and say something. Maybe you just really don't
Speaker 1: like someone and you want to make them hurt. Maybe
Speaker 1: you want to make sure that they don't advance in
Speaker 1: their career instead of you, or maybe you want to
Speaker 1: keep workers broken and pliable so that you can better
Speaker 1: exploit them. In the case of G and D Integrated SE,
Speaker 1: we see how management abused workers on a daily basis
Speaker 1: to punish them for exercising their right to unionize and
Speaker 1: get a fair contract. And then, after months of torture,
Speaker 1: on Tuesday, March first, twenty twenty two, G and D
Speaker 1: tapped everyone on the shoulder and laid off the vast
Speaker 1: majority of workers at the Morton, Illinois facility in a
Speaker 1: suspected act of retaliation. The iron workers are continuing to
Speaker 1: fight to hold G and D accountable, but things are
Speaker 1: moving slowly through the NLRB. Lastly, I want to tell
Speaker 1: you about a story that is very close to my heart.
Speaker 1: Back in September, for my podcast Working People, in what
Speaker 1: was inarguably the hardest conversation that I've ever recorded, I
Speaker 1: interviewed the family of Evans Seifried, a twenty year dedicated
Speaker 1: worker at an o'hi io Kroger, who, according to a
Speaker 1: lawsuit filed by the family, was bullied by store manager
Speaker 1: Shannon Frazy and Joseph Pigg for months, eventually causing Evan
Speaker 1: to have a transient psychotic break and take his own
Speaker 1: life on March ninth, twenty twenty one. Kroger has refused
Speaker 1: to say much at all publicly or to the Seifried
Speaker 1: family about Evan's case. While the lawsuit is working slowly
Speaker 1: through the courts, and while that lawsuit is unfolding, we
Speaker 1: legally have to qualify these charges as alleged. All I
Speaker 1: will say in that regard is if you are able
Speaker 1: to listen to the whole interview with Evan's mom Linda,
Speaker 1: his dad Ken, and his brother Eric. If you are
Speaker 1: able to, I beg you to listen to them. I
Speaker 1: can't go into all the horrific details of Evan's bullying,
Speaker 1: you know that are laid out in the lawsuit, but
Speaker 1: here's a quick snapshot from Washington Poe reporter Julian Mark
Speaker 1: quote in a lawsuit filed in Hamilton County Court, Evan
Speaker 1: Seifried's family members allege his workplace, a Kroger grocery store
Speaker 1: in Milford, Ohio, is responsible for his suicide, a wrongful
Speaker 1: death that was the result of an alleged six month
Speaker 1: harassment campaign by two of his co workers. The lawsuit
Speaker 1: alleges the co workers sabotage Sifried at work, had people
Speaker 1: stock him outside of his home, and threatened to frame
Speaker 1: him for possessing child pornography. In October twenty twenty, as
Speaker 1: the country remained in the throes of the COVID nineteen pandemic,
Speaker 1: Cifried's life became quote a living hell. At work, the
Speaker 1: lawsuit claims, one of the store's supervisors allegedly began harassing
Speaker 1: Sifried for wearing a face mask at work and highlighted
Speaker 1: the difference in their political beliefs. Some of Seyfried's co
Speaker 1: workers allegedly began calling him Antifa, referring to a loosely
Speaker 1: knit group of far left activists. The supervisor also allegedly
Speaker 1: made several unwanted sexual advances towards Cyfried, which he reported
Speaker 1: with zero recourse. The lawsuit says. Soon, according to the lawsuit,
Speaker 1: the supervisor's harassment turned into sabotage. The lawsuit alleges the
Speaker 1: supervisor would intentionally leave holes in dairy department's schedules, creating
Speaker 1: extra work for Cyfried. Then people began following Seifried home
Speaker 1: from work, the lawsuit says, end quote. Here's how Evans's father,
Speaker 1: Ken described it to me on the podcast. Management's number
Speaker 1: one responsibility when it comes to their employee, above anything else,
Speaker 1: is to create a safe working environment. That's their number
Speaker 1: one responsibility in any organization. In this particular case, here
Speaker 1: not only the McMullan, the CEO and his management team
Speaker 1: not to create a safe working environment. They conspired with
Speaker 1: my son to create a hostile environment that was focused
Speaker 1: on terrorizing him. It was the exact opposite of what
Speaker 1: their responsibility as a management team in any company is.
Speaker 1: They create an environment that targeted him, and they terrorized him.
Speaker 1: I often refer to his sore manager, Sharon Shannon Frasey,
Speaker 1: as a person that had a tollbox of terror. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about that for a minute because
Speaker 1: I want to make real clear with you that this
Speaker 1: is not a lawsuit based on conservative versus liberal, or
Speaker 1: Republican versus Democrat. This is a whistleblower lawsuit. The reason
Speaker 1: they terrorized my son and they wanted him out of
Speaker 1: the company is because he would not accept a hostile
Speaker 1: working environment. Every time they got hostile with them or
Speaker 1: a co worker, he would throw up their red flag.
Speaker 1: He would go to the union, he would go to HR,
Speaker 1: he would go to line management, he would go outside
Speaker 1: the plant, if the store, if he could to get
Speaker 1: attention with the red flags. And they saw that as
Speaker 1: a problem. All the way from the store manager to
Speaker 1: the district manager. They had a person flowing up, throwing
Speaker 1: up too many red flags, and they wanted him gone.
Speaker 1: So this is a whistle blower case. It has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with politics because in this community here, most
Speaker 1: of our supporters in this community are Conservatives. They voted
Speaker 1: for Donald Trump and they are in our camp. They
Speaker 1: are behind our cause. So it has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with politics. That has everything to do with Evan being
Speaker 1: a whistleblower. Evan tried to get help many times, but
Speaker 1: he was failed on every front by the people who
Speaker 1: were supposed to protect him. Kroger Regional management failed him,
Speaker 1: Kroger HR failed him, his union Stewart failed him, and
Speaker 1: because of their failures, he is no longer here and
Speaker 1: his family has a hole in it that can never
Speaker 1: be filled. Evan's story has not gotten the media attention
Speaker 1: it deserves, but what little attention it has received has
Speaker 1: often focused on the detail that his managers allegedly used
Speaker 1: politics to single him out, like calling Evan Antifa for
Speaker 1: strictly masking during COVID, But his family has been very
Speaker 1: clear that this was not about politics. That was just
Speaker 1: a wedge that evans tormentors use to isolate and alienate him,
Speaker 1: and the fact that neighbors and co workers and supporters
Speaker 1: from all sides of the political spectrum have come out
Speaker 1: to support the family and demand justice shows that we
Speaker 1: are fellow workers and neighbors and human beings first we
Speaker 1: are members of political camps. Second, if we remember that always,
Speaker 1: we can make sure that what happened to Evan never
Speaker 1: happens to anyone ever again. The Justice for Evan Coalition,
Speaker 1: a group of family, friends and supporters around the country,
Speaker 1: has fought valiantly to make sure that Evan's name is
Speaker 1: not forgotten, that Kroger is held accountable for his death,
Speaker 1: and that workers everywhere get the protections that they deserve.
Speaker 1: They have been fighting relentlessly to force Kroger executives to
Speaker 1: address Evan's case at next month's annual shareholders meeting, and
Speaker 1: they are asking people to do the same. The coalition
Speaker 1: and Evan's family directly attribute the conditions that led to
Speaker 1: Evan's death to Kroger's relentless pursuit of growth and profit
Speaker 1: under CEO Rodney McMullen, a man whose salary and stock
Speaker 1: options pay him reportedly twenty million dollars a year. They
Speaker 1: say that the fact that the store sales increased under
Speaker 1: Evan's new manager, meant that Kroger was unwilling to do
Speaker 1: anything about the distress that Evan and other workers experienced
Speaker 1: as demands for productivity just kept increasing, and Evan himself
Speaker 1: noted the changes in the company that he was so
Speaker 1: loyal to for so long, and these also these things
Speaker 1: also led to Kroger not stepping in, according to the family,
Speaker 1: to address the complaints that Evan filed complaints of harassment,
Speaker 1: or the complaints that he helped fellow co workers file
Speaker 1: when they were being harassed. And I want to end
Speaker 1: on that final detail because it's important. Evan was a helper.
Speaker 1: He was kind, He loved his family deeply, and he
Speaker 1: was proud of his career, and he took care of
Speaker 1: others as best he could. Evan's family want others to
Speaker 1: know this about him, and so do I, because it's
Speaker 1: important to remember that every single person who experiences workplace
Speaker 1: bullying is or was, a whole human being who is
Speaker 1: so much more than the needless and unjust pain that
Speaker 1: they endured. I want to end then by playing another
Speaker 1: clip from Ken Seifried as he shares with the world
Speaker 1: what he wants us to know about his dear son.
Speaker 1: He was working at Kroger at the time. He wanted
Speaker 1: to move back at his own apartment, so he was
Speaker 1: obviously old enough to do that, and he did it,
Speaker 1: and he survived living on his own successfully to a
Speaker 1: point where in his years that he spent at Kroger,
Speaker 1: he was able to get his own home. He was
Speaker 1: financed it, got it approved, got it on his own,
Speaker 1: and took over home ownership. And he was very proud
Speaker 1: of that. That he was working for a company for
Speaker 1: at that time for ten years, was proud of that.
Speaker 1: He was proud of being able to afford and have
Speaker 1: his own home. But what I would really like everybody
Speaker 1: to know about Evan is, particularly through this COVID period,
Speaker 1: he took care of mom and dad. He did everything
Speaker 1: for us. He did our shopping when we needed it.
Speaker 1: He visited us every week. He talked to his mom,
Speaker 1: if not every day, it seemed like every day for
Speaker 1: hours at a time. He talked to his dad a
Speaker 1: couple of times a week. He was there for us. Eric,
Speaker 1: He's the perfect word for Evan. Evan was kind, but
Speaker 1: he was selfless. He put everything and everyone out of himself,
Speaker 1: particularly his parents and his brother I couldn't think of
Speaker 1: a more giving, kind person that didn't have a harmful
Speaker 1: bone in his body that I don't think he's ever
Speaker 1: been in a fight in his life that deserved this
Speaker 1: kind of treatment that we're going to talk about later.
Speaker 1: It hurts to Evan Ciphered and Vivian Barrett wherever you are,
Speaker 1: to their families, to John hog Set and his family,
Speaker 1: to Jonathan Martin and his family, and to everyone out
Speaker 1: there who is suffering or who has suffered at work.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. You didn't deserve this. You don't deserve this.
Speaker 1: We see you, We're with you, we love you, we
Speaker 1: won't forget you, and we will fight for you because
Speaker 1: we have to fight. We have no choice but to fight.
Speaker 1: We cannot and must not accept what is fundamentally unacceptable.
Speaker 1: Thank you for watching this segment with breaking points, and
Speaker 1: be sure to subscribe to my news outlet, The Real News,
Speaker 1: with links in the show description. See you soon for
Speaker 1: the next edition of the Art of Class War. Take
Speaker 1: care of yourselves, take care of each other. Solidarity Forever