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Speaker 1: it is a bit of a banner day here at
Speaker 1: Breaking Points because we have live in studio a member
Speaker 1: of Congress, Congressman Rocano, welcome back to the show card
Speaker 1: to see you, sir, well monitor to be back on.
Speaker 1: I need to see how this happens. That's a pretty
Speaker 1: cool tech. Yeah, being on set here, a lot of
Speaker 1: go er don't give away too many of the secrets,
Speaker 1: the trade secrets, that's right. Yeah, So you had an
Speaker 1: op ed that caught both of our attentions to go
Speaker 1: and put this up on the screen. This was in
Speaker 1: the New York Times, Carson Khana taking aim at Joe
Speaker 1: Biden's inflation policies. The headline here is there is way
Speaker 1: more Biden can do to lower prices. And you don't
Speaker 1: just criticize. You have some specific ideas here that the
Speaker 1: government could enact, and that the government is basically the
Speaker 1: only actor who could take charge and have some impact
Speaker 1: both on gas prices and food prices. Just lay on
Speaker 1: the case that you're making here, Carsman, Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: at a high level, we need an all out mobilization,
Speaker 1: not just ad hoc initiatives that are reactive to headlines.
Speaker 1: Here's what I say on gas prices. The government could
Speaker 1: actually buy up oil at a reasonably cheap price and
Speaker 1: then sell it back. Now oil's at let's say, one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifteen bucks. People say, well, what if it
Speaker 1: goes down to one hundred and five. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's going to go down, but fine, the government takes
Speaker 1: a loss over the next three months, it's much less
Speaker 1: of a loss than what we're giving Ukraine. On the
Speaker 1: flip side, you could actually prevent gas from going to
Speaker 1: six bucks. So now I'm not saying do this all
Speaker 1: the time, but in an emergency, do this. You can
Speaker 1: do the same thing with fuel prices. Those are food prices.
Speaker 1: Those are two concrete suggestions, right, And this is this
Speaker 1: is in price fixing. This is actually straight up within
Speaker 1: the executive authority. I mean, look, Congressman, here's the question.
Speaker 1: We talked about this for months here. We've talked about
Speaker 1: that SBR, We've talked about the meat packing industry, agriculture,
Speaker 1: the executive action we see today talking about solar tariffs,
Speaker 1: and yet we don't see that executive action whenever it
Speaker 1: comes to the basic bread and butter. So you have
Speaker 1: more visibility far than us. Why is the administration not
Speaker 1: doing any of these things? Ager? I think that there's
Speaker 1: this concern that you're intervening with the market and what
Speaker 1: precedent are you setting. But the reality is people don't
Speaker 1: want solutions that are a year out or two years out.
Speaker 1: They want to know, how are you going to lower
Speaker 1: the price of gas? How are you going to lower
Speaker 1: the price of food? And we have a mechanism actually
Speaker 1: for doing that. In cases of emergency where a huge purchaser,
Speaker 1: we can purchase this stuff and sell it back at
Speaker 1: a cheap price. I mean, commodity traders do it, but
Speaker 1: they do it at a profit. They do it the
Speaker 1: other way, and so the government can do it. So
Speaker 1: at least acknowledge the government could do it. Now, you
Speaker 1: could say we aren't going to do it. But here's
Speaker 1: what you can't say, Well, I'll leave it to the FED.
Speaker 1: You know, the government. The president's the most powerful person
Speaker 1: in the world. They want to see the president and
Speaker 1: the administration act. Anyone can get elected and say, okay,
Speaker 1: I want the independence of the Fed. Okay, fine, it's
Speaker 1: different than Trump. But you don't get elected to say
Speaker 1: I'm going to respect the independence of agencies. You get
Speaker 1: elected to solve problems. Right, No, I think that's well said.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not every day that a critique from
Speaker 1: a member of Congress from the left is published in
Speaker 1: the pages of the New York Times. What did the
Speaker 1: White House have to say about this? Did they reach
Speaker 1: out to you? Have you seen any receptivity to the ideas?
Speaker 1: They did? They were polite. I got to talk to
Speaker 1: everyone and they said, oh, innovative ideas, But I don't
Speaker 1: care whether I don't need a compliment. I back, you know,
Speaker 1: I want them to act and at the very least
Speaker 1: direct your agencies. Look to direct the Commodity Future Trading
Speaker 1: Commission to do an analysis. They could do it in
Speaker 1: one week and what the impact would be of having
Speaker 1: the government intervene by having purchases in food or fuel markets.
Speaker 1: And then, you know, the surprising thing is in the Congress,
Speaker 1: I've had frontliners moderates actually come up to me and say,
Speaker 1: you know, you're right, We've got to do something. I
Speaker 1: don't agree with all the ideas fifty percent I agree with,
Speaker 1: but you're absolutely right that we have to acknowledge the
Speaker 1: pain and we have to do something bolder. So you
Speaker 1: have this odd alliance that the progressives agree with me
Speaker 1: going on there. Yeah, well, frontliners, that's fine as long
Speaker 1: as something gets done. I mean, I think my question
Speaker 1: is you probably see this your district. What's gas in
Speaker 1: your district post six fifty something like that where you're from.
Speaker 1: That's nuts. I mean here in DC, the national average
Speaker 1: we're all closing on five dollars a gallan. I don't
Speaker 1: understand why there aren't more Democratic members of Congress who
Speaker 1: are willing to come out and say there is something
Speaker 1: that needs to be done. Is there a reluctance amongst
Speaker 1: your colleagues in order to criticize the administration on this front?
Speaker 1: Because we just very rare, That's why you're here. Read
Speaker 1: very rarely see descent and even willingness to engage in
Speaker 1: descent in good faith. Sure, I mean there's always a
Speaker 1: reluctance to criticize the president of your own party. You
Speaker 1: want to be in good standing with the president of
Speaker 1: your own party. But here I think that my criticism
Speaker 1: was one with ideas. I wasn't just saying, Okay, you're
Speaker 1: not doing enough. I was saying, here are things you
Speaker 1: could do. And I fundamentally think it will be a
Speaker 1: disaster in November if we aren't seen every day between
Speaker 1: now in November saying we're going to do these things
Speaker 1: to lower prices. Now, look, I've been the biggest proponent
Speaker 1: on renewable energy and renewable energy spending. That's not going
Speaker 1: to do stuff in August or September at the pump
Speaker 1: speak a little bit more to that. In terms of
Speaker 1: the political landscape, there are some competing analyses I would
Speaker 1: say about why President Biden's approval rating has fallen so
Speaker 1: far the group that age demographic with which he's seen
Speaker 1: the greatest decline in terms of his approval rating as
Speaker 1: young people. I mean, at the beginning of the administration,
Speaker 1: young people were the most enthusiastic about Biden. Now he
Speaker 1: has his lowest ratings with young people. What do you
Speaker 1: think has happened? What are the failures that have led
Speaker 1: to this place? What are the American people feeling that
Speaker 1: has led them to conclude like this is not getting
Speaker 1: it done for us. Well, one, I'll give him some
Speaker 1: benefit of the doubt, and that he's genuinely had a
Speaker 1: tough hand. I mean, when you have a pandemic, when
Speaker 1: you have inflation, that's tough for any president, and so
Speaker 1: to have high approval numbers would be hard. But here's
Speaker 1: where I would say he could do more. He could
Speaker 1: be more bold, he could be more energetic, he could
Speaker 1: be more imaginative, he could be more out of the box,
Speaker 1: and he could look like he's fighting every day and
Speaker 1: decisive on some issues. I mean, there's no reason we
Speaker 1: shouldn't have forgiven the student debt, there's no reason that
Speaker 1: we couldn't have been out there and have gotten some
Speaker 1: deal on climate by now there's no reason why every
Speaker 1: day he shouldn't be pushing and fighting on reducing prices.
Speaker 1: So I just think there needs to be more energy decisiveness,
Speaker 1: creativity out of the administration. I'm not saying that's going
Speaker 1: to get you up to fifty percent, but I think
Speaker 1: that's what people want to say. One other thing, I
Speaker 1: had a question I had for you, as someone who
Speaker 1: does care a lot about the climate crisis, as I
Speaker 1: do as well, what do you think that the landscape
Speaker 1: looks like now in terms of climate action? Because you have,
Speaker 1: first of all, gas extremely expensive, and you have, of
Speaker 1: course the war in Ukraine and the fact that we've
Speaker 1: cut off access to Russian oil, and so there's this desire. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's get Saudi to pump more, Let's maybe do a
Speaker 1: deal with Venezuela. It's totally open to let's try to
Speaker 1: get the Iranians back in the system as well. But
Speaker 1: what does all of that mean in terms of the
Speaker 1: medium to longer term prospects of moving off of fossil fuel.
Speaker 1: I think medium to longer term is right. I think
Speaker 1: what we can say is, here's our climate plan, and
Speaker 1: that's going to lower your gas prices tomorrow. Because people say,
Speaker 1: come on, tell us the truth. So we should have
Speaker 1: a short term plan on gas prices. Then we should
Speaker 1: say look long term for price stability, long term to
Speaker 1: defeat Russia, Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, we need to have
Speaker 1: an alternative. If you want the oil to be worth less,
Speaker 1: their country is to have less value, then you need
Speaker 1: to have an alternative. And so a moonshot in renewable
Speaker 1: energy is in our national security. It's there for long
Speaker 1: term price stability. And I think people would get that.
Speaker 1: Where they get upset is when you have someone saying, well,
Speaker 1: they'll get an electric vehicle, and they're like, come on,
Speaker 1: three percent or something of people at electric vehicles and
Speaker 1: I'm paying too much at the pump. So, by the way,
Speaker 1: you can't get them because of the chip ish. I
Speaker 1: was going to say, I'll by the way and buy
Speaker 1: it if you wanted to. Well, it's the chip issue.
Speaker 1: It's the fact that we're not mining enough lithium or cobalt.
Speaker 1: We're not processing that here. We're totally dependent on China
Speaker 1: and Australia in terms of that production. That's, by the way,
Speaker 1: one thing that I think could bring this country together
Speaker 1: in terms of where we have common ground, bring production
Speaker 1: beast to this country, have processing of critical materials in
Speaker 1: this country. I mean yeah, but then how does the
Speaker 1: solar tariff exclusion go through when clearly someone in the
Speaker 1: administration is listening to somebody, right, because you have an
Speaker 1: executive action that goes through an extraordinary action. I mean
Speaker 1: some people called it illegal, basically circumventing a congressional law
Speaker 1: that was passed. How does that go through? And not
Speaker 1: a single one of these things goes through. I mean,
Speaker 1: the baby formula one that you point to is extraordinary.
Speaker 1: It took I mean, the administration admitted they've known about
Speaker 1: this since April, So why did it take until the
Speaker 1: end of May. I just feel a tremendous sense of
Speaker 1: malaise and yet some action on some issues which I
Speaker 1: think are extraordinarily detrimental to production. Can you square us that?
Speaker 1: How does it work in the White House? Because you're
Speaker 1: going to talk to them anymore than especially our audience,
Speaker 1: A lot of people ask that question. Well, we disagree
Speaker 1: on the solar point, and I think they had to
Speaker 1: do that, and they combined it with the defense production.
Speaker 1: But I just want to be sure, but the defense
Speaker 1: production should be fully funded, and even the baby formula,
Speaker 1: they could be doing a lot more. Look, they're flying
Speaker 1: things to planes to transport the baby formula, but if
Speaker 1: you notice, they're not actually buying the baby formula. They
Speaker 1: could actually buy the baby formula. They could tell the
Speaker 1: FDA if it's safe enough for European babies, it's safe
Speaker 1: enough for American babies. They haven't done that. So I
Speaker 1: think that this is my critique of the administration. I'll
Speaker 1: probably get calls after this, and that is that they're
Speaker 1: too caught. There's too much caution. They're not willing to
Speaker 1: think fully out of the box enough in a crisis. Look,
Speaker 1: Herbert Hoover had a lot of the ideas that FDR
Speaker 1: actually took. FDR just came and said, we're going to
Speaker 1: do it ten times bigger, and we're going to try
Speaker 1: stuff and I don't care if it fails, We'll try
Speaker 1: something else. And I think in a crisis, you need
Speaker 1: that approach, and that's that's what I've been pushing them for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it doesn't matter, but I'm curious, do you think
Speaker 1: that that cautiousness comes from an ideological predisposition. I mean, Biden,
Speaker 1: throughout his very long career in Washington has always tried
Speaker 1: to locate himself in the center of whatever the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party spectrum is. Or do you think it comes from
Speaker 1: a fear of, oh, if we do too much with
Speaker 1: the government, that's going to give the Republicans a talking point,
Speaker 1: so like sort of a political fear calculus versus an
Speaker 1: actual ideological reluctance to use the powers of the federal government.
Speaker 1: I think it comes from an ideological bias of neoliberalism.
Speaker 1: And I throw that brought out, meaning that there's just
Speaker 1: been this view that let markets do their thing and
Speaker 1: don't interfere, and it means don't interfere when it comes
Speaker 1: to production. I disagree. The government ought to be helping
Speaker 1: make sure we have plants and production here in partnership
Speaker 1: with the private sector. And it says, let the prices
Speaker 1: go up and down. The government shrant get in the
Speaker 1: business of buying. I have never met a constituent in
Speaker 1: my district who says I am concerned whether the government's
Speaker 1: going to do too much or too little on prices.
Speaker 1: You know what, they say, bring the prices down, and
Speaker 1: so I agree we shouldn't have price controls, but we
Speaker 1: are so reluctant to have the government play a decisive role,
Speaker 1: and that's I think what makes people cautious. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of economists friends of mine who called me
Speaker 1: up and disagreed with this piece. One person said, who
Speaker 1: liked my books, that this isn't one of your better works.
Speaker 1: So you know, and I'm my guess, is there a
Speaker 1: hundred of those folks who have the president's heir. So
Speaker 1: here's the point, though, the president of the guts to
Speaker 1: overrule the generals in Afghanistan. I supported the president. I
Speaker 1: think that was a courageous decision. I am non Monday
Speaker 1: morning quarterback. Could it have been done slightly better? Sure,
Speaker 1: but anyone can say that that was gutsy. Well, does
Speaker 1: he have the guts to overrule the conventional economists? Actually
Speaker 1: that's harder almost than the generals, But that's what we
Speaker 1: need in this country. Someone is going to be decisive
Speaker 1: on government intervention where it comes to helping the working
Speaker 1: in middle class. Yeah, well, it's harder because, as you
Speaker 1: pointed out, he has an ideological predisposition to not do that.
Speaker 1: Whereas on afghanistanis foreign policy is the real mixed bag.
Speaker 1: Over the course of his career, but he had some
Speaker 1: of the right instincts even under the Obama administration. It's
Speaker 1: really helpful to get some insight from you as to
Speaker 1: how these debates are unfolding. Also very interesting that there's
Speaker 1: this sort of weird horseshoe between the centrists who are
Speaker 1: facing re election doom and progressives who were saying, come on,
Speaker 1: let's get this thing together. So really appreciate you taking
Speaker 1: the time to stop by. I thank thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: appreciate for another show. Thank you Biden and open war
Speaker 1: of words with Elon Musk. After Elon Musk said he's
Speaker 1: going to be cutting some jobs over at TESLA, let's
Speaker 1: take a listen to what Biden had to say in reaction.
Speaker 1: Of course, what do you say, Elon Musk? Then his
Speaker 1: feeling about the economy. JB. Diamond has said similar things. Well,
Speaker 1: let me tell you well, Elon Musk is talking about
Speaker 1: that Ford is increasing their investment overwhelmingly. I think Ford
Speaker 1: is increasing investment in building new electric vehicles six thousand
Speaker 1: new employees union employees. I might add in the Midwest,
Speaker 1: the former Chrysler corporations still ONTI they are also making
Speaker 1: similar investments in electric vehicles. Intel is adding twenty thousand
Speaker 1: new jobs or making computer chips, so, you know, lots
Speaker 1: of luck on his trip to the moon. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't. I mean, okay, first of all, it's mars.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm curiously read the shade personally, I'm
Speaker 1: curious what you think, because, honestly, I mean, Elon's prognosis
Speaker 1: was with this up there on the screen, he said
Speaker 1: he's going to cut ten percent of its salaried workforce
Speaker 1: over concerns about the global economy following a hiring spree.
Speaker 1: That seems entirely reasonable. I mean, given the fact that
Speaker 1: we see what the macroeconomic outlook is. Actually just looked
Speaker 1: at some survey data, majority of Americans believe that they
Speaker 1: are living in a recession right now, including both Democrats
Speaker 1: and Republicans. So even with the partisans split, most people
Speaker 1: feel as if they are living already in a recession,
Speaker 1: which is obviously going to have a massive impact on
Speaker 1: consumer spending. And we already see consumer spending going down
Speaker 1: in Target and gap in Walmart. I mean, evs are
Speaker 1: the definition of a luxury good, so it makes sense
Speaker 1: that you would see a decline in sales there too.
Speaker 1: This really smacks of poor management though, because they hired,
Speaker 1: they increased their headcount by forty five percent boom during
Speaker 1: the pandemic. And we know also, I mean electric vehicle demand,
Speaker 1: we covered how it continues to go up. It's up
Speaker 1: by three hundred percent. So it makes a lot more
Speaker 1: sense to me, is you know, Ford and Chrysler are
Speaker 1: these other companies that are adding capacity. And so it
Speaker 1: seems like he went on like a wild hiring spree
Speaker 1: and now turned around and like cut all those employees loose,
Speaker 1: which I also would say, a couple this with that
Speaker 1: memo that he sent out that was aggressively like get
Speaker 1: your asses back in the office. Yeah, these are all
Speaker 1: good reasons why you should have a union, why there
Speaker 1: should be worker representation, and it shouldn't all be subject
Speaker 1: to the whims of one billionaire and his quote unquote
Speaker 1: gut feeling about the economy here. So yeah, I was
Speaker 1: I was here for for Biden's commons. I enjoy it,
Speaker 1: but he got it wrong. At least say it's good
Speaker 1: to Mars. That's whatever. It doesn't actually matter. I mean
Speaker 1: my point being, I think I do think though that
Speaker 1: Biden's kind of defensiveness on this, I mean he needs
Speaker 1: a better answer, because it's not he's not wrong that
Speaker 1: people those car companies aren't investing in evs, but I'd
Speaker 1: be certain that they're cutting their sales projections. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no way that anybody who relies on consumer spending,
Speaker 1: especially even in the EV marketplace. I mean, these are
Speaker 1: expensive cars, like most people cannot afford these cars, and
Speaker 1: even with the forty five hundred dollars tax credit that
Speaker 1: exists in place, you're still looking at what a fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars investment minimum. On the other hand, though, you
Speaker 1: have gas prices that are through the roof, so that
Speaker 1: inherently makes it so it's gonna, you know, increase the
Speaker 1: market and massive and uh incentive for people to go
Speaker 1: in the direction of electric vehicles. And also people who
Speaker 1: are at that end of the spectrum who are looking
Speaker 1: at electric vehicles are gonna are going to be the
Speaker 1: ones that are doing Okay, you know what, I'd bet
Speaker 1: on plug in hybrids. I think that's gonna be the
Speaker 1: big new thing. You think, so, yeah, I do, well,
Speaker 1: just because you know, some people want gas flexibility and
Speaker 1: they will be able to drive mostly on a lite.
Speaker 1: People are concerned about the range of electric vehicles, Like,
Speaker 1: am I good? Am I going to have to like
Speaker 1: hang out somewhere for twelve hours? Well, my vehicle charge ultimately.
Speaker 1: But yeah, again, my takeaway is it's good to have
Speaker 1: unions that way, that workers are at the table and
Speaker 1: not just like casually brought in and then casually like
Speaker 1: dispatched with a year later. Yeah, I mean, it does
Speaker 1: suck you ten percent if you aggressively expand given the demand.
Speaker 1: I do think the impetus behind it, though, I mean
Speaker 1: in terms of I don't think. I think anybody who
Speaker 1: is banking on the same level consumer demand and consumer
Speaker 1: sentiment over the last two years is absolutely foolish from
Speaker 1: a business point of view, And I do think that
Speaker 1: the President should acknowledge something like that. All right, guys,
Speaker 1: New York Times take it a little bit of heat
Speaker 1: getting dragged a bit online for their latest article. A
Speaker 1: go ahad and throw this tweet up on the screen
Speaker 1: the commentary here. All right. So the New York Times
Speaker 1: article says their solution to the housing crisis living with
Speaker 1: strangers Thrown together by New York City's brutal housing market.
Speaker 1: These roommates find a way to get by even enclosed Carters.
Speaker 1: The commentary here from Kevin Allman is The New York
Speaker 1: Times discovers roommates. Yeah, and this is what happens, Sager,
Speaker 1: when you do not have any working class people, yes,
Speaker 1: amongst your rank and file, that you would think that
Speaker 1: roommates with some sort of like new modern crazy invention, when,
Speaker 1: of course, especially in New York City, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a time honored tradition exactly. So what is their
Speaker 1: contention here? I mean, whenever we look through this that
Speaker 1: people find each other in unique ways online to live together.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, any person who's ever moved to an
Speaker 1: urban area knows that this is how it goes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Especially they're like pointing to the fact that people have
Speaker 1: like curtains and stuff in their living rooms. I've visited
Speaker 1: friends in New York who there's like a whole scheme there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of like fake walls. You know, my roommates when I
Speaker 1: first moved to DC back you know, a long time
Speaker 1: ago on Craigs. Yeah, that's very common. I still know
Speaker 1: people who do that. Yeah. Facebook now apparently there's like
Speaker 1: all these Facebook Yeah, people will be like, Hi, I'm
Speaker 1: looking for a roommate. There's like these big groups of
Speaker 1: like forty fifty thousand people or whatever, and everybody's always
Speaker 1: talking within there. I mean, whenever I graduate from college
Speaker 1: and do the same thing, I was like, hey, is
Speaker 1: anybody moving to the same area that I am. Someone
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, so I didn't even know a guy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just move in. So my confession about this article though,
Speaker 1: is that I actually liked it, okay, and I went
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's very VOYI it's all kinds of different
Speaker 1: people and like a little bit about their stories and
Speaker 1: then their living spaces, which is always interesting to see
Speaker 1: inside people's apartments and get like a little bit of
Speaker 1: a peak into their lives. It reminded me of the
Speaker 1: like humans of New York photography, just showing different people,
Speaker 1: and like, that's what's so great about New York and
Speaker 1: why I loved living there when I did live there,
Speaker 1: is just the massive variety of people, all walks of life,
Speaker 1: all different ethnicities, backgrounds, doing different stuff, the amount of
Speaker 1: creative energy people doing you know, weird stuff you never
Speaker 1: think of thrown together in the city in this instance,
Speaker 1: and tight quarters. So the actual, like the article itself,
Speaker 1: I kind of enjoyed looking through, just because that's always
Speaker 1: humans are interesting, right. The framing of it like it
Speaker 1: was some new and novel, crazy idea to have roommates
Speaker 1: was just it was a little suthing people's new thing roommates, Like,
Speaker 1: come on, I bet you can go back to the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties if people went classify. I mean people
Speaker 1: have had anyway, these people are out of touch. We
Speaker 1: have some new comments that are pretty interesting from Alexandria
Speaker 1: Cassio Cortes regarding the term LATINX. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: put this tweet up on the screen that says, for media,
Speaker 1: I aoc blast fellow Democrats for resisting term LATINX. Quote
Speaker 1: not about your reelection prospects. I think this was from
Speaker 1: an Instagram live that she did, and in it here's
Speaker 1: the full quote she says. I also have a mini
Speaker 1: rant about this because there are some politicians, including Democratic politicians,
Speaker 1: that rail against the term LATINX, and they're like, this
Speaker 1: is so bad, this is so bad for the party,
Speaker 1: like blah blah blah. And it's almost like it hasn't
Speaker 1: struck some of these folks that another person's identity is
Speaker 1: not about your reelection prospects. I have a lot of
Speaker 1: thoughts about this first and foremost. I just can't imagine
Speaker 1: this being like the hill that you die. Oh yeah, right,
Speaker 1: I mean first and foremost. Ye, I can imagine lots
Speaker 1: of things that are worthy hills to die. I support
Speaker 1: there plenty of things that are not particularly popular that
Speaker 1: I'm not going to back down off of because they
Speaker 1: are policy things that I think would make a difference
Speaker 1: for the country and in people's lives. And then it's
Speaker 1: your duty to make the case and persuade people. Some
Speaker 1: hangover up over this weird academic language that is thoroughly
Speaker 1: rejected by the country, including by people who are in
Speaker 1: the Hispanic community. Only two percent of Hispanic respondents actually
Speaker 1: use the term themselves, Like, why is this the thing
Speaker 1: that you are going to go to the mat over?
Speaker 1: And part of me Sager wanted to be like, you know,
Speaker 1: she represents this like very blue district. It's not going
Speaker 1: to hurt her there, So if she wants to like
Speaker 1: lean into this, then whatever. But the problem is she's
Speaker 1: such a representative of the broader left movement that what
Speaker 1: she says in the language that she uses has an
Speaker 1: impact on how the left of the country is portrayed
Speaker 1: and perceived by most of the nations. So with Bernie
Speaker 1: you had someone who, you know, very intentionally used language
Speaker 1: that was extremely accessible, that had a lot of resonance
Speaker 1: not just with the left, but truly sort of across
Speaker 1: ideological That's why he's still one of the most popular
Speaker 1: politicians in the entire country. With AOC, she really has
Speaker 1: made it her brand to lean into this sort of
Speaker 1: niche academic language that is like intentionally off putting and
Speaker 1: has the impact of making your entire political project less popular.
Speaker 1: I just don't understand why you would want to do that.
Speaker 1: I don't get it either. I always think, you know,
Speaker 1: Bernie had a great ad in twenty sixteen, the America Ad.
Speaker 1: It was like full of American flag, fantastic, no way
Speaker 1: ilan omar or maybe she would, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I don't think that her or AOC would ever appear
Speaker 1: in an ad like that because like, oh, it supports
Speaker 1: imperialism or some of you know, and they'll make up
Speaker 1: a bunch of other words that go along with it.
Speaker 1: Even the justification, I mean is what are you saying,
Speaker 1: So you're saying that the term LATINX is the best term? Why?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the other thing. What's your case for that.
Speaker 1: Your case is that gender's fluid language is few fluid,
Speaker 1: and I think people right now are using e as German,
Speaker 1: gender neutral in or to be inclusive as possible. We
Speaker 1: don't have to make drama over it. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: you're the one who's making the drama over it. So
Speaker 1: you're saying that it's not inclusive. But then people who
Speaker 1: are actually Latino think that it's off putting and weird,
Speaker 1: and they call themselves Latino. So then are you accusing
Speaker 1: them of like internalized sexism or racist? See how far
Speaker 1: we can go down the rabbit hole. I think about, honestly,
Speaker 1: one of those guys that we talked about on the show,
Speaker 1: Uvaldi Dad who Latino. He lost one of his kids
Speaker 1: in the shooting and people were attacking him for shit
Speaker 1: posting Kyle Rittenhouse memes like a year earlier. How do
Speaker 1: you think we got to a point where a some
Speaker 1: probably I know nothing about this man. I'm just going
Speaker 1: to make an assumption based upon the demographics of the region,
Speaker 1: but a very likely like multi generational Mexican American with
Speaker 1: roots in the area that I'm just again speaking generally
Speaker 1: about Evaldine. What I know about that region of South Texas.
Speaker 1: How did that person become a Republican and start doing this?
Speaker 1: I'm going to venture to say that it probably has
Speaker 1: a lot to do with something like this. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: here's the thing is, you know, how you speak, I
Speaker 1: think depends a lot on what it is you're engagedent.
Speaker 1: So what I mean by that is, you know, for
Speaker 1: an activist, for someone who's at like the bleeding edge
Speaker 1: of cultural chain, they're trying to push the languages. Okay,
Speaker 1: I understand, like language does matter and have an impact,
Speaker 1: and if that's your project, that's fine. The problem is
Speaker 1: that AOC's project for herself is to lean into this
Speaker 1: sort of like niche academic language, you know, very sort
Speaker 1: of like you know, she has a real following and
Speaker 1: a lot of power, and you know, is very sort
Speaker 1: of like solidly gran grounded in that academic language which
Speaker 1: is not readily accessible to the masses. That's her project
Speaker 1: for herself. The problem is that it doesn't stay there
Speaker 1: because she is such an emblem of the left movement,
Speaker 1: so it has leader of our effects. And there's this
Speaker 1: instinct on the left to almost like posture as being
Speaker 1: the most radical or the most niche, the most isolated
Speaker 1: from the mainstream, which, okay, if that's just like your thing,
Speaker 1: I guess whatever. But if you're actually trying to build
Speaker 1: political power and take the left from being just a
Speaker 1: niche constituency to a broader, actual political movement that could
Speaker 1: you do something in the country, then this is not
Speaker 1: the way ultimately to go about it. So anyway, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just another little interesting window into how she wants
Speaker 1: to position herself, and ultimately I saw somebody make this
Speaker 1: point on Twitter, like this is case in point why
Speaker 1: she will never be the successor to Bernie, why she
Speaker 1: will never be in position to win a national election.
Speaker 1: You know, even I think to win statewide in New York,
Speaker 1: as blue as state as that is, I think would
Speaker 1: be difficult because she likes to put herself on the
Speaker 1: side of not even issue but language that doesn't connect
Speaker 1: with a broad majority of Americans. Yeah, it's funny because
Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer definitely used to be afraid that she was.
Speaker 1: He would kick her ass. I think he's still I
Speaker 1: think he still is afraid because I mean, he's probably
Speaker 1: doesn't want to deal with it, but even if he did,
Speaker 1: he would kick her ass. In New York primary there's
Speaker 1: no way she's not going to get any votes upstate
Speaker 1: in New York. I mean even then in New York
Speaker 1: City maybe, I mean the national brand in icon that
Speaker 1: she was when she won. I mean I remember I
Speaker 1: was like, man, she is a force to well and
Speaker 1: let me let me say, because I want to be
Speaker 1: fair here, she she has great What was so exciting
Speaker 1: about her at the beginning is, first of all, she
Speaker 1: has this background being like great story, yeah, work as
Speaker 1: a bartender, being a regular person getting energized by the
Speaker 1: burning moment. I'm going to jump in here and I'm
Speaker 1: going to beat this out of touch you know, old
Speaker 1: guy who's not even in the district just takes it
Speaker 1: for granted. Amazing. She has incredible I know she gets
Speaker 1: sort of like, you know, slammed a lot, but she's
Speaker 1: she's does have incredible communication skills and ability, and you
Speaker 1: see that at times. She just made a comment recently
Speaker 1: that actually that I really liked when she was talking
Speaker 1: about you know, we don't live in a democracy. We
Speaker 1: live in an oligarchy that has democratic moments, and I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, that's a really good way. I think that's true,
Speaker 1: and that's a really good way to think about it.
Speaker 1: So she has that potential and has those moments, but increasingly,
Speaker 1: I think as she's you know, come under attack routinely
Speaker 1: by Fox News and by Why, she's sort of like
Speaker 1: been rewarded for this type of language and leaning into
Speaker 1: these types of fights. This is the direction that she's
Speaker 1: taken her her brand, and so, like I said, ultimately,
Speaker 1: what this says to me is she is not going
Speaker 1: to be the successor to Bernie Sanders. She's not going
Speaker 1: to win a nationwide election ever or be relevant, you know,
Speaker 1: from a NAH electoral perspective, even though she is very
Speaker 1: relevant naturally to the image of the left movement and
Speaker 1: probably very difficult even for her to win statewide in
Speaker 1: New York. Yeah, I think that's right. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Breaking Points Intercept Edition. I'm here with my Ryan Grim,
Speaker 1: DC Berroo chief for the intercepting here with my colleague
Speaker 1: Ken Klippenstein. We're going to talk about a couple of
Speaker 1: Ken's stories leading to some impact on Capitol Hill today.
Speaker 1: But first we want to start with Amazon. And so
Speaker 1: recently there was a letter from Congress sent to Amazon.
Speaker 1: We could put that up here. That was directed to
Speaker 1: David Clark, who was what was his title, CFO. He
Speaker 1: was the CEO of the consumer side, the CEO of
Speaker 1: the consumer side of the business that was demanding answers
Speaker 1: about something that you exposed, which was basically a chat app,
Speaker 1: a chat censorship app that was going to make it
Speaker 1: impossible for workers to use particular words. What kind of
Speaker 1: words was Amazon going to block its workers from saying
Speaker 1: to each other over this chat app? Yeah? So when
Speaker 1: this was first disclosed to me, what jumped out at
Speaker 1: me at the list was at first the words putten
Speaker 1: into labor unions, which apparently there there are potential legal
Speaker 1: consequences because you're that's protected speech if if workers want
Speaker 1: to discuss. We have entire laws built around right, and
Speaker 1: they're just now starting to be enforced in some way
Speaker 1: from from to his credit, Biden's NLRB has been enforcing
Speaker 1: these laws to your extent, not side of the toughest
Speaker 1: agency in the Biden administration. Yeah, and so a number
Speaker 1: of them were but labor unions and and uh, but
Speaker 1: then I quickly realized there are other ones that were
Speaker 1: just about general working conditions, not directly related to organized labor.
Speaker 1: For example, you can see you can say restrooms or
Speaker 1: bathroom which and let's put that article up. Well, yeah, restrooms,
Speaker 1: bathroom And do you think that was because people are
Speaker 1: complaining that they don't get long enough restroom breaks, complaining
Speaker 1: about the stench in the restroom, or what else, Like
Speaker 1: what I from your talking to workers, what's the rationale
Speaker 1: for blocking people from saying restroom? Because you would think,
Speaker 1: if if it's a collaborate workplace, hey, I gotta have
Speaker 1: to run to the restroom, can you you know, cover
Speaker 1: this thing? But no, you can't even do that, right,
Speaker 1: So the impression that people had was just that they
Speaker 1: don't want them talking about So I mentioned in the
Speaker 1: story that there was a high level meeting of Amazon executives,
Speaker 1: including including Dave Clark, in which they discuss, you know,
Speaker 1: how do we make an app that they have a
Speaker 1: problem with employee retention, which is interesting in itself. They
Speaker 1: don't discuss in the meeting you know why that is,
Speaker 1: But they say, so what are we going to do
Speaker 1: about it? They said, well, what if we create this
Speaker 1: internal chat app where workers can share positive feelings and
Speaker 1: encouragement with each good vibes? Yeah, exactly, good a good
Speaker 1: a good vibe warehouse? Yes, yeah. And then quickly, uh,
Speaker 1: it was it was rayed. So what do we do
Speaker 1: about the dark side or social media as they as
Speaker 1: they put it at the meeting, and they said, well,
Speaker 1: we can just block and flag words that that are
Speaker 1: going to make the conversation negative. And and that happened
Speaker 1: to include this huge list of terms that wasn't just
Speaker 1: you know, labor unions, as I said, It was bathrooms,
Speaker 1: It was fair pay, fair wages, things like that. And
Speaker 1: the idea was that this is going to enhance employee retention,
Speaker 1: make people increase employee satisfaction, of course, without addressing the
Speaker 1: underlying causes. When you talk to you know, workers, they say,
Speaker 1: you know, I'd be fine to stay here if we
Speaker 1: could improve the conditions. It's just that it wears you
Speaker 1: out so quickly. And so, you know, as we had
Speaker 1: reported in the past, they have these punishing quotas that
Speaker 1: they have to meet in the factories and a consequence
Speaker 1: of that is that people are urinating in bottles, defecating
Speaker 1: in bags to be able to meet these things. And
Speaker 1: we had internal documents reflecting not only that that was happening,
Speaker 1: but that management was aware of it and that they
Speaker 1: had formalized policy around punishing people for those things right,
Speaker 1: And at the heart of all of this to me
Speaker 1: is their central their central driving kind of ideology is
Speaker 1: represented in TOT, their time off task like this is
Speaker 1: how this is. This is the stat that workers are
Speaker 1: kind of saddled with, and so they have everybody mod
Speaker 1: so effectively that if you're in the bathroom, or if
Speaker 1: you are walking slower than they think you ought to
Speaker 1: be walking, if it's taking a little bit longer for
Speaker 1: you to do something, they'll start to register that you're
Speaker 1: off task TOT, and you're only allowed a certain amount
Speaker 1: of TOT, and then you get a demerit, a couple
Speaker 1: of demerits, and you can just be summarily fired. You
Speaker 1: can be My understanding too is and I accord it
Speaker 1: from some Amazon workers, you can actually just be fired
Speaker 1: just over the like just by text, basically, like your
Speaker 1: thing shuts off and you're told you're done. Because this
Speaker 1: TOT thing, the number came underneath the threshold that they wanted,
Speaker 1: and TOT was one of the one of the abbreviations
Speaker 1: that you weren't allowed to say, which I found profound
Speaker 1: in the sense that to them, to Amazon, it's the
Speaker 1: most important thing. Yet they won't let their employees say it,
Speaker 1: so they are clearly one hundred percent aware that it
Speaker 1: is something their employees hate because it was because if
Speaker 1: it was something that themployees bought into exactly, and we're like,
Speaker 1: you know what, we're all in this together. You know,
Speaker 1: people need their nose hair clippers in twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna we're gonna get them these nose hair clippers. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they you know, they do do important work. They're
Speaker 1: they're keeping they're keeping the country supply. Yeah, in the
Speaker 1: absence of any sort of government run logistics network, we
Speaker 1: have to work and in business in the wake of
Speaker 1: the retail apocalypse, right, they are you know, they're doing
Speaker 1: they are actually legitimately doing important work. Some of the
Speaker 1: some of the nose hair clippers probably not that big
Speaker 1: of a deal. But if they believed in that mission
Speaker 1: and they believed if the workers believed that time off
Speaker 1: task was essential to making that hum, then they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have it on the list as something only negative. Was
Speaker 1: there anything else on there that you could that that
Speaker 1: that you could say was ambiguous or what like? What
Speaker 1: what made up the rest of the list. Well, some
Speaker 1: of it was even kind of like you might call
Speaker 1: social justice terms like I think the word equality, which
Speaker 1: is just like that is a broad term, you know.
Speaker 1: And as I was talking to people about it, workers
Speaker 1: are saying, well, there might even be used to these
Speaker 1: terms outside of the political context in which they're concerned about.
Speaker 1: That's going to make communicating difficult. So I mean, it
Speaker 1: was they cast, They cast stuff like unfair, they cast
Speaker 1: a wide nat So interesting to me the discourse in
Speaker 1: the United States, the obsession with with orwell and the
Speaker 1: idea of big brother the state, and not that that's
Speaker 1: not a concern, but in my experience, the people with
Speaker 1: the really scary tools are private corporations, mega corporations like Amazon,
Speaker 1: people who in fact are contracting with the federal government
Speaker 1: to provide them a lot of services. I had a
Speaker 1: conversation with an FBI counterintelligence officer some time ago, and
Speaker 1: he was and I was asking him about their capabilities,
Speaker 1: and he said, you know what, we're really jealous of Amazon.
Speaker 1: I wish we could have what the Amazon and Google
Speaker 1: artists we had. That. It was like, the FBI is
Speaker 1: jealous of all right, So Congress sends this letter to
Speaker 1: Dave Clark. Then what happens, and then the very next
Speaker 1: day he announces his resignation, which came as a shock
Speaker 1: to a lot of Amazon. He's been there for how long,
Speaker 1: I think over two decades, an extremely you know, high
Speaker 1: level position CEO of the consumer side and the face
Speaker 1: of a lot of this stuff. He was one of
Speaker 1: the guys that was tweeting at Bernie Sanders saying, you know,
Speaker 1: you claim you're progressive, Well we just gave workers fifteen
Speaker 1: dollars an hour. Where are the real progressives? How about that?
Speaker 1: And just clearly antagonizing, right is he the one who
Speaker 1: famously clapped back at Mark Pocan and said, so for
Speaker 1: people to remember this one that Mark Poe can at
Speaker 1: something like you guys are so exploitative of your workers
Speaker 1: that they have to piss in bags. And he's like,
Speaker 1: that's Dave Clark claps back, that's misinformation, Shame on you,
Speaker 1: you know whatever whatever he said to him and you
Speaker 1: and then you and at that point then I start
Speaker 1: talking to because I've been reporting on this for a while,
Speaker 1: I knew people on Amazon and they were just laughing
Speaker 1: at the like, not only is it true, it is
Speaker 1: so prevalent that every it's not something that's toes around it,
Speaker 1: and we were able to substantiate that on a document basis,
Speaker 1: not even just interviews with workers, but like showing that
Speaker 1: it was formalized in policy. How they're going to respond
Speaker 1: to this yelling at workers stop doing this without addressing
Speaker 1: why it's happening. So I think a lot of workers,
Speaker 1: I know that, in the sense of getting sources to
Speaker 1: talk to me, they were really motivated by how dishonest
Speaker 1: and disingenuous the company was being and talking about something
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, and I think that Clark stepping down
Speaker 1: the day after this letter came out, I think is
Speaker 1: an admission that this like clapping back kind of arrogant
Speaker 1: approach that Amazon is taking isn't isn't the way to move,
Speaker 1: particularly because the Senate is considering whether or not to
Speaker 1: pass legislation in the next couple of weeks that would
Speaker 1: ban it and a couple other companies, but Amazon being
Speaker 1: a primary target of it, ban it from favoring its
Speaker 1: own products, which is es central to its profit margin right,
Speaker 1: and which I understand from staffers on the Hill. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of frustration on the part of Congress at
Speaker 1: Amazon's cavalier attitude, not just towards you know, worker conditions,
Speaker 1: but even towards Congress, they are not responding to document
Speaker 1: requests that Congress has been sending them. Congress doesn't demand
Speaker 1: that you treat workers well, but they demand that you
Speaker 1: treat Congress well. Right, so that right you're on our
Speaker 1: turf net. You better straws them. Anyway, great reporting. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about some more impact that some of
Speaker 1: our reporting had on Jared Kushner and his future investments,
Speaker 1: So stick around for that. This has been an episode
Speaker 1: of Breaking Points the Intercept And if you have a
Speaker 1: tip for Ken, you can find his number on Twitter
Speaker 1: or if you want to just give it to him
Speaker 1: to zero two five one, zero twelve sixty eight U
Speaker 1: signal yes, you signal I have open DMS, so don't
Speaker 1: only use that if it's something that you are You're
Speaker 1: okay with the NSA reading. All right, welcome back to
Speaker 1: Breaking Points an Intercept edition. I'm Ryan Graham, DC Bureau
Speaker 1: Chief with the Intercept. I'm here with my colleague Ken Klippenstein's.
Speaker 1: Today we're going to talk about a letter that was
Speaker 1: sent recently by the House Oversight and Government what's it
Speaker 1: called now, the Committee on Oversight and Reform. They changed
Speaker 1: the name of this committee every two years to Jared
Speaker 1: Kushner demanding a series of documents. And the documents that
Speaker 1: they're demanding are interesting. I will see if they ever
Speaker 1: get them. But we'll go into later what they're asking for.
Speaker 1: But to start, let me give a bit of a
Speaker 1: long winded wind up to give to set the kind
Speaker 1: of frame for people who may not have followed Jared
Speaker 1: Kushner's machinations over the years. So and jump in here
Speaker 1: if there's anything I'm missing, But I think the key
Speaker 1: moment is two thousand and seven is where all of
Speaker 1: this begins. Kushner takes over his family's troubled somewhat trouble
Speaker 1: but doing pretty well real estate empire in New York City.
Speaker 1: He's this little young thinks he's a wonder kind and
Speaker 1: quickly engages in the most expensive real estate transaction in
Speaker 1: the history of New York City. He buys for one
Speaker 1: point eight billion dollars this property at six sixty six
Speaker 1: Fifth Avenue. Now this is two thousand and seven. By
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, everybody involved in real estate was
Speaker 1: getting out of real estate, the regular people, some of
Speaker 1: them were still getting in, but even regular people. By
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, were like, this is looking a
Speaker 1: little bit shaky. I'm not sure where this is headed,
Speaker 1: but this doesn't feel very good. Kushner says, no, I
Speaker 1: want this property, six sixty six Fifth Avenue at one
Speaker 1: point eight billion, basically sinks his family's entire fortune into it,
Speaker 1: because you're just absolutely leveraged to the hilt at this
Speaker 1: point two thousand and eight, we know what happened the
Speaker 1: financial crisis. The building is worth like half or less
Speaker 1: of that instantly, and now he's soon two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: twenty ten, he starts to have calls due on this
Speaker 1: on this loan which is just absolutely not performing. He
Speaker 1: scrabbles together a bunch of help, some of it thanks
Speaker 1: to Tom Barrack, who was later indicted as part of
Speaker 1: a Saudi influence scheme. He is able to kind of
Speaker 1: refinance it and just kick the can down the road
Speaker 1: long enough to get into the White House. So he
Speaker 1: becomes Donald Trump's advisor since he's his son in law.
Speaker 1: In twenty seventeen, and his family starts a kind of
Speaker 1: tour of the Middle East shaking down money for this property,
Speaker 1: and he's regularly in contact with his father, who's you know,
Speaker 1: continuing to run this this real estate firm, and he
Speaker 1: himself is meeting with the Qataris, with the Saudis, with
Speaker 1: the Hmoradis, while at the same time that his real
Speaker 1: estate firm needs this bailout and is pushing policy at
Speaker 1: the same time his business shakes down. The Qataris and
Speaker 1: the Qataris end up telling him no. They later told me,
Speaker 1: if we had known what was going to happen as
Speaker 1: a result of that, what they feel as a result
Speaker 1: of that, they would have just given him the money.
Speaker 1: Would have been much cheaper to just give him the money.
Speaker 1: So the Saudis and the yue then blockade Right after
Speaker 1: Trump visits Riod, you know, puts the ORB, the hands
Speaker 1: on the ORB. They blockade Cutter. There is a base
Speaker 1: with ten thousand American troops on the Cutter and they're
Speaker 1: blockading it and threatening to invade Cutter, and the Secretary
Speaker 1: of State Rex Tillerson condemns this publicly. The US is
Speaker 1: like this has to end. Kushner back channels to Trump,
Speaker 1: writes a little statement for him, which apparently what his
Speaker 1: soul was written by UAD Ambassador Yusaf al O Taba
Speaker 1: and sides with Saudi and says, hey, cutter, I'm told
Speaker 1: there's a lot of terrorists there, so I'm fine with
Speaker 1: this blockade. That blockade ends up lasting the entire Trump term.
Speaker 1: A year later, Saudi Arabia Butcher's with a bone saw
Speaker 1: Jamal Koshogi. Kushner becomes the number one defender globally and
Speaker 1: inside the White House of MBS my Vin Salmon, who
Speaker 1: we now know and it was clear at the time
Speaker 1: ordered the killing of Koshogi. Flash forward to twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: Now that he's out of the White House, he starts
Speaker 1: a private equity firm, so it's an investment fund, goes
Speaker 1: to RIOD, winds up with two billion dollars. So your
Speaker 1: reporting has cited multiple times. Some of our reporting previously
Speaker 1: is sited in here, particularly because one of the things
Speaker 1: you expose was just what a ridiculous investment this was.
Speaker 1: And that's not me talking, that's not you talking. So
Speaker 1: who was it that looked at this and said, why
Speaker 1: on earth would you give this kid money? Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: in the course of working for the story, my sources
Speaker 1: for it were people in the private equity world. I
Speaker 1: had to be vague about that. I don't want to
Speaker 1: get anybody in trouble. But what they told me was
Speaker 1: that when this investment vehicle was pitched, you know, right
Speaker 1: after the Trump admistration ended and they're out of government,
Speaker 1: these are pitched to some very high level people in
Speaker 1: the Wall Street world. There was ridicule and laughter after
Speaker 1: the presentation because they could understand what the product was.
Speaker 1: They said, what are they selling. There's repeated reference to
Speaker 1: all our fancy connections throughout the region, but what is
Speaker 1: the actual It's just kind of business speak. And my
Speaker 1: understanding is that you know, in the business world, yes
Speaker 1: that exists, but not at the level that these guys
Speaker 1: were pitched. And you don't waste people in Wall Street
Speaker 1: at that level's time with this kind of pablem. And
Speaker 1: they had the impression that it was just influence pedling,
Speaker 1: because all it was was we know this guy, we
Speaker 1: know this guy, we know this guy. Look at all
Speaker 1: these people high up that are in this investment world.
Speaker 1: There was no talk of what the actual assets are,
Speaker 1: you know, what the plan is really And there was
Speaker 1: also are reporting that the advisors to the Saudi Fund
Speaker 1: itself yes, said don't do this like this. There's their
Speaker 1: own sovereign investment fund says this is a very bad idea.
Speaker 1: They're not ahead, they're overridden by MBS or says something,
Speaker 1: and then they go ahead and invest it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: their own bureaucrats are saying that this is not a
Speaker 1: second invest So you have the Saudi Investment Fund people
Speaker 1: and you have top Wall Street private actory people saying
Speaker 1: this is way over the top. That Obviously networking who
Speaker 1: you know these are important things in global capitalism. Obviously
Speaker 1: that's that's the case, but you need something more than that, Like,
Speaker 1: who we know is important to us because of our
Speaker 1: real estate strategy that we're going to develop in Saigon,
Speaker 1: and because we know the rights Saigon. These officials, you
Speaker 1: know this is gonna work, This is gonna work for
Speaker 1: us or whatever. Like, you have to have some reason
Speaker 1: that knowing these people is going to make you money.
Speaker 1: The all street people on the side of you are like,
Speaker 1: you have nothing here, what is this? So you know people? Okay,
Speaker 1: So what does that mean? And so the implication, very
Speaker 1: strong implication left in this letter is that this was
Speaker 1: just a payoff for the work that you did for
Speaker 1: Saudi interests during your time as advisor to President Trump,
Speaker 1: and potentially a payoff for future work, which is you
Speaker 1: will do if you return to the White House, which
Speaker 1: is the Cutter example that you cited before, you know,
Speaker 1: really suggests that not only was this a pro Persian
Speaker 1: Gulf administration, but it was an intensely partisan one among
Speaker 1: parties within that even right to you know Cutter, Historically,
Speaker 1: the US has never had any problems with We have
Speaker 1: a giant base there that they wash all sorts of money,
Speaker 1: and they like they're they're the place where we would
Speaker 1: host like the negotiations with the Taliban like it. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like the Switzerland of the Middle East. Like
Speaker 1: all of these different factions who are who were warring
Speaker 1: all over the place are allowed to come to Doha
Speaker 1: and kind of live in peace. And and that's how
Speaker 1: you can sit down at the table with the tal
Speaker 1: Van for And what I was told is that the
Speaker 1: internal conflict with Cutter was the major reason that Secretary
Speaker 1: of State Tillerson ended up resigning because he just I mean,
Speaker 1: he's a long time oil man. He used the what
Speaker 1: CEO of ex On Mobile for number of years, and
Speaker 1: so he knows the region and he just thought it
Speaker 1: was crazy, right right, And and so the question is
Speaker 1: why do they have this very partisan position. Partisan not
Speaker 1: in the sense of Democrat republican, but the sense of
Speaker 1: like specific regional jockeying. Why are they siding with one
Speaker 1: specific party? And then you know, I can I can
Speaker 1: guess one billion reasons and so so so towards the
Speaker 1: end of this they ask for Kushner. They asked for
Speaker 1: where we got it here, all communications all communications from
Speaker 1: January seventeenth to present discussing Thrive, which is his brother's
Speaker 1: business in the Middle East, including but not limited to
Speaker 1: Thrives interactions with Saudi government officials. And so this goes
Speaker 1: to the internescine nature of the government work and the
Speaker 1: business work that you had, the real estate operation you
Speaker 1: had to Thrive. This his brother's company, which was raising
Speaker 1: all sorts of venture capital fund He's his brother met
Speaker 1: with with the Qataris at one point, as we reported,
Speaker 1: And so they're asking for all communications with the Saudi's
Speaker 1: about Thrives. So, in other words, is he using his
Speaker 1: position to leverage to leverage investments to his family. I
Speaker 1: think from a distance it looks like obviously he is.
Speaker 1: The question is is this something that you can prove?
Speaker 1: They also they also ask for quote all communications between
Speaker 1: you and Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salmon or other Saudi
Speaker 1: officials from January twenty, twenty seventeen to the present, and
Speaker 1: all documents related to such communications related to your or
Speaker 1: your family's present or future business ventures, including but not
Speaker 1: limited to Saudi investments or participation in any of these ventures.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that we reported that they
Speaker 1: cite in this letter is that he used WhatsApp to
Speaker 1: communicate with MBS, And so that's an interesting question. The
Speaker 1: reason he would use what's app is so he could
Speaker 1: go around the White House chain. You're supposed to use
Speaker 1: official channels, not just you know, because that formalizes things
Speaker 1: in your bearercunts can understand what's going on, but also
Speaker 1: just so the historians get a picture of what the
Speaker 1: heck was going on during the administration the President's Records Act,
Speaker 1: and also because who knows who's reading your WhatsApp checks?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and the security And so it's an interesting question.
Speaker 1: Then if they subpoena these, I would assume he's deleted them, right.
Speaker 1: Could they get them from Facebook? Can they get them
Speaker 1: from the NSA? You know, the NSA is not supposed
Speaker 1: to be spying on White House officials not supposed to
Speaker 1: be spying on American citizens at all. However, they are
Speaker 1: definitely monitoring Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that he's not
Speaker 1: an American citizen, that is, that is somebody that is.
Speaker 1: Every administration is like, yes, of course we're going to
Speaker 1: try to spy on, you know, those those types of
Speaker 1: figures out you're not supposed to spy on ahead of state.
Speaker 1: But he's not ahead of he's not officially right ahead
Speaker 1: of state. So where do you come down on the
Speaker 1: on the privacy question here? And do you think that
Speaker 1: this will go anywhere? Or do you think that Kushner
Speaker 1: all he has to do, he knows that all he
Speaker 1: has to do is just stonewall thists for six months. Well, people,
Speaker 1: Republicans will be back. Yeah, people in What people in
Speaker 1: the US intelligence community and people close to Middle East
Speaker 1: governments in the region tell me is that it's important
Speaker 1: to understand that not isn't a historical artifact where it's
Speaker 1: you know, potentially a reward for services rendered during the administration,
Speaker 1: but but it could be something that is going to
Speaker 1: affect policy going forward, because again those same sources tell
Speaker 1: me that government officials in Saturabia in the UAE take
Speaker 1: for granted that Trump is going to win the next election.
Speaker 1: Whether or not that's true, that's the attitude. And so
Speaker 1: when you have that attitude, when you have an assumption,
Speaker 1: the question is, well, how can we leverage him again
Speaker 1: to try to do to try to influence him, to
Speaker 1: try to get him to do things that we want.
Speaker 1: And I think that is the prism through which this
Speaker 1: kind of apparent influence pedaling should be seen, not just
Speaker 1: something that pertained to the previous administration, but one that
Speaker 1: could have effects on the upcoming election and forthcoming administrations. Right,
Speaker 1: so they feel like they're another administration will be back
Speaker 1: in power that they can buy off, so that will
Speaker 1: sell out American interests. And as we have talked about
Speaker 1: a lot, they have some say over this. They are
Speaker 1: not just passive observers of American electoral politics. They have
Speaker 1: in the past influenced approval ratings by either producing more
Speaker 1: oil or reducing the output of oil. When when OPEC
Speaker 1: pushes more oil into the market, the price comes down
Speaker 1: very and we're seeing them very strikingly now. And that's
Speaker 1: the impression that I get from from folks familiar with
Speaker 1: the region, which is that you know, I say, you know,
Speaker 1: they are devastating the American economy. This has a huge
Speaker 1: role inflation. Very interesting that we don't hear about this,
Speaker 1: the Saudi oil's role in the inflation debate. It's just
Speaker 1: discussed as some sort of abstract economic theory, completely untethered
Speaker 1: to any of these kinds of things. I mean, we
Speaker 1: can go into why that is. People don't like to
Speaker 1: talk about satur Abia generally it's embarrassing to Washington. But
Speaker 1: you know, I asked these guys to say, isn't this
Speaker 1: going to enrage Biden the Democrats? You're really going to
Speaker 1: push them away and politicize the relationship. And again, the
Speaker 1: view of these governments is, we don't think Mine's going
Speaker 1: to win, We think Trump's will come back, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. We don't care, right, And so even if
Speaker 1: there is some relief on gas prices, and I expect,
Speaker 1: actually this is my guess that after the mid terms,
Speaker 1: when the damage is done to Democrats, you'll start to
Speaker 1: see gas prices come down because the mission will have
Speaker 1: been accomplished. Yeah, you won't get nasty letters like this
Speaker 1: from Republicans on the Oversight Committee who We're just fine
Speaker 1: with whatever Trump and Kushner want to do in the
Speaker 1: Middle East. I mean most of them are. There are
Speaker 1: some that are not. But then late twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: or twenty twenty four, I bet you're going to start
Speaker 1: to see gas prices. Oh yeah, sing again. And this
Speaker 1: very high level. And the question is if the Democrats
Speaker 1: are going to be willing to be candid about this
Speaker 1: because they are fighting this behind the scenes. They are
Speaker 1: not messaging to the public to explain to them what
Speaker 1: exactly is happening. How many times you've seen Biden go
Speaker 1: out and say, hey, he says the Putin gas tax,
Speaker 1: which obviously Putin has a role in it, but I've
Speaker 1: never heard him say the MBS gas tax. I've never
Speaker 1: seen him talk about the role of Saturdaybia in this.
Speaker 1: To try to stimulate, you know, some kind of response
Speaker 1: by the public to realize, hey, we're providing these countries
Speaker 1: with security paid for via US tax dollars. Maybe they
Speaker 1: have some maybe maybe they have some responsibility to us. No,
Speaker 1: he never says any of that. And the reason is
Speaker 1: because it's the relationship is embarrassing. It's a sordid regime
Speaker 1: with terrible human rights record that they don't want to
Speaker 1: talk about. And so long as he continues to hide
Speaker 1: that and refuse to discuss it, people aren't going to
Speaker 1: understand why gas prices are what they are where they're
Speaker 1: going to have a simplistic understanding of what it is
Speaker 1: and the knock on effects like inflation and things like that.
Speaker 1: So that big question, that's the big question to me,
Speaker 1: is how much are they going to come out and
Speaker 1: finally discuss this, because they never have. I've never been
Speaker 1: straight with the American people about this actually, and hopefully
Speaker 1: of the Russia's invasion of Ukraine will have will have
Speaker 1: ended by then, so that won't be driving gas prices too.
Speaker 1: And the message would be quite simple. It would be
Speaker 1: there's a tyrant in the Middle East who's making you
Speaker 1: pay five dollars a gallon so that Trump can come
Speaker 1: back into office, so that his friend Jared Kushner continues
Speaker 1: to run US foreign policy in the Middle East. It's
Speaker 1: pretty straightforward. You're paying five dollars a gallon because this
Speaker 1: tyrant wants Trump in the White House. And unfortunately, as
Speaker 1: simple as that message is, and I am in the
Speaker 1: American public, you know their adults, they would understand. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's a secret why we maintain relations with
Speaker 1: those countries. If you look at Biden's ridick. Now he's saying,
Speaker 1: he's saying, oh, the relationship is not this isn't about oil.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go visit MBS. He's going to abrogate
Speaker 1: his promise to make Saudirabit a pariah. That was a
Speaker 1: language not a lot of uncertainty, and in language like that,
Speaker 1: Now he's saying he's going to meet with him. They're saying, well,
Speaker 1: why is that. They said, oh, it's because of the
Speaker 1: oil prices, which it obviously is. He says, no, that
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with it. The relationship is deep
Speaker 1: and complex, and it goes fart want to chat and
Speaker 1: it's like with my good friend. You're treating Americans like children,
Speaker 1: like come on, they understand how this stuff work. Nobody's
Speaker 1: going to believe that you know, right, And if you
Speaker 1: told the Marian people, look, we're overlooking the butchering of
Speaker 1: this journalist, and we're overlooking these human rights abuses because
Speaker 1: we need two dollars gawn gas. A lot of people
Speaker 1: would be like, well, Trump said, I want to say
Speaker 1: it out loud, but I'm okay with that Trump did
Speaker 1: essentially that Oh Trump, absolutely, Yeah, I think it was.
Speaker 1: I think it was representative Tom Alanowski said to one
Speaker 1: of our reporters here, Shroeda. He said Trump had the
Speaker 1: right idea in the sense that he threatened to withdraw
Speaker 1: the US military from the region unless they started producing
Speaker 1: oil quotas, you know, along the lines of what we wanted,
Speaker 1: and that worked. That worked against MBS. We have power.
Speaker 1: That's not even a threat, that's not even a positive
Speaker 1: threat of doing anything. That's just saying we will pull
Speaker 1: our support and then good luck dealing with your right.
Speaker 1: So this notion that we don't have any leverage is
Speaker 1: just not true. Yeah, very true. Ken, great reporting. As always,
Speaker 1: Thank you everybody for joining us here. This has been
Speaker 1: another episode of Breaking Points the Intercept. You can if
Speaker 1: you have a tip for Ken, you can reach him
Speaker 1: on signal his His signal phone number is on his
Speaker 1: on his Twitter. Check out our podcast Intercepts Deconstructed. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm only I'm only doing Rising Fridays with Emily Joshinsky.
Speaker 1: Otherwise I'm happy to come by here with with Ken
Speaker 1: or anybody else from the Intercept and thank you guys
Speaker 1: for induledging us. Hey, guys, our friend Marsha Kossof he's
Speaker 1: going to be aducting interviews with experts and newsmakers for
Speaker 1: us here on the Breaking Points channel. We're really excited. Yep.
Speaker 1: Here it is a Breaking Points. I'm back with Nate Hawkman.
Speaker 1: We did that episode a few weeks back where we
Speaker 1: talked about the future of the right, secularism, barstoore, conservatism.
Speaker 1: Everything in the audience I know is into So I
Speaker 1: wanted to follow up with Nicks. You just had a
Speaker 1: new piece in The New York Times. It's called What's
Speaker 1: after the Religious Rite? Let me just ask you the
Speaker 1: most meta question I could ask you for Breaking Points,
Speaker 1: which is, and I know everyone's thinking in the comments section,
Speaker 1: why write for the New York Times. You know you're
Speaker 1: at National Review, You're a fellow there. The tagline for
Speaker 1: this show is say spree to the mainstream media. But
Speaker 1: why is it important to articulate your viewpoints to let's say,
Speaker 1: a very unsympathetic audience like that? I think, well, I
Speaker 1: think the reason that it's important is because it's unsimptic audience.
Speaker 1: But this is like actually a conversation that I had
Speaker 1: with my friends when The New York Times reginly reached
Speaker 1: out because, like a lot of conservatives, I spend a
Speaker 1: lot of times, a lot of time dunking on the
Speaker 1: Times and writing for them. I think maybe some people
Speaker 1: would think that was selling out, but to me, it's
Speaker 1: like The Times, for better for worse, is the paper
Speaker 1: of record, not just in America but probably in the
Speaker 1: Western world. It's an enormous platform, and it's a reader
Speaker 1: base that is wildly ideologically different than the reader and
Speaker 1: viewer base that I'm usually talking to. So if I
Speaker 1: can take the opportunity to actually explain my point of
Speaker 1: view from my perspective rather than letting other people tell
Speaker 1: that story, I think generally I'm willing to take that opportunity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I want to pull a line that you wrote
Speaker 1: in the piece, which you said, it's the culture wars stupid.
Speaker 1: You're referencing James Carver nineteen ninety two bo put into
Speaker 1: the election where he said it's the economy stupid. Basically,
Speaker 1: everything's abt economics. And I definitely know theres a part
Speaker 1: of the Breaking Points audience which is going to be
Speaker 1: a little unhappy with us focusing on culture wars because
Speaker 1: of this idea that, hey, culture wars are divisive, let's
Speaker 1: focus on the economy, would focus on healthcare, it's focus
Speaker 1: on higher ed and inflation. You could take this in
Speaker 1: a right direction, taking the left direction, why is it
Speaker 1: the culture war or stupid? Given all the problems we
Speaker 1: have in the country right now? Yeah, well, look, first
Speaker 1: of all, let me say to the viewers who are
Speaker 1: sort of frustrated with the culture war discourse, I get it.
Speaker 1: The culture wars often do feel mind numbingly stupid a
Speaker 1: lot of the times, and they are divisive, right. I mean.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons that I think the cultural issues
Speaker 1: that we're debating in the culture wars are so important
Speaker 1: is because, as we talked about on the last podcast
Speaker 1: I came on, these are the foundational political questions that
Speaker 1: we're debating. Right. It's the meaning of men and women,
Speaker 1: It's the meaning of America. It's the meaning of you know,
Speaker 1: national integrity, borders, et cetera. You can sort of go
Speaker 1: down the list, but those issues really sort of tap
Speaker 1: into a lot of electoral passion. People care about them.
Speaker 1: So the sort of reframing of the James Carvill it's
Speaker 1: the economy stupid line from the ninety two Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: campaign was sort of a partially tongue in cheek, partially
Speaker 1: serious way of pointing out that actually, for better or
Speaker 1: for worse, the debates that we're having in the culture
Speaker 1: wars are debates that matter to people. And while absolutely,
Speaker 1: you know, economics are important too, and making sure that
Speaker 1: people have good jobs and are able to sort of
Speaker 1: provide for their families, et cetera, et cetera. Of course
Speaker 1: those are important issues. But there's a certain impulse, I
Speaker 1: think in the elite commentariat to sort of sniff at
Speaker 1: cultural issues and say, well, those aren't serious issues, right,
Speaker 1: those are issues that you know, pundits talk about because
Speaker 1: they want to sort of rile up the base, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But I actually think that these are again, really really
Speaker 1: important issues, and I think that the fact that people
Speaker 1: care about them is entirely legitimate, and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: as a Republican, i'd like to see the Republican Party
Speaker 1: recognize that to an extent. Yeah, and I really resonated
Speaker 1: with what you said, because I think we disagree on
Speaker 1: a lot of the issues that we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about in terms of the actual policy. But something I've
Speaker 1: learned the past few years. Is that part of what
Speaker 1: recognizing politics is is you can't just say, oh, don't
Speaker 1: care about that. It goes either. It're actually like whether
Speaker 1: or not people agree, Like let's say, with LGBTQ rights
Speaker 1: being like the most important issue in the country. There
Speaker 1: are voters on the Democratic side, there are voters on
Speaker 1: the Republican side who definitely think that it is. It's
Speaker 1: not a conspiracy if you're not hoodwinked. They're not like,
Speaker 1: you know, consuming the opiate of the masses, like that's
Speaker 1: just their opinion. And what your duty is as a
Speaker 1: person who's engaging in politics is to recognize that fact
Speaker 1: and then operate accordingly. So I think that's why your
Speaker 1: thought is useful in that. So let's just actually go
Speaker 1: in and push on the assumption that basically underlying your
Speaker 1: piece this idea that something's coming next after the religious right,
Speaker 1: because I think for a lot of listeners, especially for
Speaker 1: people who are living in blue states or even cities,
Speaker 1: the idea that the religious right is going away doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense whatsoever. You talk about this Roby Wade
Speaker 1: is likely to be overturned. Obviously, you have this huge
Speaker 1: Republican backflass which is probably gonna lead to successful red
Speaker 1: victory in the midterms. Explain the seeming contradiction between what
Speaker 1: you're describing here, right, And I think one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that this is an admittedly provocative thesis is because
Speaker 1: we're probably on the cusp of Roe v. Wade being overturned.
Speaker 1: But as I pointed out in the early paragraphs of
Speaker 1: the piece, Roby Wade being overturned would be more of
Speaker 1: a last gasp for the religious right than it really
Speaker 1: would be a sign of resurgent power, because the entire
Speaker 1: country is rapidly secularizing. Fewer and fewer Americans are going
Speaker 1: to church every single year, and the Republican Party has
Speaker 1: not been immune to that trend. I mean, we have
Speaker 1: seen drastic reductions in the number of Republican voters who
Speaker 1: routinely go to church, and in the number of Republican
Speaker 1: voters who just self identify as Christian or say that
Speaker 1: being Christian is an important part of the American identity.
Speaker 1: So my point was pointing out that amid all of
Speaker 1: this sort of resurgent cultural war energy, because the culture
Speaker 1: wars really are more fierce right now than they've been
Speaker 1: in a very long time, one aspect of the story
Speaker 1: I think that's getting missed is that this is not
Speaker 1: being driven primarily by the old religious right. There is
Speaker 1: a sort of secular cultural conservatism which is a sentence
Speaker 1: and which is engaging in a lot of these debates
Speaker 1: and has an uneasy relationship I think, with the old
Speaker 1: religious right, but is driven by Republican voters who don't
Speaker 1: necessarily go to church anymore, and that's going to result
Speaker 1: in a different Republican party, a different conservative movement, and
Speaker 1: ultimately a th think, a different country. Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: You do a good job of setting up with dichotomy
Speaker 1: between the let's say, the old culture war touch points
Speaker 1: and the new ones. Like what are some of the
Speaker 1: old ones like you listed, you know, school prayer, no
Speaker 1: fault divorce, traditional gay rights, like expanding those. Then we'll
Speaker 1: get into the new ones, like what were the defining
Speaker 1: parts about that? Yeah, I think, you know, the old
Speaker 1: Christian Conservatism was trying to defend this old public, sort
Speaker 1: of small sea conservative Protestant moral order, which was why
Speaker 1: a lot of the sort of primary debates that it
Speaker 1: was concerned with had to do with things like the
Speaker 1: public view of sexuality and marriage. So to the old
Speaker 1: religious right. The really primary points of cultural division came about,
Speaker 1: you know, questions of whether or not gay people could
Speaker 1: get married, whether or not sort of homosexuality should be
Speaker 1: mainstreamed in the public view. And then of course to
Speaker 1: just the role of religion in public life and issues
Speaker 1: like school prayer and abortion of course is obviously an
Speaker 1: issue that is relevant to this as well. Culture war conservatism,
Speaker 1: again being driven by folks who don't necessarily go to church,
Speaker 1: is much more interested with questions of national identity, sort
Speaker 1: of a secular patriotism, racialism, pushing back against sort of
Speaker 1: left wing cultural ideology in the classroom right. It's this
Speaker 1: cultural conservatism that probably appeals to a lot of the
Speaker 1: old religious right voters, but is framed in much more
Speaker 1: secular terms and is less concerned with the specifically religious
Speaker 1: and theological dimensions of our cultural debates and more just
Speaker 1: with defending American voters of a variety of different racial
Speaker 1: and religious backgrounds who feel alienated from the modern cultural left,
Speaker 1: which is I think again the energy that is driving
Speaker 1: the Republican Party to day. Let me get personal for
Speaker 1: a second. I'm curious what you think about this dynamic
Speaker 1: you're describing because I think something that folks don't know,
Speaker 1: especially if they don't know you, is that you're a
Speaker 1: traditional social conservative. So I think what your piece did
Speaker 1: a great job of doing, and why I don't feel
Speaker 1: like a shill bringing you on the top talk about it,
Speaker 1: is you're diagnosing a dynamic that various folks have to
Speaker 1: deal with, whether they like it or not. So if
Speaker 1: you are a traditional social conservative, it's not like this
Speaker 1: rise of this new social conservatism is inherently going to
Speaker 1: be a pure win for you. I still know of
Speaker 1: conservatives who do not think. You know, I just had
Speaker 1: you Ramazone on the Realignment a few weeks ago, Like
Speaker 1: his whole thing is he thinks the school prayer issue
Speaker 1: should not be dead, and he has a whole bit there. So, like,
Speaker 1: just talk about how you feel about this personally as
Speaker 1: a person who comes from that traditional conservative space. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you sort of teasing out that aspect of
Speaker 1: the essay, because what I was trying to do in
Speaker 1: the essay was basically give a descriptive analysis of what
Speaker 1: I think is happening rather than a normative analysis of
Speaker 1: what I think should be happening in an ideal world.
Speaker 1: Because you're right. I am in many ways a sort
Speaker 1: of traditional old school social conservative, and I have really
Speaker 1: mixed feelings about what's happening on the right today. There
Speaker 1: are aspects of the essay where I point out that
Speaker 1: a lot of the new cultural conservatism, what people call
Speaker 1: our stool conservatism. Of course your viewers will be familiar
Speaker 1: with that, exemplified by people like Dave Portnoy, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: there are aspects of that that make a lot of
Speaker 1: traditional social conservatives really uncomfortable. I mean, there is this
Speaker 1: famous clip of the importantly after the row leak, saying
Speaker 1: that if Republicans tried to ban abortion, he's going to
Speaker 1: become a democrat. I mean, to me, as an ardent prolifer,
Speaker 1: that's unacceptable. Right. So for the sort of old school
Speaker 1: traditional social conservatives, this new energy, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: presents this massive, unexpected political opportunity to build a sort
Speaker 1: of center right cultural conservative coalition that is capable of
Speaker 1: delivering on some of our priorities. But it also requires
Speaker 1: sharing a coalition with a lot of figures that I
Speaker 1: think we might find unsavory on an ideological level, and
Speaker 1: that I think is a loss. And it also indicates
Speaker 1: just this broader phenomenon of declining religiosity in America, which
Speaker 1: I also think is a reason to be concerned. So
Speaker 1: I am not necessarily on the whole celebrating this development,
Speaker 1: but I am engaging with the fact that it's happening
Speaker 1: and trying to sort of make sense of it. And
Speaker 1: that was the point. Yes, Yeah, And I also like
Speaker 1: your use of the term coalitions because it gets to
Speaker 1: what politics actually. It's easy to just say that, oh
Speaker 1: and this is me shouting out the breaking points, listener. Oh,
Speaker 1: there's the establishment, there's the mainstream, there's the Democrats, as
Speaker 1: the Republicans. But all these groups are combinations of different individuals, institutions,
Speaker 1: different groups. So the coalition you're describing as a Republican
Speaker 1: party a conservative movement that has hawks, it has social conservatives,
Speaker 1: it has barsal conservatives. Once again, like it or not,
Speaker 1: where are the tensions and where do you think the
Speaker 1: tensions are going to start playing out, especially as we
Speaker 1: move outwards. Because I'm a little less interested in things
Speaker 1: leading up to the midterms. It's kind of funny. I
Speaker 1: was getting an argument of some of my social conservative
Speaker 1: friends where they were saying, I don't think the WIVI
Speaker 1: wad overturn is going to affect the twenty twenty two midterms,
Speaker 1: and I was like, look, I agree with you, but
Speaker 1: I think the real testing point will be in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five when a Republican governor votes or says something
Speaker 1: about how I think abortion rights should actually operate in
Speaker 1: a state. You know, once again, think back to two
Speaker 1: thousand and six Terry Schivo that you know, very specific,
Speaker 1: very Florida decision over end of life and euthanasia and
Speaker 1: those different issues. That was a very specific, literally familiar issue,
Speaker 1: but that issue was a defining moment of the politics
Speaker 1: of the country then, So I think you shouldn't focus
Speaker 1: on court decision, you should focus on practical effects and
Speaker 1: once again, how Jeb Bush as governor of Florida responded
Speaker 1: to it. So I'm just curious how you think about
Speaker 1: this dynamic overall, right, And I think you're absolutely right, Marshall.
Speaker 1: I think more or less twenty twenty two is baked
Speaker 1: into the cake. You might see some movement on the margins,
Speaker 1: but really the question is going to be when Republicans
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four and beyond have to start answering
Speaker 1: really difficult questions that they didn't have to answer before
Speaker 1: Roe v waves overturned because before they could just wave
Speaker 1: their hands and say, well, I'm against Rob Wade, and
Speaker 1: now they have to actually explain in detail what does
Speaker 1: that mean? Right? Are we talking about a fifteen week ban,
Speaker 1: are we talking about a heartbeat ban? Are we talking
Speaker 1: about exceptions for rapid incests? Right? All these more difficult
Speaker 1: questions that required detail they answers. That's something that they're
Speaker 1: going to be struggling with, particularly when it comes to
Speaker 1: appealing to these sort of more sort of socially moderate
Speaker 1: barstool conservatives who might have a real problem with quote
Speaker 1: unquote wokeness right with you know, CRT and gender ideology
Speaker 1: in schools. They're uncomfortable with transgender athletes, right, all these
Speaker 1: sort of new cultural war issues, but are probably pro choice, right.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of them probably agree with Dave
Speaker 1: Portnoy and my sort of suspicion. And this was something
Speaker 1: that I was attention that I was teasing out at
Speaker 1: the end of the piece, was that on something like abortion,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of these these sort of center
Speaker 1: right voters would probably be more or less comfortable as
Speaker 1: something like what Ron de Santis signed Florida, which is
Speaker 1: a fifteen weekman, which more or less resembles what most
Speaker 1: of the rest of the West has, with some exceptions.
Speaker 1: But if you start talking about a six weekman or
Speaker 1: a flat out ban or rape and incest exceptions, I
Speaker 1: think that's going to make a lot of these voters
Speaker 1: really uncomfortable, let alone sort of old religious right priorities around,
Speaker 1: you know, same sex marriage and homosexuality, which I think
Speaker 1: is just not even on the table for these voters.
Speaker 1: So both sides of this spectrum are going to have
Speaker 1: to reckon with these tensions. And you don't have to
Speaker 1: resolve all of the internal tensions to have a functional coalition,
Speaker 1: because every political coalition has its fair share of tensions.
Speaker 1: But there are going to be have to be sacrifices
Speaker 1: on both sides, and I don't think either side is
Speaker 1: going to necessarily be entirely happy with them. You know.
Speaker 1: In my last bit here is I'm curious, how do
Speaker 1: you think Democrats are going to respond to this dynamic,
Speaker 1: because once again Dave portnoyin look, I actually I admire
Speaker 1: how honest Dave was about his underlying politics. I think
Speaker 1: it's very tough for folks who operate in those sort
Speaker 1: of ambiguous political spaces, just to be that directive, like, look,
Speaker 1: I'm a pro choice first voter. Yes, I probably think
Speaker 1: free speech is cringe. Yes, he's probably not a fan
Speaker 1: of Taylor Lorenz, but all that aside, I'm voting on abortion.
Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of people like that,
Speaker 1: especially in media, because it's not particularly hip to identify
Speaker 1: off Joe Biden's Democratic Party right now who don't feel
Speaker 1: lay but you know, Dave was honest, that's a voting luck, right,
Speaker 1: that's the dynamic there. So, so how do you think
Speaker 1: Democrats how do you think they should put on your
Speaker 1: pure political analysis hat, and how do you think they
Speaker 1: are going to respond over the short and long term? Right? Well,
Speaker 1: I think those are two very fundamentally different questions, because
Speaker 1: if Democrats were smart and they were sort of capable
Speaker 1: of just assessing the scene as it is, they would
Speaker 1: pivot back to the sort of Bill Clinton line on
Speaker 1: cultural issues, which was where all the sort of Dave
Speaker 1: Portnoy voters were very comfortable with the Democratic Party back then. Right,
Speaker 1: I mean this new influx of sort of center right
Speaker 1: on culture, but more moderate on the sort of old
Speaker 1: school social issues. Voters who are flooding into the Republican
Speaker 1: Party are doing so from the Democratic Coalition. These are
Speaker 1: a lot of these guys are traditional Democratic voters who
Speaker 1: used to see the old religious right as the sort
Speaker 1: of puritanical school marm of American life which wanted to
Speaker 1: come into the bedroom and tell you what to do
Speaker 1: with porn, et cetera, et cetera. And now that the
Speaker 1: left is the one sort of vigorously enforcing these social orthodoxies,
Speaker 1: they're alienated from it and they're looking for an alternative
Speaker 1: in the Republican Party. But again, with issues like Roby Wade,
Speaker 1: there is an opportunity for Democrats to win some of
Speaker 1: those voters back, but they have to sort of be
Speaker 1: able to distance themselves from the cultural radicalism of their
Speaker 1: left flank. And I just don't think the party right
Speaker 1: now is institutionally positioned to do that. They are entirely
Speaker 1: captured by powerful donors who very much are of this
Speaker 1: sort of elite cultural worldview, a powerful corporate media which
Speaker 1: is very much captured by that worldview, and you know
Speaker 1: sort of institutions like teacher unions which are completely uninterested
Speaker 1: in talking about the radicalization of the American public school curriculum.
Speaker 1: So those sort of institutional issues for the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: makes it very, very difficult for them to pivot on
Speaker 1: cultural issues, which is why you've seen moderate Democrats break
Speaker 1: with the sort of progressive wing of their party on
Speaker 1: economic issues like spending and regulation, but the entire party
Speaker 1: is basically on lockstep on cultural issues. So again, the
Speaker 1: should and the will, I think are two different questions.
Speaker 1: They should pivot to the right on culture and become
Speaker 1: sort of Bill Clinton cultural centrists and emphasize the popular
Speaker 1: economic parts of their program, but I don't think that
Speaker 1: they're going to do. One last question, which I think
Speaker 1: is probably my only main bit of once again analytical
Speaker 1: pushback on your piece. What separate the like exact like
Speaker 1: policy bits there? How away? Has the old religious right
Speaker 1: really gone? You know, as you were just talking about porn,
Speaker 1: I thought, well, you know, JD. Vance, it was just
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to say unearthed because that
Speaker 1: suggests he was hiding this view. But because he gave
Speaker 1: an interview like last year he's the Republican you know,
Speaker 1: Senate nominee for Ohio, he talked about banning porn. So
Speaker 1: I think what a smart center left person would probably say,
Speaker 1: is look Nate, you know or audience, I get that,
Speaker 1: you know, the woke stuck his cringe. It's all going
Speaker 1: too far, Like we as a Democratic Party need to
Speaker 1: be much more like Bill Clinton. You're starting to kind
Speaker 1: of see people like Reuben Diego start to like kind
Speaker 1: of do this with his pushback against the use of
Speaker 1: the word LATINX. But guys like don't forget all this,
Speaker 1: like Barstol, conservatism is basically just a trojan horse. They're
Speaker 1: coming in and talking about CRT, which may make you uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: They're coming in talking about identity. But at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, I seen with the JD quote, it's
Speaker 1: all gonna be about banning port again. Oh and by
Speaker 1: the way, the gay marriage pivot didn't actually happen. What
Speaker 1: actually happened was they made a tactical and strategic retreat
Speaker 1: and now that they see the Olverton window expanding, they're
Speaker 1: going to be aggressive again. So what would you say
Speaker 1: to that bit of pushback that it's all basically trojan horse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's sort of two separate questions there, the
Speaker 1: first one about the trojan horse question and the sort
Speaker 1: of hysteria that you've heard from some corners that left
Speaker 1: about the fact that Roby Wade is going to mean
Speaker 1: that same sex marriage is going to be overturned and
Speaker 1: they're going to be banning birth control, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: I don't buy that, right, I really don't think politically
Speaker 1: the Republican Party. You know, fifty five percent of Republican
Speaker 1: voters now it created the same sex marriage. They would
Speaker 1: just be political suicide for them to actually try to
Speaker 1: make that a part of their agenda. And there are
Speaker 1: different issues today that they're fighting about, right, Like the
Speaker 1: barstool conservative issue set is substantively different than the old
Speaker 1: religious right issue set. These are two different kinds of conservatism.
Speaker 1: So it's not I think conflating the two is not
Speaker 1: the right way to think about it. But it is true,
Speaker 1: of course that Christian conservatism is still a powerful force
Speaker 1: in the Republican Party and will be for the rest
Speaker 1: of my lifetime. Right, I mean, Christian voters in the
Speaker 1: Bible Belt are a cornerstone of the Republican electorate. And
Speaker 1: there's a reason that someone like Donald Trump, who was
Speaker 1: a lifelong pro choicer and not exactly a sort of
Speaker 1: bastion of Christian sexual morality, felt the need to really
Speaker 1: make a serious outreach to evangelical conservative voters because he
Speaker 1: knew that they were a fundamental part of his voter base,
Speaker 1: and he could break with party orthodoxy on trade and
Speaker 1: spending and welfare and immigration, but if he broke with
Speaker 1: party orthodoxy on abortion, for example, he'd be dead. So
Speaker 1: that is an important part of the Republican Party and
Speaker 1: it will be for some time to come. So I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to say that this doesn't exist anymore or
Speaker 1: won't play a powerful role in American politics going forward.
Speaker 1: I'm pointing out that it's declining, and it also doesn't
Speaker 1: have the same sort of monopoly over the Republican Party
Speaker 1: cultural agenda as it did thirty years ago. Well said,
Speaker 1: I learned a lot of this episode, Nate, most importantly,
Speaker 1: to not wear a white shirt when I have a
Speaker 1: fake background. You're going to people who are still here
Speaker 1: with all interview. Yes, don't coming for the poor outfitting
Speaker 1: choice been o. This is this is a great piece.
Speaker 1: We'll make sure it's linked in the comments. And I
Speaker 1: also suggest that folks check out the rest of Nate's
Speaker 1: work because, once again, like the part of the segment
Speaker 1: isn't for to get everyone to cree with you on
Speaker 1: your specific policy ends. It's more just this idea of
Speaker 1: I think this is really good analysis of dynamics that
Speaker 1: are coming into play, and because they're new dynamics, it's
Speaker 1: going to be difficult to sort through without being rigoroused.
Speaker 1: So thanks for coming on the show again. Join us
Speaker 1: now for our weekly partnership segment with the lever is
Speaker 1: a reporter at that wonderful outlet, Matthew Cunningham Cook. Great
Speaker 1: to see you, Matthew. Thanks for having me on Crystal
Speaker 1: Our pleasure, Our pleasure. So this is a bombshell that
Speaker 1: you dropped here, got a lot of pickup. I'm glad
Speaker 1: we're getting the opportunity to covered as well. Go ahead
Speaker 1: and put this up on the screen. So Biden hikes
Speaker 1: Medicare prices and funnels profits to private insurers. The largest
Speaker 1: ever Medicare premium increase will pad the pockets of insurance
Speaker 1: executives who donated millions to the president's election campaign. Matthew,
Speaker 1: there are actually a lot of layers to the story,
Speaker 1: and there's a significant backstory here also regarding sort of
Speaker 1: FDA corruption and the approval of a drug, very expensive
Speaker 1: drug for Alzheimer's that doesn't actually really seem to work.
Speaker 1: Can you take us from the beginning of the story
Speaker 1: to how we end up with this largest ever Medicare
Speaker 1: price hike? Yeah, I mean, so it starts. I mean
Speaker 1: there's a bigger story where it's you know, we've seen
Speaker 1: for the last fifty years, we've seen this creeping privatization
Speaker 1: of Medicare, where the idea is that even though Medicare
Speaker 1: is set up a system as a system to get
Speaker 1: insurers out of the equation, starting under Nixon and agressively
Speaker 1: expanded under every president, this idea that hey, well maybe
Speaker 1: insurers could do a good job. Maybe you know, great
Speaker 1: Grandma is using too much, going to the doctor too much,
Speaker 1: you know, and insurance could help us solve that problem.
Speaker 1: So that's the bigger backstory. But since Biden came into
Speaker 1: office in June twenty twenty one, his FDA, over the
Speaker 1: recommendations of a scientific panel, approved this incredibly expensive drug
Speaker 1: add you Helm that was produced by Biogen, that was
Speaker 1: a drug that was really just was found to have
Speaker 1: not worked, but because of its enormous cost and because
Speaker 1: of poor modeling by CMS actuaries, and potential conflicts of
Speaker 1: interest there. The Biden CMS used the drug to justify
Speaker 1: a world historic price increase for Medicare, where most people
Speaker 1: don't know that Medicare recis Hippiens do pay premiums. They're
Speaker 1: directly debited out of their Social Security check. And it
Speaker 1: went up by twenty dollars a month. So that's a
Speaker 1: fourteen point five percent increase in just one year. Again,
Speaker 1: you know, all this media discussion about inflation will really
Speaker 1: hone in on workers' wages, but won't talk about the
Speaker 1: enormous growth in health care costs, with this Medicare premium
Speaker 1: increase being kind of the sterling example of that. So
Speaker 1: it was approved, caused a massive premium increase, then Biogen
Speaker 1: got a bunch of flack lowered the price of the drug.
Speaker 1: Then CMS got a bunch of flacks said that they
Speaker 1: would only cover the drug under very specific circumstances, and
Speaker 1: so Javier Bassera directed CMS to consider, well, maybe we
Speaker 1: should lower the premium increase given the problems we've found
Speaker 1: with Aduhilm, and ultimately they decided not to lower the
Speaker 1: premium increase, even though it was based on assumptions that
Speaker 1: were totally wrong totally faulty, totally wrong. You know, I
Speaker 1: actually remember reading about this drug in depth. I think
Speaker 1: the New York Times did a big story about it
Speaker 1: a while back, and there were very real and legitimate
Speaker 1: questions about whether there was a sort of conflict of
Speaker 1: interest or corruption issue here that led to the drugs approval, because,
Speaker 1: as you point out, not only does the research not
Speaker 1: really show that the drug is particularly effective for Alzheimer's,
Speaker 1: but it shows it can have dangers as well. And
Speaker 1: then you add the expense on top of it. I
Speaker 1: never would have imagined reading that piece though, that one
Speaker 1: of the implications would be a massive premium hike for
Speaker 1: all seniors who are dependent on Medicare. So you see
Speaker 1: this just ripple effect of how potential possible government corruption
Speaker 1: leads to hurting you in your pocketbook. And then the
Speaker 1: other piece of this that I just can't I literally
Speaker 1: can't understand is the political part. Like you correct me
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong. The administration could decide, you know what,
Speaker 1: we're not going to hike premiums on seniors right before
Speaker 1: the midterm election, and they decided not to do that,
Speaker 1: Like yes, what I mean really, like what is the
Speaker 1: thinking that goes into that decision. I mean, I've often
Speaker 1: said Democrats have a kink for losing, you know, but
Speaker 1: I really do think that that does play into this here.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think most of all is kind of
Speaker 1: you know, we see, you know, cabinet secretaries, senior CMAS
Speaker 1: officials go to making extraordinary amounts of money when they
Speaker 1: leave the administration, and so I think that the problem
Speaker 1: here is that top biding administration officials are more interested
Speaker 1: in their next job than actually stop Republicans. And so,
Speaker 1: I mean you can see this with Jen Saki, right,
Speaker 1: you know, she was you know, negotiating her job with
Speaker 1: MSNBC while she was still press secretary. I think that
Speaker 1: that really plays I think that in DC, there's people
Speaker 1: are much more interested in having an Olympic sized swimming
Speaker 1: pool than winning. I think that that's what their definition
Speaker 1: of winning really is. It's one big club. So that,
Speaker 1: to me, I think is kind of the real big
Speaker 1: issue here is that they're they're not actually interested in winning,
Speaker 1: because if they were, then they wouldn't be doing things
Speaker 1: that materially make the lives of millions of seniors worse.
Speaker 1: The other piece of this, Matthew, is a media story
Speaker 1: which is I'm so grateful to you guys for the
Speaker 1: reporting that you all do, and you specifically, I think,
Speaker 1: have broken already a number of really important stories. This
Speaker 1: got a lot of traction on line, there was clearly
Speaker 1: a lot of public interest. It was covered in a
Speaker 1: lot of independent outlets like our own, but I haven't
Speaker 1: seen it picked up by the mainstream press. When again,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a really this is a bread
Speaker 1: and butter issue. It's going to have a massive impact
Speaker 1: on a whole number of people, that illustrates a number
Speaker 1: of core issues here in DC, and there seems to
Speaker 1: be very little curiosity about it. What do you attribute
Speaker 1: that to? Yeah, I mean, I mean I was talking
Speaker 1: on our podcast about this that when I started out
Speaker 1: doing investigative reporting almost a decade ago, also with David,
Speaker 1: I mean, we've been working together off and on for
Speaker 1: a long time. You know, we used to have stories
Speaker 1: that would get a lot more pick up in the
Speaker 1: mainstream press, a lot more mainstream reporters reporting out what
Speaker 1: we were doing, and now that seems to have not happened,
Speaker 1: to just not happen anymore. And I think that what
Speaker 1: we do here at the lever that really folks are
Speaker 1: not interested in replicating is kind of hard hitting economic
Speaker 1: reporting that speaks to the pocketbook issues of millions of
Speaker 1: Americans and avoids kind of culture war dislocations in favor
Speaker 1: of what's what's really impacting you know, our elders, you know,
Speaker 1: people who have worked their entire lives, and that to
Speaker 1: me is a big tragedy because again, you know, the
Speaker 1: other flip side of this is that so in the
Speaker 1: midst of this massive premium increase, you also see in
Speaker 1: April an eight point five percent increase in the payments
Speaker 1: to privatize Medicare advantage plans. So again, meanwhile, while there's
Speaker 1: tons of doctors who are saying that they can barely
Speaker 1: make ends meets and keep their you know, private off
Speaker 1: us is open due to Medicare payments issues, instead, they're
Speaker 1: now engaging in a massive giveaway to insurers that run
Speaker 1: Medicare advantage plans. So it's really a very simple story,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, the poor are getting poorer and
Speaker 1: the rich are getting richer. And I think that the
Speaker 1: story did well because it speaks to what every American
Speaker 1: can really witness with their own eyes, which is that
Speaker 1: economic inequality, even this year is massively accelerating and creating
Speaker 1: enormous amounts of social problems and dislocation, and the only
Speaker 1: kind of response offered to it by the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: is more culture war stuff and not any type of real,
Speaker 1: dedicated program to address the pocketbook needs of Americans. I
Speaker 1: think that is all very well said. As always, we're
Speaker 1: extremely grateful for your reporting and for the Lever for existing,
Speaker 1: and we always recommend to our viewers that you, guys,
Speaker 1: if you're able, I know things are really tough for
Speaker 1: a lot of people, but if you are able to
Speaker 1: do it, go and subscribe to the Lever, because they
Speaker 1: are filling a need that is just extraordinarily important within
Speaker 1: our media realm. So Matthew, thank you for the great reporting. Guys,
Speaker 1: go check out more of their work, and we will
Speaker 1: see you again next week. Thank you, Matthew, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for having me. Kristl Hi. I'm Maximilian Alvarez. I'm
Speaker 1: the editor in chief of the Real News Network and
Speaker 1: hosts of the podcast Working People and this is the
Speaker 1: Art of class War on Breaking Points. I want to
Speaker 1: start today's segment by thanking all of you watching for
Speaker 1: being so welcoming and encouraging as we've gotten this recurring
Speaker 1: series off the ground, and I want to thank you
Speaker 1: for all your thoughtful and constructive engagement with the segments
Speaker 1: that I've put out so far. It really does mean
Speaker 1: a lot to me, and I think it's a really
Speaker 1: special thing what we're doing here, and I just wanted
Speaker 1: to say up top that it's an honor to be
Speaker 1: in this struggle with all of you together. Now, the
Speaker 1: last segment in this series, as you well know, ended
Speaker 1: up being quite a bit longer than I anticipated, So
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to make this segment shorter, and
Speaker 1: we're going to dive straight into it because what we
Speaker 1: are talking about today has become so pervasive, so widespread,
Speaker 1: and so commonly accepted as normal that few of us
Speaker 1: can even imagine what an alternative would look like. We're
Speaker 1: talking today about bosses and managers interfering with employees legally
Speaker 1: protected rights. Specifically, we're talking about bosses and managers retaliating
Speaker 1: against workers for exercising their right by engaging in quote
Speaker 1: protected activity. So first let's start big, and then we're
Speaker 1: going to winnow down. So there are actually many different
Speaker 1: forms of protected activity when it comes to the workplace,
Speaker 1: and protected activities are defined as such because they are
Speaker 1: legally protected activities that workers can engage in without fear
Speaker 1: of retaliation from supervisors or employers. That's what the word
Speaker 1: retaliation legally means in this case. I mean, bosses and
Speaker 1: managers love telling workers what they can and can't do
Speaker 1: on the job, and it often feels like they have
Speaker 1: just complete, unchecked power to do whatever they want and
Speaker 1: that they don't have to follow any of the same
Speaker 1: rules that we do. And you know, just being honest,
Speaker 1: for most of my life, I'm sure as hell didn't
Speaker 1: know that there were actually a whole lot of things
Speaker 1: that they can't do, but they do it anyway because
Speaker 1: they can get away with it. Protected activities, though, are
Speaker 1: outlined in a range of federal statutes, including the Americans
Speaker 1: with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the
Speaker 1: Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act,
Speaker 1: the Family Medical Leave Act, the Whistleblower Protection Act, and more.
Speaker 1: Exercising your equal employment opportunity rights is protected activity. It
Speaker 1: is illegal for employers to punish job applicants or employees
Speaker 1: for asserting their right to be free from employment discrimination
Speaker 1: and harassment. As the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission website states, quote,
Speaker 1: it is unlawful to retaliate against applicants or employees for
Speaker 1: filing or being a witness in an EEO charge complaint, investigation,
Speaker 1: or lawsuit, communicating without communicating with a supervisor or manager
Speaker 1: about employment discrimination, including harassment, answering questions during an employer
Speaker 1: investigation of alleged harassment, refusing to follow orders that would
Speaker 1: result in discrimination, resisting sexual advances or intervening to protect others,
Speaker 1: requesting accommodation of a disability or for a religious practice,
Speaker 1: or asking managers or coworkers about salary information to uncover
Speaker 1: potentially discriminatory wages. End quote. So, by the letter of
Speaker 1: the law, that's how it's supposed to work. You're not
Speaker 1: supposed to be able to retaliate against workers for engaging
Speaker 1: in those activities. Of course, we know that this is
Speaker 1: so often not how it works in the real world,
Speaker 1: and there are a whole lot of reasons why that
Speaker 1: is the case that we just can't get into right now,
Speaker 1: but you probably already know why, right But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that working people have no recourse. It is a
Speaker 1: pain in the ass, and it can take a long time,
Speaker 1: and frankly, the agencies themselves are almost all overburdened and
Speaker 1: underfunded and have limited enforcement power. But you can use
Speaker 1: agencies like the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal
Speaker 1: Opportunity Employment Commission to hold employers accountable for violating your rights,
Speaker 1: and that is an important part of this total picture,
Speaker 1: because if they are not held accountable, employers get used
Speaker 1: to feeling like they can do whatever they want, but
Speaker 1: they can't, and working people suffer needlessly when we resign
Speaker 1: ourselves to the notion that they can. And when it
Speaker 1: comes to retaliation, employers have largely felt that they can
Speaker 1: get away with anything without facing any consequences, but hopefully
Speaker 1: that is changing. In nineteen ninety seven, out of all
Speaker 1: the charges filed with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, twenty
Speaker 1: two point six percent of those charges pertain to retaliation,
Speaker 1: regardless of the statute the charge fell under. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, retaliation charges comprised a whopping fifty six percent
Speaker 1: of all charges filed with the Commission, So retaliation, it
Speaker 1: would seem, is on the rise, but we can also
Speaker 1: see from this table that instances of people reporting employers
Speaker 1: for retaliation are also on the rise, and the more
Speaker 1: that people know their rights, the better we can know
Speaker 1: what to do when those rights are violated. And with
Speaker 1: the time that we have left, I want to focus
Speaker 1: on one specific area where it's really really important to
Speaker 1: know your rights, and that is the area of concerted activity.
Speaker 1: It is your legally protected right as a worker to
Speaker 1: engage in concerted activity without fear of retaliation from your boss.
Speaker 1: So what does that mean organizing? It means organizing, and
Speaker 1: it means taking collective action or engaging in an activity
Speaker 1: that can lead to collective action to address issues in
Speaker 1: the workplace. You have the right to act with your
Speaker 1: co workers to address work related issues, and that doesn't
Speaker 1: just mean organizing to form a union. It could involve
Speaker 1: joining with co workers to talk directly to your employer,
Speaker 1: to a government agency, or even to the media about
Speaker 1: problems in your workplace. It could involve a concerted refusal
Speaker 1: of unsafe working conditions. It could involve talking openly with
Speaker 1: one or more co workers about your wages and benefits
Speaker 1: or other working conditions. Managers love telling us that we
Speaker 1: can't discuss our wages and salaries, but they legally can
Speaker 1: do that because doing so infringes on your right to
Speaker 1: know about and address disparities in pay and wage discrimination.
Speaker 1: Your boss cannot discharge, discipline, or threaten you for or
Speaker 1: coercively question you about engaging in these protected concerted activities.
Speaker 1: As the National Labor Relations Board website lays out, quote,
Speaker 1: it is unlawful for an employer to interfere with, restrain
Speaker 1: or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights. For example,
Speaker 1: employers may not respond to a union organizing drive by threatening, interrogating,
Speaker 1: or spying on pro union employees, or by promising benefits
Speaker 1: if they forget about the union. Section seven of the
Speaker 1: National Labor Relations Act guarantees employees quote the right to
Speaker 1: self organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to
Speaker 1: bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to
Speaker 1: engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective
Speaker 1: bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, as well as
Speaker 1: the right to quote refrain from any or all such
Speaker 1: activities end quote. Now I noticed some this may seem
Speaker 1: like a total you know, no duh, no brainer kind
Speaker 1: of point to make, but you'd be surprised by how
Speaker 1: many workers don't organize or don't engage in concerted activity
Speaker 1: because they are afraid of how their boss and managers
Speaker 1: might retaliate. And that's why it is so important to
Speaker 1: know that there are real, etched in stone rules about
Speaker 1: how they cannot retaliate against you for exercising your rights.
Speaker 1: And you know, I mean retaliation can take many forms.
Speaker 1: If bosses take action that adversely affects workers, or they
Speaker 1: threaten employees with adverse consequences like closing the shop, loss
Speaker 1: of benefits, or making working conditions worse in response to
Speaker 1: workers supporting unionization or engaging in union activity, that's retaliation.
Speaker 1: If they promise workers' additional benefits or preferable treatment, if
Speaker 1: they reject the union, if they interrogate you about organizing activity,
Speaker 1: or if they spy on workers who are organizing, If
Speaker 1: they withhold benefits or raises that were expected before talk
Speaker 1: of a union began, If they tell you you can't
Speaker 1: wear union buttons at work, that is retaliation. Yes, your
Speaker 1: relationship with your manager might change if you engage in
Speaker 1: concerted activity. They may take it personally, and sometimes that
Speaker 1: really can't be helped. But if they respond in a
Speaker 1: retaliatory way to your protected activities, they are breaking the
Speaker 1: law and yet bosses do it all the time. It
Speaker 1: is so pervasive, and it is so brazen, and it
Speaker 1: drives me nuts, let alone you know everyone else out
Speaker 1: there who is confronting this stuff on a day to
Speaker 1: day basis, because I mean, the path to holding companies
Speaker 1: meaningfully accountable is so long, arduous, time consuming, and often
Speaker 1: so expensive, and because so many workers can't really afford
Speaker 1: that and can't risk losing a paycheck, most just have
Speaker 1: to grin and bear it, or at most they quickly
Speaker 1: find another job. For bosses and the companies themselves, though,
Speaker 1: the benefits of retaliating against workers as a general practice
Speaker 1: outweigh the costs of maybe possibly getting caught and held
Speaker 1: legally accountable. It's really just the cost of doing business
Speaker 1: for them, and the cost is us and our rights.
Speaker 1: And when I say it's pervasive, I mean it. It
Speaker 1: actually dawned on me while I was preparing this segment
Speaker 1: that a shocking number of the worker interviews I've done
Speaker 1: of late and over the years center on some form
Speaker 1: of retaliation. Remember in our last segment when we talked
Speaker 1: about the iron workers at G and D Integrated LLC
Speaker 1: in Central Illinois. If you watch the whole interview I
Speaker 1: did at the Real News Network with former G and
Speaker 1: D employee John hog Set and Vince d. Dinado and
Speaker 1: Ben Scroggins to organizers with the Iron Workers' Union, you'll
Speaker 1: hear them detail what they allege was a concerted campaign
Speaker 1: of retaliatory harassment from management after a majority of workers
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly voted to unionize in October of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: Then on March first, twenty twenty two, in a final
Speaker 1: cruel act of suspected retaliation against workers for engaging in
Speaker 1: protected concerted activity, G and D laid off the vast
Speaker 1: majority of workers at the Morton, Illinois facility. Remember Evan Seyfried,
Speaker 1: the twenty year Ohio Kroger worker who, according to a
Speaker 1: lawsuit filed by the Seyfried family, tragically took his own
Speaker 1: life after enduring a horrific six month campaign of targeted
Speaker 1: bullying and harassment from his own managers. As the family
Speaker 1: and Evan's co workers describe it, this was a campaign
Speaker 1: of terror, and it was a campaign done in retaliation
Speaker 1: for protected activities that Evan himself engaged in, even if
Speaker 1: those weren't concerted organizing activities. Evan filed safety and Harassment
Speaker 1: complaints with Kroger HR, and he helped other employees file complaints.
Speaker 1: He even refused to comply with directives from a superior
Speaker 1: that he believed to be against the law and or
Speaker 1: company policy, and he was targeted for it. And the
Speaker 1: list just goes on and on. I mean, the path
Speaker 1: to the incredible Amazon labor union victory at the JFKA
Speaker 1: warehouse on Staten Island, in many ways, started from the
Speaker 1: moment that Amazon retaliated against Christian Smalls by firing him
Speaker 1: for speaking out about the company's COVID safety policy in
Speaker 1: March of twenty twenty. As companies always do, Amazon denied
Speaker 1: charges of retaliation. You'll seldom find a company at like
Speaker 1: admitting to retaliation, and Amazon found some flimsy excuse to
Speaker 1: justify Smalls as firing, although in April of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: Amazon was famously caught with its pants down when a
Speaker 1: leaked memo from an internal meeting of Amazon leadership, a
Speaker 1: meeting that Jeff Bezos attended, showed executives hashing out their
Speaker 1: scheme to make a public example out of Smalls, including
Speaker 1: racist smears about him being quote not smart or articulate
Speaker 1: end quote again, Amazon claims it does not retaliate against
Speaker 1: workers for protected activities. But we have to square that
Speaker 1: with the fact that a lot of pro union workers
Speaker 1: and organizers have either been fired, interrogated, had their workshifts
Speaker 1: adjusted in seemingly punitive ways, and surveilled and been surveilled
Speaker 1: by the company. In January, the NLRB found merit in
Speaker 1: the charge that Amazon had illegally fired de Kwon Smith,
Speaker 1: a worker at the Staten Island complex and an Amazon
Speaker 1: labor union organizer who was living out of a homeless
Speaker 1: shelter at the time. And that's not all, not by
Speaker 1: a long shot. Jonathan Bailey co founded Amazonians United, a
Speaker 1: network of Amazon workers around the country fighting for better
Speaker 1: wages and working conditions. As Olivia Salon and April Glazer
Speaker 1: wrote for the for NBC News in March of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, quote the day after Jonathan Bailey organized a
Speaker 1: walkout over COVID nineteen concerns at an Amazon warehouse in Queens,
Speaker 1: New York, he was, he said, detained during his lunch
Speaker 1: break by a manager in a black camouflage vest who
Speaker 1: introduced himself as ex FBI. Bailey was ushered to asside
Speaker 1: office and interrogated for ninety minutes, according to testimony filed
Speaker 1: to the National Labor Relations Board. A week later, Bailey
Speaker 1: received a formal write up for harassment, although his managers
Speaker 1: would not tell him whom he had allegedly harassed nor
Speaker 1: what he had allegedly said or done end quote. Now,
Speaker 1: the NLRB found merit to that charge that Amazon's interrogation
Speaker 1: and attempted intimidation of Bailey was an illegal form of retaliation,
Speaker 1: and Amazon had to settle. And just this past month,
Speaker 1: Amazon fired two worker organizers involved with the Amazon Labor Union.
Speaker 1: As Lauren Gurley wrote for Vice's Motherboard, quote on May third,
Speaker 1: Amazon human Resources notified Matt Cusick, the comms lead for
Speaker 1: Amazon Labor Union and an Amazon warehouse worker, that he
Speaker 1: had been terminated for voluntary resignation due to a job
Speaker 1: abandonment quote unquote. According to an email obtained by Motherboard,
Speaker 1: Cusick had been on COVID related leave. Amazon notified another
Speaker 1: warehouse employee, employee Tristan Dutchen, an outspoken ALU organizer whose
Speaker 1: photo has been prominently featured across major media outlets in
Speaker 1: recent weeks, in a meeting on May seventh, that he
Speaker 1: had been terminated for Felton falling behind on productivity targets
Speaker 1: Dutch and told Motherboard quote, I believe it retaliatory Dutch
Speaker 1: and told Girley, Amazon knows that I'm making national headlines.
Speaker 1: They could see all my interviews with the press. End quote.
Speaker 1: Amazon claims the firings are quote unrelated to each other
Speaker 1: and unrelated to whether these individuals support individuals support any
Speaker 1: particular cause or group end quote. You guys may remember
Speaker 1: that in my first installment of the art of class
Speaker 1: war here on Breaking Points, I talked at length about
Speaker 1: how the ruling class weaponizes time against us, and I
Speaker 1: talked about the importance of all of us staying vigilant
Speaker 1: and committed to workers' struggles even after the headlines and
Speaker 1: the initial excitement fades. The retaliation and suspected retaliation that
Speaker 1: we're talking about here is a perfect example of why
Speaker 1: we have to stay focused and not abandoned these workers
Speaker 1: after the cameras and social media excitement are gone and
Speaker 1: they and their co workers are left to fight off
Speaker 1: increasingly top down pressure, increasing top down pressure, and increasingly
Speaker 1: tense environments at work. If you like me, like so
Speaker 1: many of us, have excitedly been sharing news over the
Speaker 1: past two years of another unionization campaign or strike, or
Speaker 1: news of workers anywhere standing up for themselves and fighting
Speaker 1: for what they deserve. Then I urge you to do
Speaker 1: regular Google searches about those same stories and to add
Speaker 1: the word retaliation into your search, and you'll see what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. Or hell I mean. Go to the
Speaker 1: Equal Opportunity Employment Commission website, find the newsroom section where
Speaker 1: they post press releases about settled, filed, and ongoing cases.
Speaker 1: Type in the word retaliation and give a good look
Speaker 1: for yourself at all the results. Again, the sad reality
Speaker 1: is that these documented cases represent merely a fraction of
Speaker 1: the frankly innumerable instances in this country where workers face
Speaker 1: retaliation for protected activity and don't report it. Even though
Speaker 1: the number of cases we can see is pretty staggering,
Speaker 1: the fact that they traditionally represent a small portion of
Speaker 1: instances of retaliation means that bosses and companies get comfortable
Speaker 1: believing that no one will notice or hold them accountable
Speaker 1: if and when they illegally retaliate against their workers, and frankly,
Speaker 1: the penalties can be very minor, and so they don't
Speaker 1: really change their behavior unless they're slaped with like a
Speaker 1: big settlement that they have to pay out. But this
Speaker 1: is where we can play a role. In the same
Speaker 1: way that more people have trained themselves to instinctively whip
Speaker 1: out their phones and use their cameras to document civilian
Speaker 1: encounters with police and hold cops accountable for abusing their
Speaker 1: power or neglecting their duties. We can all help create
Speaker 1: a climate in which workers know that they are continuously
Speaker 1: supported and bosses know that they are continuously being watched. Again,
Speaker 1: like I said in that very first segment here on
Speaker 1: Breaking Points, we can't just excitedly jump from unionization vote
Speaker 1: to unionization vote, to strike to strike and so on.
Speaker 1: Workers struggles against the boss don't magically end after a
Speaker 1: successful union vote, and sadly, no company has made that
Speaker 1: clearer than Starbucks. In an article for WES published in
Speaker 1: April of this year, journalist Paul Blest wrote quote, more
Speaker 1: than a dozen current and former Starbucks employees told Vice
Speaker 1: News the company is punishing workers for being vocally supportive
Speaker 1: of unionizing. Over the past two months months, Starbucks has
Speaker 1: fired workers across the country, four allegedly breaking a sink
Speaker 1: on purpose, leaving at the end of a shift. While
Speaker 1: one other worker was still working. Quote safety violations after
Speaker 1: being interviewed inside the store by a television crew after hours,
Speaker 1: entering the store alone, when arriving to work early, allegedly
Speaker 1: being late to work without letting anyone know ahead of time,
Speaker 1: allegedly recording supervisors without their permission, allegedly failing to close
Speaker 1: the store properly, and more. End quote. And one of
Speaker 1: the examples that Blessed sits in that paragraph is the
Speaker 1: case of a group of workers at the Poplar and
Speaker 1: Highland Starbucks location in Memphis who were fired on February eighth.
Speaker 1: That group, who have become known as the Memphis Seven,
Speaker 1: made up the original union organizing committee at that store location.
Speaker 1: In a collective statement released publicly, the Memphis Seven said, quote,
Speaker 1: we were fired over mundane things. The things we were
Speaker 1: fired for are things that nobody has been fired over
Speaker 1: in the past, and we believe they fired us because
Speaker 1: we were told we were too loud for Starbucks and
Speaker 1: they had to shut us down the only way that
Speaker 1: they know they knew how end quote. Starbucks has denied
Speaker 1: allegations of retaliation, saying that the workers were fired for
Speaker 1: violating safety and security policies. Including remaining in the store
Speaker 1: after closing time with non employees to do an interview
Speaker 1: with local media. Those Memphis workers did get some sweet
Speaker 1: vindication of their own this week, though, when the store
Speaker 1: that they were fired from voted to unionize with eleven
Speaker 1: yes votes and three no votes. On top of that,
Speaker 1: as josh Idelsen wrote in Bloomberg last month, quote, Starbucks
Speaker 1: Corporation violated federal law by firing, threatening, and carrying out
Speaker 1: surveillance on union activists in New York, US Labor Board
Speaker 1: prosecutors alleged in a complaint. The agency's Buffalo regional director
Speaker 1: said in a filing Friday that the company illegally interfered
Speaker 1: with employees' rights by firing six and retaliating against others.
Speaker 1: The NLRB complaint seeks remedies, including the reinstatement of the
Speaker 1: employees who were allegedly illegally fired or forced out, along
Speaker 1: with financial compensation and apology letters. Starbucks, in an emailed statement,
Speaker 1: disputed the claims and said the complaint represented only the
Speaker 1: start of a litigation process end quote. Again, Starbucks has
Speaker 1: disputed all the charges of retaliation against the company, even
Speaker 1: as those charges continued to stack up by the week.
Speaker 1: The National Labor Relations Board has even sued the coffee
Speaker 1: giant for allegedly retaliating against three employees in Phoenix who
Speaker 1: were involved in union organizing, demanding that those workers be
Speaker 1: immediately reinstated with their usual schedules and accommodations, from firings
Speaker 1: to descheduling and underscheduling people to putting pro union workers
Speaker 1: on different shifts at different stores. The list of retaliation
Speaker 1: charges is a mile long at this point, and again,
Speaker 1: Starbucks denies all of them, As is very often the
Speaker 1: case in these circumstances, and as workers and organizers around
Speaker 1: the country have been saying repeatedly, companies like Starbucks do
Speaker 1: their best to sidestep charges of retaliation by finding some
Speaker 1: reason for disciplinary action against pro union workers, and those
Speaker 1: reasons usually focus on fine print violations that managers never
Speaker 1: cared about before or that were not you know, serious
Speaker 1: issues before workers made their organizing efforts known, which is
Speaker 1: why it is so important for anyone thinking of engaging
Speaker 1: in concerted activity to take care and take precautions, keep
Speaker 1: a paper trail, have witnesses, get things in writing before
Speaker 1: you move forward. Now, this is the playbook that workers
Speaker 1: at the College Avenue Starbucks location in Ithaca, New York
Speaker 1: have said that managers have been following since they made
Speaker 1: their desire for a union known and successfully voted to unionize.
Speaker 1: On April eighth of this year, Ithaca actually made history
Speaker 1: and became the first city in the US where all
Speaker 1: Starbucks locations voted to unionize, and all three of the
Speaker 1: Ithaca locations unionized on the same day. Barely a week
Speaker 1: after that, workers at the College Avenue location staged a
Speaker 1: walkout after a grease trap in the kitchen, which they
Speaker 1: had complained about before, overflowed and spilled a gross, smelly
Speaker 1: stew of congealed grease and runoff onto the floor. When
Speaker 1: customers complained about the smell and workers complained about the
Speaker 1: safety hazard, the shift supervisor made the decision to close
Speaker 1: the store. Then the acting manager flipped out at the
Speaker 1: acting manager at the time flipped out, rushed to the
Speaker 1: store and demanded that they reopen, and so the whole
Speaker 1: crew went on a one day strike in protests. Now
Speaker 1: last week, in what certainly appears to be an escalation
Speaker 1: in Starbucks's alleged retaliation campaign, the company announced that it
Speaker 1: would be permanently closing the College Avenue location on June tenth,
Speaker 1: for my podcast Working People This Week, I spoke with
Speaker 1: Nadia Vitek, a partner at the College Avenue location and
Speaker 1: a worker organizer with Starbucks Workers United. Listen as Nadia
Speaker 1: first describes the treatment one of their co workers received
Speaker 1: by management and then sums up the message that Starbucks
Speaker 1: is bluntly sending to any workers out there who were
Speaker 1: even thinking of unionizing. And for context, like a final
Speaker 1: written warning means that if he gets branded up again,
Speaker 1: he'll be fired. And so he feels like he has
Speaker 1: that My specific co worker who got a final written
Speaker 1: warning has been targeted by her, like really heavily. We
Speaker 1: also have a fan that like blows cool air on
Speaker 1: us because our AC doesn't really reach us behind the bar,
Speaker 1: and she decided one day that it's not quote up
Speaker 1: to standard and that it's a tripping hazard, and so
Speaker 1: she unplugged it and said we can only use it
Speaker 1: when the store is closed. And you know, it started
Speaker 1: getting really hot recently, and so the co worker I
Speaker 1: was just talking about, and this actually prompted her to
Speaker 1: give him a final written warning. He was like, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: it's like too hot. I'm going to leave this out.
Speaker 1: You can do whatever you want to me. She took
Speaker 1: the fan and threw it in the trash, and then
Speaker 1: she left. She went outside, took a phone call, came
Speaker 1: back handed him that final written warning that had like
Speaker 1: like reasoning that like backed up like a few weeks
Speaker 1: behind two. I mean, definitely it's retaliation. I don't think
Speaker 1: there's any other way to look at it. But I
Speaker 1: think like on top of that, they're also like their
Speaker 1: goal in this isn't to harm us like at the
Speaker 1: College As store, but to intimidate workers like everywhere who
Speaker 1: are thinking about unionizing. I think their goal is to
Speaker 1: send a message that if you unionize, these are the consequences.
Speaker 1: This is just like a new escalation and their union
Speaker 1: busting campaign as a whole, not just in Ithaca, and
Speaker 1: like it has consequences that are far reaching, which is why,
Speaker 1: like us at College Avenue, we're going to fight this
Speaker 1: as hard as we can, and we have like the
Speaker 1: support financially and in other ways to do that. Again,
Speaker 1: Starbucks denies charges that this is an act of retaliation
Speaker 1: for workers unionizing. Quote, we open and close stores as
Speaker 1: a regular part of our operations. Starbucks spokesperson Reggie Borges
Speaker 1: told Bloomberg regarding the announced closure, by the time you
Speaker 1: watch this, the College Avenue store will be closed. Workers
Speaker 1: like Nadia have told me that the main way people
Speaker 1: can support them is by paying attention to this ship
Speaker 1: and calling it out whenever they see it. And frankly,
Speaker 1: it is depressing to see the number of go fundmes
Speaker 1: that are circulating right now for fired pro union workers,
Speaker 1: not just at Starbucks, but a whole lot of people
Speaker 1: who have engaged in unionizing organizing activities, have been celebrated online,
Speaker 1: have subsequently been fired and now are struggling to pay rent.
Speaker 1: And so if you are able to offer immediate support
Speaker 1: to them while they are fighting to get legal recourse,
Speaker 1: please do so. Starbucks, Amazon, Kroger, G and D Integrated
Speaker 1: and a million other lesser known employers need to know
Speaker 1: that we are watching them and that they cannot just
Speaker 1: violate our rights and face no consequences to them. I say,
Speaker 1: we see your asses, and we are not going to
Speaker 1: let you get away with this bullshit. Thank you for
Speaker 1: watching this segment with breaking points, and be sure to
Speaker 1: subscribe to my news outlet, the Real News Network with
Speaker 1: links in the description. See you soon for the next
Speaker 1: edition of the Art of Class War. Take care of yourselves,
Speaker 1: take care of each other. Solidarity Forever,