Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 2: the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent.
Speaker 3: Coverage that is possible.
Speaker 2: If you like what we're all about, it just means
Speaker 2: the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that,
Speaker 2: let's get to the showing.
Speaker 3: Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday.
Speaker 2: We have an amazing show for everybody today. When do
Speaker 2: we have crystal?
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do lots of things happening here in this
Speaker 1: town this week. We've got a little Meet the Candidate
Speaker 1: segment for you, all of the individuals who are vying.
Speaker 4: To be the next Speaker of the House. Not that
Speaker 4: I know why you would.
Speaker 1: Want that job in particular, but some people do, so
Speaker 1: we'll tell you about that. We also have an interesting
Speaker 1: situation where a number of Republicans are very mad at
Speaker 1: Democrats for failing to bail out Kevin McCarthy. And there
Speaker 1: was also some retribution enacted on Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer.
Speaker 1: They're kicked out at their little special offices in the Capitol,
Speaker 1: so all of the fallout here, we'll get into that.
Speaker 1: We've also got a really bad jobs report that just
Speaker 1: came out. There's another one that's coming out on Friday.
Speaker 1: We'll see if that confirms the bad news, so we'll
Speaker 1: get into that as well. New numbers with regard to
Speaker 1: how much Americans would like to see a party other
Speaker 1: than the Democrats and Republicans succeed, and it's actually surprising
Speaker 1: who is most interested in moving in third party direction,
Speaker 1: which could have some implications for the RFK Junior.
Speaker 4: Impending independent run. So we'll get into that.
Speaker 1: And Michael lewis once again under fire, this time for
Speaker 1: what appears to be a very sympathetic portrait of Sam
Speaker 1: Bankmin Freed.
Speaker 4: As he faces chial this week.
Speaker 1: We're also going to be joined by a United Auto
Speaker 1: worker who is on strike currently to give us an
Speaker 1: update from the ground about what is going on and what.
Speaker 4: They are hoping to achieve through their strikes.
Speaker 2: So a lot to get into, that's right, and I
Speaker 2: just want to say once again thank you to all
Speaker 2: the prem subscribers.
Speaker 3: We've got the upcoming focus group in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: You guys will be interested in that specifically, about what
Speaker 2: we're going to be talking about with third parties. We're
Speaker 2: going to talk to Democratic voter this time about how
Speaker 2: they feel about Biden. And also thank you all the
Speaker 2: Premum subs helping us support Jordan Sheridan other on the
Speaker 2: ground reporting efforts as we bring more of an effort
Speaker 2: in all of these cases.
Speaker 3: You know, we're having a UAW worker on.
Speaker 2: It's better to not hear from us, it's better to
Speaker 2: hear from them, and so that is what you are helping.
Speaker 2: Support Breakingpoints dot com if you are able, let's get
Speaker 2: to the speakers race. Just some shocking turn of develop
Speaker 2: I feel like Chris I have lived several lifetimes in
Speaker 2: the last couple of weeks, just from Diane Feinstein's death onwards.
Speaker 2: It just feels like things keep on and rolls. Now
Speaker 2: we've lost the speaker. Counterpoints did a great job yesterday
Speaker 2: summarizing Kevin McCarthy and how he's decided to go right
Speaker 2: off into the sunset.
Speaker 3: I actually support that. I support people.
Speaker 2: Losing a vote and then having the dignity to be like,
Speaker 2: you know what, I'm out now though absolute chaos. The
Speaker 2: calls are everywhere here in Washington. We now two official
Speaker 2: bids for speaker, both of which are actually quite formidable.
Speaker 2: I could see both succeeding. Let's start with Congressman Steve Scalis.
Speaker 2: Let's go and put this up there on the screen,
Speaker 2: he announced yesterday in a letter to his colleagues. Quote
Speaker 2: it is with that sense of responsibility and purpose I
Speaker 2: am seeking the conference's nomination for Speaker of the House.
Speaker 2: You know my leadership style. I have displayed this as
Speaker 2: your majority leader and whip. I have approven track record
Speaker 2: of bringing together diverse array of viewpoints within our conference
Speaker 2: to build consensus where others thought it impossible. The other
Speaker 2: one is also a very different style of speaker bid.
Speaker 2: Congressman Jim Jordan. Let's go and put this up there
Speaker 2: on the screen, he announces. Quote, we agreed at the
Speaker 2: beginning of the Congress there are free fundamental things the
Speaker 2: House must do. Pass the bills that need to be passed,
Speaker 2: do the oversight and reign in the spending. Working with
Speaker 2: Chairman Green in our leadership, I helped to deliver the
Speaker 2: most significant legislative accomplishment this Congress, the strongest immigration and
Speaker 2: border enforcement bill ever. With other committee chairs and members
Speaker 2: of the Judiciary Committee, I am doing the oversight and
Speaker 2: holding this administration accountable. I have been amongst the leaders
Speaker 2: pushing for fiscal discipline with my career, and then at
Speaker 2: the end he says, we must do it together as
Speaker 2: a conference. I respectfully ask for your support as Speaker
Speaker 2: of the House of Representatives. Both of these are critical
Speaker 2: actual bids and really have two diverging viewpoints. But I
Speaker 2: would be remiss if I did not mention the dark
Speaker 2: horse candidate who has been now nominated by Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 2: Green and by Congressman Troy Nilles. President Donald Trump, former
Speaker 2: President of the United States. As you remember, you do
Speaker 2: not have to be a actual sitting member of Congress
Speaker 2: to be the speaker, even though it has never happened.
Speaker 2: The rules don't say that Trump himself actually weighed in
Speaker 2: on that bid. Here's what you have to say.
Speaker 5: A lot of people of the big ally speaker. All
Speaker 5: I can say is, Wilton, whatever.
Speaker 6: It's best floral the country of the Republican by you.
Speaker 7: Just hi.
Speaker 8: People say we have some.
Speaker 6: Great, great people. You just take a job.
Speaker 5: A lot of people have asked me about it. I'm
Speaker 5: focused leading, I don't know you. I'm shooting oo much.
Speaker 5: Thanks fifty the president. So my focus is totally under
Speaker 5: that if I can help them do it in the process,
Speaker 5: I would do. There's some great people in the Republican
Speaker 5: Party that could do.
Speaker 6: A great job at Street.
Speaker 2: Trump also posted this on truth Social yesterday. Let's put
Speaker 2: this up there on the screen. What do we see? Oh,
Speaker 2: it's Trump in the photoshops into the Speaker's galley, wearing
Speaker 2: with the gavel, wearing his mate America grating a hat. Chris,
Speaker 2: I was telling you before the show, I should note
Speaker 2: that would actually be against the dress growths of which
Speaker 2: I support. By the way, I do not believe that
Speaker 2: hat should be worn on the floor, and especially not
Speaker 2: by the Speaker of the House.
Speaker 3: But there we have it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think one of the ways we can
Speaker 2: summarize it and look at it for everyone is that
Speaker 2: Steve Scalise is probably the more establishment type of Republican.
Speaker 2: This is the former leader. He has been now in
Speaker 2: the position for almost a decade twenty fourteen, he was
Speaker 2: the whip. He has good relationships with others. He has
Speaker 2: a very different style actually than Kevin McCarthy, and behind
Speaker 2: the scenes of retentions between the two. But he would
Speaker 2: buy no by he buy all estimations would be the
Speaker 2: quote unquote establishment choice. The thing is, and I mean, look,
Speaker 2: I'm shocked that his scalise is running. I didn't even
Speaker 2: think he would be a viable candidate just because, as
Speaker 2: we raise, I mean, this is a man who's been
Speaker 2: put through the ringer. He survived that horrible mass shooting
Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen against Congressman.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Then you know, he currently has been diagnosed with an
Speaker 2: aggressive form of blood cancer and is currently undergoing chemo therapy.
Speaker 4: I I believe he was just diagnosed, Like we just
Speaker 4: learned about it last month.
Speaker 2: Exactly, so, I mean, who knows how long it's been
Speaker 2: going on. But at the very least he has to
Speaker 2: wear like a KA ninety five mask, because, like infection
Speaker 2: is that.
Speaker 3: Much of a threat.
Speaker 2: Not to mention when you were speaker, it's not just
Speaker 2: the job here. You got to fly your ass all
Speaker 2: over this country raising.
Speaker 4: Money money, So that's part of the job.
Speaker 3: One thing.
Speaker 2: Jim Jordan also actually, you know, if you'll recall, I
Speaker 2: always said I thought he was a dark horse candidate
Speaker 2: just because this is a man with incredible amount of
Speaker 2: he has an incredible amount of credibility with the Freedom Caucus.
Speaker 2: He has made multiple stands against Speaker Bainner and against
Speaker 2: Speaker Ryan, but he voted for Kevin McCarthy this time around. Critically,
Speaker 2: you know, Matt Gates and that wing. All of them
Speaker 2: have said, oh yeah, I would like Speaker Jordan, I
Speaker 2: would like Speaker Skilly.
Speaker 3: So we'll see where they line up.
Speaker 2: People like Thomas Massey, who also voted for Kevin McCarthy,
Speaker 2: but still, you know, more of a hardliner Republican. He
Speaker 2: came out and he supported Jordan. So I'm curious what
Speaker 2: you think. You know, these are probably our top two candidates.
Speaker 2: The Speaker could be one of those two. But you know,
Speaker 2: we should also remember that chaos.
Speaker 3: Who the hell knows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, both these guys could fall, and three weeks from
Speaker 2: now we could have a totally different Speaker whose name
Speaker 2: I didn't even just mention.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could end up very easily with the
Speaker 1: situation where since you have these two individuals in the
Speaker 1: race and they're splitting the votes and you can't come
Speaker 1: to that majority consensus, that some other dark horse emerges
Speaker 1: as sort of like a consensus pick who's able to
Speaker 1: get across the finish line.
Speaker 4: There's just no way of.
Speaker 1: Saying, you know, in terms of their ideological differences, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure it matters that much because as we saw
Speaker 1: with McCarthy and as we've seen with previous Republican speakers,
Speaker 1: it's less about what they really want to do and
Speaker 1: more about what their caucus is going to permit them
Speaker 1: to do. Good point, and so you know, even we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about Ukraine AID. I think part of
Speaker 1: why McCarthy basically had to step down there were no
Speaker 1: real moves left for him on the chessboard because if
Speaker 1: he made some deal with Democrats to stay in office,
Speaker 1: and I think if he had offered them much of anything, certainly,
Speaker 1: if he had offered them like okay, I'll bring up
Speaker 1: the Ukraine AID, they would have backed him. They would
Speaker 1: have kept him in office. Then he's screwed with regard
Speaker 1: to fundraising. He screwed with regard to the like his
Speaker 1: never ending nightmare with the caucus and with the Matt
Speaker 1: Gates wing and the caucuss would just be beginning. So that
Speaker 1: was like not a good and viable option. And then
Speaker 1: on the other side, it didn't look like there was
Speaker 1: really anything he could do to placate this group of
Speaker 1: holdouts because he'd already given the store away to the
Speaker 1: like what much left was there for him to give them?
Speaker 1: So it was a completely untenable situation. And whoever is
Speaker 1: able to succeed and end up as the next speaker,
Speaker 1: which could take some time to resolve, by the way,
Speaker 1: is going to be subject to the exact same identical
Speaker 1: set of pressures. So again, I mean, I guess my
Speaker 1: biggest analysis is I'm perplexed why anyone would want this job.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of self delusion here in
Speaker 1: Washington that like, oh, well, I'm the guy, and I'll
Speaker 1: be different and they'll respect me, and I'll be able
Speaker 1: to put Probably the only one who actually would be
Speaker 1: able to pull it off and pull them together is
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. But I don't think anyone's really even He
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like he's really taking any of that particularly seriously.
Speaker 2: Privately, I believe I think Trump would be the best speaker.
Speaker 2: You know, why you can't cross him. It's like, what
Speaker 2: are going to are going to vote against Trump? And
Speaker 2: Trump is going to primary alphas. You can't speak out
Speaker 2: against this man. I mean, he could negotiate with confidence.
Speaker 2: He could basically do whatever he wanted. You want evidence
Speaker 2: for that, Look at whenever he was president, all the
Speaker 2: people who even the people who voted against him, they
Speaker 2: did it very quietly and they never made it into
Speaker 2: a thing. They certainly never would have pulled any of
Speaker 2: the Shenan against that they did against Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 3: And that's the other one.
Speaker 2: If you want to keep Matt Gates in line, who
Speaker 2: does make Matt Gates answer to Trump, mar to Retaylor
Speaker 2: Green and everybody else who is in the party. You
Speaker 2: would just have to hold your nose and you would
Speaker 2: have to make do so. I actually think Trump would
Speaker 2: be a very strong candidate. Now I do not believe
Speaker 2: he actually would be the person who. I don't believe
Speaker 2: he ultimately will end up in that position because there's
Speaker 2: a whole logistically and all kinds of things, but you
Speaker 2: know it's out there. Let's also, though, talk about the
Speaker 2: race for number two, Steve Scalise, if he were to
Speaker 2: get the job, what that would look like. Let's put
Speaker 2: this up there on the screen. There's actually a lot
Speaker 2: of jockeying going on behind the scenes right now. So
Speaker 2: in terms of who would be the Republican Majority leader. Remember,
Speaker 2: the leader is actually the number two position because the
Speaker 2: number one is the speaker. Whenever you have the majority,
Speaker 2: Steve Scalise vying for the speaker, which means that Tom Emmer,
Speaker 2: who is currently the number three the majority whip, is
Speaker 2: currently leading for a majority leader and also has been
Speaker 2: racking up a decent amount of endorsements. However, at least
Speaker 2: Stephonic appears from making a big move for the number
Speaker 2: two slot in the party. Remember, she got a lot
Speaker 2: of credibility during the impeachment fight, especially the second impeachment
Speaker 2: where she stood up and I believe he spoke on
Speaker 2: behalf of Trump. Trump has always admired her. He spoke
Speaker 2: on behalf r He said, this is the potential vice
Speaker 2: president here. I mean, she has a lot of credibility
Speaker 2: I think with Trump at the very least, which of
Speaker 2: course would matter. Representative Jim Banks, who's one of those
Speaker 2: maga ish type Republicans, came out an endorseder just yesterday,
Speaker 2: so that also would be a very big fight. But
Speaker 2: all of this depends on Scalise not getting the speakership.
Speaker 2: We don't know what the whipcount is right now, so
Speaker 2: in terms of the vote, the vote is supposed to
Speaker 2: be next Wednesday. Tuesday, the House will come back in session.
Speaker 2: Everybody will fly. They'll have a caucus meeting on Tuesday
Speaker 2: where they cast the initial round of ballots. Wednesday is
Speaker 2: supposed to be actual vote on the floor of the
Speaker 2: House of Representatives. Nobody expects, at least as of right now,
Speaker 2: that there will be a prevailing vote for speaker on
Speaker 2: that ballot, although I think one scenario where that might
Speaker 2: be possible is that the Republicans say, we're not leaving
Speaker 2: this room on to Tuesday night till we figure this out,
Speaker 2: and then we go when you vote to eighteen on
Speaker 2: the day of the election on Wednesday, they could just
Speaker 2: say we're going to figure this out in here, whoever
Speaker 2: ends up winning, and we can all agree.
Speaker 3: For the entire caucus. Not a single person can.
Speaker 2: Vote no, or if they do, you know, maybe they'll
Speaker 2: just not show up that day sometimes, you know, some
Speaker 2: sort of absence thing in order to rig the vote
Speaker 2: if they can't stomach it. I could see that playing out,
Speaker 2: just because they're like, we're sick of the headlines, we're
Speaker 2: sick of the chaos. Wednesday, We're coming together and we're
Speaker 2: going to vote for a speaker. But as of today,
Speaker 2: not a single informed person, including the Congressmen themselves, believe
Speaker 2: that anything like that is going to happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and remember, nothing can be done in the House
Speaker 1: until this is taken care of. Yeah, and they just
Speaker 1: passed that forty five day continuing resolution, So you have
Speaker 1: that clock ticking in terms of when that expires. Your
Speaker 1: face another government shutdown situation. So you know, it's not
Speaker 1: like there aren't things that they need to do, but
Speaker 1: you cannot move forward on anything until.
Speaker 4: You have a Speaker of the House. You know, I
Speaker 4: don't think.
Speaker 1: That this situation really gets resolved until the next election
Speaker 1: because and I'm not saying there won't be a there
Speaker 1: will be some Speaker of the House. They'll figure something out,
Speaker 1: someone will end up in the position. But in terms
Speaker 1: of the level of chaos and the dissidence and the
Speaker 1: way that this is all going down, I really don't
Speaker 1: think that there is any resolution until either Republicans have
Speaker 1: a good showing and they increase their margin because all
Speaker 1: of this political leverage in the hands of the Matt
Speaker 1: Gates wing of the party comes from the fact that
Speaker 1: they have a three vote majority. That's where that comes from.
Speaker 1: And you now have some members of the Republican Caucus,
Speaker 1: Mike Lawler in particular, very vocal that they want to
Speaker 1: have a vote to expel Matt Gates.
Speaker 4: That would then further decrease your margin.
Speaker 1: You know, so George Santos, who's under multiple federal indictment.
Speaker 1: So the margin is as narrow as it could possibly be.
Speaker 1: So you either have a result where they expand their
Speaker 1: margin and whoever is the next speaker House has a
Speaker 1: little bit more wiggle room to work with, or they
Speaker 1: lose their majority, which is very possible, and you know,
Speaker 1: you end up with a Democratic House and you end
Speaker 1: up going in that direction. So I think we're going
Speaker 1: to continue to see this type of brinksmanship and you know,
Speaker 1: unsettled nature of the Republican Caucus, just given the nature
Speaker 1: of their narrow margin, given the fact that you have
Speaker 1: a handful of people who are willing to do you know,
Speaker 1: willing to cause chaos, willing to.
Speaker 4: You know, go against whoever. Their leaders are unafraid of
Speaker 4: any of that.
Speaker 1: So you're going to continue to have that dynamic until
Speaker 1: you end up with a different, a different situation, a
Speaker 1: different either caucus leading the House or a larger margin
Speaker 1: for the Republican.
Speaker 2: You are exactly right, and that fits very much with
Speaker 2: the topic of the day, which is Ukraine. Ukraine money
Speaker 2: is very much in doubt right now. Jim Jordan will
Speaker 2: bring you a little bit of what he had to
Speaker 2: say on the subject. But the White House is absolutely
Speaker 2: freaking out and losing their mind. President Biden making that
Speaker 2: clear in a press conference yesterday.
Speaker 3: Here's what he had to say.
Speaker 9: This array on Capitol Hill after your conversation with allies yesterday.
Speaker 6: Worry you that you won't be able to deliver the
Speaker 6: aid that the US has promised to Ukraine.
Speaker 8: It doesn't worry me, and but I know there are
Speaker 8: a majority of members of the House and Senate in
Speaker 8: both parties who have said that they support funding Ukraine
Speaker 8: with your I'm going to be announcing very short a
Speaker 8: major speech I'm going to make on this issue and
Speaker 8: why it's critically important for the United States and our
Speaker 8: allies that we keep our commitment.
Speaker 9: President, are you also concerned about the rest of your
Speaker 9: domestic and foreign policy and issuative is being internal because
Speaker 9: of what we saw happened yesterday, is dysfunction in Congress
Speaker 9: of the chaos that we saw on the House side.
Speaker 9: Does that concern you in any way.
Speaker 8: The dysfunction always concerns me. The programs that we have
Speaker 8: argued over, we've passed bipartisanly. I'm not concerned that they're
Speaker 8: going to all of a sudden commit try to undo them.
Speaker 6: Although there will.
Speaker 8: Be some, There will be some. I'm sure there's half
Speaker 8: a dozen or more extreme magnane Republican Republicans who would
Speaker 8: like to eliminate just about everything I've done.
Speaker 2: So Biden saying he's going to give a big speech
Speaker 2: on Ukraine. If I was a Ukraine person, by.
Speaker 3: The way, I would not want that.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't want Biden, one of the most leave popular presidents,
Speaker 2: to be the main cheerleader.
Speaker 3: But hey, you know, go for it. I guess I'm
Speaker 3: sure you'll convince us.
Speaker 2: That big thing whenever it comes to the speaker race
Speaker 2: is that Scalise and Jordan, none of them have made
Speaker 2: Ukraine a priority. In fact, Kevin McCarthy is the best
Speaker 2: friend that Ukraine had whenever it came to somebody who
Speaker 2: had any even semblance of credibility with both sides. Just
Speaker 2: to give you an idea, this is Jim Jordan, straight
Speaker 2: from his mouth on what he would do whenever it
Speaker 2: comes to Ukraine.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen, what about Ukraine?
Speaker 2: Are you?
Speaker 4: Are you willing to move forward with an aid package
Speaker 4: for Ukraine?
Speaker 7: If your speaker, I'm against that. What I understand is
Speaker 7: at some point we're going to have to deal with
Speaker 7: this appropation process in the right way, and we're going
Speaker 7: to try to do that in the next to be
Speaker 7: down to forty one days. The most pressing issue on
Speaker 7: Americans mind is not Ukraine. It is the border situation,
Speaker 7: and it is crime on the streets.
Speaker 2: The most pressing situation on American's mind is not Ukraine.
Speaker 2: Crystal on that, He's one hundred percent correct. The big question, though,
Speaker 2: is about where Steleeve Scalise has this. We actually pulled
Speaker 2: some scores. There's a group here in Washington called Republicans
Speaker 2: for Ukraine. They're not really Republicans, they're like Bill Crystal
Speaker 2: Biden voters. But they've created a very useful score, at
Speaker 2: least for me, about where to judge where people are
Speaker 2: in terms of the votes on Ukraine. And this is
Speaker 2: according to their scoreesheet. What Steve Scalie and Jim Jordan have.
Speaker 2: Let's put it up there on the screen. So they
Speaker 2: have given Steve Scalise a quote B grade overall. That's
Speaker 2: based on his voting record. The voting record is that
Speaker 2: he voted I on the Ukraine len Lease Act, the
Speaker 2: original one, the Ukraine Supplemental Appropriation, the extra fifty billion
Speaker 2: back in twenty twenty two, but he voted NO on
Speaker 2: three critical amendments which we've excited more to Ukraine. He
Speaker 2: did ultimately support that three hundred million dollars to Ukraine
Speaker 2: with no statements currently on the record.
Speaker 3: They call him a bee. Jordan though is a no.
Speaker 2: He voted I only on the initial fifty billion dollars
Speaker 2: that was granted to Ukraine and NO on basically every
Speaker 2: single vote since they give him an F. Obviously, Trump,
Speaker 2: I don't have to tell you where he stands on Ukraine.
Speaker 2: But I think that one of the important reasons why
Speaker 2: this matters for the entire Ukraine debate is it is
Speaker 2: more in peril today than it ever has been. Politically, Republicans,
Speaker 2: the vast majority of Republicans polling shows do not support
Speaker 2: more aid to Ukraine. Now, that hasn't necessarily mattered whenever
Speaker 2: it comes to the votes, and McCarthy was stuck very
Speaker 2: much between a rock and a hard place. It was
Speaker 2: interesting in his speech after he was defeated as speaker,
Speaker 2: he actually likened Putin to Hitler and was talking about
Speaker 2: bringing some stuff up in the past. So I think
Speaker 2: his personal loyalties absolutely lied with Ukraine. And Zelenski and
Speaker 2: others had made comments in the past that he had
Speaker 2: said privately, yeah, look, I support you all, figure out
Speaker 2: the votes. Well, that's not what Steve Scalise actually believes
Speaker 2: at all, at least in terms of the public record.
Speaker 2: Scalise himself, given his voting record, he did not vote
Speaker 2: I on those three critical amendments in the past. While
Speaker 2: he may have supported the three hundred million, is he
Speaker 2: going to support the one hundred billion more that the
Speaker 2: Republicans in the Senate and the Democrats in Biden want
Speaker 2: to push through with Jordan's actually a completely It's a
Speaker 2: known quantity.
Speaker 3: He's like, no, I'm totally against it.
Speaker 2: So, I mean the idea that a hundred billion more
Speaker 2: is going to Ukraine, I just simply I can't believe
Speaker 2: a scenario where that would happen. I'll give the other
Speaker 2: side chaos, as I have said that chaos is a
Speaker 2: ladder and the words of the great Little finger. They
Speaker 2: could extract some margin which would weaken the speakership akin
Speaker 2: to the motion to vacate and remove some of the
Speaker 2: barriers to what a discharge petition might look like, and
Speaker 2: so that would make it so that it would be
Speaker 2: possible to maybe get some Ukraine aid on the floor.
Speaker 2: But with both of theseidates, and it's not just me
Speaker 2: saying this is most congressional analysts that can look at
Speaker 2: it right now, even another dollar to Ukraine or even
Speaker 2: the transfer vote does not look likely anytime soon going
Speaker 2: through the House of Representatives. That will, not, however, crystal
Speaker 2: stop the Senate from trying to get more money for Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, listen, I think honestly, like I said before,
Speaker 1: I don't think their ideology really matters here. I don't
Speaker 1: think whether it was Kevin McCarthy or whether it is
Speaker 1: Steve Scalise or Jim Jordan, I don't think they were
Speaker 1: going to have the political strength and ability to bring
Speaker 1: a vote for Ukraine aid to the floor, at least
Speaker 1: if they want to keep their job as Speaker. Yes,
Speaker 1: I just don't think that you can at this point,
Speaker 1: given where the Republican caucus is, and given how hardline
Speaker 1: especially the dissident faction is on this particular issue. I mean,
Speaker 1: this was part of what led to the downfall of McCarthy,
Speaker 1: these allegations from Matt Gates that there was some sort
Speaker 1: of a secret deal with Democrats that he denied, but
Speaker 1: Gates was pushing forward. But that's part of what led
Speaker 1: to McCarthy's downfall. I do not think whoever it is
Speaker 1: who ends up as Speaker of the House next can
Speaker 1: bring this vote to the floor. The only way it
Speaker 1: gets done, as far as I can see, is through
Speaker 1: some sort of legislative parliamentary maneuver, a discharge petition or
Speaker 1: some other thing arcane maneuver that I'm unaware of. That's
Speaker 1: the only way I think that they are able to
Speaker 1: move a forward. You do still have Biden's right, You
Speaker 1: do still have if you had a vote in the House,
Speaker 1: it would still.
Speaker 3: Pass well how much? How much though, because that's the question.
Speaker 1: The because you would have I mean, they only Republicans
Speaker 1: only have a three vote margin, So if all of
Speaker 1: the Democrats are voting for it, you only need three
Speaker 1: three Republicans to get it across the finish lines. I
Speaker 1: think it's very clear there's a pretty large majority in
Speaker 1: the House.
Speaker 4: Honestly, you're right.
Speaker 2: I meant in terms of what he said, the majority
Speaker 2: of both parts.
Speaker 3: I guess you know what.
Speaker 2: You're right because rhetorically what he said is that a
Speaker 2: majority of each chamber in the Congress to support it.
Speaker 3: You're absolutely correct.
Speaker 2: Yes, I thought he was talking about the majority of
Speaker 2: Republicans because I'd flagged previously that the majority of Republicans.
Speaker 1: It's actually completely I think Republicans are pretty split at
Speaker 1: this point in terms of pretty split down the middle
Speaker 1: in terms of the caucus, although it's not a hundred
Speaker 1: percent clear. But yeah, if you had a straight up
Speaker 1: and down vote in the House, it would pass.
Speaker 4: But it's a question of getting to that vote.
Speaker 1: And like I said, I don't think there's any way
Speaker 1: in hell anybody who wants to remain Speaker of the
Speaker 1: House can bring that vote. I will say I differ
Speaker 1: from you a little bit on the Biden speech. In
Speaker 1: that listen, he owes it at this point to the
Speaker 1: American people to explain what the hell he's thinking about.
Speaker 3: I agree with you.
Speaker 2: I meant in terms of, like, if you want AID
Speaker 2: to continue to have somewhat of a biparson majority, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: good luck, give it to the unpopular president on a
Speaker 2: democratic level.
Speaker 3: Agree.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't think he's going to persuade or dissuade a
Speaker 1: single person with whatever he says.
Speaker 4: But I do think he really owes it to.
Speaker 1: Everyone the world, the American people at this point, to
Speaker 1: explain what the hell the plan is. And because you know,
Speaker 1: the plan had previously been we're going to be all
Speaker 1: in through the counter offensive, They're going to take back
Speaker 1: territory and then they'll be in a stronger position and
Speaker 1: then maybe we can think about how to end this conflict. Well,
Speaker 1: that did not work out, So what now? That's what
Speaker 1: I want to hear from the president of the United States,
Speaker 1: And that's what I think he owes people person.
Speaker 2: If they don't have a plan, he can try and
Speaker 2: gas lad us. All I want Biden gave us the
Speaker 2: plan already. It's called regime change.
Speaker 1: Reidential presidential words. Well, that's the thing, Like presidential words matter.
Speaker 1: So if he says something like that, that's important. You know,
Speaker 1: whatever sort of line he tries to pull, like, it's
Speaker 1: important to hear at least how he is explaining what
Speaker 1: his view of the conflict is so I welcome this address.
Speaker 1: I hope it's fullsome I'm certainly going to, you know,
Speaker 1: listen very carefully to the words coming out of his
Speaker 1: mouth versus what the actions are that they're taking.
Speaker 3: I have no disagreement. I welcome the speech as well.
Speaker 2: I think you should have been given us speeches, probably on
Speaker 2: a quarterly basis, as to why we're massivoluing this, as
Speaker 2: to what the goals are, as to what all of.
Speaker 3: That is that said.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's basically told us nothing without nothing for
Speaker 2: Ukraine without Ukraine, which means these government, which is wholly
Speaker 2: reliant upon us for basically everything, gets to set the terms.
Speaker 2: That's not a plan. Actually the second plan is in
Speaker 2: terms of the red lines. First F sixteens was going
Speaker 2: to start World War three. There's actually a good side
Speaker 2: by side analysis every single thing that he has said
Speaker 2: that he eventually reversed on. He reversed himself on F sixteens,
Speaker 2: he reversed himself on Abrams tanks, he reversed himself on
Speaker 2: even he pledged at one point no NATO troops would
Speaker 2: be sent to the country. Now the UK is talking
Speaker 2: about sending actual boots on the ground to Ukraine. I mean,
Speaker 2: at every step of what he has said that he
Speaker 2: wouldn't do, and what were alleged red lines he eventually flipped.
Speaker 2: The only thing hasn't flipped on yet is a no
Speaker 2: fly zone, which I wouldn't put off the table given
Speaker 2: what this administration is and how obsessed they are with Ukraine.
Speaker 2: So I agree with you from a democratic perspective, I
Speaker 2: agree completely. From a global perspective, and from an interest
Speaker 2: of the peace of the world, I agree that said,
Speaker 2: I don't expect to hear anything new. I think his
Speaker 2: plan is very simple. He just back Ukraine for as long,
Speaker 2: quote unquote, as long as it takes. And it's funny too,
Speaker 2: you know. I've seen a bunch of people say things like, oh,
Speaker 2: Biden gave his word to Ukraine, so how can the
Speaker 2: US Congress go back on his word. I'm like, hey,
Speaker 2: you know what, in our system, the president is not
Speaker 2: a king.
Speaker 3: The president does not decide.
Speaker 2: And if we really want to think that statements of
Speaker 2: the presidents are official declarations of American policy, as by
Speaker 2: the way, the Russians in the Chinese do, there are
Speaker 2: a whole lot of statements in the past that clash
Speaker 2: very much with even allowing or trying to get Ukraine
Speaker 2: into NATO. The reason why you can disregard those is
Speaker 2: in our system, the Senate of the United States ratifies
Speaker 2: all treaties, and that is what our word actually looks like.
Speaker 2: The House of Representatives, per our constitution, is the one
Speaker 2: that actually appropriates these bills. So he shouldn't be talking
Speaker 2: out of his ass if he can promising stuff that
Speaker 2: he can't necessarily not even he can't deliver that the
Speaker 2: United States, through our democratic system actually can. So look
Speaker 2: on a personal level, obviously, I support this. I don't
Speaker 2: think Ukraine should get a single dollar more from the
Speaker 2: United States, and I think that we should be pursuing
Speaker 2: all avenues towards peace. I think that US giving them
Speaker 2: this blank check has been a disaster for American foreign
Speaker 2: policy interests has been the complete distractions. Depleted all of
Speaker 2: our weapons stockpiles. We've given them over one hundred billion
Speaker 2: dollars in aid, more than we gave to the Afghan
Speaker 2: national security forces through all of twenty years. We've done plenty.
Speaker 2: If the Euros want to pick up the tab, go
Speaker 2: for it. But you know what, they don't actually have
Speaker 2: the capacity even if they wanted to. So this is
Speaker 2: going to happen now or it can happen five years
Speaker 2: from now, and there's no reason to waste a couple
Speaker 2: hundred billion in the meantime, keep our eye off the
Speaker 2: ball of where our actual threats are, and frankly, just
Speaker 2: make our own country less safe. But you know, obviously
Speaker 2: my view is a very standard and at this point
Speaker 2: for people who watch this show.
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, in my opinion, all of this gates
Speaker 1: Ko situation has worked down beautiful for me too. Yes,
Speaker 1: we avoided a government shutdown. You know, there was no
Speaker 1: none of the like mole spending cuts to social spending
Speaker 1: that he was advocating for, and that you know, that
Speaker 1: initial appropriations bill that McCarthy tried to pass that they
Speaker 1: rejected even though it had like draconian cuts to every
Speaker 1: social safety net program. So that didn't happen. So I'm
Speaker 1: happy with that. I'm happy that, you know, Ukraine aid
Speaker 1: is being stymied here and that at least there's going
Speaker 1: to be a big debate over whether we move forward
Speaker 1: on that. I'm happy with that and happy to see
Speaker 1: the Republican Party torn to shreds and look like chaotic morons.
Speaker 3: They can't do anything, so.
Speaker 1: For me, this is all going great. All right, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about this next piece. So, just as a
Speaker 1: little bit of background, when you have a position of power,
Speaker 1: whether you're in the majority or in the minority, there
Speaker 1: are these like special perks that you get, and some
Speaker 1: of those perks are this is all by tradition. There
Speaker 1: are these little offices tucked away in various corners in
Speaker 1: the Capitol, and so if you're in a leadership position
Speaker 1: in your caucus, you traditionally get one of these they
Speaker 1: call them hideaways in the Capitol rather than have to
Speaker 1: go all the way back to the office buildings, which
Speaker 1: are you know, attached to the capital that are not
Speaker 1: in that same building. Okay, so Pelosi obviously had one
Speaker 1: of these. I don't know what it looked like, but
Speaker 1: it was probably one of the more grand ones because
Speaker 1: of her level of prestige. Put this up on the
Speaker 1: screen mere hours after taking over as Speaker pro tem
Speaker 1: with the ouster of Kevin McCarthy. This dude Representative Patrick mcckennry,
Speaker 1: who's kind of like the placeholder running the votes for
Speaker 1: the next speaker, et cetera, ordered former Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Speaker 1: to vacate her office by Wednesday. He said, please vacate
Speaker 1: the space tomorrow. The room will be re keyed. They
Speaker 1: go on to say Pelosi's currently using a hideaway office
Speaker 1: which only a handful of members received. Given that she
Speaker 1: is speaker. Emerita McCarthy allowed Pelosi to occupy that space. Mckenry,
Speaker 1: who is a McCarthy ally, is clearly less keen on it.
Speaker 1: There was additional reporting that also Steady Hoyer, who also
Speaker 1: benefited from one of these hideaway offices, has also been
Speaker 1: informed that he needs to get out of there. It's
Speaker 1: unclear whether Pelosi will actually be able to comply with
Speaker 1: this in time, because she is in California for the
Speaker 1: funeral of Diane Feinstein. But again, in terms of how
Speaker 1: this is all working out for me, am I sad
Speaker 1: to see Nancy Pelosi inst anyway. I love special offices.
Speaker 4: No, no, I am.
Speaker 3: I love amount of Oh my god, kicked out a rock.
Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, well, why does she even have an office,
Speaker 3: you know, in the first place. All this stupid courtesy
Speaker 3: nonsense is ridiculous.
Speaker 2: By the way, these hideaway offices, if you ever get
Speaker 2: the chance, they are really nice. I do absolutely think
Speaker 2: that if anybody has the chance, they should be able
Speaker 2: to see them. Have taken a couple of meetings in
Speaker 2: them in the past and they're pretty cool because they're
Speaker 2: all in the basement and all of that. And as
Speaker 2: you said, the main reason that people want them is
Speaker 2: the actual office is, as we all learn during the
Speaker 2: Jamal Bowman thing, are across the street from the.
Speaker 1: Capital and it is kind of a pain in the
Speaker 1: ad well, especially it's a little far well, especially if
Speaker 1: you're in Rayburn.
Speaker 2: So for those who don't know, the Rayburn House Office
Speaker 2: Building is, I think it might be a more than
Speaker 2: a half mile walk actually from the Capitol, which is
Speaker 2: a pain whenever you're running for votes. So there's actually
Speaker 2: a little subway like that people take in the House
Speaker 2: of Representatives.
Speaker 3: Is just kind of fun.
Speaker 2: If you're ever here and you're a tourists, you should
Speaker 2: go do it and you can come from the Rayburn
Speaker 2: House Office Building to the floor that's where senators also
Speaker 2: have one from the Heart Senate Office Building, which is
Speaker 2: similarly far from it. But that's why they all want
Speaker 2: a capital office, because they could just be in the
Speaker 2: US Capitol. So it's much more a matter of like
Speaker 2: pain in the ass factor and all of that that said,
Speaker 2: I'm not really sure why the current former Speaker of
Speaker 2: the House deserves an office, and especially the former Democratic whip.
Speaker 2: Pelosi was like, well, I let Speaker Hastert, whose name
Speaker 2: we probably shouldn't talk about it anymore, actually have an
Speaker 2: office whenever he was out of power. But the thing is,
Speaker 2: Crystal Is Pelosi is not just a former speaker. She's
Speaker 2: not even the former current leader of the party, Jaquem
Speaker 2: Jeffries is the only one who should have office space
Speaker 2: in the capital.
Speaker 3: Traditionally, it's really only leadership.
Speaker 2: She doesn't, as far as I know, have an official
Speaker 2: position of leadership in the Democratic Party.
Speaker 3: You're just another member at this.
Speaker 2: Point, unless you're the secret leader of the Democratic Party,
Speaker 2: which in which way, oh right, then it actually would
Speaker 2: make sense.
Speaker 3: Now I'm starting to understand where things come well.
Speaker 1: Also, people may think differently from the outside, but and
Speaker 1: all of the office space in the separate office buildings
Speaker 1: are also allocated by like seniority. So if you're a
Speaker 1: freshman member of the House, your office is actually really shitty.
Speaker 3: It's usually Rayburne or in Longworth, and it's very small.
Speaker 1: You would think, you know, it's members of the Oh,
Speaker 1: you're in the Senate, you're a member of Congress.
Speaker 4: Whatever.
Speaker 1: You would think there might be some grant. No, they're
Speaker 1: just like very standard and actually quite small office spaces
Speaker 1: where you walk into one room, there's like a secretary
Speaker 1: sitting right there, and then usually there's like one small
Speaker 1: office over here, one small office over there, and that's it.
Speaker 1: So it's that's why they really covet these like special
Speaker 1: perks of the hideaway office and whatever.
Speaker 4: So all of this so speaks.
Speaker 1: To the fact that and I think this is personally
Speaker 1: hilarious that the Republicans are furious that Democrats did not
Speaker 1: rescue Kevin McCarthy's lay mass, which it's like to me,
Speaker 1: why would they, Like, I see no reason why they
Speaker 1: would rescue him. And also it doesn't even seem to
Speaker 1: me like he wanted to be rescued because he did
Speaker 1: not offer them a single thing in terms of trying
Speaker 1: to make a deal, and there was one.
Speaker 4: Hundred percent deal to be made. You don't think if
Speaker 4: he offered them.
Speaker 1: Ukraine aid that a significant number of them wouldn't have
Speaker 1: come over and held their nose or whatever and voted
Speaker 1: McCarthy back. Absolutely not so yeah, they absolutely would have
Speaker 1: taken that deal. So it's not clear to me that
Speaker 1: he really wanted to be rescued, because, as I laid
Speaker 1: down before, he was in an impossible bind. There were
Speaker 1: really no decent moves back on the chessboard. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I find it hilarious that out of this whole thing,
Speaker 1: which is all total intra Republican party stuff, that there
Speaker 1: are a bunch of people on the right and in
Speaker 1: the mainstream press who've decided that the real culprits here
Speaker 1: are the Democrats. Here's Fox and Friends taking exactly this
Speaker 1: line of argument, take aalism.
Speaker 10: So the Democrats, under the leadership of Hakim Jefferies, wrestled
Speaker 10: with whether or not to support and save the speakership
Speaker 10: of Keim McCarthy. Ultimately they decided not to, and I
Speaker 10: read somewhere that apparently in the morning, as you can
Speaker 10: see right there, every one of the Democrats voted against McCarthy.
Speaker 3: That's what you get for trusting.
Speaker 10: They tell you one thing and then they pulled back
Speaker 10: and do something else.
Speaker 11: Instead of winning over your caucus, instead of getting the
Speaker 11: twelve Appropriations bill, instead of getting term limbs. What you
Speaker 11: promise you trusted the Democrats to save your till you
Speaker 11: trusted the Democrats to save you with the CR bill.
Speaker 11: I mean, it's no wonder why he's not speaker.
Speaker 3: And very much in this same we agree with Lawrence
Speaker 3: there at the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, but again, there was nothing really that
Speaker 1: McCarthy could do at this point, because he put this
Speaker 1: insane appropriations bill on the floor that, by the way,
Speaker 1: a bunch of modern Republicans ended up voting for, like,
Speaker 1: you know, forty percent cuts to Social Security Office or whatever,
Speaker 1: which still ends up failing because it wasn't parn So
Speaker 1: it just doesn't seem to me like there was really
Speaker 1: any move left for him to make. And in the
Speaker 1: same line of argumentation, Matt Lewis over at the Daily
Speaker 1: Base put this output this up on the screen. You
Speaker 1: can't blame Democrats for the blow that right wing bomb
Speaker 1: throwers landed on Kevin McCarthy, But what you can say
Speaker 1: they failed to do the right thing on behalf of
Speaker 1: the American people. And I just think this completely ignores
Speaker 1: the fact that number one, this is all intro Republican
Speaker 1: party stuff. And number two, whether it's McCarthy, whether it's Scalise,
Speaker 1: whether it's Jim Jordan, whether it's anyone except for Donald Trump. Honestly,
Speaker 1: the dynamics are going to be the same. Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: was not going to be able to bring a Ukraine
Speaker 1: Aid vote.
Speaker 4: To the floor. That ship had sailed.
Speaker 1: So I don't know what is the like the loss
Speaker 1: that we're suffering here. I don't know what the grand
Speaker 1: stakes are that you know, we failed the American people
Speaker 1: on and Nancy Pelosi failed the American people on.
Speaker 4: It just all seems incredibly silly to me.
Speaker 3: Well, McCarthy in particular, seemed very bitter.
Speaker 2: He said that Pelosi had told him privately that they
Speaker 2: would back him if there was ever a mothashould vacate.
Speaker 2: I once again returned to why is he having this
Speaker 2: conversation with Pelosi and not with Hakim Jeffreys, actual leader
Speaker 2: of the Democratic Party. But hey, you know, apparently that's
Speaker 2: where the deals get me. Then you also, why would
Speaker 2: you assume that would be the case. But the reason
Speaker 2: why Crystal that he couldn't bargain with them is what
Speaker 2: kind of speaker does he look like to the GOP
Speaker 2: when you had to rely on the Democrats to save you,
Speaker 2: if you bargain Ukraine AID like that up on the tape,
Speaker 2: you're dead amongst the base.
Speaker 3: The other thing is and this is why he made.
Speaker 2: The correct call in my opinion, by offering them nothing,
Speaker 2: and they also made the correct call. Well it depends, Actually,
Speaker 2: I'm curious what you think. Do you think they made
Speaker 2: the correct call because they effectively at this point have
Speaker 2: guaranteed that Ukraine Ate is ten times harder to get past.
Speaker 4: Again, I still don't think it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think they made the right call because they
Speaker 1: get to enjoy watching the chaos and Republicans rip each
Speaker 1: other to shreds.
Speaker 4: And you know, I mean, Matt.
Speaker 1: Gates is getting accused of all kinds of wild things
Speaker 1: on cable news. I mean, it's a total shit show
Speaker 1: over there. So of course they love that Ukraine Aid
Speaker 1: was not happening. I think that's just so clear at
Speaker 1: this point, right, there was no Matt Kate's Austin McCarthy
Speaker 1: over the rumor that there was perhaps in the future
Speaker 1: some secret feel over Ukraine. Yes, mcarthy was not going
Speaker 1: to be able to bring this to the floor, So yeah,
Speaker 1: there was nothing. They're not losing anything in this deal. Effectively,
Speaker 1: as far as I can.
Speaker 3: Tell, Yeah, yeah, you're probably right.
Speaker 2: I do think that the effectively guarantee a shut down
Speaker 2: in November. I could be wrong. We could have a
Speaker 2: similar last minute thing. But you think Jim Jordan's not
Speaker 2: willing to shut down the government that I literally would
Speaker 2: be willing to crash the entire debt ceiling. He doesn't
Speaker 2: care if he wins. Scalise too. Scalise is much more
Speaker 2: of a actual conservative on those issues than McCarthy really,
Speaker 2: and MacCarthy didn't really believe in anything that was like
Speaker 2: d honestly to his benefit because he was.
Speaker 3: Just like, look, I don't care. What does the caucus want.
Speaker 3: They're like, okay, we'll go with that.
Speaker 2: McConnell was, frankly, a much more ideological actor than Kevin
Speaker 2: McCarthy ever was. Kevin McCarthy cared about his majority, He
Speaker 2: cared about his name, He cared about that little thing
Speaker 2: that says speaker McCarthy above his door. He cared about
Speaker 2: the portrait, and he also cared about raising a ton
Speaker 2: of money. These other guys are a lot more ideological.
Speaker 2: So I think you're probably right in terms of shutdown,
Speaker 2: in terms of Ukraine, especially on an effective an effective measure.
Speaker 2: And you know, honestly, if they are Republicans and the
Speaker 2: Republicans were going to quote unquote say Pelosi or even Jeffries, I.
Speaker 3: Would tell them the same thing.
Speaker 2: I'd be like, no, screw them, let them, you know,
Speaker 2: let them flail and twist in the wind. Yeah, that's politically,
Speaker 2: it's a good thing. That's what you want the country
Speaker 2: to be focused on at the very least. So yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, from that perspective, and even also what you
Speaker 2: think the Dems are going to let you get something,
Speaker 2: you know through the No, it's not gonna happen if
Speaker 2: you're especially if we're talking vice versa in terms of
Speaker 2: Republican priorities like border security or something, It's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: if they control the House, they're totally going to trade
Speaker 2: that for you.
Speaker 3: They never would.
Speaker 1: I mean, imagine an alternate universe where the Progressives actually
Speaker 1: had some balls and actually challenged Pelosi and you know,
Speaker 1: had some real demands that they were going to make
Speaker 1: and whatever, you think the Republicans would bail Nancy Pelosi, like,
Speaker 1: it's a preposterous idea good point. So I don't know
Speaker 1: why anyone would think that, you know, and it's something.
Speaker 1: A lot of this is personal too. I mean McCarthy
Speaker 1: right after this he avoids the shutdown and you know,
Speaker 1: effectively does a deal with Democrats to just continue with
Speaker 1: the spending level as they are and to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're not doing Ukraine Aid for now. He goes on
Speaker 1: the Sunday shows and blames the Democrats for the situation,
Speaker 1: like you think that engenders a lot of good will
Speaker 1: where they feel any compunction to save your ass when
Speaker 1: it's on the line.
Speaker 4: Absolutely not.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think it's I think it's sort of preposterous,
Speaker 1: this idea that you know, it's really the Democrats fault
Speaker 1: that they should have saved him. And then it really
Speaker 1: makes that much of a difference in terms of how
Speaker 1: the future scenarios in terms of Ukraine Aid, in terms
Speaker 1: of government shut down are going to play out, because
Speaker 1: it's really I think one thing that's very clear, the
Speaker 1: Speaker is not in control of this caucus, So whoever
Speaker 1: it is, they're going to be subject to the same
Speaker 1: whims and pressures. There's one more piece of this that
Speaker 1: I think is amazing and hilarious, which is the problem
Speaker 1: Solvers Caucus, which are some of the worst annoying is
Speaker 1: most annoying corporate shills bipartisan in Congress, who are mostly
Speaker 1: solving problems for rich people.
Speaker 4: They're apparently in chaos over.
Speaker 1: The fact that Democrats did not rescue Kevin McCarthy. Put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen. This is per axios House
Speaker 1: Bipartisan Caucus risk collapse after McCarthy ouster. Republicans and the
Speaker 1: Problem Solvers Caucus are Wayne Quinn the bipartisan group after
Speaker 1: Democrats opted against helping former Speaker Kevin McCarthy keep his
Speaker 1: leadership position on Tuesday, why it matters to you he
Speaker 1: members in the group are furious. The Republicans say he
Speaker 1: was punished for doing the right thing after advancing a
Speaker 1: stop gapp funding bill on a bipartisan basis. So we
Speaker 1: could also have the beneficial outcome of the annoying, terrible
Speaker 1: problem Solver's caucus falling apart, so that would be positive
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 3: There's always a silver lining. There's always a silver lining.
Speaker 6: Quess.
Speaker 1: All right, let's turn to some truly bad news here,
Speaker 1: not the mixed bag that the House situation has gone,
Speaker 1: and put this up on the report. We just had
Speaker 1: a new jobs report from ADP and by the way,
Speaker 1: We're expecting another different jobs report on Friday, so we'll
Speaker 1: see how that one comes out. Private payrolls rose by
Speaker 1: only eighty nine thousand in September. That was way below
Speaker 1: what economists were expecting to see in this report. They
Speaker 1: were thinking that we'd add more like one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty thousand jobs. So, I mean, we're almost half of
Speaker 1: what the expectation here was. Let me read you a
Speaker 1: little bit of the details here. They see the report
Speaker 1: provides some sign that historically tight labor market could be
Speaker 1: loosening and giving the federal reserves some incentive to stop
Speaker 1: raising indust rates.
Speaker 4: Well, that part would be good.
Speaker 1: They also said, though, that not only has the job
Speaker 1: market slowed, according again to this report, annual wage growth
Speaker 1: has also slowed. This is the twelfth consecutive monthly decline
Speaker 1: in terms of wages. So not only are you adding
Speaker 1: fewer jobs, but the jobs that we do have are
Speaker 1: seeing very low wage increases. And we continue to struggle,
Speaker 1: of course, with inflation, which means many workers are taking
Speaker 1: a pay cut every month month to month. Now, they
Speaker 1: go on to say, this ADP report can be significantly
Speaker 1: different from the government's official count. That's the one that
Speaker 1: comes out on Friday, So we'll see how that one goes.
Speaker 1: But you know, this is a very troubling warning sign
Speaker 1: of where the economy is at a time when you know,
Speaker 1: we've been tracking a number of storm clouds on the horizon,
Speaker 1: including the commercial real estate market. I think is the
Speaker 1: most flashing red light that has the potential to ripple
Speaker 1: throughout our entire economy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the mortgage demand is the one that really troubles me.
Speaker 2: The CNBC, we can put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: They've dropped to the lowest level since nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 2: and interest rates heading towards eight percent. Obviously that's a
Speaker 2: disaster of eight percent interest rate, but the load level
Speaker 2: demand since ninety six that I mean, you may think
Speaker 2: it's good. We need housing prices to come down. We'll
Speaker 2: talk about that in a little bit, but I just
Speaker 2: think Ristle that the squeeze on the rental market right
Speaker 2: now is going to be something that none of us.
Speaker 2: I mean literally, I think I was four years old
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety six. We have not seen that level
Speaker 2: of squeeze on our current housing supply since then. When
Speaker 2: mortgage rates are going to be this high and people
Speaker 2: aren't pulling out. Well, then they're either not moving and
Speaker 2: they're locked up to where they are, which dramatically reduces
Speaker 2: inventory the existing rental inventory. Unfortunately, the rental you know
Speaker 2: boom for that is just incredibly contributing to inflation. So
Speaker 2: I've seen some reports that rent is beginning to stabilize
Speaker 2: in places like New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, the
Speaker 2: highest demand rent areas in the country, but critically that's
Speaker 2: like twenty something percent above what the baseline was in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen. There are some new rental inventories that are
Speaker 2: coming online. The other issue with these very very high
Speaker 2: interest rates, a lot of people aren't building anything right now.
Speaker 2: In fact, I saw a report that when you're browsing Zillo,
Speaker 2: the number of projects which are half completed has never
Speaker 2: been higher in terms of OH share, And it makes
Speaker 2: sense because people are like, look, I cannot sell.
Speaker 3: This at what would be a profit. I need to
Speaker 3: just get the hell out of this now.
Speaker 2: If you're a private sale seller and you have a
Speaker 2: brother in law or whatever as.
Speaker 3: A contractor, now is the time to buy.
Speaker 2: It's a good you can clean up right now, and
Speaker 2: especially because in a couple of years it's not like
Speaker 2: our housing shortage is going away. I am curious for
Speaker 2: your take on this. From the Wall Street Journal, where
Speaker 2: Wall Street is betting on American home value, let's go
Speaker 2: and put this up there. They think America's home values
Speaker 2: are overvalued. Quote as prices paid for the average single
Speaker 2: family property have still hit record highs, big investors are
Speaker 2: taking a pass the single family home right now in
Speaker 2: terms of the overall US residential property value index is
Speaker 2: at the highest level that it's ever been. It actually
Speaker 2: dipped slightly in February of twenty twenty three, came right
Speaker 2: back to baseline and even above of June of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two from where things were. And I don't really
Speaker 2: agree with Wall Street actually on this one. Maybe I
Speaker 2: could be totally wrong. I wonder what you think, But
Speaker 2: to me, it's just look structural. We have way too
Speaker 2: little housing supply and we'd have a ton of demand.
Speaker 2: More and more people are quote unquote coming online every year.
Speaker 2: The people get older, they get to the place where
Speaker 2: they want a house. The pandemic massively changed the actual
Speaker 2: living preferences for the vast majority of Americans. They want
Speaker 2: more space. When we want more space, that cost money
Speaker 2: and then more space, especially with the inventory that we
Speaker 2: have right now, which is large, you know, is big,
Speaker 2: Like I think the average American wants like a twenty
Speaker 2: two hundred square foot house or something like that. Well,
Speaker 2: you know those are expensive, so and they don't exist
Speaker 2: very much, and we're building less of it. So yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, we could talk housing prices six months and
Speaker 2: all that. You shouldn't even be betting on that in
Speaker 2: the first place unless you're literally like a hedge funder.
Speaker 3: But I don't know.
Speaker 2: It just seems like prices have nowhere to go but
Speaker 2: up when the supply is down and the demand is
Speaker 2: only continue to be high and high in the future.
Speaker 2: Even if you're a residential landlord or something, you could
Speaker 2: still get probably a pretty good rent from where you
Speaker 2: could have not that long ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I really don't know, but it does.
Speaker 1: There is a logic to the prices, which is just
Speaker 1: what you said. There's no supply, you know, there is.
Speaker 1: We have dramatically underbuilt, especially at the sort of like.
Speaker 4: Starter home level of house now.
Speaker 1: With mortgage rates inching up to almost eight percent on
Speaker 1: average now, people who are in a home they don't
Speaker 1: want to sell, so then you don't have that churn
Speaker 1: adding to the supply on the market. So yeah, if
Speaker 1: you don't have sufficient supply, just thinking of like the
Speaker 1: basic laws of supply and demand, the prices make some
Speaker 1: sense to me, you know, if the report is accurate.
Speaker 1: There's it's kind of a double edged sword because on
Speaker 1: the one hand, you're like, Okay, good private equities like
Speaker 1: not like buying up whole neighborhoods like they were. They're
Speaker 1: taking a step back. That's probably a good thing. They're not,
Speaker 1: you know, buying up the American dream as they were
Speaker 1: aggressively doing before. On the other hand, if you're like,
Speaker 1: you know, paying too much for a house to get
Speaker 1: ripped off, that's a bad side of things. So I
Speaker 1: don't know, I'm not sure whether it's accurate or not,
Speaker 1: but it's interesting to see the way that Wall Street
Speaker 1: is looking at all of this in terms of the
Speaker 1: overall economic numbers. I think there's just a lot to
Speaker 1: be very nervous about because not only do you have
Speaker 1: a housing market that is wildly unaffordable and basically it's
Speaker 1: sort of frozen right, Mortgage demand way down. People can't
Speaker 1: buy homes, people can't sell homes. Everyone's just sort of
Speaker 1: stuck in place, right, So housing market that is totally stuck.
Speaker 1: You've got commercial real estate market which is like actively
Speaker 1: in a free fall and with a huge debt reckoning
Speaker 1: coming imminently over the next one.
Speaker 4: To two years.
Speaker 1: You have student loan debt payments which are restarting, just
Speaker 1: restarted this month, and a lot of question marks about
Speaker 1: what that's going to do to consumer spending. And you
Speaker 1: continue to have, you know a lot of worries overseas.
Speaker 1: You know, we've been covering what's going on in China.
Speaker 1: We're not insulated from if there are huge shocks to
Speaker 1: a giant economy like that, and there's massive fallout like
Speaker 1: that's going to hit us as well. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot to be very wary of. And when you add
Speaker 1: on top of that the latest really bad jobs report,
Speaker 1: because the one thing that you could say about this
Speaker 1: economy was Okay, well, we just might be low and
Speaker 1: inflation might be high, and there might be these other problems,
Speaker 1: but at least there's a lot of jobs, right, And
Speaker 1: that height labor market has also really contributed to the
Speaker 1: labor energy that we've seen in all these strikes and
Speaker 1: all these new workers forming unions, which is incredibly positive,
Speaker 1: incredibly hopeful. The tight labor market has been a key
Speaker 1: part of that story. So that part is going away
Speaker 1: and easing up. It's just it's a very troubling picture
Speaker 1: overall that we should be keeping our eyes up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because that was always the Biden defense.
Speaker 2: They're agreeable look at the unemployment rate, and it didn't
Speaker 2: matter how much we talked about inflation, underemployment, wage for growth,
Speaker 2: you know, all the structural factors which make it. So
Speaker 2: it's like, yeah, it's great to be employed, I guess,
Speaker 2: but it's better than being unemployed. But you know what's
Speaker 2: worse is what's worse is high unemployment, which is frankly
Speaker 2: what they want. They want the federal reserve, and very
Speaker 2: high inflation, which is caused structurally by a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of supply issues. The price of gas shelter remained the
Speaker 2: two driving sources behind all of inflation. Those basically have
Speaker 2: nothing to do with government spending. They have a lot
Speaker 2: more to do with real policy implications. And so when
Speaker 2: you look at that, you know, it's a very very
Speaker 2: tough situation for the average American right now. The only
Speaker 2: thing worse is on unemployment which appears to now be
Speaker 2: going up. So I actually thought we talked a lot
Speaker 2: about this, but Biden people were betting on a quote
Speaker 2: unquote economic recovery coming in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: Looking at this, I actually probably take the other side
Speaker 3: of the bet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not looking good. It's definitely not looking good.
Speaker 1: Let's gohead and move on to some interesting new numbers
Speaker 1: from Gallup which ties into how Americans are feeling about
Speaker 1: I mean this ties into the whole show, right, how
Speaker 1: Americans are feeling about a totally dysfunctional political system and
Speaker 1: about the inability.
Speaker 4: To deliver for regular people. Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: You now have support for the third parties up to
Speaker 1: sixty three percent. Sixty three percent of US adults currently
Speaker 1: agree with the statement that the Republican Democratic parties do
Speaker 1: such a poor job of representing the American people that
Speaker 1: a third major party is needed. That represents a seven
Speaker 1: percentage point increase from just a year ago, and it
Speaker 1: is a high since gal first asked the question back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and three, and Sager part of what
Speaker 1: was really interesting and surprising to me was that the
Speaker 1: largest numbers of support for a third party are with independence.
Speaker 1: That part makes sense. But you now have a majority
Speaker 1: of Republicans fifty eight percent who endorse a third US
Speaker 1: political party. That's up significantly. It was just forty five
Speaker 1: percent a year ago. The only other time more Republicans
Speaker 1: than now express support for a third party was in
Speaker 1: a late January earlier early February twenty twenty one poll
Speaker 1: conducted after the January sixth riots, the second impeachment Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and the presidential inauguration of Joe Biden. There has also
Speaker 1: been an uptick in support for third party among Democrats
Speaker 1: this year, from forty to forty six percent. There's still
Speaker 1: less than major back the idea. So a lot of
Speaker 1: the movement in this poll towards support for a third
Speaker 1: party is actually on the Republican side of the ledger.
Speaker 3: I think that's fantastic, you know.
Speaker 2: I The more that the individual parties become legitimate in
Speaker 2: the eyes of the public, I think that's fantastic. In
Speaker 2: terms of the Republican side, we can explain it a
Speaker 2: couple of different ways. A lot of it is that
Speaker 2: Trump's at dissatisfaction. The majority of Republicans do support Trump,
Speaker 2: of course, but many people are Republicans don't. And that's
Speaker 2: actually very evidence in the data. The last time that
Speaker 2: third party support was this high in the Gallup tracker
Speaker 2: was January of twenty twenty one. Anyone want to remember
Speaker 2: what happened around then, It was January sixth, So a
Speaker 2: lot of people were upset with the direction of the party,
Speaker 2: and a lot of Republican voters in particular.
Speaker 3: Here's the other thing and why you can reconcile this.
Speaker 2: You could be a Trump Republican and not actually be
Speaker 2: a Republican at all. You're more just a Trump You're
Speaker 2: a Trumpelican, I guess or something. He's just support Trump.
Speaker 2: You don't support the overall party apparatus. You don't believe
Speaker 2: in the RNC, you don't care about like the Reagan
Speaker 2: rule about insulting it.
Speaker 3: You're like, no, I love Trump.
Speaker 2: Trump is my politics, not the Republican Party, not vig
Speaker 2: Ramaswami or Mike Pencer any of these other people.
Speaker 3: I got nothing common with those people.
Speaker 2: So of course they would be actually supportive of a
Speaker 2: third party because if Trump were to run as a
Speaker 2: third party, I think he would win a lot of
Speaker 2: those voters. So the more that Trump turned the Republican
Speaker 2: Party into a cult of personality, but by you know,
Speaker 2: an extension, he actually dramatically reduced the overall credibility of
Speaker 2: said party. Now I'm fascinated by the Democratic number because
Speaker 2: forty six percent for a bunch of people who are
Speaker 2: hardcore institutionalists and love the media and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: that's very high. I don't know where that comes from.
Speaker 2: I think it could be by an age I could,
Speaker 2: it could. There's a lot of things. I wonder what
Speaker 2: you think, how how it can be nearly a near majority.
Speaker 1: I have to think that the numbers would be very
Speaker 1: clearly skewed by age demographic. So I think, you know,
Speaker 1: the younger part of the Democratic coalition is extremely dissatisfied
Speaker 1: with this party. Feels like their priorities and their like
Speaker 1: ideological inclinations are completely sneered at. You know, they're they
Speaker 1: feel dismissed by this party. They feel like this party
Speaker 1: does not care about what they want, does is not
Speaker 1: responsive to them, takes them completely for granted, and they
Speaker 1: just don't have that same level of just you know,
Speaker 1: Democratic party loyalty that perhaps previous generations did and still do.
Speaker 1: So that's my guess is young voters and that's where
Speaker 1: we see the largest amount of dissatisfaction within the Democratic
Speaker 1: Coalition with Joe Biden himself. So that's my expectation of
Speaker 1: what is going on there. And I mean the overall
Speaker 1: numbers just reflect the fact that people are unhappy. They
Speaker 1: feel like the country is in decline and decay. They
Speaker 1: feel like there's a rot at the core. They feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, they have no hope for the future. They
Speaker 1: feel like they're never going to be able to buy
Speaker 1: a house. They feel like they're not going to be
Speaker 1: able to send their kids to college. They feel like
Speaker 1: they're never going to be able to pay off their college.
Speaker 4: Student loan debt.
Speaker 1: They feel like none of these neither of these parties
Speaker 1: is really delivering for them on these you know, material
Speaker 1: realities that are making their lives very stressful, very difficult
Speaker 1: for young people. Also, the climate crisis looms really large,
Speaker 1: and they see, you know, they see a little bit
Speaker 1: of action, but then they see like two steps backward
Speaker 1: with a bunch of DOI leases, etc. From the Biden administration.
Speaker 1: So that level of dissatisfaction as reflected in third party
Speaker 1: support makes a lot of sense to me. Now, I
Speaker 1: think it's always important with these third party polls to
Speaker 1: put in a note of caution, which is that our
Speaker 1: electoral system, the way it's set up, is set up
Speaker 1: to crush third parties and make them not viable. So
Speaker 1: the mere fact that you have a large number of
Speaker 1: people who are like, yeah, there should be some other
Speaker 1: choices doesn't mean those people are going to vote for
Speaker 1: the other choices. Yes, and you know the fact that
Speaker 1: you have this large group saying yeah, we want other choices,
Speaker 1: they also don't mean the same things by that in
Speaker 1: terms of what they would want to see with.
Speaker 4: Those other choices.
Speaker 1: So we've had high numbers like this before and it
Speaker 1: hasn't translated into a large third party vote, even when
Speaker 1: you've had some choices on the ballot that are third
Speaker 1: party candidates.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, there's also a fascinating RFK Junior kind of tie
Speaker 2: into this if he does end up running as an independent,
Speaker 2: which we expect him to do.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Nate Silver ran the numbers over at the Free Press,
Speaker 2: which is run by Barry Weiss, and he argues again
Speaker 2: pretty persuasively what we said about how he probably doesn't
Speaker 2: hurt Biden and most respects will almost certainly help. Oh, sorry,
Speaker 2: will almost certainly hurt Trump. Now, I also understand that
Speaker 2: it is annoying to people support third party candidates all
Speaker 2: about hurt the idea that they should be viewed on
Speaker 2: their face. I don't even necessarily disagree with you, but again, Crystal,
Speaker 2: you and I are trapped in what the reality of
Speaker 2: the American political system.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's a duopoly.
Speaker 2: I don't wish it wasn't necessarily that way, but you know,
Speaker 2: when we're talking about places where you can only get
Speaker 2: anywhere between one to five percent of the ballot historically,
Speaker 2: you know generally you are going to be a quote
Speaker 2: unquote spoiler. I don't think of it that way, but
Speaker 2: that's how most people process it. What he writes in
Speaker 2: here is basically that because of the overall amount of
Speaker 2: favorability that RFK Junior does have with a lot of
Speaker 2: Republican voters and or independents who are sick of the
Speaker 2: Democrats Party for reasons that don't necessarily align with the
Speaker 2: mainstream Democratic Party, then those people would predominantly gravitate towards
Speaker 2: either Trump or trump ish like candidate on those issue sets,
Speaker 2: things like Ukraine, the vaccine, and more so with those
Speaker 2: and those voters who may not identify as Republicans but
Speaker 2: who predominantly have sympathies with some parts of Republican voters,
Speaker 2: who may disagree on several other issues, but that's not
Speaker 2: the priority. It's not what's drawing them away from the party. Largely,
Speaker 2: it is going to hurt in a duopoly system. So
Speaker 2: I think that when you look at that and you
Speaker 2: also see the Republican figure be so high, to be
Speaker 2: such an app at an attitude and an appetite if
Speaker 2: you will, for something different RFK Junior, especially with the
Speaker 2: Kennedy last name, with a specific issue set that he
Speaker 2: is most passionate about, I would view that very much
Speaker 2: as an avenue for him to be able to gain
Speaker 2: a lot of Republican votes. I'm not arguing you shouldn't run,
Speaker 2: by the way, but actually, funnily enough, I've started to
Speaker 2: see big maga Twitter accounts shift their focus. I actually
Speaker 2: saw one, this guy d C Dreno. If anybody knows
Speaker 2: there's over a million followers on this yeah, and he
Speaker 2: was like, hey, I'm I'm guilty of this. He's like
Speaker 2: I propped up. He is actually very open. He was
Speaker 2: like I elevated RFK Junior because he was a cudgel
Speaker 2: against Democrats. He's like, now I'm going to start highlighting
Speaker 2: all the bad things about him because I think he's
Speaker 2: gonna hurt Trump.
Speaker 3: And I was like, wow, that's a very by the way,
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 1: I love as my propagation before.
Speaker 3: Because I hate the Democrats and I want them to lose.
Speaker 2: Now and it goes independent, I actually think he's gonna
Speaker 2: hurt us, so now I'm gonna start attacking him, and
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, I thank you for telling us.
Speaker 3: I hope all people aren't that straight anyway.
Speaker 2: My point is is that there is broad recognition amongst,
Speaker 2: as I said, every MAGA influencer of any consequence that
Speaker 2: I've been able to see people who have legit massive
Speaker 2: followings amongst the overall GOP based and I think the
Speaker 2: fact that they overwhelmingly believe that RFK Junior would hurt
Speaker 2: Trump if it came down to it does tell you
Speaker 2: a lot about what they see the problem.
Speaker 3: As you know, and Trump himself has remained silent.
Speaker 2: This amount of data on third parties is also just
Speaker 2: another indication in that direction.
Speaker 1: You know, who I could see voting for RFK is
Speaker 1: people who are frustrated with Trump because they think he
Speaker 1: was like too pro vac Yeah, absolutely, Anthony Fauci whatever, Yeah, like.
Speaker 3: A Robert Santis super standards.
Speaker 1: That's like kind of the you know, just Trump is
Speaker 1: going to be the nominee. And so that seems to
Speaker 1: me like the most clear cut avenue of people who
Speaker 1: were like that's their issue and they're like die hard
Speaker 1: about it and really super anti vaccine, and there is
Speaker 1: a constituency for that, and most of those people, if
Speaker 1: it wasn't for RFK being there, would probably either not
Speaker 1: vote or they would vote for Donald Trump. They certainly
Speaker 1: wouldn't vote for Joe Biden. That seems to me like
Speaker 1: probably where he gets the bulk of his support from.
Speaker 1: But you know, I do think it's complicated.
Speaker 4: Nate.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, as you're pointing out, he says, guns, abortion,
Speaker 1: vaccines in Ukraine are quite a quartet of issues to
Speaker 1: defect in the Democratic Party on, particularly from the suburban,
Speaker 1: college educated base that they rely on increasingly. But he
Speaker 1: does make the other side like he's not really definitive
Speaker 1: about it. He's like, I could see it going other
Speaker 1: either way. I think probably he takes more from Trump
Speaker 1: than Biden, but he says the most persuasive argument to
Speaker 1: him is that Trump is a higher floor but lower
Speaker 1: ceiling on his support than Biden does. In other words,
Speaker 1: the Trump support is much more locked in. His supporters
Speaker 1: are much more committed, So in that case, Trump's diehards
Speaker 1: might stick with him even if they also like Kennedy,
Speaker 1: but people who are kind of like eh on Biden
Speaker 1: may may flirt with or consider the Kennedy candidacy. The
Speaker 1: other thing that I threw in the mix that Nate
Speaker 1: doesn't mention here, that I do think is a really important.
Speaker 4: Factor is remember, a lot of people don't pay that
Speaker 4: close attention.
Speaker 1: They aren't aware of RFK, all of rfk's positions and
Speaker 1: exactly where they are Visa v. Him, et cetera. He's
Speaker 1: got a Kennedy last name, and there is a lot
Speaker 1: of just like historical affection for that name the Democratic Party,
Speaker 1: I think is a big part of why he has
Speaker 1: his support he has in a Democratic primary in spite
Speaker 1: of the fact that he still has these very low
Speaker 1: approval ratings within the Democratic Party.
Speaker 4: So it continues to not.
Speaker 1: Be totally clear cut to me, I do think, and
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. Apparently there's a Kennedy
Speaker 1: campaign insider who told media that RFK running independent is
Speaker 1: going to f Trump, so he was pretty clear about it.
Speaker 1: It's also kind of revealing the way this Kennedy campaign
Speaker 1: insider talked about RFK and about his assessment.
Speaker 4: Here he says, this is going to f Trump.
Speaker 1: Bobby's values are much more in line with patriots, meaning
Speaker 1: I guess Republicans. He's against big pharma, he's pro bitcoin
Speaker 1: decentralized so the government can't control it. So anyway, for
Speaker 1: what it's worth, RFK and his campaign seem to think
Speaker 1: this is gonna be more of a problem for Trump.
Speaker 1: Very likely, it doesn't actually make that much of a
Speaker 1: difference either way. It's possible because especially if you have
Speaker 1: votes kind of split, some of the people might have
Speaker 1: gone to Biden, some of the people might have gone
Speaker 1: to Trump. Who knows, and historically Americans just don't vote
Speaker 1: in that larger numbers for third party candidates, especially if
Speaker 1: you're not going to have a bunch of Baggett influencers,
Speaker 1: you're going after him who aren't giving him the platform
Speaker 1: and like the cover and the adulation that they were
Speaker 1: giving him when he was running against Biden that could
Speaker 1: also change his favorability of rating and the appetite form
Speaker 1: within more Republican aligned to independence.
Speaker 4: So I don't know, We'll see.
Speaker 3: We will certainly see.
Speaker 2: Let's move on to the SPF trial, which remains ongoing
Speaker 2: but honestly a more meta crisis of biography. Michael Lewis,
Speaker 2: who I got to admit it was one of my
Speaker 2: favorite authors, but he really is stoop into a very
Speaker 2: new low here with effectively a defense of Sam Bankman Freed,
Speaker 2: not only in his book but in recent interviews. Take
Speaker 2: a listen to how he defended him in a recent
Speaker 2: interview with Chris Hayes on MSNBC.
Speaker 10: I hadn't come down in the Bernie made Off category
Speaker 10: right when I read the indictment.
Speaker 2: That's not really the line this book takes, or your
Speaker 2: impression of.
Speaker 12: Well, so just for starters, I mean this like, I
Speaker 12: think this is an important distinction. Everbody shouts at me
Speaker 12: when I make it. But Bernie made Off. It was
Speaker 12: a Ponzi scheme, and it's like a definition of a
Speaker 12: Ponzi scheme. There's no real business there. So Sam Bankman
Speaker 12: Freed had two businesses. He had this hedge fund, he
Speaker 12: called all of me to research. But he had this
Speaker 12: crypto exchange, and the exchange what was a goal mine.
Speaker 12: It generated a billion dollars in revenues in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 12: like fourhundred million dollars in profits.
Speaker 4: It was real.
Speaker 12: Without without the hedge fund there to screw it up,
Speaker 12: it'd still be there.
Speaker 13: You know.
Speaker 12: It was a casino. It was just like they took
Speaker 12: the little slices of every transaction in crypto.
Speaker 4: So and the other one is still around, right, coinbase whatever.
Speaker 12: Yeah, well there are a bunch of them are still around.
Speaker 5: So and people.
Speaker 12: Most of the most money in crypto has been made
Speaker 12: by the people who bought bitcoin when it was zero
Speaker 12: or people who created these exchanges. So there was this
Speaker 12: real thing, and the alleged crime kind of makes no sense.
Speaker 12: He blew up forty billion dollar forty billion dollar business
Speaker 12: for this kind of pitch fund on the side that
Speaker 12: really was it was his legacy business. Is how he
Speaker 12: got into crypto in.
Speaker 6: The first place.
Speaker 12: But it didn't they didn't bear a necessary relationship.
Speaker 2: Uh what the alleged crime kind of makes no sense.
Speaker 2: What are you talking about, dude. The thing is is
Speaker 2: that it actually is very analogous to made Off.
Speaker 3: He's totally wrong.
Speaker 2: The old SBF thing actually made me go and read
Speaker 2: the definitive book on made Off, and the parallels are striking.
Speaker 2: You need money coming in the door one way to
Speaker 2: prop up an allegedly good business over here which has
Speaker 2: fantastic margins and has all this awesome stuff, but is
Speaker 2: basically backstopped by fraud.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's the exact same thing.
Speaker 2: You have money coming in, you use that money for
Speaker 2: a different purpose and to reputationally kind of launder yourself
Speaker 2: and make yourself into a you know, like a vaunted
Speaker 2: One point, made Off was even like a head of it.
Speaker 2: He was like a representative or something to the US,
Speaker 2: not the SEC, but the Dow Jones, Nasdaq, something like that.
Speaker 2: My point is that he basically just moved money around
Speaker 2: in order to create like a financial engineering scheme. That's
Speaker 2: exactly what Sam Bankman Freedm is doing. I mean, when
Speaker 2: you have to.
Speaker 1: Get more money in to keep your scheme afloat and
Speaker 1: pay off the things that you're already obligated, that's like
Speaker 1: the deafin.
Speaker 3: Word I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: And the thing is, this is a lot of problems
Speaker 2: to Mber Michael Lewis's book, Let's put this up there.
Speaker 2: You know. Max Chafkin over at Bloomberg wrote a pretty
Speaker 2: skating review, and he noted multiple times.
Speaker 3: Here where Lewis quote.
Speaker 2: It is impossible to miss the differences in Lewis's treatment
Speaker 2: of Sam Bankman Freed, a socially awkward young man afforded
Speaker 2: nest empathy by the author, and Michael Orr, the socially
Speaker 2: awkward young man who Lewis treats his quote nearly mute
Speaker 2: spectator in his two thousand and six book The blind Side.
Speaker 2: The book is ostensibly about Or, but he barely quotes
Speaker 2: Or and offers his awkwardness not as a sign of
Speaker 2: his genius. Lewis does for Bankman Freed as evidence that
Speaker 2: he may be mentally limited, you know, SPF, he says.
Speaker 2: Lewis treats SBF with endless compassion, treats everyone around him
Speaker 2: with zero It seemed nuts. For example, when SBF went
Speaker 2: trying around to pin the entire collapse on his s girlfriend,
Speaker 2: Lewis somehow goes for it. For example, the portrayal of
Speaker 2: Caroline Ellison, the star witness in the trial, comes off
Speaker 2: as a sayso affair of a guy accused of art
Speaker 2: scale fraud feels especially unfair. Lewis seems to consider bankmin
Speaker 2: Freed a totally reliable narrator while approaching Ellison as an
Speaker 2: emotionally unstable temptress. In doing so, he falls back on
Speaker 2: a tired and sexist trope while arguing as defenders of
Speaker 2: Pharaohos initially did that if it weren't for the haters,
Speaker 2: everything would have been fine.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: He attacks Caroline Ellison in the book, and then he
Speaker 2: also quote I was gobsmacked by the way that Lewis
Speaker 2: was left out damning things about Sam, who he presents
Speaker 2: as a misunderstood genius. I couldn't help but think about
Speaker 2: another socially awkward Michael Lewis character who is treated with
Speaker 2: much less compassion, and again talking about devastating.
Speaker 3: I think it is a devastating review.
Speaker 2: I haven't fully read the book, but you know, multiple
Speaker 2: people I trust, coffee Zilla, who will be having on
Speaker 2: the show sometime next week. He's doing a review of
Speaker 2: the book, A scathing review of the book. A friend
Speaker 2: of mine shre Round Krishnan. He runs the Good Time Show.
Speaker 2: He's a pro crypto. Guy's a pro crypto, A sixteen's
Speaker 2: the Investor, and he was like, basically, this book reads
Speaker 2: as if you got conned by con men. So I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm talking about people who were pro crypto in the space.
Speaker 2: They always hated SBF because he tarnished the reputation a
Speaker 2: lot around the business and all that, and they're reading
Speaker 2: this book and just be like, I'm gobsmacked by this.
Speaker 2: So from every angle that I've been able to see,
Speaker 2: this appears to really just be like stenography in terms.
Speaker 3: Of the book, which is frankly disappointing.
Speaker 2: You know, as a fan of Moneyball's a fan of
Speaker 2: the Big Short Liars Poke, I thought these were great,
Speaker 2: great books, But honestly, I'm beginning to doubt now even
Speaker 2: those books now after reading this, because I'm like, dude,
Speaker 2: if this is your editorial standard, like I got to
Speaker 2: start doubting.
Speaker 3: What I was reading, you know, ten.
Speaker 1: Years ago, I feel exactly the same way. And there
Speaker 1: was a piece in The Guardian put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen that I thought was also very good, The
Speaker 1: Insider how michae Lewis got a backstage pass with the
Speaker 1: fall of Sam Bakant Free And what they point out
Speaker 1: here is that in all of these books. What Michael
Speaker 1: Lewis does is he takes a character, whoever his chosen
Speaker 1: hero is, and really lionizes them and makes them a hero.
Speaker 1: So when he started following SBF around before his downfall,
Speaker 1: he wasn't thinking con man, fraudster, I'm going to expose him,
Speaker 1: because frankly, that's not really what he does, which is
Speaker 1: why he's beloved on Wall Street. That should have been
Speaker 1: a red flag to us number one. But he was thinking,
Speaker 1: this is a genius, this is the boy genius. He
Speaker 1: bought into the hype and from the expert that's been published.
Speaker 4: From.
Speaker 1: His analysis in this Chris Hayes interview and the way
Speaker 1: he's trying to cover for him. He really seems to
Speaker 1: have believed in this view of the quirky genius billionaire
Speaker 1: doesn't care about money and is just doing all these
Speaker 1: things for altruistic reasons, etc.
Speaker 3: Etc.
Speaker 1: And when the narrative collapsed and all this I don't
Speaker 1: write fraud and a massive theft was revealed, he couldn't adjust,
Speaker 1: He couldn't change the story. He couldn't you see him
Speaker 1: through any other lens. He couldn't actually apply a critical
Speaker 1: lens because he already was so far in and had
Speaker 1: bought so much of the hype, you know. He admits
Speaker 1: in an interview for this Guardian piece that the prosecution
Speaker 1: is going to get maybe some little pieces out of
Speaker 1: this book, but actually that overall it really works for
Speaker 1: Sam's defense. He says that, so he clearly understands that
Speaker 1: this is in some ways like exculpatory to Sam Bankman Freed,
Speaker 1: and is relatively clear about it. He also says to Lewis,
Speaker 1: I'm reading from that piece now whether Bankman Freed is
Speaker 1: innocent or guilty is in a sense moot. What narrative
Speaker 1: purpose would it have served? Lewis asked me to be
Speaker 1: harder on him in the book. What narrative purpose would
Speaker 1: it have served? I thought this analysis was also really revealing.
Speaker 1: While reading the book, I found myself itching for Lewis
Speaker 1: to his amused ethnographer approach. The drama he was witnessing
Speaker 1: was so outrageous that he seems to have satisfied himself
Speaker 1: with relaying it rather than picking its truth and meaning apart.
Speaker 1: I wondered if he'd spent so much time within the
Speaker 1: technocratic echelon of American life that when Benkmin Freed embodied
Speaker 1: some of its worst traits when he thought of people
Speaker 1: as probability distributions, or ran his companies with deliberate opacity,
Speaker 1: or chased an obscene level of wealth. Lewis could only
Speaker 1: see him as an especially quirky character rather than a
Speaker 1: product of terrible dysfunction. And that comes across in that
Speaker 1: excerpt where he's talking to Anna Wintour on a zoom
Speaker 1: and he's at the same time playing this video game
Speaker 1: storybook Brawl that he's apparently obsessed with to the point
Speaker 1: of absolute distraction, not engaging at all in what Wintour
Speaker 1: is saying, promising all sorts of things that he ends
Speaker 1: up completely crashing out on, and rather than being like
Speaker 1: you know, in any normal situation, when you don't make
Speaker 1: good on your obligations and you're distracted, not paying attention
Speaker 1: to people, terrible person. Yeah, you're immature. You can't stay
Speaker 1: focused on a single subject. You can't, you know, pay
Speaker 1: attention to the person in front of you. You're just
Speaker 1: lying about things that you're gonna do that you actually
Speaker 1: have no intention of doing. You're not even listening to
Speaker 1: the things that you're agreeing to, Like you're an immature brat,
Speaker 1: spoiled and not a good person. But that's not the
Speaker 1: way he's portrayed here whatsoever.
Speaker 3: Certainly not the way he is portrayed. To put it lightly, I.
Speaker 2: Honestly, look, I mean the charitable explanation, as you said,
Speaker 2: is that this is just how he always writes. And
Speaker 2: sometimes it's a hit, like with Billy Baines, like with
Speaker 2: like with Michael Burry in The Big Short and some
Speaker 2: of the other people who he profiles. But it's a
Speaker 2: massive miss whenever we're talking about I mean, for example,
Speaker 2: I didn't read The Fifth Risk, but apparently it's very
Speaker 2: like it's It basically is just a stenography by Chris
Speaker 2: Christy about how everything went wrong during the Trump administration.
Speaker 2: That's an honest view of went wrong. And I think that's,
Speaker 2: let's be real. That's why think about Fifth Risk pandemics, right,
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm thinking I thought there was another BOK that
Speaker 2: he wrote about the pandemic.
Speaker 3: I forgot exactly what that one was called.
Speaker 2: This one was about the Trump transit, I believe about
Speaker 2: Chris Christy was in charge and got fired by Jared Kushner,
Speaker 2: and he just sat down with Chris Christie for like
Speaker 2: ten hours and cranked.
Speaker 3: Out a book.
Speaker 2: They're also look, let's be real here. In terms of
Speaker 2: Lewis's career, there have been some hints. He wrote what
Speaker 2: is probably the most hay geographic profile I've ever read
Speaker 2: of an American president, where he hung out with Barack
Speaker 2: Obama while he played basketball, and he just I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just amazing, Like the guy ployees basketball. He doesn't
Speaker 2: want to lose, so he invites all these veteran employees
Speaker 2: who are actually good and he's good.
Speaker 3: Guys, I played with him.
Speaker 2: I remember reading this like a decade ago, being yeah, man,
Speaker 2: I'm a fan, but like this is this is crossing
Speaker 2: in the line of like this is like king worship
Speaker 2: but something like that.
Speaker 3: So there have been hints there. Yeah, wow, true.
Speaker 1: And then when you get to this juncture, you kind
Speaker 1: of kind of look back and you're like, yeah.
Speaker 4: Oh, okay, there's been a lot of things differently.
Speaker 1: Than I was, because at the time, if you just
Speaker 1: see that, you can sort of Okay, MoMA's on a
Speaker 1: lot of people's heads with Starstruck, we'll push that one
Speaker 1: on the side. Now you're like, oh, you actually never
Speaker 1: critically write really critically about people with wealth and power,
Speaker 1: and you just like fall in love with him.
Speaker 3: He hasn't a time.
Speaker 2: So he wrote Flashboys is actually one of my favorite
Speaker 2: books he's ever written about high frequency of trading.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it pissed a lot of people off on
Speaker 3: Wall Street. And I love that.
Speaker 2: Because he pissed off a lot of Ken Ken Griffin,
Speaker 2: a lot of these guys who made fortunes basically just
Speaker 2: you know, building servers and investing in like microwave technology
Speaker 2: to try and send their trade quicker, as like arbitrage.
Speaker 2: Basically it's at tax on the entire system.
Speaker 3: I thought it was a.
Speaker 2: Phenomenal book and I actually thought it had a good
Speaker 2: and it did piss off a lot of rich people.
Speaker 2: But I also do remember him. I went to one
Speaker 2: of his book events. I know, I'm sorry, I was
Speaker 2: young whenever, and I remember him saying, He's like, I've
Speaker 2: never experienced him on a pushback in my life, so
Speaker 2: maybe because he's not experienced to it, he took it
Speaker 2: as a scar and he's like, you know what, I'm
Speaker 2: going to sit here and just write for the billionaire
Speaker 2: Sam Bankment Freed. And this is one of the most
Speaker 2: disgraced men in the United States. So I don't even
Speaker 2: know what the incentive is it's crazy.
Speaker 1: To me too, because, like you, this all came It
Speaker 1: would be one thing if the book was totally written
Speaker 1: and like going to press before everything came out, but
Speaker 1: you had a chance, like you got to know what
Speaker 1: the truth was.
Speaker 4: I don't know, and you didn't adjust. It's it's wild.
Speaker 1: We're both i think, probably going to read the book
Speaker 1: just to be able to see it and.
Speaker 4: Judge it for ourselves, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But especially as this trial is going on and it's
Speaker 1: so blatant for him to say, oh, look, the alleged
Speaker 1: crime doesn't make sense. Are you kidding me? Like, do
Speaker 1: you know nothing about these people? Do you know nothing
Speaker 1: about how Wall Street works, about the way Crypto has
Speaker 1: worked and been like total wild West, the amount of
Speaker 1: rug pulls and all this nonsense that's been going on there.
Speaker 1: And they're like, oh, it just doesn't make sense for
Speaker 1: him to steal all this money. Of course, it makes sense.
Speaker 1: It makes it's completely logical, it makes all the sense
Speaker 1: in the world. He was trying to keep all of
Speaker 1: the balls in the air, and he decided it was
Speaker 1: justified to steal people's money in order to try to
Speaker 1: keep his thing going. For whatever deluded reasons that he
Speaker 1: convinced himself of.
Speaker 3: And is said, Christill, what do you takeing a look at?
Speaker 1: It would be difficult to find a more clear example
Speaker 1: of good versus evil. On one side, you've got a
Speaker 1: government agency which has actually delivered for ordinary Americans, returning
Speaker 1: seventeen billion dollars to consumers who've been screwed over and
Speaker 1: defrauded by banks and big business. On the other side,
Speaker 1: you have these scumbag vultures of the payday lending industry
Speaker 1: whose whole business model is exploitation of desperate people. And
Speaker 1: for once, maybe, just maybe, the good guys are going
Speaker 1: to win thanks to some very unlikely hearers.
Speaker 4: All right, so here's the story.
Speaker 1: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or CFPV was established after
Speaker 1: the fallout of the Great Recession to provide consumers with
Speaker 1: some degree of protection and to punish financial predators who
Speaker 1: steal from their customers because they think they can just
Speaker 1: get away with it. And while of course there is
Speaker 1: always way more that can be done, the agency has
Speaker 1: actually broadly been a real success. They've taken the lead
Speaker 1: and cracking down on junk fees that banks charged for
Speaker 1: no real reason other than extraction They just went after
Speaker 1: Bank of America for misleading their customers and double dipping
Speaker 1: on insufficient funds fees. Last year, they ordered Wells Fargo
Speaker 1: to pay two billion dollars back to auto loan and mortgage.
Speaker 4: Consumers that they had ripped off.
Speaker 1: And the agency has also served as a resource for
Speaker 1: consumers who feel like they've been cheated or are struggling to
Speaker 1: sort through the intentionally misleading financial jargon that banks routinely
Speaker 1: throw at them. Now, the CFPD was the brainchild of
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren. This was back in her two income trap era,
Speaker 1: not her pink pussy hat era. And because the agency
Speaker 1: tangles with a lot of powerful wealthy interest, it was
Speaker 1: intentionally designed to be insulated from day to day political
Speaker 1: pressure so it could not just be captured by partisans
Speaker 1: or industry allies or quietly defunded and zombifie. Specifically, ron
Speaker 1: than being subject to the yearly appropriations process, the agency
Speaker 1: is funded through the Federal Reserve, which provides funds up
Speaker 1: to a set cap of six hundred million dollars a year.
Speaker 1: This funding structure is now being used to try to
Speaker 1: attack and destroy the agency by its opponents, specifically the
Speaker 1: aforementioned gules in the payday loan industry. Now the real
Speaker 1: beef from this industry are new rules which seek to
Speaker 1: curb their most abusive practice. These rules prevent these vultures
Speaker 1: from piling on new fees on loans, which contribute to
Speaker 1: ever escalating loan balances, leading consumers to find themselves rapidly
Speaker 1: in debt for thousands of dollars on even small loans
Speaker 1: of five hundred dollars or less.
Speaker 4: It's truly evil stuff.
Speaker 1: They could not get the course to agree with them
Speaker 1: on going directly after these new rules, but they did
Speaker 1: get a sympathetic judge to by an argument that the
Speaker 1: agency's funding structure is an unconstitutional violation of the appropriation's clause,
Speaker 1: which grants Congress the power of the purse. But based
Speaker 1: on oral arguments, yesterday, all of the liberal justices at
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, and critically two of the conservative justices
Speaker 1: were none too impressed with these arguments, eviscerating the core
Speaker 1: of the.
Speaker 4: Payday ghules case.
Speaker 1: Justice Kagan ripped the arguments as quote, flying in the
Speaker 1: face of two hundred and fifty years of history. Indeed,
Speaker 1: Congress has long provided standing non annual appropriations similar to
Speaker 1: the mechanism used to fund the CFPV for agencies as
Speaker 1: diverse as the Federal Reserve to the Postal Service. Justice
Speaker 1: Katanji brown Jackson took aim at the payday lender's imagining
Speaker 1: of secret language in the appropriation's clause which would constrain
Speaker 1: the mechanisms Congress can use to fund agencies. She asked, quote,
Speaker 1: I had understood the point of the appropriation's clause is
Speaker 1: to prevent the executive from taking money without consent of
Speaker 1: the legislature. Is there something about the appropriation's clause that
Speaker 1: directs Congress to check the executive?
Speaker 4: Don't you have to have that?
Speaker 1: What was actually the arguments of Conservatives Amy Cony Barrett
Speaker 1: and Brett Kavanaugh that really cut the deepest. Barrett surprisingly
Speaker 1: backed up the line of questioning of Brown Jackson, pointedly declaring,
Speaker 1: there is nothing in the appropriations clause that imposes the
Speaker 1: limits you were talking about. Brett Kavanaugh chimed in to
Speaker 1: put the payday lenders in a bit of a logic
Speaker 1: choke hold, pointing out the absurdity of their claim that
Speaker 1: CFPB funding was perpetual, when in fact, Congress can literally
Speaker 1: change the law anytime they choose to change or eliminate
Speaker 1: funding for this agency altogether. On the other side, Alito, Thomas,
Speaker 1: and Robert seemed, with their compstant questions to be on
Speaker 1: the side of the pay day life. Gorsich played his
Speaker 1: cards close to the vest gave no real indication which
Speaker 1: direction he was leaning in. But if ACB and Kavanaugh
Speaker 1: joined the three Liberals, the CFPB is going to live
Speaker 1: to fight another day.
Speaker 4: I will confess.
Speaker 1: When I saw this court was taking up a challenge
Speaker 1: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, my heart sank. This is
Speaker 1: hardly a consumer friendly court. Even the Liberals cannot be
Speaker 1: counted to reliably take the side of ordinary Americans against
Speaker 1: Wall Street in big business. But there was one factor
Speaker 1: I did not consider. The funding question for this agency
Speaker 1: strikes at the heart of all agencies that have these
Speaker 1: type of standing appropriations, not just this one that does
Speaker 1: happen to help consumers, and quite a bit of the
Speaker 1: financial architecture that banks and homebuilders in particular rely on
Speaker 1: for market stability would be under threat with a finding
Speaker 1: in favor of these payday lenders. That is why a
Speaker 1: coalition of mortgage bankers and the home builders and realtors
Speaker 1: associations filed a series of Friend of the Court briefs
Speaker 1: on behalf of the good guys against the bad guys.
Speaker 4: So perhaps the fact that in this.
Speaker 1: Instance the needs of consumers happen to line up with
Speaker 1: the interests of some big Washington pow brogers is actually
Speaker 1: going to end up saving the day. Trump justices and
Speaker 1: bortgage bankers teaming up with liberals to actually preserve something good.
Speaker 1: Did not see it coming, but I will absolutely take
Speaker 1: it all day long. And Sager, I actually came to realize.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot Com. All right, sorry,
Speaker 2: are we looking at Something has changed on the streets
Speaker 2: of Northern Virginia and Washington, DC in recent years. And no,
Speaker 2: it is not just the crime and the homelessness. It
Speaker 2: is a new type of vehicle with those distinct headlights,
Speaker 2: the R rerivian R one SSUV. Now suddenly I swear
Speaker 2: I am seeing these things everywhere as they come out
Speaker 2: of thin air. It reminds me of seeing teslas in
Speaker 2: San Francisco like a decade ago.
Speaker 3: Is it the next Tesla? What does it say?
Speaker 2: About the state of electric vehicles in the US and
Speaker 2: how does it fit now into the war for manufacturing,
Speaker 2: production and price in the global market. Now, personally, I'm
Speaker 2: always been suspect of Rivian after the rumblings of their
Speaker 2: cost structure, and that seemed insane to me, especially with
Speaker 2: a recent exposa of The Wall Street Journal. Rivian cars
Speaker 2: technologically have some awesome specs. They cost on average about
Speaker 2: eighty thousand dollars. Now that's a high price tag for sure,
Speaker 2: but in a world where the average new car costs
Speaker 2: fifty thousand, it's not that crazy for an electric and
Speaker 2: a premium suv product. What really stunned me, though, is
Speaker 2: this for every single car that Rivian sells on average,
Speaker 2: it is losing I repeat, losing thirty three thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: The company has.
Speaker 2: Raised approximately eighteen billion dollars in cash in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: one with a promise to be the Tasla of trucks
Speaker 2: and SUVs, and it is now in a matter of
Speaker 2: just two years, blown through nine billion dollars in production
Speaker 2: of only sixty five thousand vehicles. I don't say this
Speaker 2: to bash Rivian. I want them and many new electric
Speaker 2: car companies to succeed, but the pitfalls the company faces
Speaker 2: highlight some of the major supply issues that I've tried
Speaker 2: to bring attention to for evs on the show. Consider
Speaker 2: that with the astronomical loss now of nearly nine billion
Speaker 2: dollars and thirty three grand per vehicle, the company's single
Speaker 2: US factory is still only producing one third of its
Speaker 2: build capacity, and it's on track to produce only about
Speaker 2: fifty thousand dollars fifty thousand more cars this year. The
Speaker 2: current burn rate is about four billion dollars per quarter,
Speaker 2: even after the sales on cars are factored in. What
Speaker 2: really stunned me though about Rivian was how atypical it
Speaker 2: actually is when you look at other non Tesla electric
Speaker 2: vehicles in the US. Take Ford, for example, for some
Speaker 2: of the best Big three evs on the market, and
Speaker 2: yet Ford is taking a loss of nearly sixty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars per electric vehicle sold per the latest data of
Speaker 2: the company published. Total losses for the company on electric
Speaker 2: vehicles just this year total some four point five billion,
Speaker 2: with the Ford Model E alone representing one point eight
Speaker 2: billion losses. Now, the losses predominantly are located in upfront
Speaker 2: costs associated basically with the startup within a major company,
Speaker 2: and they demonstrate really the difficulty of getting electric vehicles
Speaker 2: to mass market. Silantis and GM do not publish specific
Speaker 2: EV losses per vehicle, but there's no indication they've somehow
Speaker 2: secretly discovered of magic and are not running similar deficits
Speaker 2: that other carmakers are. Others may give us a sense
Speaker 2: of how common these losses appear to be. Take the
Speaker 2: luxury evmaker Lucid, which was billed as a major competitor
Speaker 2: to the Tesla model S. The company is currently posting
Speaker 2: half a million dollars losses per vehicle, which second quarter
Speaker 2: results showing one hundred and fifty million in revenue for
Speaker 2: just fourteen hundred vehicles sold in three months. Back of
Speaker 2: the Napkin math factoring in their net loss of seven
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty four million suggests the half a million
Speaker 2: dollar loss on car that still only costs between eighty
Speaker 2: to two hundred and fifty grand. Now, seriously, there's a
Speaker 2: big success story missing from this, and of course that
Speaker 2: is the path to victory that all these car makers
Speaker 2: wont the Tesla. Tesla, which has more than a decade
Speaker 2: head start on the rest it wasn't that long ago
Speaker 2: the Tesla was posting about a four thousand dollars loss
Speaker 2: per vehicle like in twenty fifteen, and gearing up for
Speaker 2: its most ambitious project ever, the Model three, the affordable
Speaker 2: and the mass market car that very nearly did not
Speaker 2: make it to production. White literally required Elon to sleep
Speaker 2: on the factory floor to deliver it well past the
Speaker 2: promised deadline. Wasn't until twenty eighteen, a decade into existence,
Speaker 2: that the company even began to consistently deliver a profit,
Speaker 2: and since then has of course gone gangbusters, in some cases,
Speaker 2: out selling massive competitors like Toyota in many states like California.
Speaker 2: The lesson from Tesla is that diminishing losses per vehicle
Speaker 2: over time, combined with chasing economies of scale, market share,
Speaker 2: and infrastructure, can deliver you big time success in the
Speaker 2: long run. And they're doing so well now. They're even
Speaker 2: slashing prices to gain more market share because they can,
Speaker 2: and they're still making a lot of money. The big
Speaker 2: elephant in the room, though, is not just for non
Speaker 2: Tesla US companies, is chasing market share here and abroad,
Speaker 2: especially with Tesla and all others versus China, specifically Chinese
Speaker 2: maker BYD.
Speaker 3: BYD doesn't just have consumer cars sold.
Speaker 2: They don't have consumer cars sold here in the US
Speaker 2: they probably never will because of US China relations. But
Speaker 2: abroad they are a juggernaut to be reckoned with. I've
Speaker 2: seen a few in last year or so in my travels,
Speaker 2: and it pains me to admit. They both look and
Speaker 2: they are selling very well. In fact, for the third quarter,
Speaker 2: BYD has officially reached tessel status, selling a comparable four
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty one thousand electric vehicles worldwide. Already, it
Speaker 2: is the top ed seller outside of China in key
Speaker 2: countries like Australia, Sweden, Thailand, and even Israel. The company
Speaker 2: is the purest distillation of the Chinese model. You steal
Speaker 2: with assistants all of the ip of every major automaker
Speaker 2: in the world. You use government cash and protectionism to
Speaker 2: refine the company.
Speaker 3: Over decades, you vertically integrated. They produce then a.
Speaker 2: Product that actually genuinely rivals most competitors, and in some
Speaker 2: cases is even better.
Speaker 3: The point of this.
Speaker 2: Monologue is only just to honestly survey the landscape for
Speaker 2: those who may not know the sheer amount of costs involved.
Speaker 2: And the real business dynamic that could put the US
Speaker 2: still farther behind China. We have not even touched on
Speaker 2: the fact that the vast majority of inputs into all
Speaker 2: these cars do come from China or are controlled by China,
Speaker 2: and the supply chain itself already shows the same perils
Speaker 2: of globalization that bedeviled the internal combustion engine car for
Speaker 2: the last couple of decades. I am genuinely rooting for
Speaker 2: electric cars. My main takeaway from this is that if
Speaker 2: this is to be the future, these pitty tax credits
Speaker 2: that we have in place, they are not going to
Speaker 2: set us up for success. It will require a near
Speaker 2: Manhattan project or a Polo style program leap forward to
Speaker 2: secure the supply chain and then, most importantly, deliver a decent, reliable, usable,
Speaker 2: affordable product to the American consumer that actually fits their needs.
Speaker 2: All I'm seeing right now is a weird mix between
Speaker 2: rugged individual capitalism and then half hearted state policy that
Speaker 2: ironically may meet us weaker in the long run, reducing
Speaker 2: combustion engine production and then not setting us up for
Speaker 2: actual electric success. It's time, though, to get real, if
Speaker 2: we want to win. I'm curious what you think, Crystle these.
Speaker 1: Losses, and if you want to hear my reaction to
Speaker 1: Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 1: Very excited to be joined live now by Jim Row.
Speaker 1: He is a veteran auto worker with UAW Local twelve
Speaker 1: in Toledo. He's also currently on strike, and he's a
Speaker 1: forty year UAW worker who also spent sixteen years as
Speaker 1: a UAW rep. So we're very lucky to have him
Speaker 1: join us this morning. Great Seezar, good to Zoo, good morning, Thanks,
Speaker 1: good morning. So, first of all, just give us an
Speaker 1: update on your spirits. How are you feeling about how
Speaker 1: things are progressing here.
Speaker 13: We're doing good, you know, the talks are going good.
Speaker 13: We haven't heard a whole lot, you know, we get
Speaker 13: our updates on Fridays, but negotiations seem to be moving along.
Speaker 2: Jim, There's been a lot of talk here in Washington
Speaker 2: about demands. I've personally found it frustrating that everybody talks
Speaker 2: in percentages. Could you just lay out one of the
Speaker 2: reasons that you guys are on strike, one of the
Speaker 2: reasons that I understand you've been walking the picket line yourself.
Speaker 3: Some of the conditions.
Speaker 2: The raises what you guys have done in the past,
Speaker 2: just for our audience who wants to hear it directly
Speaker 2: from a worker.
Speaker 6: Well, our demands aren't outrageous.
Speaker 13: In two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, when
Speaker 13: we filed bankruptcy, we took cuts, and we took big cuts.
Speaker 13: And then in twenty thirteen when they start hiring again
Speaker 13: here in Toledo or our new hires were making fifteen
Speaker 13: seventy eight an hour, and there's still when they hire
Speaker 13: in today, fifteen seventy eight an hour. No one can
Speaker 13: live on that wage. It's not a living wage. You
Speaker 13: have to have a second job. And for making that
Speaker 13: kind of money and going into the plant and working
Speaker 13: hard and hurting your body, they deserve an increase.
Speaker 1: Jim, I wonder what you've made of some of the
Speaker 1: political attention. Obviously you had current President Biden walking the
Speaker 1: picket line. You also had former President Trump going to
Speaker 1: Michigan saying he was sort of supporting autoworkers, but then
Speaker 1: speaking at a non union plant. Does this political peace
Speaker 1: factor into any of this.
Speaker 4: For you all?
Speaker 6: It doesn't.
Speaker 13: I try we try to keep the political side out
Speaker 13: of it. This is for the working class of America.
Speaker 13: We need to stand strong and get what we deserve,
Speaker 13: and this is going to help out the whole working
Speaker 13: class of America.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jim, I mean, I think one of the things
Speaker 2: that people really want to understand is about the mood
Speaker 2: in the country and whether you guys feel is if
Speaker 2: you're getting the support that you need. Let's put the
Speaker 2: politics out of this, out of this and think about
Speaker 2: the American people. Do you feel as if the American
Speaker 2: people are with you? Have you've seen, you know, the
Speaker 2: support for unions. We're seeing that reflected and polling. I'm
Speaker 2: curious how you feel it actually on the ground.
Speaker 13: Actually, it's great. The people are for us here in Toledo.
Speaker 13: We have a strong community support, strong leadership from our
Speaker 13: mayor on down, our our senators, our governors, they're all
Speaker 13: they're all supporting. Across the United States, even up in Michigan,
Speaker 13: there's a lot of support.
Speaker 6: We're seeing the different unions there. It's amazing.
Speaker 13: How you see Sarah Nelson, she came with President Fame
Speaker 13: from the AFA and the Teachers Union and the iron
Speaker 13: workers and the electricians, and they're coming from not just Ohio,
Speaker 13: but different states and they're coming and walking with us
Speaker 13: and supporting us.
Speaker 1: What do you think of the strategy that present Fine
Speaker 1: and the UAW leadership have pursued. I know there were
Speaker 1: some workers who were open and everybody was going to
Speaker 1: go on at once. Instead, you've gone with what's called
Speaker 1: a stand up strike, where different plants starts striking at
Speaker 1: different times depending on how the negotiations are going.
Speaker 4: What do you think of the strategy.
Speaker 6: I think it was pretty smart.
Speaker 13: He knew which one is to hit first, and that's
Speaker 13: their money makers, Toledo Jeep. That's the only place that
Speaker 13: the jeep has made for the world is here in Toledo,
Speaker 13: and you hit them on their pocket when you stop
Speaker 13: building jeeps. And the stand up strike by hitting him
Speaker 13: strategically through different plants, I think they're starting to understand.
Speaker 2: There's all the questions about, you know, how this will
Speaker 2: come to resolve, and we just want to ask you,
Speaker 2: you know, in terms of you, your colleagues and everyone,
Speaker 2: are you willing to give an inch here? Are you
Speaker 2: guys going to stand for the entire time? Because that's
Speaker 2: what the bosses apparently are hoping.
Speaker 13: Well, I'm sure it's negotiations. I mean, there's going to
Speaker 13: be there's going to be negotiations. Are they going to
Speaker 13: give an inch? Yes, we've already have. I mean, we
Speaker 13: went from forty down to thirty six or thirty two,
Speaker 13: and we are willing to negotiate. They just there's a
Speaker 13: few things that need to be looked at, the tears
Speaker 13: and the starting wage for our new hires.
Speaker 3: Got it, Jim.
Speaker 1: I was also curious about your view of the electric
Speaker 1: vehicle transition, which has ended up being a major topic
Speaker 1: of conversation. You know, the future of that industry and
Speaker 1: the future of workers and auto workers within that industry.
Speaker 4: I'm just curious your view.
Speaker 6: Well, I'm not a big fan of the electric vehicle.
Speaker 6: Is it coming? Yes, it is.
Speaker 13: Unfortunately, what they say is it's going to take about
Speaker 13: thirty percent of our jobs away from us.
Speaker 6: Hopefully that's not true.
Speaker 4: Is that part of what this fight is about.
Speaker 13: No, the fight is about the working class in getting
Speaker 13: a working wage that we can survive on and people
Speaker 13: don't have to go do second jobs and come to
Speaker 13: the plant, work ten hours and go work at Dollar General.
Speaker 13: You know, they need working class wage so they can
Speaker 13: survive and pay their bills.
Speaker 2: Jim, I want to ask you worked in the industry
Speaker 2: for forty years now, you've probably seen a lot of
Speaker 2: change over time. What was it like when you started
Speaker 2: in terms of the ability to work to support a family,
Speaker 2: and then what's it like now? And is that why
Speaker 2: you're fighting today?
Speaker 13: It was when I started in nineteen eighty four. It
Speaker 13: was the best place to work in Toledo. Everybody wanted
Speaker 13: a job at JEEP. Everyone had good families, they had
Speaker 13: a good living. You know, if you worked at JEEP
Speaker 13: in the eighties, you were you had a good, good
Speaker 13: living and it took care of your family. And as
Speaker 13: the years progressed through all the people that have bought us,
Speaker 13: from Cerberus to Dommler to Fiat, we always gave up
Speaker 13: our progression. We never regressed. We always gave up concessions.
Speaker 13: And it's time for us to get it back so
Speaker 13: we can have a good living, a good wage and
Speaker 13: support our families.
Speaker 4: Wonder Jim.
Speaker 1: Lastly, if you have any message to folks like Jim
Speaker 1: Kramer over on CNBC who suggested that the CEOs should
Speaker 1: just shut down production, move everything to Mexico and say
Speaker 1: screw you to you guys and all of your commands.
Speaker 13: Well, Jim Kramer, he flip flops because a few years
Speaker 13: ago he was for the autoworkers and for the unions,
Speaker 13: so I really don't have much say about him.
Speaker 3: That's probably best for all of us.
Speaker 2: We appreciate, we appreciate you joining us, sir, We do
Speaker 2: really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: We support you one hundred percent. So thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great to have you. Good luck, We stand solidarity
Speaker 1: with you.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Have a good day, it's our pleasure. We'll see you
Speaker 3: guys later.