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Speaker 1: Breakingpoints dot Com, our good morning, Welcome to Counterpoints. We
Speaker 1: still do not have intro music. We promise we're going
Speaker 1: to get on that very soon. Should we set a deadline? No, no,
Speaker 1: let's not say it that I got the deadline. Definitely
Speaker 1: an I'm Ryan Grahama's family, Jishinsky. We've got a lot
Speaker 1: to get into, that's right. We got war in Ukraine expanding,
Speaker 1: but first in Georgia. The end of the midterms is coming,
Speaker 1: and potentially maybe I'm curious for your take on this,
Speaker 1: the end of an era. Let's let's put up a
Speaker 1: one here. Raphael Warnock is heading into today with a
Speaker 1: you know, a small but significant polling lead, but also
Speaker 1: more importantly, with more than a million votes banks so
Speaker 1: far in Georgia a significant lead among those votes. We
Speaker 1: don't know how those people voted, but we know what
Speaker 1: party they're in and we can We'll talk about this later.
Speaker 1: Fifty two percent of the votes in so far Democrats,
Speaker 1: thirty nine percent are Republicans, the rest Independence that we
Speaker 1: know in the polls, he's winning independence, which means herschel
Speaker 1: Walker on election day would have to win that day's
Speaker 1: turnout by something like seventeen percent. And if you look,
Speaker 1: if you look at the polls, this is just polls
Speaker 1: as of Monday, Warnock plus five, Warnock plus five, Warnock
Speaker 1: plus three, Warnock plus four, Warnock plus five, Warnock plus two.
Speaker 1: If you go to post from Friday, Warnock plus four,
Speaker 1: Warnock plus three. I'm not seeing Anya two here. Not
Speaker 1: since November seventh, am I seeing a poll that has
Speaker 1: herschel Walker in the lead on rcpu's aggregation right. As
Speaker 1: a result, Larry Sabado's Crystal Ball moved it over to
Speaker 1: lean Democrat. Now, polls are often wrong, but what you
Speaker 1: want to do is you want to combine the polling
Speaker 1: data that you get with other inputs, and one of
Speaker 1: those inputs being votes that have already been cast. Another
Speaker 1: being rally sizes all the intangibles and you're not you
Speaker 1: know this, this is something conservatives have been frustrated with
Speaker 1: Walker about. Right. He kind of took off like there's
Speaker 1: only a month of the runoff, but on a bunch
Speaker 1: of those weekends he was just kind of mia Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, and one point nine million votes have
Speaker 1: already been cast, which is pretty shocking. That's a record
Speaker 1: for Georgia. They've had about three hundred thousand people voting
Speaker 1: early every day in recent days. I mean that's just
Speaker 1: in whatever jimpro to Winno did, it did not manage
Speaker 1: to like stop people from voting well. And I believe
Speaker 1: brain Kemp actually cut early voting days from seventeen to five,
Speaker 1: which again, I mean, this is we're talking about one
Speaker 1: point nine million in and just I want to give
Speaker 1: some perspective on those numbers, because they're really shocking. The
Speaker 1: total number of votes that were cast in the twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen midterm and the twenty twenty two midterm before the
Speaker 1: runoff was three point nine four eight and three point
Speaker 1: nine six one, respectively, So about four million votes cast.
Speaker 1: Two million have already been cast early in the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one runoff, there were four point about four point
Speaker 1: five million votes cast. Again, two million of those votes
Speaker 1: are already in As you mentioned, Ryan, we have the polling,
Speaker 1: but we also have the breakdown of voters that have
Speaker 1: already come and cast their ballots. That number clearly favors
Speaker 1: Democrats by a margin of fifty two to thirty nine.
Speaker 1: So Herschel Walker was a Trump sort of suggested candidate
Speaker 1: Georgia Republicans, some Georgia Republicans in the party probably would
Speaker 1: have preferred someone else. But it looks like Herschel's going
Speaker 1: to lose. And what does this say about Trump? Like
Speaker 1: does this is this a Georgia specific thing that Georgia
Speaker 1: is gonna continue to be for however long, a kind
Speaker 1: of a red state where Republicans are in control on
Speaker 1: the state level, they can jerrymander all of those state
Speaker 1: legislative seats, they can keep winning the governor's mansion. But
Speaker 1: on the federal level and on the presidential level, is
Speaker 1: it just becoming a blue state or is there something
Speaker 1: more specific to Trump here? There's something more specific to
Speaker 1: Trump here. Specifically, if you look at Brian Kemp, the
Speaker 1: numbers that Brian Kemp put up on election night, he
Speaker 1: beat Stacy Abrams, who I would consider a pretty bad candidate,
Speaker 1: by a healthy margin. He got fifty three point four
Speaker 1: percent of the vote two point one million votes. Stacy
Speaker 1: Abrams got forty five, about forty six percent of the vote.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty healthy margin there, about seven points easy victory,
Speaker 1: whereas Walker wouldn't even come. And so you could say
Speaker 1: that that's a candidate quality issue. You could say it's
Speaker 1: a Trump issue. I think both of those questions are correct. Now.
Speaker 1: Kemp had fallen out of favor with Trump pretty famously
Speaker 1: over overturning Georgia's results in twenty twenty. So it is
Speaker 1: I think think very telling that somebody Trump, a very
Speaker 1: high profile Trump enemies or Trump appointed enemy like Brian Kemp,
Speaker 1: who we have an ad I think from Kemp, uh
Speaker 1: from Walker, that shows Camp giving his support. If that
Speaker 1: tells you anything that's been running over the course of
Speaker 1: the midterms, he did. Well. Oh, if you want to
Speaker 1: put up a three that's that's the website that has
Speaker 1: uh the these early voting numbers. You can check it
Speaker 1: out yourself. It's Target Early dot Target smart dot dot
Speaker 1: com and it's a democratic data firm that is able
Speaker 1: to tell you know which which votes have been cast
Speaker 1: and whether or not that person is registered as a Democrat, Independent,
Speaker 1: or Republican. You can, you can fiddle around with all
Speaker 1: the numbers on their on their site, and but none
Speaker 1: of no amount of fiddling makes it any any better
Speaker 1: for Walker. But so the numbers you're talking about, that
Speaker 1: means that about two hundred thousand plus Republicans went to
Speaker 1: the polls on election day the ballot for Camp and
Speaker 1: then either voted for Warnock, a write in a libertarian candidate,
Speaker 1: or didn't vote at all, just left it blank. And
Speaker 1: if you have a sizeable enough number of those people,
Speaker 1: does is that a signal about Trump's kind of drag
Speaker 1: on the party nationally? Or is there is there something
Speaker 1: unique about Georgia because of his history there, of his
Speaker 1: fight with Camp, his perfect phone call where he's say,
Speaker 1: I need eleventh I don't care how you do it,
Speaker 1: just get me eleven thousand votes, Just get it done.
Speaker 1: And then the Ravensberger like leaks the audio of the
Speaker 1: phone call. He then you know, Barnstorm's the state practically
Speaker 1: for Democrats in the twenty one runoff, helping both Warnock
Speaker 1: and us off win. And I say for Democrats because
Speaker 1: a he set up the two thousand dollars check fiasco
Speaker 1: for Republicans, like after they signed the six hundred dollars checks, like, hey,
Speaker 1: why don't you do two thousand? Democrats are like, great,
Speaker 1: do two thousand, and then warnock and also have ran
Speaker 1: on make it two thousand. But then also he was
Speaker 1: telling everybody that it was rigged and there's no point
Speaker 1: in voting. So Trump, that did so much to hurt
Speaker 1: Georgia Republicans in twenty twenty. Is he more toxic there
Speaker 1: or is he equally toxic around the country? And this
Speaker 1: is going to be this is going to be a
Speaker 1: drag on him despite the fact that, let's be honest,
Speaker 1: he's still polling ahead of Ron de Santis. He's still
Speaker 1: or not I guess not in every poll, but he's
Speaker 1: still Trump. But how much of a drag is this
Speaker 1: on him? So if you look at the numbers, about
Speaker 1: thirty percent of people nationwide say they're more of Republican
Speaker 1: voters say they're more loyal to Donald Trump than the
Speaker 1: Republican Party, and that number has actually shifted recently in
Speaker 1: favor of the Republican Party. And less in favor of
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. So that means the amount of people who
Speaker 1: say they're favorable to Donald Trump and not just the
Speaker 1: Republican Party over the Republican Party has decreased. Well, people
Speaker 1: who say they're they're loyal to the party over Trump
Speaker 1: has changed. And so that is a I think a
Speaker 1: really important thing to keep in mind, because there's this
Speaker 1: hardened faction of the electorate for very good reasons, that
Speaker 1: supports Donald Trump and Donald Trump only, or Donald Trump
Speaker 1: above the Republican Party. And that's a faction of the
Speaker 1: electorate that really matters. And I think that might be
Speaker 1: a faction of the electorate that doesn't go out and vote,
Speaker 1: let alone vote for for Hershel Walker, because they just
Speaker 1: don't trust the results. So as opposed to it being
Speaker 1: that Trump is uniquely toxic in Georgia, I would say
Speaker 1: it's possible that you just have Trump voters who don't
Speaker 1: trust them, don't trust the election. Even though kemp ushered
Speaker 1: in those electoral reforms that were decried as Jim Eagle,
Speaker 1: Jim Krocher, Hoorto, you can go down the list. It
Speaker 1: seems entirely possible to me that Walker may be Walker's
Speaker 1: results may actually be a glimpse into that. What happens
Speaker 1: when you have that remaining faction of Trump voters who
Speaker 1: won't support Kemp and just won't vote period, Like maybe
Speaker 1: they're just straight up Trump can get them out right exactly.
Speaker 1: And that's a problem for Republicans around the country because
Speaker 1: you can't run doctor Oz in Erie County and expect
Speaker 1: to win the same margins as Donald Trump with doctor Oz.
Speaker 1: You can't do it. And so again for Republicans, it's
Speaker 1: about finding that sweet spot that right now electorally mathematically.
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis has done it, but it's going to be difficult.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think you can run Brian Kemp
Speaker 1: for president. That's not going to be I think the
Speaker 1: ticket that a lot of people get behind. So that's
Speaker 1: a sweet spot that's incredibly elusive. Speaking of this Republicans
Speaker 1: sweet spot, Glenn Youngkin did not campaign in Georgia, despite
Speaker 1: Republicans hoping that he would. Does he come out of
Speaker 1: this and we can put up a four which is
Speaker 1: the polling numbers that Emily talked about. All those blues
Speaker 1: you see over there on the right are the polls
Speaker 1: coming in for for Raphael Warnock and Obviously, Youngkin has
Speaker 1: a five thirty eight dot com up on his toolbar there,
Speaker 1: so he you know, he sees this and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what Herschel, I think you're I think you're
Speaker 1: all right on your own, not gonna not gonna come
Speaker 1: down there. So does he come out of this looking
Speaker 1: better than he did ahead of time? Like? Is that
Speaker 1: where is that the analysis Republicans are going to come to.
Speaker 1: I think they're definitely looking at Youngkin and DeSantis as
Speaker 1: people who were able to get that coalition together of
Speaker 1: what they saw, what they see his parents sort of
Speaker 1: anti woke independence, but not turn off people by being
Speaker 1: what does Biden say, ultra maga hardcore maga it is,
Speaker 1: and that's sort of what people see it as, although
Speaker 1: DeSantis has been pretty hardcore mega even though there's been
Speaker 1: Trump has been attacking him recently. But also another thing
Speaker 1: to keep in mind here, if we put a five up,
Speaker 1: we're talking about eighty million dollars that have been spent
Speaker 1: just in this runoff. That's a truly remarkable number. Seventy
Speaker 1: nine million into airtime in the runoff, just unbelievable number.
Speaker 1: And people in Georgia right now are also debating what
Speaker 1: to do with their elections going forward, because the runoff
Speaker 1: tax on weeks to an exhausting election season and makes
Speaker 1: them spend I think it's like seventy five million dollars
Speaker 1: in election costs for a runoff. Yeah, state election costs
Speaker 1: because of all the because you got to send the
Speaker 1: envelopes back out, it's a lot. Got the employees to
Speaker 1: count them again and right. So that's another thing to
Speaker 1: look for into the future. And I think we should
Speaker 1: go ahead and just for a taste of what that
Speaker 1: airtime has looked like, where that seventy nine million dollars
Speaker 1: seventy nine million dollars in just a few weeks has gone.
Speaker 1: Let's roll a couple of their ads, a couple ads
Speaker 1: from We'll roll an ad from Warnock and then from Walker,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's the other way around, and just get
Speaker 1: a taste of what people in Georgia have been seeing.
Speaker 1: Let's roll asex. Character is what you do when nobody's watching.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. And Warnock thought no one was watching when
Speaker 1: his ex wife called police to report his abuse, and
Speaker 1: he's a great actor. And Warnock thought no one was
Speaker 1: watching when he evicted poor people from their homes excum
Speaker 1: MELI character is what you're doing when nobody's watching. You
Speaker 1: find out who Reverend Warnock really is. I'm Herschel Walker
Speaker 1: and I'll prove this message. New details tonight about accusations
Speaker 1: that continue to follow senate candidate Herschel Walker. Walker's ex wife,
Speaker 1: Cindy Grossman, got a protective order against him. Her sister
Speaker 1: submitted an affidavit saying he stated unequivocally that he was
Speaker 1: going to shoot my sister. Cindy put the gun to
Speaker 1: my tackle. He had the gun right here, ed and
Speaker 1: what did he say? I'm going to blow your f
Speaker 1: and brains out. Over the years, two other women have
Speaker 1: accused of senate candidate threats, a woman telling police she
Speaker 1: was very frightened of Walker making threats to her and
Speaker 1: having her house watched. In another incident, a police report
Speaker 1: shows a woman who was involved in a relationship with
Speaker 1: Walker said he told her that he was going to
Speaker 1: blow her head off at one point with a loaded
Speaker 1: pistol in his car. It admits he set out to
Speaker 1: kill a man over a trivial business dispute. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to kill it. Yeah I didn't, he says.
Speaker 1: He doesn't remember a lot of details of these. He
Speaker 1: may not, but I finally do, capping it off with
Speaker 1: Walker being like, yeah, I wanted to kill him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like the first ad, which is the hit
Speaker 1: on Warnock, is so deeply undermined by the last three seconds,
Speaker 1: which is I'm Herschel Walker and I approved this message.
Speaker 1: Because then you're like, oh, okay, well, if it's a
Speaker 1: question of character, you could you could be like, hmm,
Speaker 1: let me find out more about what happened with Warnock
Speaker 1: and his x Y, let me see who I agree
Speaker 1: with or disagree with in this in this dispute, And
Speaker 1: then you're like, oh, but if it's a question of
Speaker 1: character between Walker and Warnock, that's not terrain that Republicans
Speaker 1: want to be fighting on. They want to say, forget character.
Speaker 1: What matters is how you're going to vote in the
Speaker 1: Senate and what your kind of political values are, because
Speaker 1: if it's going to be on character, there aren't many
Speaker 1: people that would lose to Hershel Walker in Georgia. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's fundamentally something that can also neutralize though
Speaker 1: the character question. I think that's probably part of the
Speaker 1: strategy here, and Herschel Walker is loved in Georgia by many,
Speaker 1: many people just for his athletic career. He's an icon, right, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And so I mean I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: do admire champion athletes. Now, whether that means they want
Speaker 1: to put them in the Senate if they seem to
Speaker 1: have other character issues that come out over the course
Speaker 1: of the campaign, I don't know, but it is one
Speaker 1: of those things that could potentially depress independent turnout. For
Speaker 1: Warnock to say, hey, look, he's saying that he's going
Speaker 1: to be the man of integrity and character that gets
Speaker 1: into the office and you have to block Herscha Walker
Speaker 1: from getting into the office. But if you think, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe these two guys are both kind of you laying,
Speaker 1: maybe they're both losers, then maybe you stay home. And
Speaker 1: what's another interesting thing is just this eighty million dollar
Speaker 1: runoff has been nasty basically what you noticed in both
Speaker 1: of those ads, and this had come out before just
Speaker 1: the runoff, but allegations of domestic abuse. Warnock's ex wife
Speaker 1: alleges that he ran over her foot with a car.
Speaker 1: They're in a nasty custody battle, so he's problems with
Speaker 1: that as well. And there are many many allegations of
Speaker 1: abuse against krschel Walker. He said that he's had had
Speaker 1: mental illness. He's actually copped to a lot of bad
Speaker 1: stuff that he's done in his past, which has been
Speaker 1: an interesting strategy, but it's just really been a nasty one.
Speaker 1: And the Warnock one was an issue in the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty election. Police the police report came out basically they
Speaker 1: were he and his wife ex wife were having a
Speaker 1: fight near the car and he backed the car up.
Speaker 1: She claims that the car ran over her toe. The
Speaker 1: police said that they saw no evidence of any injuries
Speaker 1: and so didn't do it, and so didn't do anything
Speaker 1: at the time. And I think that has that kind
Speaker 1: of helped Warnock put it behind him. And you know,
Speaker 1: nobody wants to say, well, I almost ran over my wife,
Speaker 1: like you're like, once you're you know, once you're in
Speaker 1: that it's not good. But like I said, compared to
Speaker 1: he put a gun to my temple and said he
Speaker 1: was going to pull the trigger, and then him saying yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to kill that guy, or and multiple other
Speaker 1: women also saying that he had made these like severe
Speaker 1: traumatizing threats. Although the last thing I'll say, maybe we
Speaker 1: can pop a eight up on the screen. This is
Speaker 1: ural walk quote from Marshall Walker, You're so good. He
Speaker 1: says he hasn't seen any lack of enthusiasm from voters.
Speaker 1: This is a quote from Politico. Walker said, they're not
Speaker 1: less motivated because they know right now that the House
Speaker 1: will be even so that they don't so they don't
Speaker 1: want to understand what is happening right now. You get
Speaker 1: the House, you get the committees, you get all the committees,
Speaker 1: even they just all things within there. So if we
Speaker 1: keep a track on Joe Biden, we're just going to
Speaker 1: keep a check on him. Walker said, Now it sounds
Speaker 1: there like he thinks he's running for the House or
Speaker 1: he's mixing up the words house and Senate. I don't know.
Speaker 1: But the point I was going to raise is there's
Speaker 1: a difference I think of in Warnock's contrast and Walker's contrast,
Speaker 1: and that Herschel Walker isn't running as you know, an
Speaker 1: areadite statesman, whereas Warnock is running as a sort of
Speaker 1: I mean he's running on his religious credentials. He is
Speaker 1: running leverendt Martin Luther King's church. I mean it's right,
Speaker 1: and so with Herschel Walker It's like, yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: all kind of baked into the cake. I mean, what
Speaker 1: are you gonna says he's a football player and he is,
Speaker 1: you know, has had a checkered pass. Well, he'll tell
Speaker 1: you the same things, right, And so this so Friday
Speaker 1: to pick up the thread we talked about there he
Speaker 1: audio emerges of him saying, I live I live in Texas. Uh,
Speaker 1: he took he took a homestead exemption in Texas. He talked,
Speaker 1: he talked about making the decision to run for Georgie's
Speaker 1: for the race. I was gonna say Georgia Senate, but
Speaker 1: we're not. It's not obviously he knows he's running for
Speaker 1: Georgia Senate to run in the campaign from his Texas home.
Speaker 1: And now you add to it that maybe he's misspeaking here.
Speaker 1: But the funny thing is you're not sure, Like you
Speaker 1: have to sit with the possibility that he thinks he's
Speaker 1: running for the house, but you can't. You can't immediately
Speaker 1: rule it out. And everybody watching that knows you can't
Speaker 1: immediately rule that out. And that's amazing thing. He might
Speaker 1: have been misspeaking. Maybe he thinks they're both called houses
Speaker 1: and he's going to the upper House and there's the
Speaker 1: lower House something. But you're like, I'm not. I would
Speaker 1: not bet my life that he doesn't think he's running
Speaker 1: for the House. Also, it's his point is also wrong
Speaker 1: even on his own terms. Republicans already control the House,
Speaker 1: so one more seat in the House wouldn't actually help them,
Speaker 1: and Democrats have a majority in the Senate no matter
Speaker 1: what happens. That's what was confusing to me, that there
Speaker 1: wasn't a even you could take it in the most
Speaker 1: charitable possible way, and it's still the logic didn't check
Speaker 1: out with reality or didn't match up to the reality.
Speaker 1: But you know, with herschel Walker, it reminds me a lot.
Speaker 1: We were talking about this last week of the runoff
Speaker 1: between Roy Moore and Doug Jones and Roy Moore is
Speaker 1: a pretty different ballgame, but in the respect that there
Speaker 1: are Republicans who are single life or single issue voters
Speaker 1: on pro life issues. There are Republicans who are single
Speaker 1: issue voters right now on basically wokeness issues, if that's
Speaker 1: what we're going to call it. And what I would
Speaker 1: say is just basically these people are mostly warm bodies anyway,
Speaker 1: But the public is like increasingly aware of that. You know,
Speaker 1: someone is just a robot who's going to vote either
Speaker 1: the way the sort of antie McConnell people want them
Speaker 1: to vote, or the anti Shumer people or the anti
Speaker 1: Pelosi people want them to vote, or they're going to
Speaker 1: vote down the line with McConnell, with Schumer, with Pelosi,
Speaker 1: with McCarthy. And as long as you can determine which
Speaker 1: side of that they're on, you probably know what's going
Speaker 1: to happen, and you just need them to pull the
Speaker 1: lever and last point. On these early voting numbers that
Speaker 1: you can fiddle around with, it looks like Warnock is
Speaker 1: up probably fifteen points like in the early vote to start.
Speaker 1: But if you look at youth vote, here's what's interesting.
Speaker 1: Youth vote eighteen to twenty nine made up almost eleven
Speaker 1: percent of the electorate on election day, which which is
Speaker 1: a huge amount, Like that's well above what young people
Speaker 1: used to do, say twenty fourteen and before. So far
Speaker 1: in the early vote they're only seven point nine percent.
Speaker 1: And so there are two possibilities here, one which is
Speaker 1: what I think, which is that young people procrastinate and
Speaker 1: they also are they they're more likely to vote on
Speaker 1: election day, if you only have a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: to vote, or they're going to go back to their
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen kind of turnout levels and youth turnout will
Speaker 1: be way down. I don't think that's right, but if
Speaker 1: it's right, then Walker could be closer and maybe only
Speaker 1: lose by a couple of points. If youth turn out
Speaker 1: on election day you know surges and hits, you know,
Speaker 1: hits what it was during the general election ten point
Speaker 1: nine percent, you could see a significant Warnock win, which
Speaker 1: which would be kind of startling because you know, he
Speaker 1: only won by thirty thousand votes in the general election,
Speaker 1: so so how he So finding a way to go
Speaker 1: from thirty thousand to winning by several hundred thousand is
Speaker 1: difficult in the same state a month apart. But Walker
Speaker 1: may have figured it out. You know, it's interesting to
Speaker 1: kind of hypothesize about what this race sort of looked
Speaker 1: like had it been the determinive factor in control of
Speaker 1: the Senate. And again it's not. And there's still eighty
Speaker 1: million dollars that poured into it, because obviously that vote
Speaker 1: is extremely important either way. But you know, when Republicans
Speaker 1: sort of realized what wasn't at stake in Georgia. It
Speaker 1: does seem like and I saw a quote in Politico
Speaker 1: from a GOP guy down in Georgia saying, it's like
Speaker 1: everybody's just kind of hoping for the best right now.
Speaker 1: But you know, that's all you can do. It's so
Speaker 1: crazy to think that Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin only got
Speaker 1: a couple million bucks from the party and lost by
Speaker 1: like twenty thousand votes, and that's also a Senate seat.
Speaker 1: But again, that's we're looking at these numbers right now,
Speaker 1: and I think we don't have a poll that shows
Speaker 1: a recent poll that shows Walker winning. We have the
Speaker 1: early vote numbers that favored Democrats by a really sizable margin.
Speaker 1: And you know, the polling in the last what five
Speaker 1: plus years just really hasn't been great, So you never know.
Speaker 1: It's raining in Georgia. Who knows who that favors. Polls
Speaker 1: close at seven, But certainly here I think we're expecting
Speaker 1: we're not win. Yeah, and results should be in by nine,
Speaker 1: ten o'clock. We'll see, we'll be watching. Let's move on
Speaker 1: to Ukraine. There's a lot of news on this front
Speaker 1: just in the last twenty four hours. We're going to
Speaker 1: start with a video of Vladimir Putin driving across the
Speaker 1: Crimea bridge. This happened on Monday. Let's roll right now
Speaker 1: be two the video of Putin give the bridge was
Speaker 1: hit by a truck bomb on October eighth. This was
Speaker 1: a surprise visit from Putin now on Monday. Also, New
Speaker 1: York Times has this sentence in its report on what
Speaker 1: happened between Ukraine and Russia. Quote, Ukraine executed its most
Speaker 1: brazen attack into Russian territory in the nine month old
Speaker 1: war on Monday, targeting two military bases hundreds of miles
Speaker 1: inside the country. You unman drones. According to the Russian
Speaker 1: defense industry and to a senior Ukrainian official, they got
Speaker 1: within one hundred miles of Moscow with one of those, right,
Speaker 1: and this is huge news. I think the New York
Speaker 1: Times is correct to say it's the most brazen attack
Speaker 1: into Russian territory. What did you make of the development yesterday?
Speaker 1: Just monster escalation, it seems like for so what Ukraine.
Speaker 1: What Ukraine did here is attacked the airfields from which
Speaker 1: Russia has been launching a lot of its attacks. You
Speaker 1: know what I would say are kind of illegal war
Speaker 1: crime attacks on the kind of infrastructure, the civilian infrastructure
Speaker 1: of Ukraine heading into the winter, trying to plunge the
Speaker 1: country into cold and darkness throughout this the long Ukrainian winter.
Speaker 1: And so they sent to drones to these two air bases,
Speaker 1: one of them Angles Airfield, I guess after Frederick Engels,
Speaker 1: the Soviet era name. It's near a as the town
Speaker 1: of Angles. They didn't rename that, although there's you know,
Speaker 1: there's still still love for Angles over there. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a base in the south of Russia, right and so.
Speaker 1: And one of them was what one hundred miles away
Speaker 1: from Moscow. Russia claims that they were able to shoot
Speaker 1: down that drone, but that as it crashed, it ended
Speaker 1: up killing a couple of servicemen and hitting like I
Speaker 1: think one aircraft, yeah, two planes. It had slightly damaged
Speaker 1: two planes. The fall of the Soviet era jet drones less.
Speaker 1: The New York Times is reporting that Russia said were
Speaker 1: shot down slightly damaged two planes and according to Russia,
Speaker 1: killed three servicemen and wounded for others. And again we're
Speaker 1: talking three hundred miles from the Ukrainian border. One of
Speaker 1: these is one hundred miles from Moscow. You can see
Speaker 1: there in the New York Times headline it says deep
Speaker 1: into Russia, Deep in Russia, And I think that's absolutely correct. Ryan.
Speaker 1: The Putin video happening, I mean that visit happened earlier
Speaker 1: on month day. What do you make of both of
Speaker 1: these things happening on the same day. I thought Putin
Speaker 1: would use a horse, ride a horse across the bridge,
Speaker 1: Isn't that Isn't that kind of his thing? No, I mean,
Speaker 1: so that's his that's his flex to try to like
Speaker 1: to try to assure the Russian public that that this
Speaker 1: is not going backwards for him. You know, he's he's
Speaker 1: also there was there were reports in the Post at
Speaker 1: the Times that he's, you know, that Putin is is
Speaker 1: building up bases in mary Apaul, trying to, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to strength strengthen his his hold on key parts
Speaker 1: of Ukraine that they that they're currently occupying, even as
Speaker 1: they even as they see even as they lose ground
Speaker 1: elsewhere around the country. This comes at the now. I
Speaker 1: think it's I think it's useful for de escalation that
Speaker 1: Ukraine did not use kind of American weapons. If Ukraine
Speaker 1: had used I was thinking that American drones or American weapons,
Speaker 1: you'd have h you'd have Russia calling an a and
Speaker 1: an attack by NATO and you and then who knows
Speaker 1: what what that response would be. I think it shows
Speaker 1: that Ukraine isn't really afraid of Russia escalating inside Ukraine
Speaker 1: like Russia. And that's so, you know, Russia has played
Speaker 1: the card of humanitarian catastrophe by constantly attacking all all
Speaker 1: of these all these power plants and other other civilian
Speaker 1: elements of infrastructure. Then they've kind of they don't long,
Speaker 1: they don't have a threat that they're gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: go that much more brutal, because at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the conflict you kept hearing people who are sympathetic to
Speaker 1: the Russian side saying, well that they they have gloves
Speaker 1: on still that you know, they could really be punishing
Speaker 1: Ukraine and and they're not so far, so you you know,
Speaker 1: don't do this or don't do that. Now that they're
Speaker 1: trying to plunge, they're trying to freeze everybody death over there,
Speaker 1: then that takes away kind of a stick. So I
Speaker 1: guess Ukraine is in a we don't have anything to
Speaker 1: lose frame. Now certainly they do. There are still nuclear
Speaker 1: weapons that Russia holds, and the world has plenty to
Speaker 1: lose in a nuclear fireball if this continued to escalate.
Speaker 1: So to me, it shows the importance of actually getting
Speaker 1: this thing to the negotiating table, because you don't you
Speaker 1: don't know any morning you could wake up with somebody
Speaker 1: stepping over a line that can't that that can't be
Speaker 1: walked back, right absolutely, And on that note, actually, did
Speaker 1: you read the National Interest story. We have a graphic
Speaker 1: of it and we have a tear sheet of it
Speaker 1: that we can put up right now. It was about
Speaker 1: what a potential peace proposal might look like. Did you
Speaker 1: get a chance to take now? What did you so
Speaker 1: tell me about this? Well, basically what the sort of
Speaker 1: contours of a legitimate proposal being passed around might be.
Speaker 1: And that is something that really should have been a
Speaker 1: conversation months and months and months and months ago. Obviously
Speaker 1: there's some people who have been talking about it for
Speaker 1: months and months and months, but it's basically like seven
Speaker 1: year waiting period for Ukraine to enter NATO, which you know,
Speaker 1: that's that doesn't really solve any problems at all, actually,
Speaker 1: and it may be something that can call off everyone
Speaker 1: calls off their dogs in the moment. But also, you know,
Speaker 1: I think this would necessarily involve seating some territory to Russia,
Speaker 1: which is a non starter for Zelenski for a lot
Speaker 1: of people in the American government, But it has to
Speaker 1: I mean, you have to have something on the table
Speaker 1: in order to de escalate, right, And it goes back
Speaker 1: to this rhetoric where we've set Zelensky up, I think
Speaker 1: to be humiliated in the way that the US has
Speaker 1: consistently said that, you know, Zilenski and the Ukrainians are
Speaker 1: the ones that are fighting on behalf of and negotiating
Speaker 1: on behalf of Ukrainians, and the United States is just
Speaker 1: just here to help. Like that. That has been our
Speaker 1: posture the entire time the United States. Maybe there's a
Speaker 1: time throughout our our history where we have stuck by
Speaker 1: our word on something. I can't think of it offhand.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe somebody out there can can find an example.
Speaker 1: But people who have relied on the word of the
Speaker 1: United States have consistently lost. And so the idea that
Speaker 1: an empire like the United States was ever going to
Speaker 1: indefinitely turn over, uh, it's it's foreign policy to a
Speaker 1: smaller country like Ukraine that it is that it is
Speaker 1: that is funding and backing in the in this war
Speaker 1: against Russia was always absurd. It's it's a nice thought
Speaker 1: when you know, sovereignty and self determination. Uh, these are
Speaker 1: nice thoughts. Ever since Woodrow Wilson proposed them, they've been
Speaker 1: lies ever since Woodrow Wilson propose them. Every country who
Speaker 1: believed that Woodrow Wilson was serious about their own self determination. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, paid the price of our betrayal that these
Speaker 1: are words. These are not things that the United States
Speaker 1: is going to act on and definitely and so ap steal.
Speaker 1: It is not going to be only up to Ukraine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and here's from national interests. They say. The proposal that's
Speaker 1: transmitted through Ukrainian contact has been drawn up by quote
Speaker 1: some Western countries, which is a euphemism for the United States.
Speaker 1: They put in parentheses, and has been initially accepted by
Speaker 1: the Ukrainians. The cars on the table for Russia make
Speaker 1: interesting reading. In this agreement, there's a complete cessation of
Speaker 1: hostilities and a withdrawal of troops from Ukraine by Russia.
Speaker 1: The thorny question of NATO will be postponed, and Ukraine
Speaker 1: will join after a minimum period of seven years, one
Speaker 1: hundred k kilometer wide security zone will run along the
Speaker 1: borders of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and will be policed by
Speaker 1: six western countries. Crimea will become a neutral area and
Speaker 1: the Russian Navy leave the Black Sea. They say they're
Speaker 1: in the national interest. That has initially been accepted by
Speaker 1: the Ukrainians, Crimea becoming a neutral area and withdrawals, the
Speaker 1: withdrawal of troops from Ukraine. I just I don't see
Speaker 1: Russia doing that. I don't see Crimea becoming a neutral
Speaker 1: area from the Ukrainian perspective. So the idea that that's
Speaker 1: sort of been initially accepted by Ukrainians is pretty surprising
Speaker 1: to me. And it and then the question is or
Speaker 1: else what right? So if the if the United States,
Speaker 1: if let's say hypothetically the United States is offering some
Speaker 1: type of a deal like this, the question then or
Speaker 1: what like what what happens if Russia does not accept
Speaker 1: the terms of this down says According to this, Ukrainians
Speaker 1: are like, okay, well we'll take we'll take this, like
Speaker 1: something along the lines along these lines will work. How
Speaker 1: much more support does the United States offer? And I
Speaker 1: don't know if we have the element for this here.
Speaker 1: But the Washing Post is reported this morning that you know,
Speaker 1: support that indefinite support for US for the war in
Speaker 1: Ukraine is steadily fading among the American public. Now, there
Speaker 1: might be enough support to last long enough to get
Speaker 1: to a place where Russia has to eventually capitulate, and
Speaker 1: there might not. There also there is a gap, a
Speaker 1: significant gap between kind of elite and Washington support for
Speaker 1: the war and public support for the war. And in
Speaker 1: that gap is the kind of gap of our democracy.
Speaker 1: Like when it comes to foreign policy, the American public
Speaker 1: gets some say like they get the sort of like
Speaker 1: offer an opinion, but they but it's not democratically decided,
Speaker 1: Like foreign policy decisions are often bipartisan, even if one
Speaker 1: party would go slightly different direction than the other party.
Speaker 1: And so if the American public turns against the war,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that the war more support stops. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Eventually the weight of opposition can work us way kind
Speaker 1: of through the broken, rusty machinery of our democracy. But
Speaker 1: will it takes many cycles and to wrap up. And
Speaker 1: when we started the segment with Putin driving over the
Speaker 1: crimea bridge, the crimea bridge and national interests said, you know,
Speaker 1: this leaked piece deal for what it's worth, is basically
Speaker 1: being rejected by Putin by the fact that he was
Speaker 1: continuing to bomb Ukrainian infrastructure and then Ukraine retaliated and Russia,
Speaker 1: by the way, retaliated back. So again, the idea that
Speaker 1: there's a plausible peace deal being circulated by both sides
Speaker 1: right now, I mean, it's very important to have terms
Speaker 1: on the table, period, but the idea that we are
Speaker 1: meaningfully close to an end I think is unfortunately tragically loose.
Speaker 1: A yeah, and you could at least say that calling
Speaker 1: crimea neutral would be a win for Russia because right
Speaker 1: now you can claim it right now, it's right now
Speaker 1: it's called officially legally Ukrainian territory that Russia has illegally annexed.
Speaker 1: And so if they move it back to neutral, then
Speaker 1: that's that's arguably moving it in Russia's direction. That plus
Speaker 1: lack of prosecution, maybe maybe there's enough pressure on him
Speaker 1: that Putin can find some way to declare victory. Let's
Speaker 1: turn to doctor Anthony Fauci. The transcript of his interview
Speaker 1: with who was the Missouri ag he was. He's been
Speaker 1: deposed in a lawsuit brought by the ags the attorney
Speaker 1: generals of both see one here. Yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: both Louisiana and Missouri. They have a lawsuit against the
Speaker 1: federal government, also against the Biden administration for allegedly colluding
Speaker 1: with social media companies to suppress speech. And they were
Speaker 1: so Fauci was deposed, I believe last week. Yesterday the
Speaker 1: full transcript dropped and it is long. I think it
Speaker 1: makes found. She did not look great. This is a
Speaker 1: g landry, He's saying in his press release. Fauchi's recent
Speaker 1: deposition only confirmed what we already knew. Federal bureaucrats and
Speaker 1: collusion with social media companies watching control not only what
Speaker 1: you think, but especially what you say. During no time
Speaker 1: in human history was this more obvious than during COVID nineteen,
Speaker 1: where social engineering tactics were used against the American public,
Speaker 1: not to limit your exposure to a virus, but to
Speaker 1: limit your exposure to information that did not fit within
Speaker 1: a government sanctioned narrative. And you can see if you
Speaker 1: read the full transcript, which is it's extremely long. He
Speaker 1: was deposed for a very long time or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was an hours and hours of deposition on Fauci's
Speaker 1: behalf you can see I mean Fauci uses the term
Speaker 1: I do not recall, the famous term I do not recall,
Speaker 1: many many, many times. He leans on that, very very heavily.
Speaker 1: I do not recall. I do not recall. And again
Speaker 1: that's very common of people in positions of power, whenever
Speaker 1: they're to posed. The American public is well aware of that,
Speaker 1: and in a long deposition you would imagine that or
Speaker 1: be some I do networcalls. But I want to put
Speaker 1: up this statement that we got from Justin Goodman with
Speaker 1: Whitecoat Waste project. That's going to be let's pop that
Speaker 1: up on the screen because Justin I reached out to
Speaker 1: him last night Whitecoat Waste. We had him on the
Speaker 1: show a couple of weeks back. They've been doing a
Speaker 1: lot of insanely good foil work that and a lot
Speaker 1: of what we know about what the government knew in
Speaker 1: the early days of the pandemic has come from them.
Speaker 1: So Justin immediately gave the statement to us here at
Speaker 1: counterpoints and said, what really jumped out at me from
Speaker 1: this deposition is that in his in the deposition, Fauci
Speaker 1: definitively states at numerous points that it is quote impossible
Speaker 1: that the animal experiments that he funded in Wuhan could
Speaker 1: have sparked the pandemic. At the same time, he claims
Speaker 1: he's only vaguely familiar with the project he was funding
Speaker 1: there and that he barely knows the key pay players,
Speaker 1: including some of these scientists and people may be familiar
Speaker 1: with Peter Dashak and Eco Health Alliance and Fauci Justin says,
Speaker 1: cannot have it both ways. Hopefully the incoming House JP
Speaker 1: majority is promised COVID Origins investigation can refresh his memory
Speaker 1: and get the truth, all right, Ryan, I think that
Speaker 1: is a really big tension for Fauci, and in the
Speaker 1: deposition you can see him repeatedly saying, I'm vaguely familiar
Speaker 1: with Dazac, I'm vague vaguely familiar with the Eco Health Alliance,
Speaker 1: but also is impossible. Impossible is what he's saying publicly
Speaker 1: that the animal research here created the pandemic uh The
Speaker 1: one my favorite part was that he also doesn't know
Speaker 1: how to pronounce da Zach yes, which I still don't.
Speaker 1: I've been reporting on the guy for two years. Let's
Speaker 1: just go with Zach, says. The lawyer says, how do
Speaker 1: you say his name? If you know, and Fauci says,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I think it's Dazac. I think so,
Speaker 1: but completely unhelpful transcript because it just spells the name
Speaker 1: like I need to go, I need to go. Listen
Speaker 1: to the audio. And then he says, we've met once
Speaker 1: or twice, but I don't know, but we may, like
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if we've met, and he says, there's
Speaker 1: a picture of us at a scientific conference, which and
Speaker 1: he rightly says, like, look, that happens a lot. I mean,
Speaker 1: hundreds of people at science for conferences. They're like, it's
Speaker 1: doctor Faucci. Let me get a picture. They snapped selfie
Speaker 1: few years long later, they might start a pandemic, and
Speaker 1: then now all of a sudden, you're getting blamed for
Speaker 1: the pandemic because this person snapped a selfie with you.
Speaker 1: But you're right that he consistently says, yes, it's true
Speaker 1: that NIAI D you know, funded Eco Health Alliance, but
Speaker 1: this particular project, did we fund that particular one? You know,
Speaker 1: you know who knows well. And they also get into
Speaker 1: a ridiculous debate about gain of function. And this is
Speaker 1: something that you've covered a lot about Fauci and the
Speaker 1: medical establishment being very cagy, but what the actual definition
Speaker 1: of gain of function is, because that might mean the
Speaker 1: grant that was given an Eco Health Alliance government grant,
Speaker 1: given an Eco Health Alliance I would have had to
Speaker 1: have been approved by Fauci. And he's saying in the
Speaker 1: step position, was it wasn't that he doesn't think, he
Speaker 1: doesn't remember, but he doesn't think it was at his level.
Speaker 1: It may have been a deputy that it came across
Speaker 1: their desk, not his desk, something to that effect, that
Speaker 1: the money was going to something that was intentionally gain
Speaker 1: a function. There had been a cessation of a federal
Speaker 1: cessation of gain funding for gain of function research. And
Speaker 1: he basically concedes at one point in this deposition, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the terms in the grant could mean amplifying
Speaker 1: the virus. Certainly good and so just read I'll just
Speaker 1: read a little tiny bit of that. Lawyer says, so
Speaker 1: you refer to conditions under which such research should be
Speaker 1: done when you're generating potentially dangerous viruses. It's like, right,
Speaker 1: first of all, is that kind of research generally referred
Speaker 1: to as gain of function research? And here I'll just
Speaker 1: stops gain of function is is Fauci. Gain of function
Speaker 1: is a very potentially misleading terminology, yes, and that was
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why several years ago, outside groups,
Speaker 1: not the NIH, made the determination that they would much
Speaker 1: more strictly define the guardrails of experiments that would require
Speaker 1: additional oversight and did away with the terminology gain of
Speaker 1: function because it can often be very confusing and misleading.
Speaker 1: So read between the lines of what he's saying there
Speaker 1: the gut. In order to stave off government regulation, these
Speaker 1: outside organizations said that they were going to self regulate,
Speaker 1: that they were going to police themselves, put up their
Speaker 1: own guardrails, and also, by the way, they were going
Speaker 1: to get rid of this pesky term gain of function,
Speaker 1: so that if somebody comes asking, like, are you doing
Speaker 1: gain to function research over here, well, there is no
Speaker 1: such thing really as gain of function research, and we've
Speaker 1: put up all of these guardrails, and this is all
Speaker 1: of this giant debate is happening between twenty twelve, twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. Obama, to his great credit, I wasn't even
Speaker 1: following this at the time, clearly got a very good
Speaker 1: briefing on this issue, and it was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: this looks dangerous, and he paused all gain of function research.
Speaker 1: Not long after the pause was lifted, the Trump campaign
Speaker 1: comes in. Trump Trump administration comes in, and Fauci, who
Speaker 1: has forty years of bureaucratic knife fighting experience, it's like, oh, cool,
Speaker 1: new administration, new rules, I can get this lifted. You
Speaker 1: get it lifted. A couple of years later, we have
Speaker 1: a pandemic That alone does not prove anything, but the
Speaker 1: timeline is frightening that if what is alleged to have
Speaker 1: happened in the Wuhan lab did actually did actually spark
Speaker 1: the pandemic, it only took a couple of years with
Speaker 1: this risky research. We're still doing it, and we're doing
Speaker 1: it at a much greater clip around the world at
Speaker 1: this point. We hosted a few months back, I think
Speaker 1: it was over the summer, a debate between someone at
Speaker 1: MIT and someone at Johns Hopkins on what gain of
Speaker 1: function is and if it's worth it. So I really
Speaker 1: that was a very clarifying conversation. So if folks are
Speaker 1: interested in that, they can check it out. That was
Speaker 1: back at the Hill, But it was fascinating to pit
Speaker 1: experts against each other because this is a question experts
Speaker 1: disagree on now. I think most of the public is
Speaker 1: probably in our camp run. It's like this is no
Speaker 1: I stop. And so to Justin's point that a house
Speaker 1: goop now that we know they'll have the majority, McCarthy
Speaker 1: has said he's told me, he's told other people that
Speaker 1: he absolutely will be investigating the origins of COVID. I
Speaker 1: think though, that this deposition, which is hours long, hundreds
Speaker 1: of pages long, is a great glimpse into what that's
Speaker 1: going to look like if they put if they try
Speaker 1: to get Fauci to testify. I don't think he has
Speaker 1: any fear of testifying. It's why he goes on every
Speaker 1: different show that'll have him. People you know, want he
Speaker 1: wants to talk to people. He's arrogant to the point
Speaker 1: where he thinks he can explain away that he can
Speaker 1: basically talk through any of these questions. So I don't
Speaker 1: know how productive it is to continue the investigating, continue
Speaker 1: probing Fauci because he's he doesn't admit to anything. He says,
Speaker 1: you know, he'll get into these. At one point, the
Speaker 1: attorney basically says, you know, stop going on tangents in
Speaker 1: the deposition because it does seem to be an intentional
Speaker 1: sort of deflection technique where he's talking for a really
Speaker 1: long time and going in different directions in order to
Speaker 1: distract from one question or another. So, if House Republicans
Speaker 1: want to get to the bottom of this, I know
Speaker 1: that Fauchi is a headline grabber. I doubt that Fauci
Speaker 1: himself is that you're going to get any productive lines
Speaker 1: of inquiry out of Fauci himself at this point, because
Speaker 1: he is ready to talk in circles around absolutely anyone
Speaker 1: without revealing pretty much anything. So let's move on to
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. Big case potentially a landmark case in
Speaker 1: front of the Supreme Court or oil arguments. Happened yesterday
Speaker 1: in the three Zho three creative case, which I really
Speaker 1: think could be a landmark First Amendment case. Now that
Speaker 1: the balance of the court has shifted, right words, folks
Speaker 1: are expecting this to change what happened in the Masterpiece
Speaker 1: Cake Shop case, which a lot of people might remember.
Speaker 1: Jack Phillips, he's a Colorado baker, ended up in the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court because essentially he would is being compelled legally
Speaker 1: to create what he sees as art, which would be
Speaker 1: the decoration of a cake. The baking of a cake,
Speaker 1: the decoration of a cake for causes like same sex
Speaker 1: marriages that he didn't agree with. He said, I'll happily
Speaker 1: serve any customer, it doesn't matter race, sex, religion, sexual orientation.
Speaker 1: I will serve any customer. I can't create art that
Speaker 1: violates my values. So that ended up at the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court as to whether the government, for the sake of
Speaker 1: preventing discrimination, can compel him to do that. Laurie Smith
Speaker 1: is now in front of the Supreme Court. She's also
Speaker 1: from Colorado and she is doing the same thing. Basically,
Speaker 1: she's a graphic designer, a website designer, so she's saying
Speaker 1: she doesn't want to create wedding websites for same sex couples,
Speaker 1: and Colorado has that protective antidiscrimination law. That's what got
Speaker 1: Jack Phillips ended up having the court case with Jack
Speaker 1: Phillips and Masterpiece in the first place because of Colorado law. Ryan, So,
Speaker 1: what was the precise result of the cake wedding cake
Speaker 1: keepers back and forth. Was the cake maker told that
Speaker 1: because the law. I know that law was upheld, but
Speaker 1: there was some carve out for the cake maker or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's exactly that it's it's not a clean cut, and
Speaker 1: that's what the right is hoping for in three A
Speaker 1: three creative, that you would have a clean cut protection
Speaker 1: of conscience in this case. Basically the carve that are like,
Speaker 1: all right, you don't have to make this particular cake. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was, but everybody else has to follow law. And
Speaker 1: Jack Phobes continues to get sued to do the same thing,
Speaker 1: to make the same types of cakes. And so it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where the right is hoping that
Speaker 1: there can be a more clear cut protection in this case.
Speaker 1: And you know, the oral arguments yesterday were interesting, Ryan,
Speaker 1: we both had similar reaction just looking at some of
Speaker 1: the stuff as it goes down. Let's actually put let's
Speaker 1: play the salt D two because we get the audio
Speaker 1: clips from the oral arguments, which is always fun. So
Speaker 1: here's one from yesterday of what Justice Kennedy wrote in
Speaker 1: Oberga Fell about honorable people who object to same sex marriage.
Speaker 1: Do you think it's fair to equate opposition to same
Speaker 1: sex marriage with opposition to interracial marriage? Yes, because in
Speaker 1: how the law applies, not in the discussion with folks,
Speaker 1: because of course, honorable people have different views on this issue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of back and forth that
Speaker 1: went in some very strange hypotheticals were floating Black Santa yes,
Speaker 1: and it went. And that was you were hearing the
Speaker 1: voice of the Colorado Solicitor General Eric Olsen, who was
Speaker 1: defending the comparison of race and sexual orientation. A lot
Speaker 1: of justices pushed him on that note. And the peoples
Speaker 1: who analyzed courts and analyze these oral arguments seemed to
Speaker 1: think it was pretty clear where this decision was going
Speaker 1: to go, which was favoring Laurie Smith. What did what
Speaker 1: did you make of what we heard from? I mean,
Speaker 1: it does seem like they've got the votes and they're
Speaker 1: gonna they're gonna try to ram this through it. The
Speaker 1: question will be how how wide or narrow it is.
Speaker 1: But let's be clear about what Laurie Smith is asking for.
Speaker 1: Nobody has come to her and asked her to make
Speaker 1: a website for a same sex marriage like that hasn't
Speaker 1: happened yet, and she's it seems like she wants to
Speaker 1: make one of these sites where basically you fill in
Speaker 1: your name, your date, like when you're when your wedding is,
Speaker 1: you can upload your photos like you're you're basically the
Speaker 1: one that's doing the designing. But you know, she'll like
Speaker 1: make the fonts and the like the pretty part in
Speaker 1: the background, and she wants to put up on she
Speaker 1: hasn't built this yet, she wants to build it. She
Speaker 1: wants to put up on her site that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: same sex marriages need not apply, like you can't it,
Speaker 1: need not try to do business at her shop, like
Speaker 1: this is only for opposite sex couples, like she wants
Speaker 1: to She wants to be able to put that on
Speaker 1: her website rather than somebody having walked through the door
Speaker 1: and said, hey, we we we'd like a website, and
Speaker 1: so that takes it that That's I think is where
Speaker 1: the landmark element comes in, because if if she can
Speaker 1: do that, then why can't Facebook do that? Why can't
Speaker 1: Twitter do that? Why can't you know, any other private
Speaker 1: company say that we don't believe we don't we don't
Speaker 1: allow same sex couples to use our services. But that's
Speaker 1: not what she's I mean, she she will serve any
Speaker 1: same sex couple. She won't make a website for same
Speaker 1: sex wedd She she won't make a website that is
Speaker 1: specifically for the act of a wedding, and I would think,
Speaker 1: but that's her, that's what her business is going to
Speaker 1: be right or right. But that doesn't mean she wouldn't right. So,
Speaker 1: but it's the marriage itself that doesn't mean that, like
Speaker 1: she wouldn't design a website or and it's the same
Speaker 1: thing with Jack Phillips. It's not that he wouldn't make
Speaker 1: a cake or decorate a cake for somebody's birthday. Whatever
Speaker 1: their sexual orientation happened to be, or whatever their race
Speaker 1: or sex or whatever it was, they will still be
Speaker 1: served there, happily, will be served by the business. But
Speaker 1: the wedding itself if it violates your religious values. And
Speaker 1: that's why I think this case is so interesting because
Speaker 1: this is a really fundamental question about the First Amendment.
Speaker 1: And you're right that I actually talked to her a
Speaker 1: few months back, and that was one of the things
Speaker 1: that I was getting at, is, you know, what is
Speaker 1: taking this to court? Where is this going and why?
Speaker 1: And the Jack Phillips case was it really did shake
Speaker 1: a lot of Christians in Colorado who said, we're just
Speaker 1: trying to operate businesses here and follow our values at
Speaker 1: the same time. And you've heard similar cases like this
Speaker 1: come up from Muslim businesses, from Orthodox Jewish businesses, and
Speaker 1: it's becoming a real point of tension in society. And
Speaker 1: I think that's why a case like this, and somebody
Speaker 1: like Laurie Smith is saying, I want to whatever you
Speaker 1: think of the motivation to seek the protection people, the
Speaker 1: protection in and of itself is a pretty big tension
Speaker 1: point in the country right now. And it's the same
Speaker 1: one that the kind of diner owners in North Carolina
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties were using, right, that it was
Speaker 1: the First Amendment free right of somebody who owns a
Speaker 1: lunch counter to just serve whoever they want to serve. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it. And that's the Arry Goldwater argument too, who
Speaker 1: was very involved with the NAACP, who was saying it's
Speaker 1: not the federal government's responsibility to determine how a business
Speaker 1: owner wants to discriminate, which we have obviously rejected with
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Act and in federal court since then.
Speaker 1: But that was the argument being made, I think, and
Speaker 1: I think right, and so I think we and the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, I think, still believes that. I don't think
Speaker 1: even this six ' three majority would say that no, actually,
Speaker 1: a public accommodation like a diner can, in fact, is
Speaker 1: free to discriminate based that's not speech, like, that doesn't
Speaker 1: count as speech. Yeah, you can't discriminate based on race, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but can you discriminate based on sexuality? Well, and that's
Speaker 1: again where the Civil Rights Act was always a really
Speaker 1: interesting test case for this, because if somebody claims their
Speaker 1: religion is racist, right they outright say my religion discriminates
Speaker 1: based on race. Well, the federal government has stepped in
Speaker 1: and basically said, we don't care if your religion says
Speaker 1: that you should be discriminating and segregating. If you have
Speaker 1: a pro segregationist religious belief, you are not able to
Speaker 1: practice that as a business owner in your private property.
Speaker 1: The federal government is stepping in. Now. I think that
Speaker 1: is a very very reasonable, a very reasonable distinction. Now,
Speaker 1: in this case, what's happened is that our public opinion
Speaker 1: on same sex marriage has shifted very very quickly, and
Speaker 1: it's a similar sort of test point. But at this
Speaker 1: at the same time, I think it's it's pretty much
Speaker 1: within the boundaries of you know, she has a position
Speaker 1: on same sex marriage that Barack Obama had about ten
Speaker 1: years ago, literally ten years ago, and I think it's
Speaker 1: fine to say that businesses should be able to choose,
Speaker 1: you know, what business they want to do. Like if
Speaker 1: somebody comes into a T shirt shop and wants a
Speaker 1: pornographic T shirt made, a T shirt shop can be like, no,
Speaker 1: we like, that's that's not the that's not the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that we do. Or if it's a kind
Speaker 1: of one of the if it's like a right let's
Speaker 1: say it's a right wing T shirt shop, they shouldn't
Speaker 1: have they shouldn't have to make you know, gun control
Speaker 1: t shirts. If it's a left wing one, they shouldn't
Speaker 1: have to make you know, AR fifteen t shirts. Like
Speaker 1: I get that, But to say that in entire class
Speaker 1: of people, which are you know, gay people, are not
Speaker 1: entitled to use this product, I think is different now
Speaker 1: it should I don't think that you should, you know,
Speaker 1: force a poet to write a poem for a wedding
Speaker 1: that they don't that they don't support. I don't think
Speaker 1: you should force a harpist to play it once Like
Speaker 1: if you're a if you're if you're an artist, that's
Speaker 1: one thing you can you can pick and choose. Now.
Speaker 1: But Jack Phillips sees his work as although I don't
Speaker 1: actually I don't think. No, let me take let me
Speaker 1: take a harpist, let me take a harpist back, like
Speaker 1: I think a harpist. If you do wedding businesses, you
Speaker 1: should do all you should do all all wedding businesses.
Speaker 1: You know, within reason, if you if your book that day,
Speaker 1: you can't do it like you can you can turn
Speaker 1: down business. But to turn down business, well, no, I
Speaker 1: won't play harp at a at a gay marriage like
Speaker 1: that that I think a gay wedding. I don't that.
Speaker 1: I don't think uh that I don't think is okay
Speaker 1: within the within the bounds, that's not it's not your speech.
Speaker 1: That's just a service. So I don't think she sees
Speaker 1: it as her art. And then you get to this,
Speaker 1: but she's already made, but the government film it's like
Speaker 1: a fill in the blank's website. Like I think she
Speaker 1: needs to get over herself with like whether this is
Speaker 1: her speech. It's not her speech, it's not her wedding.
Speaker 1: It's their wedding, it's their love like stops, it's not
Speaker 1: you like so you're it's just your website. You just
Speaker 1: agree that what she's doing in terms of website design
Speaker 1: is creative, and that I think so. But then the
Speaker 1: government is determining whether baking a cake is art when
Speaker 1: Jack Phillips, who's been doing this for decades, sees it
Speaker 1: as art, he sees it as he won on right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then so again this is the government coming in
Speaker 1: and joining the lion as to what constitutes art, what
Speaker 1: constitutes speech, what constitutes I mean, like, all of these
Speaker 1: questions I think are good ones to work out. But
Speaker 1: my colleague David Harsani wrote a decent question he was
Speaker 1: talking about. So he says wo Cole, who says the
Speaker 1: ACLU has been this nation's leading defender for speed for
Speaker 1: more than a century. Call for the state to intervene
Speaker 1: in the case of an evangelical customer who wants to
Speaker 1: compel a gay designer to create a website for an
Speaker 1: organization that wants to overturn same sex marriage laws and
Speaker 1: preaches or preaches that acts of homosexuality are immortal sin.
Speaker 1: And that's why again we get into this a lot
Speaker 1: with like, evangelical Christians have a very particular cultural connotation
Speaker 1: right now, but this happens to people that are not
Speaker 1: just evangelical Christians. It happens to Muslims, that happens to
Speaker 1: Orthodox Jews, as we just were talking about. And if
Speaker 1: the protections I think are not enshrined, it will happen
Speaker 1: to other people, will happen to people who are pro LGBT,
Speaker 1: and get pushed on this by people who are anti
Speaker 1: And so I just think this protection in the sort
Speaker 1: of broad from the broader perspective is a worthwhile one.
Speaker 1: And I think this discussion is a testament to how
Speaker 1: interesting these questions are and how fundamental they are to
Speaker 1: the way we function as a country. I wonder if
Speaker 1: if the country can get to a place where, though
Speaker 1: the war is so thoroughly won on that question that
Speaker 1: if there are a couple of businesses that don't want
Speaker 1: to do it, that it that it doesn't you know,
Speaker 1: hamper people's ability to get done, because you like, throughout
Speaker 1: history there's always there's always tension between between overreach and
Speaker 1: how much you force people along. Like if you take
Speaker 1: like the French Revolution, where they basically just like annihilate
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church, like that ended up not working out
Speaker 1: so well for them eventually, and so maybe so if
Speaker 1: they had you know, been a little bit more, if
Speaker 1: they had created more space as they did later in
Speaker 1: the in the revolution. You know, for people who are like, look,
Speaker 1: I'm not against the revolution, but we just want to
Speaker 1: keep our priests, they eventually like, okay, you know what,
Speaker 1: that's fine, And that's a good point because I think
Speaker 1: we're basically, I actually think we're pretty much there. And
Speaker 1: that's been the case with Jack Phillips, definitely the case
Speaker 1: with Lori Smith, and it's definitely the case with Baron
Speaker 1: mill Stutsman up in Washington State of a florist. There
Speaker 1: are plenty of options at the same price point in
Speaker 1: all of these places. What happens is these in some cases,
Speaker 1: it's activists are intentionally pushing the question and intentionally trying
Speaker 1: to get it to the courts. To this one was right,
Speaker 1: how do you mean? Yes, yeah, this case basically from
Speaker 1: start to finish, yes, and again we're working it out
Speaker 1: in the court. So but to your point, you know,
Speaker 1: pending this decision. But I think the good news is,
Speaker 1: you know, customers can can get the product that they're
Speaker 1: looking for at this stage in the country, regardless of
Speaker 1: where they fall on that question. There are people who
Speaker 1: will serve you. And I think it's hard for but
Speaker 1: I think it's hard for people in particularly LGBTQ community
Speaker 1: to feel to feel comfortable in their gains at this
Speaker 1: point because of the backsliding that they're that they're seeing
Speaker 1: from say like the from the Fox News World. You
Speaker 1: get your all of these kind of drag Queen's story
Speaker 1: hour panics being built up, and so I think it's
Speaker 1: like while from the right, they you guys look around,
Speaker 1: and you're like, you guys, won what do you? What
Speaker 1: are you? What are you worried about? You've got it,
Speaker 1: just let us have our little web design company here
Speaker 1: in peace. From their perspective, they're still under siege. So
Speaker 1: and when when both sides feel under siege, it's really
Speaker 1: hard for either to kind of reach a compromise, I
Speaker 1: think absolutely. And I think that's what we see when
Speaker 1: we get these kind of test cases making their way
Speaker 1: through the court system. So we'll continue to follow this
Speaker 1: one for sure. On the question of people coming to agreement,
Speaker 1: perhaps your monologue today is going to get at something
Speaker 1: that people can come to agreement on. There we go,
Speaker 1: what's your point this ending this war in Yemen? So
Speaker 1: we can report today that Senator Bernie Sanders is planning
Speaker 1: to force a vote on a war powers resolution aimed
Speaker 1: at blocking US support for the Saudi led war and
Speaker 1: Yemen as soon as next week. He told my colleague
Speaker 1: at the Intercept Dan Bogus Law, an agreement for a
Speaker 1: ceasefire in Yemen between the Saudi led Alliance and the Houthis,
Speaker 1: who are backed by Iran, expired October first, though both
Speaker 1: sides have tenuously maintained that piece. Now, Backers of a
Speaker 1: war powers resolution say that a strong vote in the
Speaker 1: Senate in the Lame Duck will send a signal to
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia that it does not have a free hand
Speaker 1: to restart hostilities. Despite the Biden administration's more placating posture
Speaker 1: amid its hunt for lower oil prices, anti war advocates
Speaker 1: had become a bit frustrated that sanders head, until today
Speaker 1: not announced if and when he'd be moving forward with
Speaker 1: the vote. Though it's fair to say that Sanders has
Speaker 1: been heavily occupied. He led the fight last week against
Speaker 1: against forcing a contract on rail workers that they had
Speaker 1: democratically rejected, and he worked with House allies unsuccessfully to
Speaker 1: add seven sick days to it. He's also fighting the
Speaker 1: effort to add Senator Joe manchins Energy permitting reform to
Speaker 1: the National Defense Authorization Act. Now a vote would not
Speaker 1: take significant floor time, though, and anti or advocates have
Speaker 1: been pushing him hard privately to move ahead with the vote.
Speaker 1: The news that he's finally doing so will surely hearten
Speaker 1: those who've been pressuring him. Now. A War Powers resolution
Speaker 1: is quote privileged in the Senate, which means that the
Speaker 1: sponsor of it can bring it to the floor for
Speaker 1: a vote without the need for approval by the Chambers
Speaker 1: leadership once a certain amount of time has elapsed. At
Speaker 1: that point, the resolution has what we call ripened, and
Speaker 1: the one sponsored by Sanders is now ripe, meaning it
Speaker 1: can come to the floor. On Wednesday, a coalition of
Speaker 1: groups pushing to end the war and Yemen plan to
Speaker 1: release a letter to Congress calling for a war Powers
Speaker 1: resolution vote during the lame Duck, and today the House
Speaker 1: Foreign Affairs Committee holds a hearing on the issue. The
Speaker 1: House version of the War Powers resolution is sponsored by
Speaker 1: outgoing Representative Peter de Fazio, and it needs the support
Speaker 1: of Representative Jim McGovern to get through the House Rules Committee.
Speaker 1: It's much easier to move the House version once the
Speaker 1: Senate version passes if it does. The war between Russia
Speaker 1: and Ukraine, though in which the US has been supporting
Speaker 1: Ukraine without a declaration of war, may complicate the politics
Speaker 1: of the resolution because some of the language as applied
Speaker 1: to Yemen would appear to perhaps equally apply to the
Speaker 1: war in Ukraine, though of course Congress is never under
Speaker 1: any obligation to be consistent in their interpretation across countries.
Speaker 1: The resolution defines quote hostilities in a number of ways,
Speaker 1: including quote sharing intelligence for the purpose of enabling offensive
Speaker 1: coalition strikes, and providing logistical support for offensive coalition strikes,
Speaker 1: including by providing maintenance or transferring spare parts to coalition
Speaker 1: members flying warplanes engaged in anti Houthy bombings and Yemen unquote. Now,
Speaker 1: that definition is legally safe in Ukraine, probably since there's
Speaker 1: no evidence the US is helping Ukraine target Russia inside
Speaker 1: Russia's own borders, although we might be, it's not known,
Speaker 1: and there was just a major strike inside Russia's borders.
Speaker 1: If there's any evidence that the US participated in that,
Speaker 1: that could trigger that provision right there. But the second
Speaker 1: definition reads quote quote the assignment of the United States
Speaker 1: Armed Forces, including of any civilian or mis military personnel
Speaker 1: of the Department of Defense to command, coordinate, participate in
Speaker 1: the movement of, or accompany the regular or irregular military
Speaker 1: forces of the Saudi led coalition forces and hostilities against
Speaker 1: the Huthis in Yemen, or in situations in which there
Speaker 1: exists an imminent threat that such coalition forces become engaged
Speaker 1: in such hostilities unless than until the President has obtained
Speaker 1: specific statutory authorization in accordance with Section eight A of
Speaker 1: the War Powers Resolution unquote. Now. As the Intercept has
Speaker 1: previously reported, the US Special Operations personnel have indeed played
Speaker 1: an active role in Ukraine under a presidential Covert Action finding,
Speaker 1: despite the ceasefire lapsing in February, though the Saudis have
Speaker 1: yet to resume bombing, Anti war advocates believe that the
Speaker 1: Saudi hesitation flows from a concern that opponents of the
Speaker 1: war in Washington would get an upper hand at the
Speaker 1: first report of civilian casualties from a renewed campaign of
Speaker 1: bombing in a war that has stretched on for some
Speaker 1: seven years now. The Saudis continued to maintain a blockade
Speaker 1: of Yemen, strangling the country's economy, producing a humanitarian crisis
Speaker 1: of biblical proportions, and part of this, Emily feels like fatigue.
Speaker 1: But what's your point today? Christmas time can be really lonely,
Speaker 1: whether we're in a pandemic or not. Thankfully most people
Speaker 1: believe we're on the other side of COVID now. But
Speaker 1: ahead of Thanksgiving, economist Bryce Ward crunched some post pandemic
Speaker 1: numbers for The Washington Post. Quote our social lives were
Speaker 1: withering dramatically before COVID nineteen, Ward found between twenty fourteen
Speaker 1: and twenty nineteen, He added, time spent with friends went down,
Speaker 1: and time spent alone went up by more than it
Speaker 1: did during the pandemic, more than it did during the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Ward was looking at the Census Bureau's American Time Youse Survey.
Speaker 1: According to the data, right around twenty fourteen, weekly alone
Speaker 1: time started to increase significantly. As Word notes, our average
Speaker 1: weekly time spent with friends had actually been stable in
Speaker 1: the years leading up to twenty fourteen. That time period
Speaker 1: is really critical when you dive deeper into the numbers.
Speaker 1: It was right around twenty fourteen that adult social media
Speaker 1: use started to stabilize. According to Pew, the percentage of
Speaker 1: adults who say they use at least one social media
Speaker 1: site smooth out starting in twenty fourteen. Oddly enough, it's
Speaker 1: around sixty two percent. Deloitte compared American time use in
Speaker 1: tw thousand and three with twenty seventeen and found we
Speaker 1: spent more time watching TV and less time working out.
Speaker 1: So we're spending more time alone, more time watching TV,
Speaker 1: less time with friends and family, and less time exercising.
Speaker 1: These numbers are complicated, sure, but that is obviously a
Speaker 1: recipe for cultural chaos, especially with big changes happening over
Speaker 1: short periods of time. So who's the culprit here? Stagnant wages, division,
Speaker 1: the sexual revolution? Maybe a combination of everything. Culture versus
Speaker 1: economics is an age old chicken or egg question. Earlier
Speaker 1: this year, Seth Stevens di Midwitz did a good overview
Speaker 1: of what we know about those about that question in
Speaker 1: a New York Times essay quote. A study of thousands
Speaker 1: of millionaires led by researchers at Harvard Business School did
Speaker 1: find a gain in happiness that kicks in when people's
Speaker 1: net worth rises above eight million dollars, he wrote, but
Speaker 1: the effect was small. A net worth of eight million
Speaker 1: dollars offers a boost of happiness that is roughly half
Speaker 1: as large as the happiness boost from being married. It's
Speaker 1: a little cheaper option. Arthur Brooks studies happiness full time quote.
Speaker 1: One of the greatest paradoxes in American life is that
Speaker 1: while on average existence has gotten more comfortable over time,
Speaker 1: happiness has fallen. He wrote that in The Atlantic back
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, and added, according to the US Census Bureau,
Speaker 1: average household income in the US adjusted for inflation, was
Speaker 1: higher in twenty nineteen than has ever been recorded for
Speaker 1: every income quintile. And although income inequality has risen, this
Speaker 1: has not been mirrored by inequality in the consumption of
Speaker 1: goods and services. Meanwhile, domestic government services have increased significantly.
Speaker 1: For example, federal spending on education, training, employment, and social
Speaker 1: services increased from twenty to twenty nineteen by about thirty
Speaker 1: percent in inflation and justice terms. So if we shift
Speaker 1: back one more time, stay with me here to Stephen's
Speaker 1: Davidowitz in the Times, we might we see what might
Speaker 1: explain this great paradox that Brooks has identified. Steven Zavidevitz wrote,
Speaker 1: the activities that make people happiness include happiest include sex, exercise,
Speaker 1: and gardening. People get a big happiness boost from being
Speaker 1: with a romantic partner or friends, but not from other
Speaker 1: people like colleagues bad news Ryan, bad news for me too,
Speaker 1: children or acquaintances. People are consistently happier when they are
Speaker 1: out in nature, particularly near a body of water, particularly
Speaker 1: when the scenery is beautiful. So on that note, yes,
Speaker 1: we also know Americans are having less sex now too.
Speaker 1: My old editor Tim Carney wrote a wonderful book on
Speaker 1: all of this a couple of years ago, called Alienated America.
Speaker 1: Tim pointed partially at the rise of the gig economy
Speaker 1: over the last decade. Think uber and lyft and delivery
Speaker 1: services and even independent contractor jobs. Quote a hyper individualized
Speaker 1: capitalism is currently taking us toward a world where workers
Speaker 1: are available when needed, but no lasting attachment is formed,
Speaker 1: wrote Carney. Work can't form an institution of civil society
Speaker 1: because work is no longer a place or a company
Speaker 1: or colleagues. It's a series of gigs with no lasting
Speaker 1: attachment and no long term investment. Young people are less
Speaker 1: likely to find mentorship and training. They're less likely to
Speaker 1: find the work stability that is fitting for family life.
Speaker 1: We all have agency as individuals. The right is correct
Speaker 1: about that, but it's also true that corporations are preying
Speaker 1: on our vulnerabilities and new and significant and specific ways.
Speaker 1: Consolidation of monopoly power is giving consumers less power to
Speaker 1: push back to government and big ed saddle generations with
Speaker 1: insane levels of student loan debt amounts people say make
Speaker 1: them put off marriage and home ownership. By the way,
Speaker 1: we're also working more than we did in the past.
Speaker 1: This is a bleak economy and it's a bleak culture,
Speaker 1: with mora alone, time less marriage, sex, and children, at
Speaker 1: least on that front. Though Bricks's paradox can become empowering
Speaker 1: if look gat from the right vantage point, The saga
Speaker 1: of the real workers has put on full display the
Speaker 1: corporate strategy of making normal life almost impossible for employees.
Speaker 1: The good news is we can say no to extra TV,
Speaker 1: no to toxic food, no to dating apps, no to Netflix,
Speaker 1: and no to more time alone. It's not easy at
Speaker 1: all to do that, and some of us definitely have
Speaker 1: a whole lot more free time than others. But with
Speaker 1: our spare time, whether it's a lot or just a little,
Speaker 1: we can go outside. We can't date, to Mary, we
Speaker 1: can't hang out with friends and family. There's no downplaying
Speaker 1: the importance of living wages and material stability. But while
Speaker 1: we fight the political class on that front, we can
Speaker 1: also push back in our own lives as well. It's
Speaker 1: definitely not easy, but in some very big ways, it
Speaker 1: is free ran. The loneliness numbers before the pandemic. If
Speaker 1: you look at the short thank you everybody, have a
Speaker 1: great not weekend, have a great Wednesday, because we'll be
Speaker 1: back here on Thursday. See you then,