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.
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Speaker 2: let's get to the show.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Counterpoints.
Speaker 4: I was going to use my favorite joke, which is
Speaker 4: I'm joined by Ryan Grimm, but I think I've used
Speaker 4: it way too many times.
Speaker 1: Anny thing is, I feel like Ryan Grimm does have
Speaker 1: more doppelgangers than literally anyone I've ever known on the planet,
Speaker 1: like really like dead on ringers for him. But I
Speaker 1: am probably not one of them. Probably not.
Speaker 4: We let the audience part and Ryan does have that top,
Speaker 4: but he doesn't usually wear it.
Speaker 1: Actually, we're going to talk about not on the show.
Speaker 3: We will talk about this at in the show. We're
Speaker 3: going to talk about men today. Yes, one block you
Speaker 3: can see it on the screen. That's just men.
Speaker 1: Yes, So a lot of good stuff in the show today.
Speaker 1: We have some Supreme Court rulings that we're going to
Speaker 1: break down for you, a couple of which are really
Speaker 1: quite significant. We'll ProView for you. What else is coming up.
Speaker 1: We've got some big GOP moves with regard to the
Speaker 1: border and immigration, and a little bit of a retrospective
Speaker 1: on how the Republican Party has shifted in the Trump era,
Speaker 1: so that'll be interesting. Also, a big old twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four blooper from one of the new entrants into the
Speaker 1: GPE is this is a bad one. This is a
Speaker 1: really bad one. So we'll play that for you. The
Speaker 1: aforementioned study on men, Emily and I being that it's
Speaker 1: you know, the Ladies Show today, we've found this study
Speaker 1: really interesting. It's about men their level of sensitivity, how
Speaker 1: often they cry in a month. There's a survey that
Speaker 1: actually says men cry more often than women. So we'll
Speaker 1: tell you what we think about all of that. And
Speaker 1: there is a new report breaking down what supposedly happened
Speaker 1: in terms of Epstein's uote unquote suicide. We have those
Speaker 1: details where you. Emily is taking a look at some
Speaker 1: new comments from Bluce Cheney. I am taking a look
Speaker 1: at a potentially cataclysmic crash in the commercial real estate market.
Speaker 1: So a lot of good stuff to get into this morning.
Speaker 4: That's right, and we're eagerly awaiting as we sit here
Speaker 4: right now some Supreme Court results that could I think
Speaker 4: I have really dramatic consequences for the country. But we're
Speaker 4: going to start with some results from yesterday that actually
Speaker 4: already have dramatic results for the country.
Speaker 3: So Crystal, this is in the case of More v. Harper.
Speaker 1: Yep. So guys, go ahead and put this first one
Speaker 1: up on the screen. That's from more Perfect Union. In
Speaker 1: a six to three decision, Supreme Court decides More v.
Speaker 1: Harper and rejects the so called independent state legislature theory.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you in a minute what that is, which
Speaker 1: claims state legislators have total authority over elections. This ruling
Speaker 1: ensures that courts can still strike down state election laws
Speaker 1: and maps. So here's the back story. There was a
Speaker 1: dispute between the North Carolina legislature, which at that time
Speaker 1: was and still is dominated by Republicans, and the North
Speaker 1: Carolina state courts, which had more of a liberal bent.
Speaker 1: The court said, the maps you drew, the jerrymandered maps
Speaker 1: you drew, these are wrong. These are unconstitutional, and the
Speaker 1: legislature argued, and this is the case that went all
Speaker 1: the way up to the Supreme Court, that you don't
Speaker 1: get to have a say in this. There's this clause
Speaker 1: in the Constitution that says it's up to us, the
Speaker 1: state legislature, to determine everything with regard to elections, So
Speaker 1: you don't get to have a say in this. This
Speaker 1: theory has been kind of fringe. It's been floated for
Speaker 1: a while, but the Supreme Court has never affirmed. It
Speaker 1: came up in the context of actually Bush vy.
Speaker 3: Gore.
Speaker 1: There were some dissenting opinions that made reference to this
Speaker 1: theory and gave it a little bit of credence. But
Speaker 1: the Court yesterday pretty clearly saying we don't agree with that,
Speaker 1: and that this really goes to the core of what
Speaker 1: judicial review even is. They mentioned Marbury versus Madison in
Speaker 1: the decision. Here is seminal case that established that federal
Speaker 1: courts can strike down laws. It basically established judicial review.
Speaker 1: And they're like, so, yes, we think that courts have
Speaker 1: power and jurisdiction over this, and the fact that it's
Speaker 1: mentioned in the Constitution that state legislators have power doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that they have free reign to do whatever they want.
Speaker 1: This became really important Emily, as you know, because this
Speaker 1: was one of the theories that was floated in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty by people who wanted to hand the election to
Speaker 1: Trump even though he had lost. So in a state
Speaker 1: like Georgia, the argument was, sure, voters might have voted
Speaker 1: for Biden, although they don't really accept that, but maybe
Speaker 1: they voted for Biden. But the legislature, since is packed
Speaker 1: with Republicans, they can pick whatever electors they want. They
Speaker 1: don't actually have to listen to the will of the people.
Speaker 1: And one of the theories here was that because the
Speaker 1: legislator had complete control, they could just discard whatever else
Speaker 1: had happened and they could pick their electors. So it
Speaker 1: had far ranging potential consequences here if this one went
Speaker 1: the other direction. However, it did not, and majority on
Speaker 1: the court said, now we're not buying it. Courts still
Speaker 1: have jurisdiction here.
Speaker 4: Federal elections are one of the most interesting sources of tension,
Speaker 4: not just on the right, but I think when we
Speaker 4: talk about what America is, because judicial review obviously is
Speaker 4: Germane in this case, in this case, but it's also
Speaker 4: this idea that like the right, at least supports federalism,
Speaker 4: so the state's ability to determine what's best for its
Speaker 4: people and for its voting and what that creates is
Speaker 4: this disastrous patchwork of different election laws. And that's where
Speaker 4: you have conservatives in some cases saying, well, you actually
Speaker 4: really need a more robust federal government policy when it
Speaker 4: comes to election law, because we have this insane patchwork
Speaker 4: of different laws, which in twenty twenty was a disaster
Speaker 4: with COVID in particular, that you have very different early
Speaker 4: voting for instance, you have very different time periods that
Speaker 4: people are actually going to cast ballots, very different laws
Speaker 4: for how they cast those ballots depending.
Speaker 3: On where they live. And you know, maybe that's.
Speaker 4: The sort of blessing of federalism, or it's the sort
Speaker 4: of disaster of it. It's a double edged sort of federalism.
Speaker 4: And this is from Slate. They right in the last
Speaker 4: part of his majority opinion. That's Chief Justice John Roberts
Speaker 4: who wrote the majority here. He got the liberal justices
Speaker 4: to sign onto a version of judicial review that is
Speaker 4: going to give the federal courts and especially the Supreme
Speaker 4: Court itself, the last word in election disputes. The court
Speaker 4: held that, and this is the quote, state courts may
Speaker 4: not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that
Speaker 4: they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures
Speaker 4: to regulate federal elections. And that's just all that right there, Like,
Speaker 4: that's the not the of the issue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So put the second element up on the screen,
Speaker 1: because while they did sort of, you know, they did
Speaker 1: not accept independent state legislature theory, they did put a
Speaker 1: little bit of a caveat here and they did give
Speaker 1: themselves a little bit of wiggle room. So part of
Speaker 1: what they said in the graphic that's at the top
Speaker 1: right of the screen. Although we conclude the elections Clause
Speaker 1: does not exempt state legislators from the ordinary constraints imposed
Speaker 1: by state laws. State courts do not have free rate.
Speaker 1: State courts are the appropriate tribunals for the decision of
Speaker 1: questions arising under their local law, whether statutory or otherwise.
Speaker 1: They say the case. They at the same time, the
Speaker 1: elections Clause expressly best power to carry out its provisions
Speaker 1: in the legislature, so expressly saying there, state courts do
Speaker 1: not have free reign. So they're saying there may be
Speaker 1: some limiting principle here if the state courts, in our
Speaker 1: view as a supreme court, get way on over their
Speaker 1: skis in terms of rejecting what the state legislature does,
Speaker 1: but in no way do they define what that limiting
Speaker 1: principle might be. Now, without getting too much into the weeds,
Speaker 1: may the facts this may become really relevant really quickly,
Speaker 1: because there are a number of states where you have
Speaker 1: a mismatch between the partisan balance of the legislature and
Speaker 1: the partisan balance of the courts. The primary one people
Speaker 1: are pointing to Emily is Wisconsin, where you have a
Speaker 1: Republican legislature, you have a jerrymander that was drawn by Republicans,
Speaker 1: and you have a state supreme court that I don't
Speaker 1: know if you guys, just remember there was just a
Speaker 1: huge election where a liberal was elected like a you know,
Speaker 1: very clear, and ran as a liberal and this actually
Speaker 1: jerrymandered lines was one of the things that she ran on.
Speaker 1: And so you're likely to have the same dispute. You
Speaker 1: actually already have this dispute between the Wisconsin State Supreme
Speaker 1: Court and the Wisconsin legislature.
Speaker 3: So is the.
Speaker 1: Supreme Court going to say, yes, it's within that court's jurisdiction. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's fine for them to strike down the jerrymandered lines
Speaker 1: drawn by the Republican legislature. Are they going to use
Speaker 1: this wiggle room? And they gave themselves to go in
Speaker 1: the opposite direction when it comes to Wisconsin. A lot
Speaker 1: of you know, there's a lot of analysis out there
Speaker 1: that this there's going to be an immediate test to
Speaker 1: what the sort of limiting principles here are and whether
Speaker 1: the Court is really giving state courts kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: an open a blank check to do whatever they want
Speaker 1: with regard to the jerrymander you know, within the bounds
Speaker 1: of whatever their judicial process is right.
Speaker 3: And that's where some people I've seen on the right
Speaker 3: legal people.
Speaker 4: I'm reading from Ilia Shapiro right here on Twitter, who's
Speaker 4: at the Manhattan Institute, And that's where some people are saying, well,
Speaker 4: Justice sort of pulls back a little bit and has
Speaker 4: a quote middle of the road decision. He declined to
Speaker 4: adopt a standard as Ilia rights for determining when state
Speaker 4: courts cross the line to your point, or even to say.
Speaker 3: Whether the North Carolina Court did so here, Yeah.
Speaker 4: This is a ruling that doesn't actually even weigh in
Speaker 4: on those questions where it could have. And so this
Speaker 4: is where Ilia says, we basically have to wait until
Speaker 4: the justices are forced to make that hard balls and
Speaker 4: strikes call that the Chief Justice referenced at his confirmation hearings,
Speaker 4: and this decision stops short of doing that. So these
Speaker 4: questions are now up in the air going forward.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they haven't really clearly defined where the boundaries
Speaker 1: of state court power lie and where it that's up
Speaker 1: against the state legislature. But you know, zooming out from this,
Speaker 1: the reason people were really watching this closely this particular
Speaker 1: case was because of what happened in twenty twenty and
Speaker 1: fears that we could see a repeat of this, especially
Speaker 1: with Donald Trump very likely the Republican nominee again. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's likely. You can't say one
Speaker 1: hundred percent, but I think it's likely that they have
Speaker 1: closed the pathway to them being able to to, you know,
Speaker 1: a point, a fake elector's slate in a red state
Speaker 1: like Georgia and just completely overrule the will of the
Speaker 1: people and do whatever they want if they happen to
Speaker 1: have a legislature that is pro Trump. So it seems
Speaker 1: like they've more or less shut the door to that,
Speaker 1: although they've given themselves a little bit of wiggle room.
Speaker 1: But you know, this was one of the cases that
Speaker 1: liberals were really really Concernedive'm frankly, I think everybody should
Speaker 1: be concerned about, because we do want the will of
Speaker 1: the people to actually matter in our democracy, and so
Speaker 1: this is this is one that people should feel fairly
Speaker 1: good about that it went in the direction of saying like, no,
Speaker 1: you can't just do any old thing because you happen to, like,
Speaker 1: you know, one outcome over another outcome.
Speaker 4: It's so interesting how when we're hitting a fever pitch.
Speaker 4: I think culturally some of these areas of tension that
Speaker 4: when you have like more social consensus, like in your
Speaker 4: constitutional system, start to break down. And I feel like
Speaker 4: you start to see that kind of first like this
Speaker 4: is where these mechanisms that work for maybe decades, not certainly,
Speaker 4: we've had issues with us throughout American history. But it's
Speaker 4: just a good example of how when we're not getting
Speaker 4: along as a country, you start to see it show
Speaker 4: up in some like warning signs like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. There's another There was another
Speaker 1: decision yesterday, another ruling that we thought was interesting. Put
Speaker 1: this next one up on the screen. So the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court said that a conviction for online threats violated the
Speaker 1: First Amendment. This is a write up in the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: The subhad here says prosecutors have to show that a
Speaker 1: person responsible for threats understood the threatening nature of that speech.
Speaker 1: So the backstory here, as I understand it, is you
Speaker 1: had a music artist who was being stalked effectively by
Speaker 1: this dude who kept sending all these threatening messages. It really,
Speaker 1: she said, it really impacted her. She was scared for
Speaker 1: her health and safety. She for a time stopped doing
Speaker 1: public appearances in public concerts. So impacted her career because
Speaker 1: she just never knew whether this guy was going to
Speaker 1: turn up and what he might be capable of doing,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And so the question here was whether or
Speaker 1: not you could uphold this conviction for these online threats.
Speaker 1: And let me give you a taste of what she
Speaker 1: was being sent here, and she would block his account
Speaker 1: on Facebook, and then you create a new account and
Speaker 1: still post these messages, etc. So among the messages that
Speaker 1: were presented at trial, there was one that said, I'm
Speaker 1: currently unsupervised I know it freaks me out too, but
Speaker 1: the possibilities are endless. So listen, no one wants to
Speaker 1: give that message. That sounds really creepy, but it to
Speaker 1: me doesn't meet the test of like a direct and
Speaker 1: specific threat. Another one that said, f off permanently. Another
Speaker 1: one said you're not being good for human relations. Die
Speaker 1: don't need you. What the majority decided here in a
Speaker 1: seven to two ruling, with Elena Kagan writing for the
Speaker 1: majority and I'm reading the Washington Post now, the court
Speaker 1: emphasized that true threats of violence are not protected by
Speaker 1: the First Amendment, of course, but to guard against a
Speaker 1: chilling effect on non threatening speech, the majority said, states
Speaker 1: have to prove that a criminal defendant has consciously disregarded
Speaker 1: a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as
Speaker 1: threatening violence. So it's not enough that it is a
Speaker 1: violent threat, which is not protected by the First Amendment.
Speaker 1: There also has to be an intentionality around it or
Speaker 1: a reckless disregard as I'm not sure that's exact language
Speaker 1: that they use, but that's effectively what they're communicating here,
Speaker 1: but that there needs to be some sort of understanding
Speaker 1: of the way that these threats would ultimately be perceived
Speaker 1: you had Justice Clarence Thomas and Amy Cony Barrett, who
Speaker 1: wrote the Who Were in the Descent. Barrett wrote that
Speaker 1: the standard set by the court on Thursday gives quote
Speaker 1: preferential treatment to a broad range of threatening speech and
Speaker 1: makes it more difficult for law enforcement to address actual threats.
Speaker 1: A little bit more from Elena Kagan, she says, our
Speaker 1: decisions have often insisted on protecting even some historically unprotected
Speaker 1: speech the adoption of a subjective mental state element. This
Speaker 1: is writing for the majority. We follow the same path today,
Speaker 1: holding the state must prove in true threats cases that
Speaker 1: the defendant had some understanding of his statements threatening character.
Speaker 1: What do you think of this one?
Speaker 4: And you know, that's very different than saying you know,
Speaker 4: to your point, which I think is a good one,
Speaker 4: whether or not this particular speech met the threshold, whether
Speaker 4: or not someone knew it as a threat. I think
Speaker 4: that's probably the more interesting question with those messages, right
Speaker 4: like is especially now that we live in this online
Speaker 4: world where people almost feel like they're playing they're seduced
Speaker 4: into thinking they're playing a video game when they're talking
Speaker 4: to real human beings.
Speaker 3: On the other side, because of the way social media functions.
Speaker 4: I think it's a really interesting question of whether speech
Speaker 4: where you say die and then you know, but it's
Speaker 4: not really like I'm going to kill you die constitutes
Speaker 4: a threat. Like that's to me a more interesting question
Speaker 4: than whether he knew it was a threat, because I
Speaker 4: actually kind of tend to side with Barrett and one
Speaker 4: of the things we should say, like these last two decisions,
Speaker 4: we've been talking about six three and seven to two, so.
Speaker 1: They were not just partisan down on the line books.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: So you have Justice Roberts writing in the six three decision,
Speaker 4: and you have just Amy Cony Barrett, and so to
Speaker 4: Mayor and Gorsach coming together in that really like.
Speaker 1: That's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful friendship. Yeah.
Speaker 4: But I think in this case I am sort of
Speaker 4: tempted to be with amy Cony Barrett on that because
Speaker 4: I can envision, especially for people that are are mentally ill,
Speaker 4: a whole lot of threatening speech, yeah now not being
Speaker 4: or being protected in ways that it absolutely shouldn't be,
Speaker 4: because you can make the argument with a good attorney
Speaker 4: that hey, this person didn't know you, Yeah, they didn't
Speaker 4: understand this to be threatening because they didn't they lacked
Speaker 4: the capacity at that particular time.
Speaker 1: I think that's a fair point. I mean, it's undeniably
Speaker 1: like it's a subjective judgment. So if you can hire
Speaker 1: a great if you're wealthy, you can hire a great attorney. Right,
Speaker 1: they can convince, you know, they can convince a jury
Speaker 1: that they didn't they didn't even know what they were doing, right,
Speaker 1: they had no idea the way that this would be
Speaker 1: perceived as so threatening. Then you potentially, you know, allow
Speaker 1: an avenue for people to get off the hook for
Speaker 1: things that really should not be accepted. I tend to
Speaker 1: go in the other direction, though, just because you know,
Speaker 1: I think the First Amendment rights are so foundational that
Speaker 1: I would always err on the side of protecting them
Speaker 1: more and have more concern about, you know, potentially chilling
Speaker 1: effect of non threatening speech if you do not have
Speaker 1: these sorts of bounds in place. So I tend to
Speaker 1: air more on the side of all right, let's err
Speaker 1: on the side of free speech. But you know, I
Speaker 1: think the concern's voice in the dissent are completely legitimate,
Speaker 1: Like where are the boundaries here? How do you even
Speaker 1: interpret somebody's subjective intent or what was going on? In
Speaker 1: their mind. But in some ways, that's the nature of
Speaker 1: a lot of our laws determined on turn on determining
Speaker 1: someone's mental state and their intent at the time that
Speaker 1: a crime was committed.
Speaker 3: And also, this is how you met Kyle.
Speaker 1: Well in case you don't know, she who actually documented this,
Speaker 1: that I was the first one to reach out to him.
Speaker 1: If anything, it goes with the other direction.
Speaker 4: That's what the harasser one of my favorite like moner
Speaker 4: Old tweets. Ever, it's like, ladies, don't be afraid to
Speaker 4: make the first movement.
Speaker 1: It's nice to go for it.
Speaker 3: But I would argue that you didn't know that was
Speaker 3: a threat at the time.
Speaker 1: I didn't. Yeah, so I agree with the majority here.
Speaker 1: I don't think you should be considered that way because
Speaker 1: I was, you know, out of my mind. I had
Speaker 1: no idea what I was doing and getting myself into. Clearly,
Speaker 1: so we are expecting make a heart turn here, We
Speaker 1: are expecting some other really momentous decisions here, and listen,
Speaker 1: as much as we expect these are going to go
Speaker 1: one way, you just never know, right, the justices have
Speaker 1: already proven themselves to be somewhat unpredictable. So put this
Speaker 1: last piece up on the screen. Supreme Court's biggest decisions
Speaker 1: are coming. You know, some of these I think could
Speaker 1: come down today tomorrow, And I think, Emily that this
Speaker 1: is the last week when we when we are going
Speaker 1: to get rulings from the Court, So all of these
Speaker 1: are still still hanging out there. Big one affirmative action. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is per the ap the survival of affirmative action
Speaker 1: and higher education, subject of two related cases, one involving Harvard,
Speaker 1: the other University of North Carolina. Supreme Court is previously
Speaker 1: approved of the use of affirmative action and higher education
Speaker 1: decisions reaching back to nineteen seventy eight, but the Justice's
Speaker 1: decision to take the cases suggested a willingness to revisit
Speaker 1: those rulings. So obviously that's a big one. We're already
Speaker 1: planning a panel for tomorrow, which by the way, it's
Speaker 1: going to be me and Emily against tomorrow for breaking points. Becuzacker,
Speaker 1: as you guys know, is a way for his first
Speaker 1: of two wedding ceremonies, So we're planning some coverage of
Speaker 1: that whenever that decision comes down. They also have on
Speaker 1: the docket student loans. Are they going to uphold President
Speaker 1: Biden's plan to reduce student loan debt that has been
Speaker 1: highly contested. There is a potential that the justices decide
Speaker 1: the challengers lack the right to sue, that they don't
Speaker 1: have standing, and therefore the plan can still go forward.
Speaker 1: I think that's the best hope for those who are
Speaker 1: hoping that that student loan debt relief remains in place.
Speaker 1: And the challenge with that one is basically like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: who is actually harmed by this decision? And conservatives have
Speaker 1: had a hard time coming up with a group that was,
Speaker 1: you know, legitimately harmed. They went with I believe that
Speaker 1: this case relates to a student and processor that says like,
Speaker 1: our fees are being cut and we're being hurt by
Speaker 1: this decision. But that's a possibility that they could just
Speaker 1: sort of like punt on this one and say, listen,
Speaker 1: they don't have standing, so we're not issuing really a
Speaker 1: ruling at all. Another one here is on gay rights
Speaker 1: and religious rights and the you know, where's the line here?
Speaker 1: This one involves a graphic artist in Colorado who is
Speaker 1: Christian who wants to design wedding websites but does not
Speaker 1: want to design same sex wedding websites. This has, you know,
Speaker 1: the gay cake baking thing, very similar kind of dynamics here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've talked to her.
Speaker 4: It's basically the exact same thing as Masterpiece and the
Speaker 4: Washington flower shops.
Speaker 1: So Taber and I were trying to has this not
Speaker 1: already been like, didn't they already rule on those what
Speaker 1: happened there?
Speaker 3: Yes, But it's just it's so state based.
Speaker 4: So if your state has a very particular law that
Speaker 4: can then get sort of stress test intentionally, and in
Speaker 4: the case of Jack Phillips with Masterpiece Cake, you had
Speaker 4: LGBT activists intentionally stress testing the laws and making sure
Speaker 4: that these were cases that were ready for the court. Basically,
Speaker 4: this is sort of similar and that it's preemptive that
Speaker 4: Laurie Smith of three or three Creative, who wants to
Speaker 4: design websites you want basically the state she doesn't think
Speaker 4: the state law protects her right to refuse to make
Speaker 4: wedding websites for gay couples a gay wedding, And so
Speaker 4: it's similar in the sense that it's kind of a
Speaker 4: preemptive thing where it's going to court and it's kind
Speaker 4: of intentionally stress testing.
Speaker 1: Gotcha seeing where exactly the balands of this are, right, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, so those are the ones where those are
Speaker 1: some of the big ones that we're watching for. Obviously
Speaker 1: all of these would be extremely momentous, and you know,
Speaker 1: we'll be all over and like I said before, we're
Speaker 1: trying to get together some experts on both sides the
Speaker 1: formative Action debates so that we can kind of like
Speaker 1: get into that one tomorrow on breaking points, so make
Speaker 1: sure you stay tuned for that.
Speaker 4: I was assigned segment blocks in my favorite order here, which.
Speaker 3: Is B D.
Speaker 4: We were talking on the phone yesterday about who's going
Speaker 4: to start each block, which is like a little inside
Speaker 4: baseball thing that Sager and Crystal do and Ryan and
Speaker 4: I probably should do. But I got the B block,
Speaker 4: the D block, and the E block, and I had
Speaker 4: to make the joke.
Speaker 1: So Soger and I are just more like Planny, like
Speaker 1: a little more stressy and planning than you guys are,
Speaker 1: and you guys a little more alike. You got that
Speaker 1: like chill like fish vibe. I guess, did you put a.
Speaker 4: Fish water bottle on his idn't obviously what we're gonna
Speaker 4: talk about the border.
Speaker 3: Actually it's perfect for section.
Speaker 4: B, because there's there's a really interesting rolling Stone report,
Speaker 4: and we can put B one up on the screen here.
Speaker 4: That Stephen Miller, who you are surely familiar with as
Speaker 4: one of Trump's big advisors, particularly on the border, particularly
Speaker 4: on immigration issues.
Speaker 3: Quote, advocated using US predator drones in.
Speaker 4: Twenty eighteen to blow up migrant boats full of unarmed civilians,
Speaker 4: according to an upcoming book by.
Speaker 3: A former administration official.
Speaker 4: Now I'm going to keep reading from this rolling Stone
Speaker 4: report because actually this takes us back. I'm almost nostalgic
Speaker 4: for the era of the Trump White House leaks, where
Speaker 4: you really had to be reading tea leaves to know
Speaker 4: exactly what was happening, because there's disagreement.
Speaker 3: On whether this actually happened. And the book is from
Speaker 3: Miles Taylor, who is again perhaps a familiar name.
Speaker 4: If you torture yourself by watching MSNBC enough, you definitely
Speaker 4: know Miles Taylor.
Speaker 1: I actually forgot about this whole right saga.
Speaker 4: He's the one who said it was a capital a
Speaker 4: anonymous in the New York Times who said, basically, we
Speaker 4: are what was at the twenty fifth Amendment right back then,
Speaker 4: and people in the Trump administration he was listed as
Speaker 4: a senior official.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like we are the dissidents within. I'm
Speaker 1: getting the language right, wrong, but that was like the
Speaker 1: basically the vibe. It's like, we're this great dissidents within
Speaker 1: the Trump administration.
Speaker 4: Right, And Miles Taylor was given cover to write this
Speaker 4: by The New York Times as a senior administration official,
Speaker 4: and they gave him the anonymous byline as a senior
Speaker 4: administration official.
Speaker 3: He really was nobody.
Speaker 4: I mean, it was an incredible stretch to say he
Speaker 4: was a senior administration official. But Rolling Stone continues and
Speaker 4: says they have reviewed written documentation.
Speaker 3: From during the Trump administration that supports Taylor's claim.
Speaker 4: Taylor's account, however, is contested both by Stephen Miller says
Speaker 4: it didn't happen and another person present, who is Paul
Speaker 4: Zi Kunft, a since retired admiral who was then commandant
Speaker 4: of the US Coast Guard. Reached for comment, he said
Speaker 4: he has no recollection of that, and he says, quote,
Speaker 4: I vividly recall having a lengthy conversation with Stephen Miller
Speaker 4: regarding Southwest border security in twenty eighteen. My point was
Speaker 4: that the US is not exerting enough influence in the
Speaker 4: form of foreign aid in the tribe border region of
Speaker 4: Guatemala and Dora l Salvador.
Speaker 3: He goes on to.
Speaker 4: Basically say that didn't happen, and we had these conversations,
Speaker 4: but there was a different context. But to that point,
Speaker 4: let's put this AXE graphic up on the screen. This
Speaker 4: is B two GOP presidential field embraces Trump's border wall.
Speaker 4: You have they sort of run the gamut of all
Speaker 4: of these different Republican candidates and where they've really kind
Speaker 4: of coalesced and become a block when it comes to
Speaker 4: immigration policies in the border wall.
Speaker 3: And then it.
Speaker 4: Gets even We're going to take it even a step
Speaker 4: further here and put B three up on the screen.
Speaker 3: This is Reason.
Speaker 4: They did something similar to Axios, but actually on a
Speaker 4: very specific question, not just about the wall, not just
Speaker 4: about hardline immigration policies. This one is about the Republican
Speaker 4: primary consensus for sending the military into Mexico. So Reason says,
Speaker 4: listed in order of their real clear politics pulling average
Speaker 4: for the past month, here are the top six twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four GOP presidential candidates talking their own words about
Speaker 4: using the US military in Mexico. To fight fentanyl dealing
Speaker 4: drug cartels. So the version of twenty sixteen's build the
Speaker 4: Wall is going to be sending the troops.
Speaker 3: That's basically how.
Speaker 4: This is emerging, and it's a really it's it's become
Speaker 4: a really hot debate in conservative circles. So on that note, Crystal,
Speaker 4: it's actually very interesting when you have the Heritage Foundation
Speaker 4: starting to talk about, for instance, like even the Heritage Foundation,
Speaker 4: long supported by the defense industry, of the tuoe of
Speaker 4: millions of dollars, saying we should cut the Pentagon budget
Speaker 4: now talking about.
Speaker 3: In conservative circles.
Speaker 4: I don't know if anyone from Heritage has said this
Speaker 4: in particularly in particular, but as you have so many
Speaker 4: people on the right to the point where it's leaked
Speaker 4: to the Heritage Foundation or trickled into the Heritage Foundation
Speaker 4: talking about the Pentagon and excess of spending on the
Speaker 4: spending on the Pentagon, forever wars, thinking about starting a
Speaker 4: military conflict Mexico.
Speaker 1: In Mexico, right, Yes, which is I mean, listen, I
Speaker 1: think it's patent Lindsay, and I don't even think it's
Speaker 1: a smart idea. If you're worried about fentanyl, et cetera.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've been trying the war on drugs for
Speaker 1: a long time, hasn't worked out, et cetera. But so's
Speaker 1: there's that piece of it. There's the merits of the idea. There's,
Speaker 1: as you're pointing out, Emily, there's the hypocrisy or the
Speaker 1: distance between some of the rhetoric. The jew He's you know,
Speaker 1: very divided on even using this rhetoric. But some of
Speaker 1: the rhetoric that you now hear from Republicans about ending
Speaker 1: forever wars about certainly this is used a lot when
Speaker 1: it comes to Ukraine and our involvement there, But when
Speaker 1: you start talking about China or you start talking about
Speaker 1: troops into Mexico, you hear a very very different narrative,
Speaker 1: and specifically, like the idea that has been taken up
Speaker 1: in mainstream. You've got you know, Tim Scott sounding like this,
Speaker 1: You've got Nikki Haley sounding like this. Not to mention
Speaker 1: Vekron Swami, Ronda Santis, Donald Trump, etc. Is Hey, let's
Speaker 1: use the same justification as the war on terror to
Speaker 1: justify these to label these cartels as terrorists, and then
Speaker 1: to justify military action basically with the blank check. So
Speaker 1: any semblance of hey, let's curtail like the war and
Speaker 1: terror's gotten out of control. It's been a blank check
Speaker 1: for presidents to do whatever they want around the world.
Speaker 1: When it comes to this issue, then suddenly there's a
Speaker 1: very different tone and polar opposite direction. But the other
Speaker 1: thing that just strikes me about this politically, Emily, is
Speaker 1: like it just shows you what a totally dominant force
Speaker 1: Donald Trump still is in the Republican Party. Because Chris Christy,
Speaker 1: Nikki Haley, and some others in twenty sixteen, they actually
Speaker 1: were against the border wall. They would make fun of
Speaker 1: Trump for it and say, like this is a preposter.
Speaker 1: Site is not going to work. Chris Christy would mock
Speaker 1: his voice and like you know, push back on the
Speaker 1: idea of the border wall. So even someone who's a
Speaker 1: quote unquote moderate like Chris Christy is now accepted like, yow,
Speaker 1: we gotta be in favor of the border wall, I guess,
Speaker 1: because that's just where the Republican base is now. And
Speaker 1: I noted too, you know, Trump had floated when he
Speaker 1: was in office, he floated ending birthright citizenship. Ronda Santis
Speaker 1: is now picked this up like they're just to me.
Speaker 1: It re emphasizes what a you know, what is it,
Speaker 1: eight hundred pound gorilla Trump is in the room that
Speaker 1: the idea that he isn't the leader of the Republican
Speaker 1: Party is sort of preposterous because even the ones even
Speaker 1: like Chris Christy whose whole run is about opposing Trump,
Speaker 1: just basically has and in line with him when it
Speaker 1: comes to policy. And then the other thing that made
Speaker 1: me think of is like, the worst thing about Trump,
Speaker 1: one of the worst things got Trump. Let me couch
Speaker 1: that one of the worst things about Trump in our
Speaker 1: politics is the way that it just makes everything centered
Speaker 1: around him and where you are put on a political
Speaker 1: spectrum versus like in terms of media perception and public perception,
Speaker 1: it's just all about how you feel about Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: So you can be Brian Kemp in Georgia, who is
Speaker 1: really hard right, like this is no squish right, really
Speaker 1: hard right in terms of his policies, in terms of
Speaker 1: what he's done in office, but because he bucked Trump
Speaker 1: on a key issue, he's seen as a quote unquote moderate.
Speaker 1: Same thing with you know Christy. Ron DeSantis is actually
Speaker 1: a perfect example. The fact that DeSantis is going up
Speaker 1: against Trump. He's to the right of Trump on a
Speaker 1: variety of issues, but he's still pitched and viewed in
Speaker 1: some ways by the public. It's like, oh, a more
Speaker 1: sort of mainstream, moderate, acceptable alternative to Trump. It's just
Speaker 1: made it impossible to actually think clearly about where do
Speaker 1: people stand on a policy basis, what would they do
Speaker 1: in office? Everything just becomes about this central question of
Speaker 1: how do you feel? How in for Trump are you
Speaker 1: or how opposed to Trump are you? And I hate
Speaker 1: that well, and it's why the media pushes that too.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think that's what's really frustrating to voters
Speaker 4: is that they're forced to see everyone through this the
Speaker 4: media's lens, which is a Trump lens. And it's not
Speaker 4: just the media's fault for focusing on right. Although the
Speaker 4: media loves it for ratings. They love it like the
Speaker 4: legacy corporate media loves it for the.
Speaker 3: Sake of ratings.
Speaker 4: That's why they do always push Trump, like going back
Speaker 4: to those early morning Joe appearances, when two people who
Speaker 4: now claim to be diametrically ideologically opposed to him were
Speaker 4: fetting him and salivating over him like that's always been
Speaker 4: the case. What's super interesting about this is to your
Speaker 4: point about Chris Christy and Nikki Hayley going from mocking
Speaker 4: Trump on the wall to saying, hey.
Speaker 3: We can maybe do a wall, or we have to
Speaker 3: do a wall.
Speaker 4: It's interesting because these are people who have not come
Speaker 4: around and into the sort of anti chamber of commerce
Speaker 4: approach that some Republicans. Whether or not you agree that
Speaker 4: this is taking over the Republican Party, and Ryan and
Speaker 4: I have definitely debated that. I know there's some people
Speaker 4: on the left that are absolutely skeptical that there's really
Speaker 4: been motion that the Republican Party has really become against
Speaker 4: the chamber of commerce because frankly, you have people like
Speaker 4: Nikola Haley and Chris Christie who will never do that.
Speaker 3: It's easy to say we need a border wall.
Speaker 4: It's a lot more difficult to start talking about things
Speaker 4: like birthright citizenships, to start talking about things like actually
Speaker 4: having an asylum policy that makes sense and that it
Speaker 4: disincentivizes the cartel trafficking that goes up through northern Mexico,
Speaker 4: and praise on the fact that we have some of
Speaker 4: these really lacks asylum policies that don't make a ton
Speaker 4: of sense and are easily exploited, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 4: That is super interesting because they would they would.
Speaker 3: Not do that.
Speaker 4: They can talk about the wall as the symbol, but
Speaker 4: will they actually execute on a Trump type immigration policy.
Speaker 3: No, and Trump himself was.
Speaker 1: Trump did not execute on a Trump and immigration policy.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm in my opinion he did way too
Speaker 1: much that was terrible and unconscionable with regard to the
Speaker 1: actual treatment of human beings. But in terms of the
Speaker 1: most maximalist of his rhetoric, I mean, he talked about
Speaker 1: any birthrights citizenship, but he didn't do it right.
Speaker 4: He's talking about making a deal with Pelosi on DHAKA.
Speaker 4: I mean, he's really not ideologically committed to this. It's
Speaker 4: also kind of symbolic for him.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, I think that's right. And I mean
Speaker 1: that's just been so much rhetoric over these past number
Speaker 1: of years around the border around immigration in conservative media,
Speaker 1: and with Trump sort of leading the charge rhetorically that Yeah,
Speaker 1: even the quote unquote moderates are saying patently insane things
Speaker 1: about literally invading our southern neighbor. Right. So it's a
Speaker 1: sign of a lot of things. It's a sign of
Speaker 1: how dominant Trump is, it's a sign of how far
Speaker 1: right they feel okay to move to please to placate
Speaker 1: a GOP base when the only issue that anyone pays
Speaker 1: attention to is like, what are you saying about Donald
Speaker 1: Trump that really gives you cover to do whatever policy
Speaker 1: wise to piece a base that you know that really
Speaker 1: is pretty hard line in terms of immigration and pays
Speaker 1: a lot of close attention to this. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of it's a pretty fascinating situation. And
Speaker 1: the same thing, you know, the same brain rot has
Speaker 1: taken hold obviously in the Democratic Party too. You're talking
Speaker 1: about Liz Cheney today, where it's like, again, what you
Speaker 1: actually think on any issue is just completely wiped clean.
Speaker 1: What you did during the Bush administration, what passed like
Speaker 1: war crimes, you and Eil all of that is just
Speaker 1: water under the bridge if you're willing to say the
Speaker 1: right things with regard to Donald J. Trump.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And the final thing I would say, to just
Speaker 4: bring it full circle is there's an actually esoteric sort
Speaker 4: of academic debate happening on the right now about whether
Speaker 4: there is just cause for war with Mexican cartels, right,
Speaker 4: not with the state of Mexico, because Mexico is a
Speaker 4: failed state where you have you know, even though Ammelo would.
Speaker 3: Admit it, won't admit it.
Speaker 4: A swath of the country like actually in the control
Speaker 4: of cartels. So can you then justify declaring war on
Speaker 4: the cartels? And that's an actual debate that's happening, and
Speaker 4: so there will be more conversation. I understand the temptation
Speaker 4: to drone some of these fentanyl operations in Sinaloa, like
Speaker 4: I actually understand why someone want.
Speaker 3: To do that, just take them out one fell swoop.
Speaker 4: But the idea that we can just do that and
Speaker 4: get out is basically exactly what we've.
Speaker 3: Seen repeatedly over the last one hundred.
Speaker 4: Years fail because I mean, we don't even need to
Speaker 4: get into the reasons. But that is a sincere conversation happening.
Speaker 4: And that's where I have no idea whether Steven Miller
Speaker 4: actually said that, but it's intention with this idea that
Speaker 4: on the right you've seen a real improvement in the
Speaker 4: conversation about immigration, and maybe it's for tactical reasons, I
Speaker 4: don't know, but that cartails are actually exploiting migrants, that
Speaker 4: they're telling them, you know, you can do this, and
Speaker 4: they're trafficking them, kidnapping them, raping.
Speaker 3: Them, torturing them.
Speaker 4: Horrible, horrible situation because we have certain policies that they
Speaker 4: take advantage of.
Speaker 3: Droning migrant boats is not whatso of.
Speaker 1: Is not in the bounds of any sort of conversation
Speaker 1: anyone should be having. I do want to say I'm
Speaker 1: a little bit skeptical of this report too, Like I'm not.
Speaker 1: I think Stephen Miller is psycho and I don't like
Speaker 1: put it past him. But it is worth emphasizing that
Speaker 1: the person who is claiming this is writing a book.
Speaker 1: You know, there's clearly an incentive.
Speaker 3: There has a history of exaggeration.
Speaker 1: Potential history of exaggeration. And it seems like I don't
Speaker 1: know that much about the other dude in the room
Speaker 1: who was you know, from the military, but he didn't
Speaker 1: seem like he's some like hardline Trump sikaphan who would
Speaker 1: be going out of his way to cover for the
Speaker 1: former president. So anyway, take all of that for what
Speaker 1: it's worth. All right, this is you guys are going
Speaker 1: to enjoy this one. So I don't even know if
Speaker 1: we've mentioned on the show, but this guy who's the
Speaker 1: mayor of Miami, Francis Souirez, has decided he also wants
Speaker 1: to run for president in twenty twenty four in the
Speaker 1: Republican primary. I most knew him because he's like really
Speaker 1: embraced Crypto for Miami. That's been like kind of a thing.
Speaker 1: Apparently the Miami mayor is kind of a very weak position.
Speaker 1: It's almost like more of a just a title and
Speaker 1: name only. There isn't a lot of power the King
Speaker 1: of Miami exactly, which I guess is an important title
Speaker 1: for what it's worth. But he was on Hugh Hewitt's
Speaker 1: radio show and he got asked a question about whether
Speaker 1: or not he would be talking about the Chinese Wiger
Speaker 1: Muslim minority and their treatment. But you know, some of
Speaker 1: that context was left out. He was just asked, like,
Speaker 1: will you be talking about the Wiggers. It didn't go
Speaker 1: too well for him.
Speaker 5: Take a listen, will you be talking about the Wigers
Speaker 5: in your campaign? What the what?
Speaker 6: The Wigers?
Speaker 3: What's a weaker? Okay, well come back to that. Let
Speaker 3: me you won't be on you gotta get smart on that.
Speaker 1: What's a weaker?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: It's so bad And it really reminded me. And I
Speaker 1: don't think I'm the only one of how it seems
Speaker 1: like every presidential election cycle, there's at least one of
Speaker 1: these moments where someone who fancies themselves the next commander
Speaker 1: in chief fails to grasp even the most like basic
Speaker 1: information about, you know, our foreign policy, or what's going
Speaker 1: on in the world, or what their own plans are.
Speaker 1: So we put together a little thanks to producer Mac,
Speaker 1: we're putting together a little bit of a trip down
Speaker 1: memory lane of some of the worst brain fart moments
Speaker 1: for political candidates over the past number of years. Let's
Speaker 1: take a listen to that.
Speaker 3: Would you do if you were elected?
Speaker 1: About Aleppo?
Speaker 3: About Aleppo? And what is Aleppo? You're kidding? No, Aleppo
Speaker 3: is in Syria. It's the it's the epicenter of the
Speaker 3: refugee crisis.
Speaker 1: Okay, got it, got it?
Speaker 6: Okay, it's three agencies of government when I get there
Speaker 6: that are gone, commerce, education, and the what's the third
Speaker 6: one there? Let's see EPA, EPA there you go.
Speaker 3: No again, let's stop. Let's stops. Seriously, is EPA the
Speaker 3: one you were talking about?
Speaker 1: No, sir, you can't name the third one?
Speaker 6: The third agency of government? I would I would do
Speaker 6: away with the education, uh, the commerce, commerce, and let's see,
Speaker 6: I can't the third one I can't. Sorry, So you
Speaker 6: agreed with President Obama on Libya or not?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 7: Libya? President Obama supported the uprising. Correct President Obama called
Speaker 7: for the removal of God. Just gonna make sure we're
Speaker 7: talking about the same thing before I say yes, I agreed.
Speaker 7: I know I didn't agree. I do not agree with
Speaker 7: the way he handled it for the following reason that
Speaker 7: that's that's a different one. I gotta go back. See, uh,
Speaker 7: got all the stuff twirling around in my head.
Speaker 5: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine.
Speaker 3: In what respect? Charlie?
Speaker 4: What do you what?
Speaker 5: Do you interpret it to be?
Speaker 3: His worldview?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 5: The Bush doctrine nenunciated September two thousand and two before
Speaker 5: the Iraq War.
Speaker 1: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do
Speaker 1: is rid this world of Islamic extremism.
Speaker 5: The Bush doctrine, as I understand, is that we have
Speaker 5: the right of anticipatory self defense. We have the right
Speaker 5: to a preemptive strike against any other country that we
Speaker 5: think is going to attack us.
Speaker 1: Yikes. The Gary Johnson one, what is a leveo? I
Speaker 1: love the way that he is like a little bit
Speaker 1: of an attitude about it, Like how dare you ask
Speaker 1: me about this thing? No one clearly knows about Aleppo
Speaker 1: at a time when this was really central to what
Speaker 1: was going on in terms of political news. But what
Speaker 1: did you make of Suarez's mess up here?
Speaker 4: You know, there was a political article this week about
Speaker 4: how the Republican field ended up getting so crowded. That
Speaker 4: really interested me because what a lot of people on
Speaker 4: the right have been talked talking about in sort of
Speaker 4: conservative DC circles for the last five plus years is basically,
Speaker 4: how do you avoid a twenty sixteen situation? And I'm
Speaker 4: not weighing in to say that you have to avoid
Speaker 4: a twenty sixteen situation.
Speaker 3: I'm sort of two minds.
Speaker 4: I think it's great that you can field a bunch
Speaker 4: of candidates from a bunch of different parts of the
Speaker 4: party and have them duke it out for public support
Speaker 4: in this high profile arena for the presidential primary. To
Speaker 4: an extent, I think that's better than having Martin O'Malley,
Speaker 4: Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton and what Jim Gilmore, I mean,
Speaker 4: who name is Republican?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Web Bran yeah, and so okay.
Speaker 4: But at the same time, it's also very clearly for
Speaker 4: some people not about becoming president of the United States,
Speaker 4: and if it is, and they actually think, despite their
Speaker 4: obvious long shot odds, that it's worth them becoming president
Speaker 4: of the United States, it's just using our politics, using
Speaker 4: voter resources, using donor money for vanity projects. And I mean,
Speaker 4: I don't know that every donor, even like super wealthy ones,
Speaker 4: understand that.
Speaker 3: I don't know if has any money.
Speaker 4: But clearly it's just a profile raising thing because I've
Speaker 4: seen it happen again and again in these wide open primaries.
Speaker 4: I mean, it happened with THEMS in two thousand and four.
Speaker 4: People were able to raise their profiles. Bill Richardson like,
Speaker 4: this is like a real thing. Now, Yeah, people have learned,
Speaker 4: and it's not just Republicans, but it's really Republicans in
Speaker 4: the last ten years. So I think Suarez is just
Speaker 4: doing that and it's really unfortunate because it's a total
Speaker 4: waste of everyone's time. It's not actually contributing anything meaningful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's so much to be gained from just positioning
Speaker 1: yourself to be like a media figure, you know, like
Speaker 1: a conservative media darling, or like a frequent podcast guest.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot to be gained and frankly
Speaker 1: not a lot to be lost from just being like, sure,
Speaker 1: I'll throw my hat in the ring, Like I guess
Speaker 1: the thing that you could lose is like your dignity
Speaker 1: is what I've found out when like that's the really
Speaker 1: the only thing anyone now knows him for is going
Speaker 1: to be this moment of you know, just not knowing
Speaker 1: a basic fact that many many people know and that
Speaker 1: you certainly should have some idea of if you are
Speaker 1: serious about being commander in chief. I feel similarly to you, Emily.
Speaker 1: It's like I am all for if you feel like
Speaker 1: you have something to say, and you genuinely feel like,
Speaker 1: all right, even if I think the passive presidency is
Speaker 1: really challenging, Like I is something I can contribute to
Speaker 1: this conversation that's not being said. I can put pressure
Speaker 1: on the top contenders to come around to my view
Speaker 1: a bit more. Ron Paul's a great example. Mike Gravalla
Speaker 1: is a great example. Right then, yes, do it, even
Speaker 1: if it looks like a suicide mission.
Speaker 4: Even why Bernie ran, by the way, so that's exactly
Speaker 4: what happened.
Speaker 1: Is at work, that is correct. He thought he didn't
Speaker 1: really think he was going to have a shot at winning.
Speaker 1: You know, his campaign took off in a way that
Speaker 1: I think no one really expected. But he felt that
Speaker 1: there should be a left challenge to Hillary Clinton to
Speaker 1: put pressure on her, and obviously, you know, worked out
Speaker 1: and transform the country in a lot of ways. But
Speaker 1: even if you don't have that path to like Bernie stardom,
Speaker 1: it can be important to have those voices or issues
Speaker 1: that aren't being heard or aren't being talked about in
Speaker 1: certain ways. So I don't want to minimize that whatsoever.
Speaker 1: But you know, for some of these people, it's like
Speaker 1: you're not saying anything different, Like you're just saying the
Speaker 1: same thing that everybody else is saying. Your politics are
Speaker 1: you know, they're not challenging to anyone, they're not raising
Speaker 1: new issues. It really either seems completely delusional, which I
Speaker 1: do think that some of these people are egotistic and
Speaker 1: delusional and narcissistic enough to actually imagine that they really
Speaker 1: have a shot at it. So I would like to
Speaker 1: inhabit that mind for a day and like, know what
Speaker 1: what does that feel like to be that like super
Speaker 1: confident and anyway and just have that level of self delusion.
Speaker 1: I would like to know what that is like maybe
Speaker 1: people out there will be like you already have it anyway,
Speaker 1: So that's one one possibility. The other is, yeah, they
Speaker 1: just want to like, you know, get their Fox News
Speaker 1: gig or get their podcasts or you know, raise their
Speaker 1: media profile. And I don't know which categories are falls into,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's really particularly helpful. And this
Speaker 1: is one of the downsides of like the new media
Speaker 1: ecosystem is so much of our politics is about vibes
Speaker 1: and about branding, yeah, and not about substance, that it's
Speaker 1: like there's there's no barriers and there's no real downside
Speaker 1: to just taking this particular path.
Speaker 4: Well, and for me, it ends up feeling like so
Speaker 4: many different things these days where you just have people
Speaker 4: picking at the carcass of the country right that are
Speaker 4: just like profiting. It feels like total like late stage
Speaker 4: republic stuff.
Speaker 3: Where you're just having people picking at the.
Speaker 4: Carcass of a great country and using it for the
Speaker 4: personal profit. Because it's going it feels like it's going downhill.
Speaker 4: That's really pessimistic. I'm not saying that's definitely what happens.
Speaker 4: What's happening. I'm saying that's often what I feel like
Speaker 4: what's happening. And this is a great example of just
Speaker 4: somebody who's able to just field some like fu money
Speaker 4: from wealthy donors to launch a perspective or a silly
Speaker 4: bid that's really not intended to go anywhere, but waste
Speaker 4: you know, five hundred thousand dollar or whatever in the
Speaker 4: process because it's nothing to these donors who want to
Speaker 4: see him talking about crypto on a debate stage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean listen. On the other hand, that's probably
Speaker 1: why Trump ran too. There's like a brand makeping exercise, right,
Speaker 1: so and president of the United States. There's another sign
Speaker 1: of like the perils of our republic. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: fact that what should be the most serious responsibility of
Speaker 1: the citizenry, of the you know, of the public apparatus
Speaker 1: of the town square, which should be the most serious function,
Speaker 1: has just turned into this like clown show reality show
Speaker 1: is It's not a great sign, not a great sign
Speaker 1: for the future.
Speaker 3: Love reality TV? Don't love it?
Speaker 1: In the presidential election, yes, correct, let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: throw up on the screen where the Republican primary sits today,
Speaker 1: and then we have some news about our dear leader
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. You know, this is looking increasingly difficult for
Speaker 1: anyone not named Donald Trump to imagine themselves being able
Speaker 1: to overcome what are a lot of obstacles to their success.
Speaker 1: Trump in the morning Console Tracker is at fifty seven percent,
Speaker 1: Ronda Santis at nineteen percent, Mike Pennce at seven, the
Speaker 1: Vecroamaswami at six. It's a good showing for him. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's been I think, really successful at raising his profile
Speaker 1: in terms of that lane. Nicki Haley at three, Tim
Speaker 1: Scott at three, Chris Christy at two, Asa Hutchinson on
Speaker 1: the board at one. Sadly, my favorite candidate, Doug Bergham
Speaker 1: zero Suarez, the afore mentioned zero percent, Will Hurd who
Speaker 1: just jumped into the race zero percent, and someone else
Speaker 1: one percent. And I mean, listen, it's the argument for
Speaker 1: Rondosantis was like, once he gets in the race and
Speaker 1: he's actually going head to head against Donald Trump, things
Speaker 1: are going to change and he's gonna be able to
Speaker 1: consolidate the vote. And the fact that you now have
Speaker 1: Donald Trump routinely, not just in this pole, but in
Speaker 1: a lot of polls over fifty percent, it's hard to
Speaker 1: see how this works out without something that we don't
Speaker 1: expect happening. Which listen American politics, you.
Speaker 4: Never know, well, this is the big difference with twenty
Speaker 4: sixteen that these numbers, and this was consistent throughout the
Speaker 4: entire primary. When you looked at those numbers, it was
Speaker 4: really the other way around. You had Donald Trump. You know,
Speaker 4: if you put the five and six for Pence and
Speaker 4: Haley together with DeSantis as nineteen percent, he's somewhere around
Speaker 4: thirty percent in most polls, that was more what Donald
Speaker 4: Trump had and the other people were split with that
Speaker 4: fifty seven percent. So you had most Republican primary voters
Speaker 4: in twenty sixteen voting.
Speaker 3: For someone else.
Speaker 4: It was just that there was so much spread out
Speaker 4: between so many different people, and they didn't consolidate in
Speaker 4: the sort of Pete Klobuchar way that happened with.
Speaker 3: Democrats in twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: They never were able to do that, and so Donald
Speaker 4: Trump has this col lane. Now it's the exact opposite
Speaker 4: of that, where Trump is around sixty percent and there's
Speaker 4: just not that thirty percent is not going to be
Speaker 4: enough unless you really start to really, I mean, it's
Speaker 4: possible when we think about how there are you know,
Speaker 4: you have New Hampshire, you have Iowa of South Carolina.
Speaker 4: People get momentum if you know they have a really
Speaker 4: good ground game in Iowa. Ron DeSantis does have a
Speaker 4: good ground game in Iowa. Right, he wins Iowa.
Speaker 3: I think Ted Cruz won Iowa. I mean, like this
Speaker 3: is it's not your shoeing.
Speaker 4: But that can change momentum, it can change money, it
Speaker 4: can change to the media conversation. So again, nothing is impossible,
Speaker 4: but this trajectory where you have Donald Trump sitting that
Speaker 4: high not great for anyone else.
Speaker 1: It's one thing when you're saying, all right, if I
Speaker 1: just consolidate everyone who's like not even not anti Trump,
Speaker 1: but who's like anti Trump, curious, like interested in Leo's
Speaker 1: maybe go in a different direction, then I can pull
Speaker 1: it off. Because you could imagine that, right, You can
Speaker 1: imagine these other Doug Bergram and Chris Christy or whatever.
Speaker 1: You can imagine them falling to the wayside and you
Speaker 1: being able to consolidate that vote. It's a whole different
Speaker 1: beast when you're talking about I got to actually take
Speaker 1: away from people who affirmatively are saying like, nah, I'm
Speaker 1: with Trump right now. That's a different animal. And I
Speaker 1: think kind of in a show of force, right, now
Speaker 1: the Trump operation is moving swiftly to effectively rig the
Speaker 1: rules of the primary and rejigger the order of the
Speaker 1: states and whether their primaries or caucuses in order to
Speaker 1: best benefit. In their opinion, the former present put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen. Interesting report here from Reuters. They
Speaker 1: say Trump team lobbying for primary rule changes to boost
Speaker 1: his twenty twenty four chances. They talk a lot about Nevada,
Speaker 1: in particular, where they want it to be a caucus
Speaker 1: instead of a primary. Their analysis is that they think
Speaker 1: caucuses are better for Trump because his people are more committed,
Speaker 1: so they're more likely show up. Caucuses obviously lower turnout
Speaker 1: because it's more effortful than just going and casting your ballot.
Speaker 1: The Desanta's campaign they don't necessarily agree with this, though,
Speaker 1: Emily they think that because they're based and this to
Speaker 1: me was an interesting admission, they think because their base
Speaker 1: is wealthier and higher education, that they'll have more free
Speaker 1: time to go and show up at a caucus, so
Speaker 1: they actually aren't sure that this is bad for them.
Speaker 1: But Trump is also moving to push pro Trump states
Speaker 1: earlier in the process so that he can sort of
Speaker 1: close the door on any of his rivals. Ron DeSantis
Speaker 1: in particular early on. And I think there's a couple
Speaker 1: things to note here. Number one, as I said, show
Speaker 1: of strength, because Trump does have a lot of loyal
Speaker 1: allies in a lot of these states. So this is
Speaker 1: what comes from I'm in president of the United States,
Speaker 1: from having this infrastructure sort of like and true believers
Speaker 1: set up ready to go for you to go to
Speaker 1: them and say, hey, this is what I want. They're like, yes, Sarah,
Speaker 1: we'll do it. The other thing that I think is interesting,
Speaker 1: and we had a reporter on that mentioned this as well,
Speaker 1: is Trump's campaigns previously not known as like a model
Speaker 1: of organizational glory, you know. Twenty sixteen famously was like
Speaker 1: chewing gum and duct tape. Basically it was less a
Speaker 1: campaign than sort of a traveling rock concert or something
Speaker 1: like that. Twenty twenty they had huge issues with I'm
Speaker 1: forgetting what was the name of the campaign manager that
Speaker 1: like blew all their money and like that was kind
Speaker 1: of a mess as well. This time it seems like
Speaker 1: they have a more competent campaign team. Like this is
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that a well oiled political machine
Speaker 1: is on top of, and they appear to actually be
Speaker 1: on top of it, much to many people's shock at surprise.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then there's always that question of if that
Speaker 4: blows back on Donald Trump in any way. I don't know,
Speaker 4: because consultants can, you know, professional dec consultants can. Obviously
Speaker 4: they do in questionable decisions, which is what some folks
Speaker 4: are wondering when it comes to DeSantis right now. But
Speaker 4: this is the kind of stuff that professional campaigns and
Speaker 4: the like political attorneys know how to do, and if
Speaker 4: you don't have that, you're obviously always going to be
Speaker 4: at a disadvantage. It's one of the annoying things about
Speaker 4: our politics actually is that you have to pay money
Speaker 4: to hire people to sort of do this stuff for you,
Speaker 4: which is like lobbying for rules changes.
Speaker 3: It's ridiculous.
Speaker 4: But it is a sign that that that is definitely
Speaker 4: a difference between twenty sixteen Trump and twenty twenty four Trump.
Speaker 4: Also twenty twenty Trump is that you just didn't have
Speaker 4: the exact same level of like professional politicos attached to
Speaker 4: the operation you had Paul.
Speaker 1: Manniford, right. Yeah, So, and I don't think that anyone
Speaker 1: would be under an illusion that the consultants who are
Speaker 1: attached to the Trump campaign are going to be able
Speaker 1: to reign in Donald Trump, right, because many have tried and.
Speaker 3: It just let Trump that Trump.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that part is not going to work out. So
Speaker 1: if they can still listen, it's not my cup of tea.
Speaker 1: But they're a lot of people who love Trump's unvarnished
Speaker 1: like he's a legitimately hilarious person unfortunately as well. So
Speaker 1: if he maintains that and they also have an effective organization,
Speaker 1: listen again, I think that's going to be pretty tough
Speaker 1: to be.
Speaker 4: Let's move on to my favorite block maybe ever, which
Speaker 4: is just called men on the screen. Just men.
Speaker 1: We just don't know. We've put this in the D block.
Speaker 3: This is in the D block.
Speaker 4: This is the right And we did, of course consult McGriffin,
Speaker 4: the extraordinary production team here for their thoughts. Yeah, the study,
Speaker 4: and Crystal actually has some thoughts to include from one
Speaker 4: of her offspring.
Speaker 3: Yes, comes to men, but let's put let's go ahead.
Speaker 4: And put d one up on the screen. This is
Speaker 4: from studyfines dot org. They right, Modern men are now
Speaker 4: just as likely as women to openly display a sensitive side,
Speaker 4: according to a new survey. The poll of two thousand
Speaker 4: adults find seventy one percent of men confessed to being
Speaker 4: in touch with how they feel, compared to eighty two
Speaker 4: percent of women. So pretty close they're across all respondents
Speaker 4: who consider themselves sense that forty one percent outwardly show
Speaker 4: this side of their personality quote often.
Speaker 3: Or quote early always.
Speaker 4: A third think being in tune with how they feel
Speaker 4: is the sign of a good leader. While of thirty
Speaker 4: seven percent of men would consider being called quote sensitive
Speaker 4: a compliment, only twenty three percent of women feel the
Speaker 4: same way. In fact, twenty four percent of women in
Speaker 4: the survey would feel insulted if someone referred to them
Speaker 4: that way. Now, the study I found this actually pretty.
Speaker 3: Amusing, was commissioned.
Speaker 4: By a Vino and it found fifty five percent think
Speaker 4: others men who openly show their sensitive side make them
Speaker 4: more likable. And the research found forty eight percent of
Speaker 4: respondents believe it's more socially acceptable for women to show
Speaker 4: their sensitive.
Speaker 3: Side that men.
Speaker 4: That's not entirely surprising. Yeah, I mean, none of this
Speaker 4: is super shocking to me. It does feel like a shift,
Speaker 4: of course, but one that's somewhat predictable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought one of the most interesting I thought,
Speaker 1: I wonder what you think about this is They said
Speaker 1: thirty seven percent of men would consider being called sensitive
Speaker 1: a compliment, whereas only twenty three percent of women feel
Speaker 1: the same way. In fact, twenty four percent of women
Speaker 1: in the survey would feel insulted if someone referred to
Speaker 1: them in this way. But I sort of think that
Speaker 1: that's justified because I do feel like if you call
Speaker 1: a woman sensitive, it is kind of more of a
Speaker 1: slight whereas if you call a man sensitive, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's like in touch with his feelings, he's very sweet
Speaker 1: and he's sensitive, you know. So I sort of feel
Speaker 1: like that's a legitimate way to view it, that the
Speaker 1: word is a little gendered in the way that it
Speaker 1: is applied.
Speaker 3: What do you think?
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I agree with that, And I think it's
Speaker 4: we have these we've sort of tried for some really
Speaker 4: good reasons to walk away from the excesses or the
Speaker 4: stereotypical traits associated with both sexes. So yeah, overt masculinity
Speaker 4: is now has now been like pinned to toxic masculinity,
Speaker 4: and over femininity has been pinned to like what Cheryl
Speaker 4: Sandberg would you know, and probably not personally described, but
Speaker 4: implicitly sort of cast as a weakness in the workplace,
Speaker 4: et et cetera. And so you see people now increasingly
Speaker 4: finding that as like actually offensive because it's been associated with,
Speaker 4: you know, in some degrees if women want to you know,
Speaker 4: I don't know, like if you're in the workforce, then
Speaker 4: men are going to obviously make sensitivity probably a negative
Speaker 4: trait for women.
Speaker 3: Right, which is not right, but like that's what's going
Speaker 3: to happen.
Speaker 4: And so you see this like walking away from that
Speaker 4: on both from both sexes.
Speaker 3: That's really actually fascinating.
Speaker 1: It kind of reminds me of some of the research
Speaker 1: about how when women take time off from work to
Speaker 1: like go to their kids ballet recital or be soccer
Speaker 1: coach or whatever, it's held against her. Where's when men
Speaker 1: do it. It's like look at that great dad. Wow, what
Speaker 1: a great what a great guy, so involved in his
Speaker 1: own children's lives. Right, So I do think like that's
Speaker 1: tied to this sensitivity conversation. There was another stat here
Speaker 1: that was surprising to me. Take all this with the
Speaker 1: great assault, but there was a survey in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one of over two thousand people, so it's not a
Speaker 1: super small sample or anything that found men cry on
Speaker 1: app about four times a month. That seems like a lot, right,
Speaker 1: that seems like a lot. It was actually more than
Speaker 1: women reported crying. And this is all self reported. They
Speaker 1: women weep about three times in a given month. Men
Speaker 1: weave at about four times in a given month. That's
Speaker 1: forty eight times a year for men and only thirty
Speaker 1: six for women. This is the piece I asked my
Speaker 1: fifteen year old, who you know is in touch with it,
Speaker 1: the young gents and the upcoming generation, the gen z vibes,
Speaker 1: and also it is just legitimately hilarious person And she said,
Speaker 1: she texted me they need to cry more, complain less,
Speaker 1: and start fewer podcasts. That was her analysis of all
Speaker 1: of this.
Speaker 3: Genuinely wanted on one of these mugs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, seriously, she's amazing. But I have to say, like,
Speaker 1: there's there's a fine line emily between like, you know,
Speaker 1: not just shoving your feelings down, not feeling like you
Speaker 1: have to put up some brave front all the time
Speaker 1: and toxically masculine however you want to find, like there's
Speaker 1: a fine line between it's fine for men to have feelings,
Speaker 1: to show feelings and be themselves and all that stuff
Speaker 1: and being overly self indulgent, and I honestly don't even
Speaker 1: feel like that's a male female conversation. I also feel
Speaker 1: like there's just like a little bit of that generationally,
Speaker 1: where there's so much emphasis on like working on yourself
Speaker 1: and self care. Can it can go from being a
Speaker 1: good thing which is beneficial to pay attention to yourself
Speaker 1: and what's going on and feel comfortable if your emotions
Speaker 1: and be able to work through those things, et cetera,
Speaker 1: and just like a narcissistic self involved tendency that ends
Speaker 1: up being a burden on the people around you. To mean,
Speaker 1: there's a fine line between those things. And got to say,
Speaker 1: weeping four times a month feels like it's over that line.
Speaker 1: Just to be totally real, not to go all and
Speaker 1: entertained here, but that feels like it's a little over
Speaker 1: the line. That's a.
Speaker 3: I don't think I cry four times. I don't think
Speaker 3: I cry once.
Speaker 1: I do cry once a month, there's no doubt about it. Well,
Speaker 1: and here's the other thing.
Speaker 3: I like to cry a lot, but I don't know
Speaker 3: that I cry once some month.
Speaker 1: Here's the other thing. I want to know what counts
Speaker 1: as crying, because listen, you put up, even just like
Speaker 1: a stupid television commercial about like kids and something sentimental.
Speaker 1: I am a sucker. I will tear up over anything. Yes,
Speaker 1: my kids dance recital, right or her little kindergarten graduate.
Speaker 1: Forget it, like I'm done, you know, But is just
Speaker 1: like welling up? Is that considered crying or are we
Speaker 1: talking about like a real proper cry with you know,
Speaker 1: some breathing and sobbing or whatever. It's what are we
Speaker 1: What are we talking about here? Because do I well
Speaker 1: up like that emotionally three times a month? Probably?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Probably, yeah, I would say so do I actually like
Speaker 1: have a full on I don't remember the last time
Speaker 1: I had like a full on cry?
Speaker 3: You know, No, I don't either. I can't.
Speaker 4: But this is another thing that's interesting. It goes to
Speaker 4: exactly what we were talking about earlier. Are men self
Speaker 4: reporting more crying than they actually do, because it's like
Speaker 4: proving a point that that is socially rewarded now right,
Speaker 4: that you're not you're not toxically masculine, You're somebody who.
Speaker 1: Is sensitive, which for men insteadive yeah they see it
Speaker 1: more is a good thing.
Speaker 4: And are women men under reporting the crying? And that's
Speaker 4: like One of the reasons that I find the Sheryl
Speaker 4: Sandberg sort of approach to femininity and I find the
Speaker 4: like toxic masculinity conversation frustrating is because.
Speaker 3: The reason I think women do belong in the workforce
Speaker 3: is that men and women are different.
Speaker 4: I think that's actually great, and the reason that women
Speaker 4: should be in the work.
Speaker 1: Force, it only comes out in favor of women in
Speaker 1: the work force. Listen, Bob Shell.
Speaker 4: Controversial stuff, I know, as two of us sit here,
Speaker 4: but like the reason for that and a reason that
Speaker 4: like I actually have argued conservatives should prioritize, for.
Speaker 3: Instance, putting a woman on the Supreme Court.
Speaker 4: More controversial opinions is that men and women are different.
Speaker 4: That has particularly political that has political salience, but it
Speaker 4: also has saliens in the workplace, and women's sensitivity makes
Speaker 4: them good workers. Men's stoicism makes them good workers. You
Speaker 4: contribute different things to the table. And yet there are
Speaker 4: women who probably could use a little bit more stoicism
Speaker 4: in the workforce.
Speaker 3: We've all worked with them.
Speaker 4: But there are also men that could use a little
Speaker 4: bit more sensitivity in the workforce. And so but on average,
Speaker 4: those differences are helpful and important and it's just frustrating
Speaker 4: that we're all now trying to prove we can be
Speaker 4: you know, more than toxic masculine, toxically masculine or feminine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Cheryl Sandberg point is a good one. And listen,
Speaker 1: obviously we're talking about averages here. There are women that
Speaker 1: are more on like what would be the traditionally male
Speaker 1: idea of you know, characteristics and personality traits of the spectrum.
Speaker 1: There are men who are more on it, and all
Speaker 1: of that is fine, right, and it's just within the
Speaker 1: range of human differences, and it's all while I'm good,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I read that leading Cheryl Sandberg book and
Speaker 1: you respised it.
Speaker 3: No, you were inspired.
Speaker 1: That was inspired, and it's how I got to where
Speaker 1: I am now.
Speaker 3: Hillage American culture and build a mansion.
Speaker 1: It was the it was the perfect It was the
Speaker 1: perfect symbol of like that moment in feminism where first
Speaker 1: of all it was just all about like representation in
Speaker 1: the C suite, right, which is also really inapplicable to
Speaker 1: almost all women, right, is like most of why employ
Speaker 1: workers too, Yeah, exactly, Like we can be the head
Speaker 1: of horrific systems as well of oppression, no problem, but
Speaker 1: it really did. The research that went into it, and
Speaker 1: what she was advocating for was basically like, forget about
Speaker 1: who you are and how you would naturally operate in
Speaker 1: the workplace, and do it more like the men like,
Speaker 1: just embrace it's a male environment. You just got to
Speaker 1: deal with it, and so embrace all the male characteristics
Speaker 1: and just like fit yourself into that mold, even if
Speaker 1: that's wildly not who you are. And so I do
Speaker 1: think that having understands that there are some natural differences
Speaker 1: and that those differences bolster each other rather than you know,
Speaker 1: being in competition or undercutting each other, et cetera, I
Speaker 1: think that's a good thing. But yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess overall, to take it back to this, do I
Speaker 1: think is a good thing that men feel more comfortable
Speaker 1: expressing their feelings and they don't feel so like boxed
Speaker 1: in et cetera. Yes, but I think for men and
Speaker 1: women keep in mind the balance between overly self indulgent
Speaker 1: and narcissistic tendencies and you know, and just like a
Speaker 1: healthy acceptance of one's feelings, do we.
Speaker 3: Can just stop trying to prove ourselves.
Speaker 4: Speaking of actual toxic masculinity, let's move on to the
Speaker 4: next blood.
Speaker 3: Actually a pretty pretty big development.
Speaker 4: Whether you agree with the conclusions or not, it's it's
Speaker 4: pretty i think, monumental that the Justice Department finally released this.
Speaker 4: We can put e one up on the screen. This
Speaker 4: is from the New York Times. As you see, report
Speaker 4: on Epstein's death finds errors and mismanagement at Manhattan Jail. Now,
Speaker 4: of course we have all known about the errors and
Speaker 4: mismanagement at the Manhattan Jail. That Jeffrey Epstein was found,
Speaker 4: as they say, dead in his cell with a bedshape
Speaker 4: tied around his back in twenty nineteen, So this.
Speaker 3: Four years ago.
Speaker 4: Now, by the way, this is the New York Times.
Speaker 4: They say he was died by suicide, not foul play,
Speaker 4: after a cascade of negligence and mismanagement at the now
Speaker 4: shuttered Federal Germ Manhattan, where he was housed, according to
Speaker 4: the Justice Department's Inspector General. So an Inspector General report
Speaker 4: came out yesterday they say, quote after years long investigation,
Speaker 4: the IG said that leaders and staff members at the
Speaker 4: jail created an environment in which mister Epstein had every
Speaker 4: opportunity to kill himself.
Speaker 3: Really no kidding.
Speaker 4: The IG, Michael Horowitz a name that might be familiar
Speaker 4: to you, referred to employees, including one supervisor, for criminal
Speaker 4: prosecution by the US Attorney for the Southern District of
Speaker 4: New York after they were caught falsifying records, but prosecutors
Speaker 4: declined to bring charges. The report said, So, note right there,
Speaker 4: they're recommending criminal prosecution for record falsification, and then the
Speaker 4: charges are declined to be brought. So you have records
Speaker 4: being falsified when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein, arge just
Speaker 4: declining to be brought when it comes to those falsified records.
Speaker 4: And the IG continues this from the New York Times,
Speaker 4: they say, IG says that staff members at the jail
Speaker 4: quote engaged in significant misconduct and dereliction of their duties.
Speaker 4: And this is investigators who apparently come through one hundred
Speaker 4: thousand records and did dozens of interviews, quote, did not
Speaker 4: uncover evidence, according to the IG, that contradicted the fbis
Speaker 4: finding that mister Epstein had died by his own hand
Speaker 4: with a makeshift news. Now that is very different than
Speaker 4: saying he definitely died with a makeshift news. That's saying
Speaker 4: you don't have evidence to contradict the FBI's finding right, like,
Speaker 4: you're not meeting the preponderance of evidence or whatever standard
Speaker 4: that they use. And we've all known again about as
Speaker 4: Bill Barr said, these quote serious irregularities.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is a pattern.
Speaker 4: Obviously going back to two thousand and seven, two thousand
Speaker 4: and seven of law enforcement irregularities as it comes to
Speaker 4: Jeffrey Epstein. So where you have I think some of
Speaker 4: the media establishments circulating this as sort of the final
Speaker 4: nail in the coffin of Epstein conspiracy theories that IG
Speaker 4: themselves came out, this raise continues to raise even more questions.
Speaker 4: And again in IG that's the government sort of internal
Speaker 4: audit system. You have government folks go through the government's
Speaker 4: records and are supposed to hold the government to account.
Speaker 4: Sometimes IG's can be sort of the whitewashing force, where
Speaker 4: they sort of have this what's the best way to
Speaker 4: put it, They'll have this kind of smoke screen, like
Speaker 4: we did find some things wrong, but the thing that
Speaker 4: you think was really wrong that we can't really prove,
Speaker 4: so like just forget about that. That's how I'm reading
Speaker 4: this IG report and the coverage of it. Again, I'm
Speaker 4: not saying definitively one thing happened or the other.
Speaker 3: Right, this definitely isn't either.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think this is going to put to
Speaker 1: bit the conspiracy theories. No hot take there. I thought
Speaker 1: this language was interesting, they say. Listen. They found no
Speaker 1: evidence of a plan to kill mister Rabstein, however, described
Speaker 1: a remarkable, at times unexplained succession of circumstances that made
Speaker 1: it easy for him to kill himself. For reasons that
Speaker 1: remain unclear, the jail staff members allow mister Epstein to
Speaker 1: hord extra blankets, linen's betting, and clothing, even though he
Speaker 1: had already tried to hang himself earlier, so they knew
Speaker 1: this man was on suicide watch. They knew that he
Speaker 1: had literally tried to hang himself before, and they're still like,
Speaker 1: here's some extra blankets. Yeah, here's some extra sheets, and
Speaker 1: that's what he ends up using to hang himself. Also
Speaker 1: thought this was interesting. They spoke to a former cellmate
Speaker 1: of Epstein who said that he would threaten staff members
Speaker 1: at the jail sort of try to throw his political
Speaker 1: weight around still even while he's an inmate, and he
Speaker 1: would tell staff members that he was going to report them,
Speaker 1: and they were sort of afraid of him, and so,
Speaker 1: according again to this former cellmate, he said that led
Speaker 1: them to relax some restrictions, such as a prohibition against
Speaker 1: keeping pens. Pens can be used as a weapon in
Speaker 1: certain circumstances as well, and this former cellmate had said
Speaker 1: he was so concerned about Epstein killing himself that he
Speaker 1: literally I'm like, please don't kill yourself. And Epstein was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to so listen. With this case, I
Speaker 1: guess there would be nothing that would surprise me. Is
Speaker 1: it crazy for me to imagine that the Pure prisons
Speaker 1: is such a cesspool and so poorly managed that even
Speaker 1: someone who is as high profile as Jeffrey Epstein literally
Speaker 1: maybe one of the most notorious inmates at the time,
Speaker 1: that they would be so laxed that they're lying on
Speaker 1: their records. You know, that may have just been routine
Speaker 1: for these prison guards that they were, you know, always
Speaker 1: saying that they were doing the rounds when they really
Speaker 1: were just like sleeping and hanging out and doing nothing.
Speaker 1: That they would not follow protocol even when there was
Speaker 1: such a clear suicide threat, that wouldn't shock me. It
Speaker 1: also wouldn't shock me if there were other nefarious things
Speaker 1: afoot because of who this man is and what he
Speaker 1: was into and what he knew on so many powerful people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, I think, you know, irregularities obviously do happen,
Speaker 4: but this is a case again where there's a pattern
Speaker 4: of irregularity dating back with his relationship with law enforcement
Speaker 4: at least like two thousand and seven. And so at
Speaker 4: that point, when you have so many regularities and very
Speaker 4: obvious connections to intelligence like this is reported out, Yeah,
Speaker 4: that combination of things puts you at a really obvious place,
Speaker 4: which is there's something deeper happening here. And another interesting
Speaker 4: thing I think about this is the way, you know,
Speaker 4: usually conspiracies aren't really conspiracies, they're incompetence. This case, I
Speaker 4: think is actually probably there was some type of conspiratorial
Speaker 4: behavior happening on behalf of the government, happened on behalf
Speaker 4: of different interests, And the way that is actually pulled
Speaker 4: off is people don't know, like only very few people know,
Speaker 4: and we've seen that be the case. So it makes
Speaker 4: perfect sense that you'd have some people at the prison
Speaker 4: worried about Epstein killing himself and taking some steps to
Speaker 4: make sure that Jeffrey Epstein doesn't kill himself, and then
Speaker 4: we just find out not all of those steps were
Speaker 4: taken by every person, and that's where you end up
Speaker 4: having to falsify records and not prosecute people for the
Speaker 4: falsification of those records because who knows what comes out
Speaker 4: in that trial. So again, this pattern I think is
Speaker 4: abundantly clear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's well said. All right, Emily, what
Speaker 1: are you looking at all? Right?
Speaker 4: Well, I actually want to start by putting this headline
Speaker 4: up on the screen. This is from the Washington Post,
Speaker 4: and you may actually be relieved by what you see
Speaker 4: or what you're hearing, So I just want to warn
Speaker 4: you that it could be false.
Speaker 3: Hope. Ex Congresswoman Liz Cheney says this tweet from the Washington.
Speaker 4: Post offered a blunt assessment of her former profession Monday Night.
Speaker 3: Quote, what we've done in our politics.
Speaker 4: Is create a situation where we're electing idiots. I know,
Speaker 4: it's perfect, right, Liz Cheney has finally come to the realization,
Speaker 4: has finally had a glimmer of self awareness about her family.
Speaker 3: Of course, I'm.
Speaker 4: Kidding, she's talking about other people. She's not one of
Speaker 4: the idiots. She would never count herself among this class
Speaker 4: of idiots, which absolutely exists. Actually, at the Federalists for
Speaker 4: a while we had stickers with a great Bendominich quote
Speaker 4: that said, consider the possibility we are led by idiots.
Speaker 4: That doesn't just apply to government, that also applies to
Speaker 4: the business sector, the media sector.
Speaker 3: It's all true across the board.
Speaker 4: And lest you think Liz Cheney has finally come down
Speaker 4: and realized it and is ready to grapple with it
Speaker 4: and come on breaking points and talk to Sager and
Speaker 4: Crystal about why it is that we keep electing idiots
Speaker 4: like herself, No, it's everyone else as an idiot.
Speaker 3: And she was in.
Speaker 4: This came from a conversation that she had on Monday
Speaker 4: night at the ninety second Street Why in New York City.
Speaker 4: It was moderated by David Rubinstein, who asked basically if
Speaker 4: she would be interested in running as an independent, not
Speaker 4: as a Republican, but as an independent next year for
Speaker 4: president if she was hypothetically given data polling information that
Speaker 4: showed her run would hurt Trump. And she replied kind
Speaker 4: of cryptically, she said, quote, look, I think that the
Speaker 4: country right now faces hugely chaled, challenging and fundamentally important issues,
Speaker 4: and what we've done in our politics is create a
Speaker 4: situation where we're electing idiots.
Speaker 3: The audience laughs.
Speaker 4: According to the post, so Cheney continues, I don't look
Speaker 4: at it through the lens of is this what I
Speaker 4: should or what I shouldn't do. I look at it
Speaker 4: through the lens of how do we elect serious people?
Speaker 4: And I think electing serious people can't be partisan, you know,
Speaker 4: because of the situation that we're in, She adds, where
Speaker 4: we have a major party candidate who's trying to unravel
Speaker 4: our democracy. And I don't say that lightly. We have
Speaker 4: to think about, all right, what kinds of alliances are
Speaker 4: necessary to defeat him? And those are the alliances we've
Speaker 4: got to build across party lines.
Speaker 3: This is a great example.
Speaker 4: When people in Washington talk about by partisanship, what they
Speaker 4: generally mean is grift and corruption. Now that isn't to
Speaker 4: mean bipartisanship doesn't have benefits. Of course it does. We're
Speaker 4: here on a show called Counterpoints that is predicated on
Speaker 4: the notion there is good conversations and constructive conversations that
Speaker 4: can have that can be had across sort of the
Speaker 4: ideological divide, and in fact are necessary to have, But
Speaker 4: what Liz Cheney wants is the exact opposite of that.
Speaker 4: She believes in bipartisanship for the sake of punching down
Speaker 4: at any threats to the political establishment, which is why
Speaker 4: she now has to deem everyone else an idiot who
Speaker 4: could possibly possibly come with a challenge to her position
Speaker 4: on this. And I actually think it's really funny where
Speaker 4: she says, particularly quote, I think electing serious people can't
Speaker 4: be partisan. This is a woman who hired an ABC
Speaker 4: producer to create a spectacle about the January six hearings,
Speaker 4: and by the way, as somebody who was covering January
Speaker 4: six on the ground, and it was one of the
Speaker 4: craziest things I've ever seen, one of the most tragic
Speaker 4: things I've ever seen. For a number of reasons. I
Speaker 4: thought the idea that she would intentionally orchestrate a media
Speaker 4: circus around those hearings, which should have been very serious,
Speaker 4: should have genuinely been bipartisan and not by partisan, with
Speaker 4: Adam Kinsinger and Liz Cheney being your Republicans on the committee,
Speaker 4: but actually allowing different voices.
Speaker 3: To come in.
Speaker 4: Because we've seen as much as you believe Republicans may
Speaker 4: have run in the wrong direction when it comes to
Speaker 4: J six so have Democrats. And there are serious things
Speaker 4: that should be discussed when it comes to the FBI,
Speaker 4: serious things that should be discussed when it comes to
Speaker 4: electoral law and whether or not anybody should be challenging it,
Speaker 4: whether it's Democrats in twenty sixteen or Republicans in twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: But being serious is not hiring an ABC producer and
Speaker 4: intentionally scripting producing congressional hearings in prime time to be
Speaker 4: what she turned them into, which was not serious at all,
Speaker 4: And that she now has the audacity to say it's unseerious,
Speaker 4: that everyone else is unserious, but her that she is
Speaker 4: the arbiter of what constitutes seriousness and politics is laughable.
Speaker 4: But I also wanted to zero in on her talking
Speaker 4: about this major party candidate who's trying to quote unravel
Speaker 4: our democracy, unravel our democracy coming from Liz Cheney, the daughter.
Speaker 3: Of you know who. She's the daughter of.
Speaker 4: The one in on Linden Cheney, the architect of our
Speaker 4: policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, or one of the leading
Speaker 4: architects of our policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, which she
Speaker 4: has defended to say that somebody who's actually tried to
Speaker 4: unravel those wars or to end those wars, is the
Speaker 4: greatest threat to our democracy or is a threat that
Speaker 4: is going to unravel our democracy. Maybe that's that's true.
Speaker 4: Maybe you can make that argument about Donald Trump. You
Speaker 4: know who doesn't have a leg to stand on when
Speaker 4: it comes to making that argument is Liz Cheney. Because
Speaker 4: things that actually do also unravel our democracy, our constitutional,
Speaker 4: republican system of government are wars that are not properly predicated,
Speaker 4: where you send working classmen to die thousands of miles
Speaker 4: away for a lie.
Speaker 3: That is a threat to our democracy.
Speaker 4: So for Liz Cheney then to beginning these positive this
Speaker 4: positive coverage in the Washington Post and the New York
Speaker 4: Times and wherever else she gets quoted, to be at
Speaker 4: the ninety second and why the ninety second won't and
Speaker 4: to be at the ninety second street why in New
Speaker 4: York having this interview is pretty interesting too, because that's
Speaker 4: where oftentimes you see like media elites congregate and do
Speaker 4: these high profile conversations where they're very thoughtful and the
Speaker 4: NPR tote bag crowd can come and feel serious for
Speaker 4: a night. That is a statement on how absurd the
Speaker 4: political establishment in this country is that when they decide
Speaker 4: the Iraq war has gone really badly, they'll sort of
Speaker 4: be they'll sort of turn on it, right, but they
Speaker 4: they'll push it and then turn on it. They'll help
Speaker 4: the intelligence community float bad information that predicates a war,
Speaker 4: and then when it starts to go poorly, turn on
Speaker 4: on the war, turn on George W.
Speaker 3: Bush.
Speaker 4: But then when Donald Trump comes along and someone wants
Speaker 4: to go after him as the sort of blunt force object,
Speaker 4: the media is suddenly not just going to treat them
Speaker 4: as a utility, but actually say fet them and say
Speaker 4: that this is a serious person, like this person does
Speaker 4: have the moral standing, And in this case, what she's
Speaker 4: saying is essentially what she wants to do to our democracy,
Speaker 4: to the sort of republican system of government, is create
Speaker 4: threats from normal Americans who disagree with the political establishment,
Speaker 4: spy on them, and start more wars. So it sounds
Speaker 4: very serious to me, just not in the way that
Speaker 4: she thinks it is. By the way, it also sounds
Speaker 4: very idiotic to me, just not in the way she
Speaker 4: thinks it is.
Speaker 3: Crystal. The audacity of lis Cheney and the audacity of
Speaker 3: Crystal what have you got for us today.
Speaker 1: Well, guys, the commercial real estate crash may well be
Speaker 1: upon us. Now, let's take a look at what is
Speaker 1: coming out of New York City in terms of latest
Speaker 1: sales statistics. Put this first tweet up on the screen.
Speaker 6: Guys.
Speaker 1: So in New York, according to important Financial Times, buildings
Speaker 1: are selling for less than the value of the land
Speaker 1: that they sit on. We are seeing prices lower than
Speaker 1: they have been in twenty years. Imagine if your home
Speaker 1: value declined, like lost all of its value that was
Speaker 1: obtained over the last twenty years. I'm not sure people
Speaker 1: have come to terms with how long the storm will
Speaker 1: hover and how much damage it will do. Go ahead
Speaker 1: and put this full Financial Times report up on the
Speaker 1: screen because I want to get into a bit of
Speaker 1: this now. This is a topic that Soccer and I've
Speaker 1: been talking about for a little while, as did a monologue.
Speaker 1: I look back about a month and a half ago
Speaker 1: about this coming financial storm. Well, Financial Times headline here
Speaker 1: is pretty dire. They say, financial storm bears down on
Speaker 1: us commercial real estate. Long awaited reckoning arrives as building
Speaker 1: loans come due at a time of scarcer credit. They
Speaker 1: take a look at a twenty twenty story tower at
Speaker 1: five twenty nine Fifth Avenue that they say stands out
Speaker 1: from the other buildings around Grand Central Station for the
Speaker 1: surreal pink designs of an Alice in Wonderland inspired art
Speaker 1: exhibit installed to fill vacant retail space on its ground floor.
Speaker 1: It's also remarkable as one among a small number of
Speaker 1: towers that have recently changed hands, giving a clue as
Speaker 1: the value of Manhattan's older offices now that the commercial
Speaker 1: real estate sector has emerged from a historic era of
Speaker 1: ultra cheap money. Silver Sign Properties sold the building three
Speaker 1: months ago for one hundred and five million dollars in
Speaker 1: price per square foot terms. That was even less than
Speaker 1: a plot of land across the street commanded in just
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen. There's some incredible detail here, but we went
Speaker 1: over this recently of some of the factors that led
Speaker 1: to this, and just to remind folks, there's a lot
Speaker 1: going on here. First of all, just as the housing
Speaker 1: market has been massively impacted and affordability massively impacted by
Speaker 1: FED rate hikes, the same thing is happening here with
Speaker 1: commercial real estate. Furthermore, you have what has been described
Speaker 1: as a wall of debt one point five trillion dollars
Speaker 1: of debt that is coming due on these commercial real
Speaker 1: estate properties in just the next few years. So if
Speaker 1: you had these mortgages, these loans at very low interest rates,
Speaker 1: and now you're in a position where you have to
Speaker 1: refinance and the rate has gone way way up, it's
Speaker 1: going to be tough for a lot of people to
Speaker 1: be able to make that work. Some of that bill
Speaker 1: is coming due now. By the way, overwhelmingly that one
Speaker 1: point five trillion dollars in debt is hold held by
Speaker 1: small and medium banks, which, as we know from the
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley bank collapse and several other bank collapse have
Speaker 1: been under tremendous pressure also because of the FED interest
Speaker 1: rate hikes. So we've already seen banks moving to get
Speaker 1: out of commercial real estate and to try to sell
Speaker 1: off their portfolio, even at a loss, to try to
Speaker 1: get ahead of this coming reckoning. But the big story
Speaker 1: here is remote work. During the pandemic, you know, workers
Speaker 1: forced to work from home. Now many of them do not,
Speaker 1: for good reason, want to come back to the office
Speaker 1: or want to come back to the office full time.
Speaker 1: So you have all of this vacant office space, especially
Speaker 1: in New York, especially in San Francisco is probably the
Speaker 1: hardest hit of all cities, also in LA but really
Speaker 1: in cities across the country where you just don't need
Speaker 1: nearly as much office space as you did just a
Speaker 1: few years ago. So some of the estimates are that
Speaker 1: office space valuations could drop by as much as forty percent.
Speaker 1: What that means to give you a few of the
Speaker 1: numbers here in terms of you know, how many workers
Speaker 1: are working remote and how quickly this has dramatically shifted.
Speaker 1: Back in twenty eighteen, you only had six percent of
Speaker 1: workers nationwide who were working remote. In twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: you have more than a quarter, So twenty six percent
Speaker 1: of workers who are now working remote. Sixty six percent
Speaker 1: of workers work from home at least some of the time.
Speaker 1: As I said before, this obviously had a huge impact
Speaker 1: on office space. Less than half of offices are occupied nationwide,
Speaker 1: less than half. Back just a few years ago, occupancy
Speaker 1: rates were in the ninety percentile. So this is radically
Speaker 1: different from what we've seen. You know, to go back
Speaker 1: to the Financial Times report that was specific to New York,
Speaker 1: there was one one analyst there who was asked I
Speaker 1: think this was a broker who was asked how bad
Speaker 1: are things right now in the city of New York.
Speaker 1: They estimated that only the top ten percent of office
Speaker 1: buildings in the city were not distressed, either in terms
Speaker 1: of the level of debt or of occupancy. Quote, I
Speaker 1: think we are on the edge front edge of the
Speaker 1: forced sales. So really take that in. Ninety percent of
Speaker 1: offices in New York City are distressed. Ninety percent. And
Speaker 1: as I said before, the debt is about to come
Speaker 1: do and if this sale and others like it, where
Speaker 1: buildings are being sold for less than the plot of
Speaker 1: land was worth just a few years ago, it would
Speaker 1: certainly appear that the reckoning has arrived and emily to
Speaker 1: me increasingly the more that I've looked.
Speaker 3: Well, Crystal, thank you for joining us on Counterpoints. I
Speaker 3: loved it. It was great, always a blast. Also, I
Speaker 3: loved going on Chrystal, Kyle and Friends last week. You
Speaker 3: guys have such a fun time we had.
Speaker 1: We really both of us really genuinely enjoyed that conversation.
Speaker 1: So if people want to check that out, we got into, like,
Speaker 1: you know, some culture war stuff, trans kids drag shows,
Speaker 1: some of the laws that have been struck down recently
Speaker 1: and what that means also the like Trump indictment and
Speaker 1: Hunter stuff. So yeah, we loved it. It was fun. We're
Speaker 1: gonna it actually inspired us to do more debaty type shows.
Speaker 3: That's awesome. Yeah, you sounded like Steffan from SNL there
Speaker 3: like it.
Speaker 4: Had ever had everything drag shows, Hunter, Biden.
Speaker 1: Anyway, anyway, let's see this again tomorrow.
Speaker 3: How about what a good idea.
Speaker 1: Just change the lighting in the background and the little
Speaker 1: bug on the side. I'll say breaking points instead of counterpoints,
Speaker 1: and let's just do it again.
Speaker 3: And I think it sounds great.
Speaker 4: Ryan's in Vermont, Sager's getting married, so we're holding down
Speaker 4: the fort here for the next couple weeks.
Speaker 1: Actually, we'll find some more studies about men so we
Speaker 1: can belittle them in their absence.
Speaker 3: It's actually a really good idea.
Speaker 4: I'm all for it, So tune in tomorrow for some
Speaker 4: sort of man hating surprise.
Speaker 1: I love you guys, See you tomorrow as at