1/9/25: LA Fires, Biden's Big Admission, Laken Riley Bill, Trump Retreating On Tariffs & MORE!

USA today. It's the only time, this is crazy during his four years in office, the only time he sat down with a major newspaper, and it is pretty interesting what he had to say.

Jeff and his reporting, So we'll tell him. We'll find out from him what his latest view is on how Trump is planning to implement this massive terrorist gen Fox News is being accused of slipping Trump the town hall questions in advance for this Fox News town while you guys might remember with Brett Baer and Martha McCollum, so take a look at that, and Sager has a big old monologue on the whole H one B situation, which

I personally very much looking forward to. Is one of the stories that we really missed your voice on.

Hills area, causing further evacuations. So far, the numbers in the New York Times this morning say that they have burned more than twenty seven thousand acres. That's equivalent to nearly twenty thousand football fields. They have destroyed at least two thousand structures. And as I said before, the two largest fires here the Palisades which is the worst, the

Eaten Fire, which is the second worst. They are the first and second worst fires in the history of la Both of them are in the top twenty most destructive fires in the history of California. Fed by massive drought situation, the worst drought that the southwestern United States has faced in some twelve hundred years. So fuel that, and then you add to that the Santa Ana winds and you have an absolute catastrophe on your hands. Let's go ahead and take a look at some of the latest horrific

images that are coming out here. This is an aerial view that you can see of the Palisades area. This is, you know, a very beautiful, very affluent area which has now been burnt to an absolute crisp. You can see this is driving around that neighborhood and you know, sections of it, there's just nothing left. Everything charred, homes, businesses, schools, churches, you name it, charred to the ground. This was a

horrifying video that came out. There was a lot of concern for the person who recorded this video, but we've since learned that the individual recorded that is thankfully safe and sound. But you could see the fire lapping at their home. This is another view. This is I believe a former Starbucks that we saw there, a relatively famous Starbucks in La This is a school that is a blaze in the same area. And I think the last

image we have is of this blood red sunrise. Again dystopian and apocalyptic as I mean, you can hardly that looks like that looks fake, right, doesn't even look real. So these are just some of the scenes of devastations that are coming out. And you know, there's the larger picture, which is, you know, this climate fueled disaster, climate change fuel disaster, and then there's also basically everything that could

go wrong seems to be going wrong. The city, led by Mayor Karen Bass We're going to talk more about in a moment, has just recently cut the budget by millions of dollars for the firefighting department, which, you know, when you're talking about a city where there's always been a risk of wildfires and that risk has only escalated in this time of extreme climate events, seems like the wrong direction to go in.

them in the Santa Monica Mountains. The La County Fire Department was prepared for one or two major brush fires, but not four, especially given these sustained winds and low humidities. Like our director of Emergency Management said, this is not a normal red flag alert, and.

destructive and damaging they would be. However, the Santa Ana wins are predictable, the drought was known, the you know, tinderbox conditions were certainly known, and as we're about to get to but I'll get your reaction first, she did herself no favors in terms of her lack of response to some very basic questions about her own leadership failures here.

fourteen percent state income tax. It's like, listen, if you're gonna pay that much, you know, you pay the sunshine task. But part of it is sunshine tax. Part of it is, hey, you're probably going to if there's a horrible fire, someone's gonna come out and look out for me. So this is a real abdication of leadership and just systematic basic failure. And so that's as you said, you've got to separate out historic temperatures and all of the other problems, but

there are realistic things that should have been done. It's not me just saying this. There have been a lot of critiques in Los Angeles around this, around the fire hydrants, the draining of reservoirs, the fact that there is no water, which we're going to get to, the cutting of the fire department, forest management. All of this, of course is going to have to be scrutinized heavily afterwards. But for

the mayor having approximately five days notice. From what I understand of the Santa Ana Wins end of the tinderbox conditions, it is just unforgivable to stay in Ghana because really we're talking about vanity trips here, like we're not talking about visiting Tokyo or somewhere else where you do a significant amount of business, you know, as the mayor or somebody of Los Angeles, I believe the purpose of the trip was just one of these cultural exchanges, just from

what I saw in my initial research. And so yeah, exactly, and look fine, all right, but let be the US ambassador handle it. The mayor of Los Angeles does not need to handle it, and so for her not to come back as a problem. And then the thing is is that she delayed it up until like a very very last moment that we saw for coming back, and since has now basically refused to answer any questions when she was confronted at the airport. So we have here

a clip. It appears to be a British journalist. We're not exactly sure where it was taken. It's from Sky News. It was taken from somewhere I believe it was in the UK. Possibly transiting through that airport on her way back to LA But she's basically catatonic in questions about why she's out of the country and why she got the fire department budget.

and the stuff which is in your immediate purview. And so there's multiple like layers of crisis here that are happening from the fire department level, the managerial level of basic city function. We're talking about water resis of war management. Then the governor, the gubernatorial level who right now Gavin was asked about it yesterday. He goes, oh, that's a

local matter. In terms, it's like, okay, well, you know, even if we think about La County and we have all these little different like municipalities, as I understand is like Santa Monica, etcetera. You know, they're all like self governing institutions. Somebody needs to look out for them. And it's just sounded like a big major culture. Of course, is a cultural capital of the United States. It's one

of the largest cities in the US. I think it's number two, uh, and it's it's one of the it's it is the one of like the beating hearts of America's entertainment industry, of arts, of a lot of our culture. And it's really sad, you know, it's just on a personal level. I know people who've been affected by the fires. But this is a great American city and it looks it's had a lot of problems in recent years. But to have it just watch get burned to the ground.

And we're about to talk about insurance. Who knows if it will ever be the same A lot of these people. I mean me tell you, if I had the amount of money that I was living in the Pacific Palisades and my home burned to the round, I'm not going back. I'm leaving. I'll be like, listen, you guys failed me in the biggest moment. You know that, in the moment that we paid all these millions of dollars in property taxes.

I'm out. And I think a lot of people are going to feel that way, especially if they can't even buy fire insurance again, which it seems likely.

They can leave wherever they want. They can leave, they can go somewhere else, they can if they want to stay, they can rebuild. They can take the risk of not having fire insurance and you know, have.

to go somewhere else. You may not have the funds to go somewhere else. Your job, you know, your only like lifeline to being able to have a prayer of paying the rent and being able to rebuild may be there, so you may not have an option just to go back to Karen Bass. And I mean that clip is one of the most politically catastrophic clips I have ever seen.

And to just freeze up very obvious basic questions here, how hard would it be to say, as soon as I saw the fires breakout, I did everything I could to get back as soon as I could. And you know, here's what we're doing, and here's our action plan, and we're going to make sure everybody's okay in LA's and now's the time to come down like whatever political but like say something, To have no answers in that moment

is truly astonishing. And what I would say is for Karen Bass and every mayor, every elected official around the country, you better get really good at mitigation. You better get really good at thinking about how your budget can be leveraged to try to protect people from these extreme climate events, because you know, these are the worst fires in LA history. We just saw again again fueled by a worse than

twelve hundred year drought. The temperature, the average temperature in California has risen by a full degree celsius, which is about two and a half degrees fahrenheit. Just since nineteen eighty we saw the devastating her canes that ravaged western North Carolina and other areas with you know, flooding. These are areas that never really thought I mean, people had moved to those areas because they thought they were escaping the worst of extreme climate events like this is the

era that we live in now. And I think there was, you know, a time when it was open a question whether we and the rest of the world would get our act together and use the technology available to us and curb some of the lifestyle and the bottom line of the ultra wealthy in order to get climate change under control and try to limit the damage. And you know, I look at this and it's we're effectively beyond that.

The wealthy and especially the actors that you know that led fossil fuel companies, that led a political cover up for years and years, who knew for fifty years the impact they were causing on the climate. You know, they're sort of the worst villains here, But there's all kinds of characters that are complicit. But this is the era

we're in now. So if you're the mayor of la and you know, you've got to sit that is fire prone and only becoming more so every single year that these patterns persist and the climate gets hotter and hotter, and the swings get more and more extreme, you've got

to be insane to be cutting the firefighting budget. And then at the same time, you know, one of the subplots here is also that there are these private firefighters effectively for hire that exist in these areas, that are effectively hired by the insurance companies to protect the properties that they've ensured. So you know, it's just as dystoping as it can possibly be. And effectively, you know, the ultra wealthy effectively run this country and buy and large

run the world. They've decided, rather than trying to deal with the core of the issue, they're going to try to mitigate for themselves and limit the catastrophic damage for themselves and letter rip and that's effectively where we are to get back to the micro level here, as Soccer was mentioning. In addition, to the fact that Karen Bass was gone, in addition to the fact that the fire chief is saying we just literally do not have enough

firefighters to fight this blaze. Also, as was alluded to, some of the fire hydrants are running dry because of the obviously strain on the system. Let's go ahead and take a listen to some of the details that have been announced on that.

use helicopters. But because these winds are so extreme, we're talking gusts of at times one hundred miles per hour, that is hurricane force gusts, which is part of what fueled this horrific blaze, with embers blowing everywhere and blowing in, you know, in ways that are not actually typical. Even with the Santa Anna wins. You can't fly a helicopter in one hundred mile per hour gust situation. So my understanding saga is that they are able to use aircraft

to help to battle the flames. Today, the winds have subsided somewhat. The forecast calls for them to pick back up into tomorrow and into the weekend. But you know, to have imagine being out there trying to battle this blaze and you just literally there's no water, no water.

an extraordinary demand. But that's actually not an excuse as I understand it, because there had been previous there's been previous just major fights in the LA area about reservoirs and about water management. This goes back again to some like very basic city stuff, and I think again this is gonna have to take a lot of scrutiny in terms of the basics of this, but you know, the truth is is that. And I'm listening to the local reporters here on all of this. We're genuinely trying to

stay out of the politics. They're like this, And I listened to one who was like, look, this is basic stuff, water management, city infrastructure, cutting, the budget, lack of investment, and it's been a failure and it is tragic. As you said. You know, I talked about the Pacific Palisades people, that's only one of four fires you know that is currently burning. You don't have to be ultra wealthy to live in some of these places, especially if you moved

there thirty forty years ago. You just like a normal middle class person. You know, maybe you want it. You were retiring, you got lucky. You own the house kind of near the beach. You bought it for a couple hundred thousand dollars. Now it's worth like two or three million. But this gets us now to the insurance question, and that is one where I really do think we're going to see a total like rewrite of insurance law in the state of California. By the way, if you think

the feds are' going to bail them out. There's just no chance they have to basically at this point, and the insurance companies themselves were very much ahead of this one. Let's put a seven please on the screen. You can see that these upscale quote West Side, LA neighborhoods were hit hard by State Farm home insurance cancelations. This was just a few months ago. Thousands of Californians won't see

their home insurance renewe by State Farm this summer. Homeowners in Los Angeles County, with these West Side neighborhoods hit especially hard, A majority were listen to this. Neighborhoods in West Los Angeles in the Santa Monica Mountains, including pel Air, Pacific Palisades, and Woodland Hills are going to lose their coverage.

The State Farm move obviously affects some of the richest neighborhoods, but the reason for it was specifically fire is that these insurance companies picked up on the fact that there was a significant problem with fire coverage in that area. Listen to this in Pacific Palisades. So just in April twenty twenty four, sixty nine percent of the policy holders in the area will lose coverage. Seventy percent as of

a few months ago lost all of their coverage. I also believe that there are caps in the number of insurance for the payout that does not even come close to the actual value of the homes. This is complicated in terms of policy and all these others. Some people can self ensure have different but on average, it does seem like there will be think about this as well. We have a national home crisis right now. I mean, do know how much wood, timber and materials it will cost?

So you can just see a total disaster. It's not as bad as the Maui situation, obviously, but you know, because it's on the mainland US. But even rebuilding this it will take tens of billions of dollars. Federal infrastructure is going to rewrite home insurance. If you live in Florida and or California, I mean, good luck, because that's another thing with these insurance companies. There's been previous propositions

and laws. In California, they tried to cap insurance companies from raising premiums to make it basically unaffordable to have home insurance, and so they capped the number that they were allowed to have. You can you can change that if you want to, but then most people will probably just not buy it, or you know, you're going to have to have the state and the federal government step in. Heres. This is a huge mess. It's a disaster.

only a matter of time. We're cutting this off. And you know, if you're going to let the free market determine, then we're going to see more and more areas of the country, which this is already We've covered this previously with regards to to Florida and other parts of the country. This is already in effect. I mean, Florida has a total mess on their hands because of their susceptibility to hurricanes' entire Gulf coasts. You know, Colorado is another area where

the home insurance. Homeowners insurance market is really struggling. You know, oftentimes you can't get a mortgage if you can't get that homeowner's insurance not to mention, you know, even if you can, then the premiums are absolutely skyrocketing. So that is the reality we live in now. And so you're going to have increasing swaths of the country that are

just uninsurable. And then there's a question as a society, do we want effectively, you know, the federal government, because the state governments won't really have the funds to be able to handle it.

insurance for people who are living in these areas. This is one of the sort of societal questions we have to ask at this point because otherwise places like and I think Ryan said a version of this on the show with Emily yesterday, you know, places like the Pacific Palisades, you're going to have either people who can afford to just roll the dice and if their property is burned to the ground and they have to rebuild, they've got the funds to be able to comfortably do that and

they're willing to live at that risk, or people who can't afford to go anywhere else and are forced into the position of effectively having to roll the dice. So you know that's that is the era we live in and that is where we are right now. The last piece of this, just to give the backstory here, why Karen Bass was in Africa while all of this was breaking out? We could put this tear sheet up on the screen. This is what I was referencing before this. There we go a Why was Mayor Karen Bass in

Africa during the LA fires? She was apparently there to celebrate the inauguration of the new Ghanaian president and would meet with the country's first female vice president as well during a press conference.

a political perspective. That clip of her stonefaced no answers, I think is, like I said before, one of the most devastating political clips that I've ever seen.

don't leave. Now one hundred and thirty people with thirty thousand people or so left the state of California, I think just last year. It's one of those places with net loss migration. But if the disproportionate number of those people are let's say ultra wealthy. It's a huge debt to the tax base. So, like I said, if the Pacific Palisades I just looked it up, four point five million dollars median home list price, that's a lot of property tax. And if let's say twenty percent of them

don't come back, that's boom wiped out. So now you have way less money. I mean, a lot of these folks are already seen billionaires on my timeline. They're like, that's it, I'm moving to Nevada, like I'm done, and you know they can afford that. But the point is is that they are so heavily relied on by the state to pay for all of this other stuff for the entire California Los Angeles. I mean, this is like

the bedrock of how the entire city functions. So if they do not get their act together and they've decided to tax their system that way, that's fine, but you better make sure that you know those people want to stay, because if you don't, then all of the poorer people of the what are their eight million people who live in La County, all of their social services, and you know, tax base and all of that is going to be

wiped out. So they've got the pyramid basically a way that they use their taxation system that they've decide on, and if they start to lose all of the intrinsic value of what makes the city of what it is, you could really see it get wiped out. So I really do feel for them. Like I said, I love I'm not one of those people who are like screwed Los Angeles. I love Los Angeles living, it's amazing. I love the state of California. Yeah, it's got a lot

of problems, but natural, beauty wise and more. And yeah, it's just it's painful, you know, to why it's like any great American city. I would say the same thing about Chicago, New York, any of these places. They're special for a reason, and to see them stuffer like this is horrible. You know. Let's also remember, like you said, our producer Griffin used to live in one of the areas which is burning. Many of his friends had to

flee apparently overnight. As he knows, they all got out safely, but because he knows somebody who personally lost their house, this is devastating for people, not just billionaires even multimillionaires, just normal people working in the industry or whatever. And

then just imagine if you lost your house. Now, it's not the most important thing, but you know, especially when you have to deal with these insurance companies and others, it's just it's just it's probably one of the most taxing events that is up there for stress for your family. What do you do now? I can't imagine having to go through.

certainly for California. You know, the irony here, both with California and with Florida is these are places people move to because of the weather, right, this beautiful, nat beauty, sunshiny days. I mean, there's no probably nowhere in the country that has a better weather than southern California, Like San Diego is ridiculous, right, It's just like, how how is this just not even fair? Like why do you get this weather all the time?

And I have to say, I think Gavin Newsom is kind of lucky that she's screwed the pooch so badly, because.

twenty thousand football fields burned. And it'll be a little bit difficult to hear, but after the clip plays, I'll fill you in. If you aren't able to catch the way he changes the subject. Here, take a listen.

at the age where you could have great grandchildren. That's especially crazy because if you think about some of the founders and others who were probably with their sixties or seventies, and when people were getting married and having children, and they're like sixteen and seventeen years old, you would have thought that someone would have been old enough even in the eighteen hundreds or so. So, you know, congratulations Joseph Robin at Biden for past Bacon history. He is making.

He is making history in a lot of ways. I mean, it's funny, but it's not funny just because, like I said, I mean, this is going I think I said this on election night and before too, I was like, he will go down as one of the most selfish, narcissistic individuals in the history of the American presidency. And I like to judge him by the things that he set out to do. Joe Biden never set out to be

fdr ll. Maybe in his head he thought so, but in reality it was what I need to stop Donald Trump, and instead he ushered in Donald Trump's popular vie electoral mandate. And if you look at him, his narcissism still somehow is able to fight through the Alzheimer's or dementia or whatever and rear its ugly head. This sit down with Biden is one of the most extraordinary things I've ever

seen from an American president. Let's put this up there on the screen, because the very first line that they quote is they ask him, do you have the vigor to complete four more years in office? And he says, so far, so good, But who knows what I'm going to be when I'm eighty six years old. Well, that might have been an interesting question and proposition to undertake when you were running for president as of one year ago and lying to the American people about your capacity.

You guys did a good job of covering that Wall Street Journal expose. I mean, but do you remember, you know, prior to Biden dropping out, the Journal wrote a much more tepid piece, just being like, hey, the president's old and people are worried about it. And they were savage, you know, ruthlessly by the American If anything, they massively understated it. So I just I don't know of reading this,

I just it fills me with like fury and rage. Look, I'm happy Biden is not going to be present anymore and that they lost and all of that, but it doesn't matter because he was our leader. On the global stage, and if you just think about, you know, the damage that his presidency has wrought, both to the reputation of the United States but also just domestically in the strife that it invited. We effectively had a vacuum of leadership for over four years. I just think it's criminal, honestly.

what some eighty percent of the American public saw. And this is fundamentally why I'm a populist, because like, and that's not just him, This is so many members of this elite media class who were Ivy League educated and have all these sources in Washington and you know, think of themselves and have been told their whole lives how

smart they are. And something that was so obvious and so basic if you just were watching the clips that were coming out of Joe Biden really starting in that twenty nineteen primary, when you and I were like, hey, this guy is lost like eight steps already. Imagine what

this is going to look like four years later. But they were willing or able, or you know, they were willing to engage in a cover up worst case scenario, or they were so easily manipulated and able to trick themselves and talk themselves into thinking, no, no, he's fine, there's no problem here. It really is an astonishing, scandalous event. And in this sit down interview, so there's a number

of things that are interesting. So Sager mentioned the one where he's like, yeah, I was basically willing to roll the dice on whether or not I would be cogent enough to function for another four years, or even alive for another four year. I was willing to roll the dice on that, which is crazy admission in and of itself. Then he gets asked, could you have won? Could you

have beaten Donald Trump? And he says, it's presumptuous to say that, but I think yes, really really, because one of the things that we have learned first post election is that his own polling showed him losing four hundred Electoral College votes to Donald Trump.

best chance of beating him. But I also wasn't looking to be president when I was eighty five years old, eighty six years old, and so I did talk about passing the baton to the next generation of Democratic leaders, of phrase many in his party took to mean he was not likely to seek a second term.

I think that was a pivotal mistake. But then in terms of foreign affairs, I mean, it's just outside of withdrawing from Afghanistan, which I hope history O record was the right decision, but I've been staying there forevery he took on a lot of water politically for the fallout from that, but Ukraine and Gaza utter and complete disaster. And then, as you said, Sager, the one thing that he was really sent there to do by the voters

was to defeat Donald Trump. And you have now ushered in a sort of consolidated Trump era, which will be reflected in the next block when we talk about Democrats now joining with Republicans on these immigration crackdown measures.

what are the major events that happened. You had Israel and Gaza, you had Ukraine, Yes, Afghanistan will be a footnote. We'll be like, yeah, it was decent. You know, in the long run, everyone can kind of admit that that was a good not needed to happen, It needed to happen, you know. The long word will how all have critics, criticisms of how it was done, et cetera. Glad that that happened, but it will. They will talk about the

American people's radicalization, about the role of government. They will talk about inflation, and they will talk about the legacy of Donald Trump. I mean, people do not. If you think about Grover Cleveland. One of the only things people note about Grover Cleveland is that he was elected to non consecutive terms. Every kid probably learns that in grade school when they look at the place matter or whatever, and oh, what happened there? That's the Biden will be

the guy in between Trump. That's it. I mean, that's all anybody will really remember one hundred years or so from now about him, and that he's one of the oldest men to have rocket the Oval office and how much, honestly of a tragedy it is. If anything, the historian writing the age will just be like, how did the media you know, even go along with this grotesque farce for three years? It was so obvious, as they will

write and cite editorials and criticisms from twenty nineteen. I remember getting so many angry emails and others at the time talking about Joe Biden's fake stutter and about how the fact that he was just old and his brain was melted. Back then, I'm like, you know, it doesn't feel good, I guess to be right, but it is somewhat vindicating in that if when you can say the truth out loud, it's actually powerful, you know in the

long run. So yeah, reading this, I just I think he's so horrible, the way that he foisted himself on America, the way that the cover up and all of that happened all the My only consolation is that all of the people around him, like Jake Sullivan and Anthony Blincoln and all the other folks have become such a laughing stock in the globe. They won't be like the Obama folks who all got cushy jobs at Uber and elsewhere. I think they're just to sail off into the sunset. No, because even.

his age, you know, for so long. I just don't think they have any credibility in the same way. I could be wrong.

Their headline is this is based on the USA Today interview of Applied Technologies he's might not have been able to serve four more years, which is crazy, but anyway they write in this the interview with USA Today just demonstrated how the White House tried to shield him from encounters that might throw him off after four years in office. It was the first time he's ever given an interview

to any reporter from any major mainstream newspaper. Unlike any president in generations, he has never given one while in office to reporters from newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the LA Times, the Financial Times, or the New York Times. Overall, mister Biden has given fewer interviews of any kind and conducted fewer news conferences than any president in decades. So in the modern era, fewer

news conferences, fewer interviews of any kind. He is at the bottom of the list for all presidents in the modern era. And again these are all things like the New York Times would have been keenly aware of the fact that they had no access to this man, that they had never gotten in interview with this man. Remember when we covered his decision not to do the interview at the Super Bowl. You know which if you think that this is a person who is remotely coherent, reliably coherent,

then that decision makes absolutely no sense. And you know, people who were raising red flags about this were just dismissed, like that was such a tell, the fact that he would not get in front of the press, would not do a single interview with a single major mainstream newspaper, and you thought this guy was fine, Like, it really is astonishing, It really is astonishing.

a joke and will be remembered as such. But you know, in terms of the media scandal and all that, I think that's probably the real story. And I honestly don't know how they're going to recover from it because there's so many people who just think that they'll never believe any of this stuff again. Again, I could be totally wrong, but you know, seeing the way that Mark Zuckerberg and all these other people like Legacy Media and others, even the people they relied on to pressure are like, no,

the emperor has no clothes now at this point. So I think their power significantly diminished. Although with Trump, because he himself also loves the legacy media in his own way, he certainly could empower them.

for reelection again, and that the entire press corps would either delude themselves or actively participate in a cover up. And you know, the the decisions with regard to Ukraine and then the decisions with regard to you know, being complicit in this this Gaza genocide.

the United States Senate. Can we put this c two please now from this Actually, what's interesting is that a couple of Democrats from the House of Representatives did join them in passing.

Senator Katie Britt, who's one of the sponsors of the bill, told Senate Republicans that she has the necessary eight votes to advance it over filibuster. Again, this is to be for consideration. Democrats are saying that they would like to amend certain parts of it, but the bill itself is actually I mean, in my opinions, well, I guess we

could debate. It basically requires ice US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to take custody of I legal immigrants in the US without legal permission who have committed theft related crimes like shoplifting. Current US law says that the people who should be most prioritized for deportation are those convicted of

a felony, but not necessarily of minor crimes. So the name of the bill is related to Lake and Riley, who was of course killed earlier in twenty twenty four by a gentleman who was actually who had been arrested previously in a nearby apartment building. It appears after the

commission of this horrible crime. So the point is is that this is a vibe shift, quote unquote, and because this was a bill, as you said, Crystal, that previously had not achieved as much, had not achieved as much democratic support, but now actually does look like it is going to pass the United States Senate in some form.

We're not exactly sure what form that is. Sure there'll be amendments and fights there, but the fact that it's even getting to the floor, I mean, this would be one of the most significant changes to ice enforcement policy in I think. I don't think policy on this has changed since the Obama era. Just to give people an idea, and Donald Trump is not even the President of the United States yet and will be in some eleven days. So it's extraordinary the fact that its even go to the Center floor.

not enforcing immigrant law as it exists now. Of course, as with any law, there's a lot of sort of prosecutorial discretion. This is what Obama famously made use of in Dhaka in terms of which immigrants you're going to undocumented immigrants you're going to prioritize for detention and for deportation. So it hands states like Texas, for example, a weapon to use against the federal government. And I have a feeling that that will probably be the most significant, lasting

impact ultimately of this legislation. And you know, the way that I look at this from a political perspective, the obviously the name is very evocative, you know, very intentionally chose Lake and Riley Act. This is part of the Trump and Republican narrative about what is ailing the country. Right in the Trumpian frame, one of the biggest problems is immigrants who are stealing your jobs, committing crimes, et cetera, et cetera. Obviously, this is not a frame I agree with.

This is their frame. And so what I find most significant about this is, uh, this is effectively Democrats validating that frame. Now, they had already done this before the election. You know, they did their whole bipartisan border bill, which you know Sager wanted to see it go further, but I don't think you would disagree that it was a break from the traditional in the the you know, past couple of decades democratic approach which tied more border enforcement

with legal pathways to citizenship. That bill said we're ditching the you know, pathways citizenship part and we're just doing the hawkish border enforcement. So in some ways they had already validated the Republican view and frame of the world. But this is another step in that direction, you know, and another indication that that will be a primary Democratic reaction to the Trump era. And this is effectively what

I expected. You know, I think that we are most likely to see from the Democratic Party a replay of kind of what Bill Clinton was able to success from his perspective, accomplish when he came into office, which is, rather than trying to rekindle the New Deal or rekindle you know, an oppositional framework to the Reagan era or the neoliberal era, instead, I'm going to embrace the core tenants of that. I'm going to you know, do a

democratic version of that. And in some ways his version was even more far reaching because he had this Democratic brand behind him and you know, for him personally it

was electorally successful. It ultimately led to devastating Democratic losses in rural areas and you know, the situation that they find themselves in today, but it was for him electorally successful, and I think, you know, this is an indication that that is effectively the direction the Democrats are going to go, and they're going to embrace more or less the Trumpian frame of the world there do their own sort of

like you know, potentially kinder, gentler version of it. And the era of you know, total Trump resistance, the era of trying to articulate competing view of the world, that era likely is passed. Now this will all shake out in terms of the Democratic primary in you know, the next presidential election. I'm sure there will be a fight amongst the factions and how they want to respond to

the rise of trump Ism. But you know, so far, this is where the bulk of the momentum is within the Democratic Party and with their aligned media class, which is almost as important and as significant here.

the past, they always fake it. They're like, oh well, we just it's cruel or whatever, and then they'll focus on child separations if it has anything to do with a guy who murdered Lake and Riley previously have been arrested for theft in the state of New York and some other thing eventually was released, goes on to murder her.

I'm just think this is an indefensible policy, Like, if anything, this has just revealed, like the veneer of how the architecture of like all this language the people basically use to justify tens of millions of people coming here illegally, and when people vote for a popular mandate for somebody who has now won the popular vote who explicitly ran on mass deportation, Like, I just have no idea what counter argument you're supposed to make if you're a democratic politician.

I mean, Reuben Diego was literally elected with the counter argument to carry Lake by saying, I'm the serious person who will help Donald Trump. I mean, in a certain sense, there is a democratic argument here to be made of, Like this is genuinely what people want. And I look, people have made the immigrant argument, they illegal immigrant argument now for twenty five years, and I think people have

rejected it correctly. In my opinion, I'm going to talk a lot about this in my monologue, but if you really understand, like the way, I mean, look at California what it is right now, because anyone says is a well run state, part of it is is that they focus on bullshit like passing sanctuary city laws which say that they're not going to cooperate with ICE. I mean, this is now. This was like an in vogue policy for what twenty twelve, twy probably twenty nineteen or so,

and I think you just have a devastating consequences. A lot of these people came to I could bite them in the ass because Republicans smartly just shipped a bunch of them to these cities and they're like, okay, you deal with it. And then, of course what happened the population was like, oh my god, we can't deal with this. This is crazy. You know, in a sense, you kind of reap what you sew. So, I mean, I just don't think it's an argument. I think it's a reality problem.

Biden changed the status quo more than any president in modern American history. Let ten million people illegally into the country. Of course, the argument is going to change, and the reaction of the people is just so extraordinary when you look at the data. So I just when I see this, the Democrats have no choice Otherwise, what are they going to say, Yes, people who are here illegally shoplift shouldn't be deported. Good luck. I mean, I just have no idea how you can make better.

this issue, et cetera. But I also don't think it's quite as one dimensional as you portray it, because on this issue, like on many issues, but I think this one, maybe in particular, what you get from the public really depends on how you ask the question. So still, if you ask the public, are immigrants a net benefit to society, they say yes. Still, if you ask the public, you know, should there be a pathway to citizenship for people who

are here who are undocumented, the answer is yes. So there is in fact a broader zooming out from this bill, a broader case to be made that is, yeah, of course we should know who's coming into the country. Of course there should be, you know, a border secure that we can make sure that people who are criminals are not coming in willy nilly, etcetera, etc. But immigrants are a net benefit to the country, and the problems that

we have are not about immigrants. The problems we have are massive income inequality fueled by a billionaire class who has rigged the rules to their benefit. And you know, we see that playing out right now in LA with this climate fueled catastrophe.

the country. And yeah, of course when you have a lot of new people coming here, especially when you have you know, a system that is truly archaic.

And you know, I just reject the idea that the fingers should be pointed at them rather than pointed up at you know, the people who have created the laws, created the system, will run the country, who run our politics, who are screwing workers and lowering weight. Is like the corporate bosses are the ones here.

citizenship for who? For the ten million who came in four years ago, for the twenty million who preceded them from Mexico, from Haiti, which ones you know, Cuba, etc. I mean there's are each one, and that's another problem

immigrant that means nothing there. I have nothing in common with somebody who came here illegally two years ago, or my parents have nothing in common with somebody who came here illegally two years ago, who doesn't even have a basic high school diploma and can barely speak Spanish, let alone English. This term is meaningless, which is why you need skills based, high points immigration system like they have

in the entire Western world. But move away from that when you actually look at the basics of this demographic change, strain on the American character, on the American welfare system. Yes, absolutely. I mean, look, I don't know why these terms are such like taboos when Donald Trump just got reelectric press.

or any of this other stuff. And again I would say, you know, America has not always been just vast open door to everybody. Who've had several periods in our history, correctly in my opinion, where we did shut the door for a long time. There's a reason they shut the door in the nineteen hundreds because we were basic.

into the nation. That's been the story of our entire history, whether it was Irish immigrants, or Italian immigrants, or Germans or Polish immigrants or now Mexican immigrants that is just or Indian American immigrants, right like that is just the natural flow of how things happen when you come and you live in the country and you and.

voted for Donald Trump. That happened to shut down immigration, But it's pretty.

not let net loss on the economy. If anything, our low wage work, if you look at the wages and all that has been depressed significantly because of illegal immigration, no evidence that. Okay, well again if I will, as you can see in my natural H one B experiment, Yes, it is true that Goldman, Sachs and others people who have been quote unquote unable to find that. However, Harvard Universities, George Waras, who again I've cited many times from twenty

seventeen as significant evidence on that. So we can debate the studies or whatever if you want. All of the reliance on immigration is good for America. It says that it increases GDP because they buy stuff that is just completely ridiculous. And America, as I said, has seen through it. They have voted for a person who had a sign behind him that said one thing massed deportation. I just don't see at this point how the argument cannot be.

I mean, in a sense you're almost saying it in a way, you're like, yeah, we have to control the border, we need this, we need that, and we can have debates over the levels of immigration. But if you see right now, the vast preference and the median of where things are is significantly away from where the Democratic policy was, which is a wide open door, let anybody in, have no enforcement. No, it is true. It's true out of ten million people arrived here.

a net benefit. I think you and your family have been a net benefit to the country. I'm glad you're here at Thoer.

Party should be making that argument. I think there should be an oppositional view. And you know, yes, immigration was an important part of thish of this election. I don't think anyone could possibly deny that, But there was no one making the counter case. The Democrats have been making that countercase for years at this point. They have not made that countercase for years at this point. And you know that's I think that that has been already a

political disaster for them. It certainly did not help them in the context of this election. And I just also happen to think it's wrong. So no, when I have principles in something I view as correct, even if it is on the wrong side of public opinion, that doesn't mean I'm just going to like abandoned those principles and stop making that case.

immigrants as a part of the country. They continue to believe that they bring more positive than negative to this country. So yeah, I think there is an opportunity to make an alternative case about the benefits of you know, net positive migration done the right way. I just think Democrats have decided that they are not going.

focus is they're not supposed to be here. The point is is that it's a crime that was never supposed to happen, in actual preventative crime as opposed to a natural born US citizen when the way that we adjudicate and look at that. So even this whole talking point about oh they commit less crime, first of all, no one even knows that's true. I can't even tell you the number of people who are here illegally. So how

are you supposed to compute like proper crime statistics. If you look at states, many of them don't even say the immigration status, etc. All of this is anecdotal. So the true status basically doesn't exist at a philosophical level. Whenever something happens that was supposed to be prevented, and then it does happen, you can't say, well, oh it's fine, because even though it's supposed to be preventable, that there's all these other reasons why it's okay. People naturally understand that.

That's why they look at the fire hydrant thing that we talked about today, or with illegal immigration crime, that's the reason it's in a special and a different class than people were here naturally US or legal US citizen. There was an actual process. So that's where I would say on that one. But if you want to propose the views that you're proposing, it only works, as it has in the past, when there is order and a sense that this is something that is being used to

the benefit of the country. The H one B process, which I'm talking about today, it passed in nineteen ninety three. What was happening in nineteen ninety three not a bunch of mass illegal immigration. There was a big question about the dot com boom. They had all this optimism about America. That's the nature of the country that you need to be able to pass something like that, or even if you want, you know, one million people, I think that's crazy.

But look, if you want to make that argument, fine, you can do that if there's an orderly process, if you talk about the caps, if you feel as and people may even support it if they feel as if it can also be circumvented by big corporate interests and people coming here illegally under asylum law. It only works in one way. And the point is is that where we are right now, with the you know, complete chaos at the border, with lack of ice enforcement, with sanctuary

cities and all this, it's impossible. And so in the balance of all of that, I think that's why people ultimately just pull the red liver lever for Trump is they just felt like there was no choice with this completely uncontrolled system. And so look, I mean, this is step one. I think we'll see if they go along with some of the other stuff. My prediction is no,

they start screeching any minute now. But you know, the point is is that when you when you don't have any of that and alrighty it's a titanic task to impose order and all of that at the border, you can't have any even of the discussion that we're having here. I just don't think it's possibleocratically, especially because for them, the chaos and the feel as if there is no controlled system of no even democratic will or say over

who or say it gets to come here. That is lost in the vacuum of what we've had to have.

with the border. The more that you have it completely shut and absolutely impossible to come here if you have.

coyote and risk their lives, et cetera, et cetera. So if you have a legal pathway to do that, people will avail themselves of that and then guess what, you will know who's coming and be able to evaluate them in their criminals.

qualify under any real legal system. Part of the reason why I think, you know, to say, oh, if we have more legal pathways like, they may not like the results because the people who are the least skilled with the least connection of the country. They're not coming, there's no way for them to be able to qualify, and they'll probably still try to get here illegally. That's why I just don't think we can use that argument of like, oh,

they're going to come anyway. It's like, well, their willingness to come does not determine our law.

he will work with Democrats on lowering costs. Okay, yeah, I won't hold my breath on that, but you know, it just does show the elites in the party have decided that capitulation to Trump. And during the Joe and Mega trip to mar A Lago, the Mark Zuckerberg hostage video, the Tim Cook million dollars to the Inauguration Fund, like, that's basically how the heads of the Democratic Party have

decided to approach the Trump administration as well. So you know, I think, well, this is what I expected after this election. I will say I did predict this direction, even though a lot of people found it far fetched at the time. But here we are, and that's exactly what is currently happening,

and I will see also America. I will say it's not that I don't think that this could potentially be electorally successful, because Bill Clinton, right for himself, was electorally successful, even though he then went and presided over like massive midterm losses, just like Barack Obama electorally successful for himself, massive devastation in terms of the wider Democratic parties so do I think they could pick up seats in the midterms, and do I think that they could potentially win back

the presidency next time around?

a long time. I think Obama was like kind of a bridge ish.

popular vote is part of what changed everything. And now I do I mean, we will retroactively look at the Trump era as twenty eleven onward, but I think now is when it really became sole locked in.

these forces. And I mean that's not to deny him his own agency for his catastrophic presidency ultimately, but I do think he kind of ends up being this transitional figure, and then when things will really be solidified is when you have if you end up having a Democratic president who fills that role of Bill Clinton, basically solidifying that both parties are now operating under the same ideological framework.

As I said, I think it'll be a big fight in the twenty twenty eight Democratic primary about whether or not the party does just sort of like embrace the Trumpian vision of the world, including this you know, anti immigrant antipathy towards any net migration effectively direction.

on every good across the board. What they're looking at, according to your reporting, is universal in the sense of applies to all countries, but a more limited amount of goods that this would be subject to. And this would still be a massive economic shift, but not quite as one might say revolutionary as what was proposed on the campaign trail.

is a lot. And what Trump was talking about was on the campaign a ten to twenty percent tax on all of that. So that was looking like potentially, you know, the numbers vary, but maybe to four hundred five hundred billion dollar tax increase unilaterally by a Republican president. Shocking idea. And what I've been told by.

a massive expansion. Can you lay out for us how this would work, which you do a little bit in the pace. Would it involve USTR, the Unit Series Trade Representative, the Treasury Department, would Congress be able to have any input? What would this look like?

hurt you know, businesses that rely on imports anyway, we may as well say that that money is being used for you know, that our tax bill is less expensive because it's paid for an import by these tariff duties. That said, that could really delay the Trump agenda, because if Trump says I'm going to wait but whatever, four or five months until Congress passes that bill, that might mean that he.

position is. And so you know it, He's probably angry that you're sort of exposing the game of where he wants to ultimately end up and you know, eliminating the ability for him to pretend like he's actually committed to putting tariffs on avocados and bananas and all sorts of things that it would just be completely idiotic to put a tariff on.

Panama and whatever and so like. I don't know for sure, but my impression is that Trump is not like studying the like USTR codes under which like tariffs will be applied, right, So there's this opportunity for his staff so maybe do not exactly what he would do if he were like able to really focus and do it.

doing universal? And I don't have this like fully confirmed, but there's some say rumor skull, but that the response to my story and his tweets, you know, his social media posts about it may actually sort of affect the process itself, where now the aids who had sort of hope to get.

And I should probably figure out because Musk is a huge amount of power right now, and is he going to try to get you know, you know, the tariffs not placed on things that would affect his private business, that was requests being submitted by other We'll be you know, we'll be watching that very closely.

this up there on the screen. A new book by reporter Alex Eisenstadt, who look, he's a great reporter, he's a solid campaign finance person followed him for many years, claims that a Fox News insider actually fed questions to the Trump team in advance to somebody there, specifically questions about quote unquote retribution that were obviously dogging Trump at the time. We watch this live. I think we even covered this answer here whenever we did the show, so

you know, we would think that makes sense. We thought that this was off the cuff. There's always allegations about insider questions and all that, but here's what in. Eisenstadt writes, thirty minutes before the town hall was set, a senior aide started getting text messages from a person on the inside at Fox. Holy shit. The team thought they were images of all the questions Trump would be asked and the planned follow ups, down to the exact wording Jackpot.

This was like a student getting a peek at the test before the exam started. Behar and McCollum planned to ask Trump if he would divest from his businesses if he won, whether the party was risk making a risk nominating him giving his indictments. They planned to press Trump to disavow political violence and ask if his White House would be focused on retribution, but with the questions in hand,

the team quote workshopped the answers. Eisenstadt told CNN that the anecdote was based on quote multiple people with direct knowledge of the event. Fox says, while we we do not have any evidence of this occurring, Alex Eisenstat has refused conveniently refused to release the images for fact checking. We take these matters very seriously and plan to investigate should there prove to be a breach within the network. I mean it would be extraordinary. Look also, why would

he release the images? Obviously the images would then give away the person. He shouldn't do that. Yeah, I mean I don't think he's lying, Like that's what a lot of people have said, like, oh, this is obviously a fake plan. I'm telling you, guys, I followed Alex. It's possible. I followed him for many years, solid campaign finance reporter. I don't think this one is fake news. I don't know why.

challenging answers was important. This was also during the time that there was an ongoing Republican primary and Ron DeSantis was maybe potentially theoretically some sort of a threat to him, So there were a lot of Dysantis questions that were mixed into this town hall as well. But you know, obviously CNN was feeding Kamala Harris questions or feeding Joe Biden questions.

It was effectively set up to be that. I mean, that's what does set Fox sort of apart, is that the conception from the beginning was we are going to be an ideological weapon for use by the Republican Party so that we can compete with you know, the quote unquote liberal news media ecosystem. So you know, this is not a particularly surprising turn of events, but still noteworthy.

Donald Trump. I mean, look, it's humiliating that it's humiliating if this did happen any news organization, the White House and campaigns, they always press you for questions and you can maybe give a topic, you know, if I think that's reasonable, but the direct questions themselves is outrageous. And then you know to use that to prepare, like if a member on the staff was able to do that.

Another big question for Fox as well is you know, they probably probably were alerted by this a long time ago, so nobody's been fired, no action has been taken. I would be assumed that there's not a ton of people who have access to this for very good reason, so that there's a narrow, you know window of a number of people who this would even know.

on Christmas. I'm referring, of course, to the massive maga civil war that has taken place over the Christmas holidays that began with the critique over H one B Visas, then a tech write versus maga write fight about who really is in power, and then a racist versus globalist fight over who's American and It ended with one of the most extraordinary posts I've ever seen from vuvek Ramaswami. It basically said, white people are lazy, so let's start

with a roadmap and let's go from the beginning. Things got kicked off when full disclosure personal friend of mine shreve Ram Krishnan, he was appointed by Donald Trump to be an advisor to the incoming administration on Ai stre Ram is a former venture capitalist of A sixteen and Z who in the past had vocally supported an increased number of H one B visas and uncapped country quotas

for green cards. Now this set off an immediate firestorm of criticism from the Magga universe, who saw the street Ram appointment as a betrayal of Trump's promises to reset US immigration policy and as a corporate giveaway. Some of the discussion was just genuine racism against Indians to the US, But what was really interesting was to actually see the conflict began from grassroots Day one supporters versus many newly arrived technology sector Trump supporters who were at direct odds.

Many of these people of Trump awarded Trump from the tech sector were shocked that the movement they aligned themselves with including other venture capitalists and others engage in these big fights online. We're trying to justify the H one B visa. But the ultimate tech aligned right wing figure

that weighed in with, Elon Musk, tweets this quote. The reason I am in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H one B. Take a big step back and fuck yourself in the face. I will go to war on this issue, the likes of which you cannot possess. So why the emotion there from Elon Musk and others? Obviously for a tech entrepreneurs

who supported Donald Trump. The truth, beyond any personal interest, is that H one B visa is what the entire US technology industry runs on. And the dirty truth is that it exploits both the workers themselves and the US workers who are they are competing against. So let's define some terms. What the hell is the H one B visa.

H one B visa is basically a supposedly high skilled G worker program other than that otherwise known as a Specialty occupation visa, created by the United States Congress in nineteen ninety The justification for the visa, which has an annual cap of eighty five thousand per year, is at high skilled industries like technology and engineering, that there's not

enough available talent in the United States. Thus, the H one B allows the so called best in the brightest of the world to come to the United States to work for specific company in a specific role for three to six years before they become eligible for a green card. In theory, it's very easy to see how this visa category was created, but in practice it has become very controversial for the major reliance of the US technology industry

has on it. H one B visa holders are not allowed to easily switch jobs without risking their immigration status, effectively chaining them to the original sponsor for the visa, and systematic study has now shown us that the H one B visa holders depress wages for US citizens because they are willing to work for less for the benefit of being able to emigrate to the United States. Now, those who defend the program say, we're only talking about

one hundred thousand or so visas a year here. These people feel jobs that Americans, according to them, are not qualified to do. So let's actually dig into the numbers and just take a look at this. Norman matt Lofos weighed in with the definitive piece here, and so I will quote him from length from Compact magazine. H one B advocates like to point out that eighty five thousand year visas is only a small fraction of overall STEM employment,

but that is misleading. Assuming a six year stay the nominal time limit, at any given time, there would be five hundred thousand visa holders in the country. More importantly, the impact is cumulative. The H one B worker who transitions to green cards becomes a permanent fixture in the labor market, especially tech heavy regions. In nineteen ninety, thirty percent of Silicon Valley engineers were foreign born. By twenty fourteen, that figure had jumped to seventy four percent. So let's

think about that. We're talking here about a sector of our economy which is roughly twenty percent of US GDP and almost entirely responsible for the growth of all of our stock intacies, and the vast majority of visioneers are not from here. That's not bad, per se, but it does raise a question why who's benefiting from this here? Again, basic labor law supply and demand come into play. If you run a business like we do here, what's the

number one pain in the ass staff turnover? So what do you do when you want to prevent staff turnover? How do you prevent that person? If you employ US citizen from leaving, you pay them more and you try to have good working conditions. How does that work with an H one B. Actually, you can pay them less

and they can't leave. That's a good trade, easy way to juice the stock price, You reduce employee compensation, you get more riches for yourself, and you don't have to deal with one of the biggest threats to any business talent leaving. Now the H one bvs A holder themselves might be miserable in the job, but he or she has other things on their mind, Like listen, I've only got a few more years where I have to take this that I can get a green card. Once that happens,

I'm free. I can do whatever I want. So you sit there and you take it. The person who loses out here is the applicant who is a native born US citizen. Because of theirs can leave whenever they want. Furthermore, there is no implied compensation like there is for the H one B vis a holder. The citizen already lives in America. The H one B visa holder can accept less because a big part of the benefit is getting

to stay now here. Again, Matt Loof weighs in by noting a University of California Berkeley study that shows that high tech engineers and managers have experienced less wage growth than all of their counterparts nationally. How is that possible. We're talking again about the fastest growing sector of the US economy. Wages should be booming, and yet they're actually growing less than average. Again, it's very simple to see why.

With the vast majority of jobs at these tech companies now held by H one B visa holders, technology companies can depress industry standard wages and keep out these troublesome US citizens. Worse, in many cases, US citizens themselves can be fired to be replaced by H one b's they

take a look. Take a look, for example, at this recent report from sixty Minutes, where a former IT administrator for a hospital in the state of California describes the anguish of being fired and then forced to train his replacement.

is where Vivike Ramaswami comes in. During much of the debate around H one b's, what many tech leaders basically came to admit is that they prefer predominantly H one B workers from India because they work harder than Americans. Implicit in that is, they say Americans are lazy. It was implicit until Vivik just said that out loud, which I know you've heard some of this, but it's really

worth ruminating. On the crux of Vivike's posts is that Americans are fat, lazy and that our culture venerates the quote jock instead of the math olympiad like him. Perfect Ax's formulation. The reason that top tech companies hire foreign workers over native Americans is because Americans, and particularly white Americans,

are lazy. He blames this on cultural degradation and obviously personal feuds that he had growing up, where he watched Corey from Boy Meets World and Zach and Slater from Saved by the Bell get venerated instead of math olympiad nerds like himself. Now, a Vik's prescription is that Americans instead to adopt a parenting culture like the one he was raised in, the immigrant striver model best known to Americans from the book Battle Him of the Tiger Mother

by Amy Chua. And in the meantime, of course, he needed more H one bs. Now this might be a surprise to the Vivike Ramaswami of twenty twenty three who called for the end of the H one B visa system,

but nonetheless let's take it seriously. As I laid out in my own lengthy response to vivig Vivic is not wrong that many companies hire foreign born workers or children of immigrants because they work hard, But he is wrong in thinking it is somehow implicit to these groups and not one that Americans have not always had in their own culture. It's certainly true much of our culture today

revolves around hedonism, gambling, drinking, getting stoned. But the fact is is that as a solution is American as apple pie. You just have to return to what we all once valued. In fact, in the period before World War Two, many Ivy League schools and other so called prep schools for the American elite explicitly emphasized athletics, social skills, and leadership over rote memorization and academics that is characteristic of much

of Asian parenting today. The reason they did that is because if you lay a foundation for discipline through sport, and you create well rounded leaders, you can combine that with academic inquiry to create the entrepreneurial culture that gave birth to the American culture that beat the Axis powers in World War two and put a man on the moon. If Avig's model of parenting was a solution for greatness, then you would see the greatest companies in the world

being built in China, India, Singapore, Korea, and Japan. And look, as much as you all know, I love Japan, let's be honest, it's not the case. The reason so many people want to immigrate to the United States and are willing to do so even undercut US wages. Is because this is the place where you have, or at least had the best shot of being whoever you want to be. As I lay out in the very reason that Indians succeed in the US is precisely the dynamism, frontier spirit,

and foundation laid by the American founding fathers. It is by combining their cultural rejection of hedonism and now current focus of the family unit with hard work that they are able to achieve such stupendous success in such a short period of time. And absolutely none of this is intrinsic to being Indian. It is the same story of small, high achieving immigrant groups. The lesson for us all is

a universal one. Pure consumerism, individualists, hedonism in an atomized America as a way that we have today will lead to ruin. The way that you get out of it is not to bring in guest workers who have yet to be tainted by this, but instead to reinvigorate the spirit of the United States and refocus all US government policy on the prosperity of the American family over the prosperity of shareholder capitalism. Vivic and Elon's proscription is actually

the one that is truly anti American. It effectively believes America is so deurrascinated and lazy it can no longer accomplish what it once did without foreign guest workers. This only makes sense if your civic ideal is to increase a company's shareholder value. But as I said in my response to Vivic, if you prioritize a reinvigorated civic nationalism, that will inevitably clash with capitalist interests. In my opinion, we should have no more widespread immigrations to the US

for the foreseeable future. Our power and population is just far too high, and at any time you history, we have nearly flooded this country with twenty million illegal immigrants in a short span of a few decades, and all of the signs of ethnic strife that we saw one hundred years ago have returned. At that time when the similar levels of high foreign born population reached a crescendo, the United States effectively shut down the vast majority of immigration.

In that forty year or so period, something happened interesting happened. People went from Irish, American or Slovenian American or German American to just American racist nativism which was fueling the KKK actually disappeared for a generation and the country that put a man on the Moon was born. Now, this was directly at odds with the oligarchs of their day, who also relied on cheap labor from Europe's poor to flood their factories. But nonetheless the population understood at that

time it was near a breaking point. It is my opinion that is what we need again, and with the popular vote for Donald Trump, I think some of you feel the same. But even if you do not, what I at least hope to convince you of this in this monologue is of what the US immigration system today has become a vehicle for corporate interests to protect their profit and having your interests secondary. You do not even have to agree with me on immigration levels to get that.

I will prove it to you by ending with some words from a US senator. I'll tell you his name at the end quote. The primary purpose of H one B and other guest worker programs is not to employ the best in the brightest, but instead to replace American workers with lower paid workers from abroad who often live as indentured servants. The cheaper it is to hire guest workers, the more money the multi billionaire owners of large corporations make.

Multi billionaire oligarchs in big tech should not be allowed to hire guest workers to fill entry level and mid level IT jobs. Those jobs should be going to American workers who have the constitutional right to form a union and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. It must never be cheaper for a corporation to hire a guest worker from overseas than an American worker. Mister Ramaswami and others have argued we need a highly skilled

and well educated workforce. They are right. But the answer, however, is not to bring in cheap labor from abroad. That was Senator Bernie Sanders writing for Fox News. So perhaps there is a bipartisan future on this issue, at least ahead of us. I mean, it's been interesting to watch the ideological.

elite and has been for twenty years. How's the American elite doing? I don't think they're that great. They are the people who covered up Joe Biden. They are the people who went to Ivy League schools and went to go work at McKenzie to help Purdue Pharma juice their profits. Are we putting men on the moon? No, are we doing anything great. No way that you really make a ton of money in America today is to go work for a health insurance company and use AI to deny claims.

Or it's like, what are we educating people for? It's for such great purpose? Like I don't see anything all that good happening in the US society right now. And that's just where the breakdown in his whole theory is incorrect. It's like, you know, study and be good at violin. I just reread Tier Mother. It's an insane book. It's actually crazy just where she sits there and like whips her child rhetorically for not being good enough at the piano. And it's like, to what end? So you could go

to Harvard Law for what? For? What question was never answered by these people. And that's the problem I have with this whole thing. It's just bullshit.

But we're trying to have Derek Thompson on next week is tracking the way that these social trends, like teenagers don't even hang out with each other anymore, be better if they were hanging out together at the mall. He goes after like he's like, you shouldn't have your kids go to sleepovers. They should instead be studying for the

math Olympics. But it's like that's the exact wrong direction because these teens are miserable, depressed, and of course they're not going to live up to whatever the best version of themselves is when they're struggling with these mental health issues and the lack of social engagement is a big part of that.

than these different individual cultural dynamics. But whether you think that, agree with me on that or not, the thing you have control over, the thing that you've been put in charge of, is policy. So stop lecturing people about what sitcoms they watched when they were twelve years old, and start focusing on how to make life better for people. And then the number three thing, This is really the core of it. Neoliberalism effectively says the only thing that

matters is GDP growth and shareholder value. You as a person, if you don't make it in the market, not only is it your own fault, and you have failed as a human being. There is nothing redeeming about you. If you aren't going to Harvard, if you aren't providing shareholder value for one of Elon Musk's many companies, you have failed as a human being. I fundamentally reject that view

of humanity. There are so many more ways to be valuable to society than just to go work at McKenzie or go get your Harvard law degree, or go come up with the latest exotic financial instrument on Wall Street.

This is the type of mentality that leads to like the Varsity Blue scandal, where you think that the only thing that matters is this specific mode of achievementism, and you will do anything including schedule your child down to the minute and force them into all these you Latin tutoring and the math Olympics and the fencing, because that's

the best way to get a scholarship, et cetera. That you will schedule them down to the minute and never let them just be and discover who they are intrinsically and what they might want and enjoy.

single generation. And yet he's basically prescribing it for people while and I mean just in general, like telling them what to value and whatnot. Now, listen, I agree with some of his critiques. I do think it's true a lot of people don't work very hard and all of that, et cetera, and we have a culture of hedonism, et cetera. But I agree with you completely that a lot of that is policy. The H one B thing is perfect example. It's like you, it's not in your control how much

you get paid. It's a macro system based on visa. You know the I didn't put this in. The actual person who wrote the H one B law, he said at the time that he was duped by the technology companies and he's outraged at the way that it is now used. The congressman who passed H one B and wrote the law said he is outraged at the way that the technology companies have circumvented it to use and discriminate against the US workers. And look at that video of that guy. Again didn't have time to play it.

He worked at a children's hospital and he's like, you know, I took my work really seriously keeping these systems up because I would walk around and see parents with children who are fighting cancer. He's like, somebody who's not here in the building has no idea, you know what the responsibility and all that, and that describes what you're saying. It's not just about the bottom line. And you know the craziest part too, that was a state institution, so

those were government dollars that they were being paid. That were outsourced.

must be your fault. And so yeah, the vag saying it out loud, and by the way, using rhetoric that many Black Americans will recognize as the type of rhetoric that many elites, but especially Republicans, have used about their culture and why they've struggled to succeed as well, is also really quite something.