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