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Let's go and move on to the democratic side of the Ledger here and some interesting post mortem that's been happening over on MSNBC. So, to my absolute shock, there are actually a few mainstream figures who have now come out after the fact, after they spent years crushing Bernie Sanders, demonizing him, his movement, anyone associated with it, like burning it to the ground, salting the ground, etc. After all of that, now suddenly you know that guy Bernie.
Sanders, maybe he had a point.
So here's James Carville on MSBC with ari melburalisticalism.
So you, as mister, it's the economy, stupid?
Was this an economy election?
And if so, is Sanders right that on populous working class kitchen table issues?
That dev didn't do enough.
Well, what he is not right about the Democrats have done a number of things for working people. I mean Obamacay expanded healthcare for twenty three million more people than had it before. A lot of things in President Bids built Back Better program, created millions of jobs working people. But I think since Senators has some point here, and that is there were things we could have run on harder that have effected the minimum wage. It passes everywhere
by seventy percent. I mean, I know that President Biden was far height and Harris as far, but we didn't put it front and center. What about tax and the incomes over four hundred thousand dollars and taking that money and put it in the first time home buyers Mortgage Relief Fund. I mean, there were things that Senator Sanders would favor that we could have put more front and center. Now you know that there are a lot of things that are just popular that Democrats areport it. They're popular
with every kind of Democrat in the country. They also happened to be popular with independence and even some Republicans. And we should run on a popular thing. A popular thing was not continuing to buy the administration that was clearly not what people wanted. I think he's a great guy, but people did want more of that, and that's what we gave them.
Incredible, incredible, and you know, I mean I like, in a sense, I guess I should be like, well, better late than ever. You know, David Brooks, thanks for coming around, like James Carvell. But it's also like, you know, you had twenty sixteen was the time to truly offer like a post neoliberal vision, and all the energy was that, you know, from occupying it builds into Bernie Sanders and you have the left alternative to the Trumpian populist direction.
And they just people like him were when above and beyond. I mean they fought Bernie Standers far harder than they ever fought Donald Trump.
And so at this point.
It's like, you know, I hope it's not too late, but I kind of think it is. And there is no Bernie Sanders. He's eighty three years old. Like for him personally, he's still with us. Actually saw him speak last night, and man, he is still sharp as attack, hasn't lost a step intellectually whatsoever.
But he's eighty three years old. Like there has to.
Be a successor to him, there's no one that's obvious that has the same type of of just you know, credibility and appeal that he truly did to independance and some Republicans. And even as James Carvel says the thing about like, yeah, there's things that he said that are popular.
I think they still don't get that.
It's not just about like, Okay, these policies are popular and like let's check.
Off the list. Because frankly, commiers did do some of that right.
She did have a good economic program that she ran a lot of ads about with you know, anti price
gouging and child tax credit and these other things. It has to be, though, part of a story with villains, and that's the part that the Carvills and the David Brooks and whoever of the world are uncomfortable with because they rely on that the people that would be the villains are like the billionaires, the millionaires, the donor class, the corrupt elite, the rigged media, And when you get to that part, they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
We just want to talk about minimum wage and talk about generally about maybe income inequality, but we don't want to name names about who are the villains here and what systems are the villains here because that implicates them directly, and that's where that's where the real rub comes in.
I can't imagine what it's like for you to watch that on MSNBC now.
I mean, it's.
Sincerely like and it has to be what it was like for Pat Buchanan to watch Fox New to suddenly start talking differently about trade and foreign policy after Donald Trump came along, right like you were having like serious conversations, like Sean Hannity is having serious conversations about whether he's like a free trade guy, a fair trade guy, and like actually platforming some of this stuff that Pat Buchanan was called, you know, it's a semitic and awful and
an extremist for talking about. And then ten years later, you know, you're having mainstream conversations about some of these ideas and Fox things because of Donald Trump.
But like, this is not impressive at all.
It's just that people are getting, you know, plaudits right now for being willing to say what James Carvill just said. But I can't imagine finding that impressive, Like it would have maybe been impressive or brave ten years ago.
But it's way way too late.
I mean, they already have a second Trump administration. The fascist quote unquote has been re elected.
Like that's two terms. So well done, guys.
This is already an abject failure by your own standards.
Yeah, no, it doesn't feel good to be Like I told you so, it does not feel good to be in that position, because again I'm just sort of like, I also know that even as in their despair at the moment, they may accidentally admit that Bernie had a point. And you know, one thing I've been pointing out is if you look at the groups that Bernie was strongest with, those are the groups Latinos, working class people, bros.
You know, Joe Rogan literally himself.
Those are the groups that are find the Democratic Party increasingly repellent and have been fleeing them. And so it's just, you know, it's unequivocally the case that those are the groups that Bernie Sanders had the greatest traction. And by the way that coalition was demonized, it was demonized by them, and Bernie himself was demonized as being racist and sexist. And you know, for the left getting all the blame
for identity politics. They're the ones that invented identity politics effectively under the Hillary Clinton campaign toothmear Bernie Sanders and
by extension, his entire movement. And you know, we're going to talk to young Democrat about the you know, the conversation around young men, but part of that conversation has to be the way that the young male supporters of Bernie Sanders were treated and smeared as you know, toxic sexist bros who were only there because they were, like, you know, interested in opposing the first historic female president.
And so yeah, when that's the message that has been routinely coming out of the Democratic Party now eight years straight, that's going to have an impact too. I'm not saying that's everything that's going on, but I also don't think it's something that you should just completely ignore when you're looking at the number of people who did travel along that Bernie to Trump pipeline ultimately.
And I think it is such a good point, just lastly, about diagnosing the problem but not being willing to like go.
Fully with the right treatment.
If you're using that metaphor and that like finally they're seeing.
What has been obvious.
I mean, it's not again, it's not impressive for them to come around to this in twenty twenty four, right, but at least being willing to admit it and have that conversation.
All right, that's one thing.
But if you're not willing to admit that your friends are the villains in the story, then you can't treat the problem because that would require actually undermining their power, their influence, their bank accounts like that would require taking really tough pills.
Yeah, and they're not willing to do that.
Easy to say Bernie is right Now that Bernie Sanders is eighty three years old and is.
Completely he won't run again.
Irrelevant to any sort of future conversation about power.
This was interesting to me.
Let's put C two up on the screen, and I think indicative of probably the way that Democrats are actually.
Going to react to this loss. So among Kamala.
Harris voters, they asked this question, this was Yukov, who do you think is more to blame for the outcome of the twenty twenty four elections? So twenty four percent say Joe Biden makes sense, six percent only say Kamala Harris, and I actually think it is fair to blame Joe Biden more than Kamala Harris, although obviously both shoulder some
blame for the decisions that were made here. But the majority say it's just a bad year for Democrats, meaning like, you know, they'll get them next time, no need for any major changes or adjustments. And if you hear people like Jim Clyburn out there being like everybody just chill out, it's like, by your own lexicon, the country just elected a fascist, yep, and you're like, let's just chill out,
no big deal them next time. So but I think if this is the way the base feels, and you know, as being sort of primed to feel by people who say also like oh look and come and stay bad all around the globe and look at inflation. Actually we did better than most parties in power around the country, And I say, a unique set of circumstances and Donald Trump's gonna be done after this, blah blah blah. We
actually came really close in the background states. There's a million reasons they can come up with for looking at this and saying like we don't really need to adjust, we can keep doing our things and we'll get them next time. And I think that's probably going to be the primary reaction. You'll have the you know, the signaling from Seth Moultens of the world of like, oh, we're going to you know, whatever issue was pulling the most poorly,
like let's just throw that issue under the bus. And you know, especially ones that don't harm the donor class whatsoever, Like being more oppositional to trans people is not going to hurt any donor or base.
So that's easy to do. Let's just do that.
In terms of any sort of like dramatic reader, we already know because they're re electing the exact same house leadership they've had. There's no conversation about any sort of like massive purge, and so yeah, I think they're just going to keep heading in this direction and this direction. If the trends and the realignments continue, like they're screwed, because yeah, right now you might be kind of in the ballgame, but only a third of the country roughly
of adults, has a college degree. So if you're effectively like only winning college degree holders, you are not a contender to be a majority coalition anymore. Like that, if that trend continues, you're going to be a permanent minority with basically no power outside of certain blue areas.
I mean, it's for a lot of people on the right seeing the numbers among young people of shifts, not just in terms of who they voted for by exit polls, but public opinion polling on different issues young men.
I know we're talking about.
This later, but the point I'm trying to make here is that, like, that's shocking to people on the right. If you had told people on the right ten years ago that young people would have shifted that dramatically on different issues, especially young men, it would have been unthinkable. That was literally like a fantasy that anyone would have ever been able to make those shifts in such quick time. And now gen z is seeing a boom in trade skills people not going through full college education.
So yeah, I think college's enrollment has peaked.
I agree.
So, like, if your projection is like, ah, but more and more people keep getting college degrees, I think that's a faulty assumption.
Yeah, I agree with that, and I think we're seeing pretty clear signs that's the case. So you know, this is a Republicans I think are poised potentially I agree with as a client that they're poised to overinterpret their quote unquote mandate and overreach because Kamala Harris is like a terrible candidate and still managed to win nearly half of the country's vote. I mean, this is probably going to be a popular vote that's like a two point difference, So I.
Think it's very possible.
And even in some of these battleground states that Donald Trump ended up sweeping, it was a really thin margin. So I think it's possible that Republicans overreach and they do over interpret this quote unquote mandate. But even so, the long term trends for Democrats there are some really
worrying signs, just like there are for Republicans. The countries not with them on abortion, countries not with them on tax cuts for the wealthy, is not with the donor class of the GOP on so the social safety net. There's some serious foreign policy differences between that donor class and the average voter as well. So there are real problems for Republicans down the line. But for Democrats, I mean, the long term trends with younger voters that was never a worry and now it is.
Yeah, absolutely, I do think some of what was seen this time is not only a shift to the right. I think that's real. But there was also fewer young people who turned out. You know, there was a depression of the sort of like democratic young base, and you know, Gaza has to be part of that, has to.
Be part of that. I don't want to overstate it.
I think, you know, it would be easy for me, given my ideology, to say like, this is the reason they lost. I think it is part of the reason they lost. Oh, you know, because how can you really feel like, oh, I'm standing for the good and the righteous when you see in your social media feed every day. I mean, I've seen things, horrors that I never imagine and will never be able to get out of my head.
And I know I'm not alone.
So yeah, that'll depress your base. Feel like, I don't want to be complicit in a genocide. I don't want to be anywhere near this, and so maybe I don't want to vote for Donald Trump.
But just I can't build the lover for this.
I mean, it's not surprising, but I feel like the lack of conversation about how much that actually affected the youth vote, young turnout and potentially in people voting for Trump is like an anti establishment Whether or not people.
Agree with it.
I mean, I know you and Sager talked about the aoc Q and A that she's been doing on her Instagram right listen in DC, like, people don't have to agree with it, and idelergs don't have to agree with it. But there are a lot of normal voters who see that issue totally differently, just trying to give a finger to the elites, no matter.
How they do it.
And for some of them, I think the war and gozz is really a part of that, and it's affecting voting patterns, and there's just been a total glossing over of how that probably shifted the election of Donald Trump's favor too.
Yeah, it is possible. It is possible, given.
How narrow Lake, Michigan was in particular, that that could have actually been decisive there.
It's possible.
Like I'm not saying one way or another, but I'd find that theory to be plausible.
College towns in Wisconsin and Georgia and North Carolina.
Absolutely.
All right, let's go ahead and move to a short story. We can certainly find some common ground on here Emily, which is bashing the New York Times. So Soger and I covered. I don't know if you guys talked about the story or not about the whole Hoogan situation in Amsterdam. So this was portrayed quite hyperbolically by Joe Biden, Barry Richie Tora as all these sorts of people and the news media as a jew hunt pogram against these Israeli
soccer fans. There was indeed quite a bit of violence. However, the portrayal of them as just these innocent victims minding their own busines, going to attend a soccer game and being targeted solely for their religion was wildly misleading. In fact, there were quite a number of journalists on the ground there, include very young We played some of his Stuf who was like fourteen years old, who was out recording before
there was any sort of retaliatory violence. You know, them going through the streets saying, you know, death to Arabs and bragging about the number of children who were massacreding gaza, vandalizing, assaulting cab driver, you know, vandalizing a taxi cab, burning Palestinian flags, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And so this descends into total melee with violence and a number of Israelis who
were you know, who were beaten in brutal way. So news media portrayed this, of course, like I said, as completely one sided, just you know, born out of anti Semitism period, end of story. So this was an interesting coda to the whole portrayal of this, so we could put this up on the screen. The New York Times had published a video that they said purported to show Israeli's being chased.
Down and beaten.
Okay, it turns out it was the exact opposite thing that happened here. So let me read to you the correction that the Times themselves posted about this video. They said an earlier version of this article included a video distributed by Reuters with a script about Israeli fans being attacked. Radar Systems issued a correction saying it is unclear who's
depicted in the footage. The videos author told The New York Times it shows a group of Maccabee fans chasing a man on the street, a description of The Times independently confirmed with other verified footage from the scene. The video has been removed, so keeps us up on the screen for a moment. So it turns out they put this video out. They thought that it showed Israeli fans
being assaulted. Turns out it shows Israeli fans doing the assaulting, and rather than allowing that to inform their reporting and keeping the video up because now they've confirmed okay, actually it shows the opposite of what we were reporting. That changes the picture that we and others have been portraying about what's going on. Instead of doing that, since it now doesn't fit the narrative that they've been peddling, they
just take it down. And I think that that is an incredibly revealing little decision that was made here that shows you that they had one way they wanted this story to be portrayed, and when the things that they themselves published did not match up with that story, rather than grappling with that as a news organization filled with serious journalists, they just took it down and hit it all together.
The New York Times Israel coverage is such a fascinating glimpse into how elites are wrestling with Israel, and that Ryan makes this point too, about how after twenty fourteen, in particular, there was a movement to get Palestinian journalists into mainstream media organizations and there was a movement to get better coverage obviously of Israel and Gaza into mainstream media coverage.
And so the institutions themselves have this.
Kind of internal battle between their own staff that is very much not of the old school foreign policy establishment when it comes to Israel, and then members of the staff that are very much like demand of demand.
That the sort of old school position on Israel is the norm is the yeah, exactly is maintained.
And so for example, I'm looking at a New York Times article from it was Monday or Tuesday of this week, where they write tensions had risen a day earlier when Israeli fans vandalized a taxi, burned a Palestinian flag in the city, and enchanted incendiary and racist slogans, according to
the police. Now I know people who would object to that even being in a story about what happened, when actually I think that context would have been helpful right up front from yeah, obviously, because there was this immediate and again I get this, by the way, from you know, Jewish people whose grandparents like survived the Holocaust. There's a level of sensitivity that is totally understandable that I don't
have because I'm not Jewish. My grandparents didn't survive the Holocaust, and so I understand why that sensitivity exists for many, many people. We are still within the lifetimes of people who went through the.
Greatest genocide that the world has ever seen.
Greatest in the sense of like the most dramatic, most tragic and awful genocide the world's ever seen.
So you understand the sensitivity. But then if you.
Are a news organization, the context is more important than the sensitivity obviously.
Well and not only that, but I don't think you do Jewish people many neighbors either, because now the narrative they're getting in the world is Jews are being hunted just for no reason other than their religion on the streets.
Absolutely European city.
Absolutely, And you know, noteworthy in this whole melee is that, you know, Dutch Jews, there's no indication any of them were targeted, Like there's no indication that there's been an uptick in violence or there's shops ACKed or anything like that.
It's like targeted for being Jewish.
Yes, it was, you know, purely, like in the context of this soccer game and these fans chanting like you know, these hooligans chanting death to Arabs and bragging about killing children and burning Palestinian flags and running around with steel pipes and being incredibly provogaed I saw a report ones like you know, going through up and down a subway
car looking for a Palestinian to like harass. So so yeah, it's it's important for everybody that you actually understand what is going on, and to your point about the internal struggles and like the you know, the struggle sessions that are happening there right now. The first article that was published about these events went through at least four different headline changes.
At least four that's interesting.
Yeah, it was like, I know, Ryan, I saw this from Ryan too, because he was like, hey, if you're involved in this, can you go ahead and hit me up on signal let me know what was going on here, because yeah, it was clearly very tortured the attempt like how do we word this and is it anti Semitism?
And where do we lead with that? And do we put in the previously like.
It was they were clearly there was some sort of an internal war going on even about how to headline this series of events.
Yeah, and you know, it actually reminds me, like even if someone I have like a more libertarian take on the police, but it reminds me of a lot of the coverage of police violence against black Americans when you public when you do public polling about how many police killings. This is obviously like five years ago when we were talking about it more and more, But when you do polling about how many unarmed people are killed by police
every year, the public vastly overestimates what the number is. Yeah, because the media coverage is so so intense during different parts of you know, the last decade. I would say, to your point about who this is, like, whether this actually helps to even have that heightened sensitivity, I would say it doesn't because it doesn't create an accurate picture of what actually happened. And I'm sure saying death to Arabs elicited death to Jews, like I don't doubt that
that happened on the streets of Amsterdam. I'm sure that there's legitimately anti Semitism, and there was probably some of it at play here. But if you were following this on my timeline and as somebody who's on the right as it was happening, you would be misinformed about what actually went down that day. Yeah, and that's I mean, it's.
Not journalism and it's not doing anyone in any favors.
Yeah, I mean, there is a similar dynamic, you know, from my left perspective of people think that the crime rates right now are much higher than they are. Yes, they think they're like the highest in history. If you go back and look at what was going on in the eighties and early nineties, y'all.
We are nowhere close.
And in fact, you know, in a lot of places violent crime has come down. That's not there was a decided uptick during COVID, there's no doubt about those things. But yeah, I mean it's Yeah, there's a misimpression that is created about the level of crime that's occurring right now. And also people are also very unaware of the fact that the number of migrants crossing the border has also in recent months come down quite significantly from its peak
as well. So in any case, a lot of inaccurate pictures created a far of our world in our country here.
Yes, and the media is to blame, yes, So that is something we can all agree on.
Indeed, so the Biden administration had a kind of strange duality to economic policy that has confounded quite a number of analysts now.
On the one hand, they completely.
Failed to deliver for working people in the near term after the American Rescue Plan, the COVID social safety Net was systematically dismantled, the fifteen dollars minimum wage hike completely scuttled, and the Build Back Better agenda buried, never to be
heard from again. As reported by Lever News, the number of Americans saying it was difficult to typical expenses skyrocketed, Inflation of course would eventually ease, but prices they would not come back down, and the child tax credit dead for Baron's Red and four Barons, Stimmis and super doll none of that was going to come back. On the other hand, the Biden admins approach to labor antitrust and crypto was actually really great, genuinely provoked the ire of
the billionaire class. Literally dozens of hate screens against FDC chair Linaghan were published to the Wall Street Journal alone. The people who had seen a chill descend on their deal flow and who now had to grapple with workers threatening union drives were one hundred percent read in on exactly what the Biden administration was doing and to whom,
and they were pissed. Just see how even Democratic aligned billionaires like Reid Hoffman and Mark Cuban waged a war of their on their own nominee to pressure her into buckling on the best parts of the Biden administration's economic policy. This Biden policy was actually really excellent, best in my lifetime, but it did little to deliver significant gains for regular people in the short term.
So he kind of had a worst of all worlds.
He had a pissed off billionaire class and a pissed off electorate. Perhaps if the president was able or willing to explain his attacks on these forces, the landscape could have been somewhat different. But if a billionaire cries over his lost merger in the woods and no one hears, it doesn't really make a sound, not as far as
the mass voting public is concerned. But in fact, quite a few of those billionaires did speak loudly with their checkbooks, because no president in history has had more unified mega donor support than Donald J.
Trump.
Now that might seem unlikely, given that Kamala raised so much more money than Trump did, but these vast resources were largely pulled from the affluent, resistant liberal donor base. The Financial Times compiled the numbers, and you could take a look.
It's quite clear.
Both candidates, of course, enjoyed generous support from wealthy donors, but Trump's elite donor hall vastly dwarfed that of Harris and her allied packs. So in total, Kamala raised about one hundred and twenty seven million dollars, or about six percent of her total funding from America's billionaires. Trump, on the other hand, vacued up a whopping five hundred and sixty eight million dollars, or about a third of his
total funding from that billionaire class. This level of disparity between billionaire giving is actually pretty unique in this election, and reflected a clear verdict on how the wealthiest people in the world viewed this contest through the lens of their own class interest. As Marine Ta Katchik writes for The American Prospect, of the top ten mega donors, only
the bottom two gave to Democrats. Trump's hall from his own top ten donors, none of whom both the surname Coke Courtil, by the way, amounted to about nine hundred and forty five million dollars, Harris's top down a two hundred and fifty four million. Now Harris ended up, She pointed out, raising more money thanks to resistance giving, but Trump got to spend much less time raising it, and with Musk he also had the algorithms on his side.
Marine's Peace posits an interesting and I think correct theory that I hadn't considered before, which is that which of the billionaire raging over Gaza and campus anti Semitism was really a proxy war over the Biden policies that hurt their bottom lines. After October seventh, billionaires congregated in group chats to organize cancelation campaigns, to defund insufficiently pro Israel news outlets, and even raise money to fund a squad of goons to assist the NYPD in cracking down on
college protesters. Warring details the various, very specific agreemances that these same billionaires had with the Biden Harris administration when it came to their bottom line. She writes, all of the whales had self serving a grievances with the Biden White House. Elon Musk has been fuming at Biden ever since the National Labor Relations Board forced him in twenty twenty one to delete a twenty eighteen tweet threatening to rescind the stock options of Tesla workers who voted to unionize.
Harvard boycott and do not Hire list coordinator Bill Ackman is likely nursing a grudge over some deleted tweets posted by a top SEC official about his dubious back. So apparently Elon was pissy over the National Labor Relations Board checking his union busting. Acman had a two billion dollar stake in Google, which was successfully sued by the Biden doj.
The billionaire who launched a donations boycott against U Penn happens to be CEO of the private equity firm that owns a grocery store whose merchant Biden merger Biden was blocking, and also owns a for profit diploma mill that the Biden Department of Education was going after. A Bunch of these guys, of course, have big crypto investments that were in danger thanks to SEC chair Gary Gensler actually regulating them.
Now they used Israel to launder their class interests, positioning themselves as the defenders of the average Joe against the militant college lefty, while simultaneously cloking themselves in the language of microaggressions and safe spaces. An incredible jiu jitsu move, I guess, and a successful one, because I bet if you asked one hundred Americans which candidate raised more from billionaires, ninety nine of them would pick Kamala. The reality, however,
is the polar opposite. And that's to say nothing of the billionaires who simply quietly dropped their previous opposition to Trump. Jeff Bezos was the most prominent example, with his decision to block his non use paper The Washington Post from making an endorsement in the race. Warren Buffett stayed on this election entirely. Google Sundar Pachai called Trump to make nice, as did Apples, Tim Cook and Facebook Smark Zuckerberg. Even
Kamala's big billionaire story hit Mark Cuban. He didn't actually give her any money for her campaign, and he has now scrubbed his Twitter account of all previous pro Kamala tweets.
Kind of incredible.
Trump himself had become a comfortable choice for many elites after dropping his twenty sixteen rhetorical opposition to billionaire donors and commitment to drain the swamp. So it's recalling just how vitriolic he was back then towards a Republican Party donor class.
You remember this quiet.
Helped us at the time a lot of times. That's all of his donors and special interests out. So that's what it is. That's what And by the way, let me just tell you we need a tickets. You can't get him. You know who has the tickets for the I'm talking about to the television audience, donors, specially the people that are putting up the money.
Who it is.
The RNC told us we have all donors in the audience. And the reason they're not loving me, the reason they're not excuse me, the reason they're not loving me is I don't want their money. I'm going to do the right thing for the American public. I don't want their money. I don't need their money. And I'm the only one up here that can say that.
A recently resurfaced tweet has Trump castigating Mark or Rubio for being Sheldon Adelson's perfect little puppet. Kind of incredible given that Trump himself was this time around beneficiarya of an eye popping one hundred million dollars from Sheldon's widow, Miriam, who already seems to have received for it a bespoke Israel First administration, complete with End Times evangelicals running the Pentagon and serving as ambassador to that nation.
But wasn't just Miriam Trump.
Corted he flipped his position on crypto, blatantly promised a room full of billionaires he will cut their taxes, told another room of oil and gas executives that he would fulfill their wildest deregulatory dreams. If twenty sixteen was dream swamp, twenty twenty four was suck off the swamp. So outside of Miriam, what are the rest of the billionaires getting
for their dollars? The general contours are cryptoregulation over tax cuts for the rich le nakhn in, aggressive anti trust enforcement over general deregulation, pro labor natural labor relations Board gutted. I've no doubt specific donors will reap their version of bespoke government rewards in the same way that Miriam was able to get her Israel First administration. Much of that we probably won't even see from our vange point. Elon Musk may of course, be the biggest winner, and he
is already clearly reaping the rewards. One source says he's been running around with Trump acting like he's go president. As we discussed earlier, Elon's officially been awarded his custom hole of government gig to crush any sort of legal and regulatory hurdles that his business interests are facing and keep those massive taxpayer subsidies coming.
Don't forget, Musk's.
Companies are some of the largest recipients of government contracts period. SpaceX alone received fifteen point four billion dollars from the government over the past decade. Your tax dollars have helped to make him the richest man on Earth, and so it is reasonable to expect that our government would provide
some oversight of those expenditures. And in fact, Musk's companies are increasingly entangled in a web of regulatory disputes and investigations over things like workplace safety violations, union busting, environmental abuses, and more. Now, look, some of these investigations might have merit, some might not. But does anyone think that under a Trump administration he will face scrudiny over literally anything, Even if Doge is really just a make work project for
Elon and Favek. These benefits are real, and they are gigantic. Our government being run to serve the interests of the richest man on the planet. It is a deeply disturbing outcome. Even if you love Elon, just to maagine it was Bill Gates, Imagine it was George Shores. Then tell me how you would feel about one billionaire, any billionaire, having this level of immunity and control. Now Musk is also apparently meeting with Trump every day to help oversee government staffing,
even to speak with foreign leaders. No one allowed to billionaire should have this kind of control, period. So did Democrats deliver for the working class on a material basis in the hero now?
No.
Did they aggravate enough billionaires for them to throw hundreds of millions of dollars to get Lena Conenco off their backs?
Absolutely?
Now twenty sixteen, the capitol class, they didn't know what to make a Trump, whether he might cause trouble for them their bottom line, but ultimately in the end he delivered for them. His cabinet was the wealthiest in history, stocked with CEOs, billionaires and Wall Street executives. His primary accomplishment was a tax cut that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy. He stopped his National Labor Relations Board with union busters who made sure that workers did not stand a shot
and increasing their labor power. So this time around, there was little concern, plenty of enthusiasm actually about getting their man back in the White House. They are fully confident that any chaos which is unleashed will leave them unscathed. And that is one of truly the most impressive accomplishments.
And if you want to hear my reaction to Chrystal monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
So of course there's been a big conversation about the bros, the young gen Z men shifting right and backing Donald Trump, and some also just staying home, so to try to.
Understand more of what may be going on there.
We're lucky to be joined this morning by Sonjay Morley there and he is the vice president of the College Democrats, hoping to give some advice to his Democratic brothers and sisters. Great to see you Sunday, welcome.
Well, thank you so much for having me.
Yeah, it's our pleasure.
So let's go just put the numbers up on the screen and get your reaction to some of the shifts that we saw. So young women in twenty twenty four, fifty eight percent voted for Kamala Harris. That was a decline from twenty twenty one, sixty five percent voted for Joe Biden. With young men, you saw an even steeper decline. You see only forty two percent of young men voting for Kamala Harris, meaning that Trump won fifty six percent, And that is a total flip from back in twenty
two money when Joe Biden won fifty six percent. Of this population, we're talking about men under the age of twenty nine. So what do you see in these numbers? What do you think is going on here?
Well, I think these are largely unsurprising. To put it simply, I think that as Democrats we fail to directly make the case two young men, and the right has very much successfully exploited I guess the struggles of young men, and I guess to truly understand this, we have to take a step back and kind of largely contextualize gen Z men and just gen Z as a whole. You know, gen Z, we're a generation and crisis. Forty two percent
of us struggle with depression, Our anxiety. Seventy three percent of us have indicated that we feel alone sometimes are.
Always in our most formative years.
And this mental health epidemic is further exascerbated within you know, the male populace, because.
It just simply isn't socially.
Acceptable for us to go out and talk to our buddies about our feelings. You know, we tend to kind of bottle it up quote unquote man up. And the result of this is terrible, you know, and I think the right is kind of very much successfully tapped into, you know, these feelings of these just general like mal sentiments and utilize that in a way that's resulted in their electoral victory.
And why do you think, at least us so far, it looks like Kamala Harris failed to inspire a big turnout among voters under the age of twenty nine. Why do you even compare with Joe Biden, who, by the way, I mean it's not just Biden's age. Obviously, Bernie Sanders was able to mobilize a pretty significant chunk of the
youth vote. But why do you think the Harris campaign And I'm curious what you make of there's the turnout question in general, But why do you think that Harris campaign struggled to get young people even to come out and vote for her.
Well, I think, I mean, it's hard to ignore the elephant in the room of gaza. You know, college democrats haven't been afraid to take a stand and you know, actually go up against the Biden administration on this consequential issue.
I think there's this common misconception that a lot of these people who are protesting are like, you know, some type of fringe left wing radicals, but a lot of them are actually call those Democrats who are actually stifically engaged and care about you know, elections as a whole.
And you know, if you're not listening to young people across the country who are literally getting beaten, literally getting arrested in pepper sprayed for standing up for global justice, it shouldn't be surprising that they didn't turn out in the numbers that we expected. So I think that's the biggest one. But I also think young people in general, we just want to know whether or not uh the people at the top care about our futures, right, We're not this kind of high up elite uh niche group
that cares about cultural war issues. We want to know, are we going to be able to afford a house? Are we going to be able to pay for our groceries? Are we going to be able to pay off a student loans? And while Democrats, you know, we have the policies that solve each of these issues, we kind of failed to connect what you guys have referred to earlier in some of your earlier segments as like the laundry
list of Democratic policies to our daily lives. And I think failing to make that connection, coupled with the fact that the concerns of young people on Gaza were largely ignored, would be the two most predominant reasons why I crossed the board.
Yeah, we saw it.
Yeah.
I've been thinking Sonjai to about how it's almost like an instinct or it's like the typical protocol within the Democratic Party to sort of bash their young base post Obama two thousand and eight, and even Obama after two thousand and eight kind of you know, made a point of punching left and you know, like hippie punching, which often ends up being the young, idealistic activists who.
Bear the brunt of that.
But you know, it's clear for me in particular with the response to the Bernie Sanders movement, which was largely a youth movement that was eight years ago. So some of the people who were big Bernie Sanders supporters aren't under that age of thirty anymore. But it's indicative of the way that the Democratic Party tends to treat its
young activist base, it's young, idealistic base. And you know, you see the same instinct with regard to the treatment of campus protesters, where you have Joe Biden, Kamala Harris going out on their way to condemn them, to smear them all as you know, blanket anti Semites, and so you know, I don't think it should be surprising then when if this is the treatment year after year after year, people start feeling like, you know, even if they're not going to vote for Donald Trump, like why am I
going to show up in both of these people who don't even really seem like they want me or my voice in their coalition?
Exactly.
It definitely makes our job top as callous Democrats. I remember all the way back in May, you know, Ryan Grim actually covered this when we put out a statement in regards to this issue, I told in New York Times that you know, we can do. We can have all the manpower, all the organizing capacity, but if we're given a broken script that doesn't actually align with the best interests of college students, it's very tough for us to.
Excite these type of voters. And that's why we spoke out as early as we did, because to.
Us, it would be a disservice to the party if we didn't tell them that, hey.
You know, we know that you need youth to win, and looking.
At what we're seeing on the ground, where our own members of our organization are getting eaten and arrested, that's not going to do well for turnout. And I deeply do hope that in future election cycles they learned from this. And I guess, you know, you don't need to agree with campus protesters and everything, but the very least, you know, support something simple as an armsymbargain.
And I think what's really telling are the numbers like Dearborn.
Michigan, for example, where Rashida to Leep want sixty percent of the vote, but Harris lost to Trump.
And I think that.
Should be proof that you know, we're not losing because we're failing to outcompete the right at shifting right word. We're losing because we're failing to actually tap into issues that matter to both young people but just Americans across the board.
Yeah, when we get back to that question of the vibes, we can put the next element up on the screen.
This is e too.
Some responses to the New York Times questions about this, these are all gen Z voters, by.
The way, who went for Donald Trump.
And Pierce twenty six from North Carolina says I voted for Donald Trump. I decided after Kamalo went on caller and Daddy Lillian twenty seven of Virginia's that I've voted for Trump and made that decision the same day the mainstream media was having a meltdown after the Madison Square Garden rally.
So one of the things I just want to put to you, Sanjay, is you.
Know llewell At the guy who wrote in Mike Blueberg.
Mike Blueberg, Yeah, that's a weird bo He's really against big gulps.
The that was the factor for him.
He wanted an overt like Oligarch and then not like a subtle one, like a just an overt one in the White House.
Yeah, you know, but a little bit of a throwback too.
But you know the question, it seems to me this is very unusual for the right, but it seems to me like there's something very fashionable among people who listen to what they see as alternative kind of dissident podcasts.
People will like Joe Rogan, people like THEO Vaughn.
It almost became fashionable to vote for the Republican candidate because it's Donald Trump. And now for Republicans that seems to be a problem because it won't translate after Donald Trump to other Republican candidates like a JD. Vant Just
people won't see it in quite the same way. But could you speak to a little bit maybe what you saw among college students, college Republicans and people even recently out of college when it came to that question of like was there something actually very exciting to them about voting for Donald Trump. It's so unusual again just to see that for the Republican candidate among young people. But I get the sense that actually is what happened.
No, yeah, I mean it's incredibly unusual to me, you know, as like a gen z Man on the left. I was shocked when NBC ends up polling showed Trump, you know, performing better among young men.
Than our candidate.
And I think the reason for this, I want to kind of come back to my first point about how I think, you know, Donald Trump and his team are kind of successfully exploited, you know, the loneliness epidemic that young men are facing. So you know, there's a lot of different rabbit holes you can fall into kind of when you're trying to in this search for a meeting. And I kind of narrowed it down to like three
big ones. The first is kind of the whole self help YouTuber or self help influencer whose whole business model is predicated on you not getting self help. You know, someone like Andrew Tate who pushed out hustlers un as this kind of way to escape the matrix, and it ended up just being a pyramid scheme where you're incentivius to share it with more people and then he gets
a kind of the revenue. I think the second group is kind of these largely a political but slightly light reading right word leading kind of like conservative influencers, the likes of like Aiden Ross Logan, Paul and I think you can throw in, you know, just general conservative influencers were also kind of entertainers, the likes of like Charlie Kirk, seven Crowder, and then the last group kind of being the one who those who kind of defied the system as a whole.
Right.
I think your best example.
Is Joe Rogan, who you know, he can't be canceled because his network is bigger than anyone who would try to cancel him CNN. They've got twenty literally like one twenty eighth of the viewership that he does.
And even Neil Jung and Johnny like they could Johnny Mitchell couldn't cancel him when they got mad at Spotify for oh no, yeah.
You literally can. And I think, honestly, I mean sidetracked. But I think as Democrats, he'd accept that and actually embrace his viewership. But I think think Donald Trump kind of taps into all three of these different I guess rabbit holes in such a perfect manner. You know, I would argue he's like the self help influencer whose whole
business models predicated and you not getting self help. We saw it with Trump University, which was I it was starkly similar to you know, all these like Nie Pyramid schemes that we've seen with like the likes of Andrew Tate. He's obviously also kind of an entertainer, you know, we've seen with The Apprentice, and his whole style is just entertaining, and he's.
Defied the system.
There is no uh, you know, political precedent for Donald Trump, and I think him kind of effectively tapping into these three different realms are is what's resulted in him being such a successful candidate.
That's such an insightful that's so insightful about Trump University. I don't really in the Andrew Tate model being similar in Trump University being version of that insightful those categories too. Yeah, go ahead, Sanjay, you can finish a point.
No, yeah, But I think the point that I'm getting at is like he they're successful in this regard, and then us as Democrats, the best way that we can combat this is to kind of combat traditional masculinity with modern masculinity. But I think until we do that, we're going to continue seeing young men kind of shift.
Right word I've been trying to figure out Hassan Piker talks about how all of these it's kind of similar to what you're saying, but how all of these spaces for men have just become like right wing and so like, if you want to get fit, the fitness influencers our right wing. If you want to like the self help like it's Jordan Peterson or Andrew Tait or whatever, like, that's become right wing. If you're a gamer like that
pipeline is also right wing. If you're just like into weird history and aliens and shit, it's like Joe Rogan and that's also right way, you know. So is that I'm just trying to figure out the chicken in the egg scenario here, Like.
Did that I don't.
I don't know whether that was a response to where young men are or whether young men were influenced by the fact that all those spaces trended to the right, you know what I'm getting at, Like which caused which.
Well, I think that this is largely oh to the fact that his Democrats are always kind of on our high horse and we're not willing to kind of go into spaces that are somewhat antagonistic to us, and that's kind of what's allowed the right to kind of have a monopoly on the so called manosphere. So my advice to Democrats me to do two things. One to enter in these spaces. Get off your high horse and go
on Joe Rogan. I remember I was sitting in the class scrolling through ground News and then when I saw Donald Trump going on Joe Rogan, I was like, Oh crap, this is not good. He's gonna get like a massive viewership base, and that's care is gonna get none of this. And it's like, So, I think the first thing is,
you know, we got to go into these spheres. And I think not just Joe Rogan, but I think they would break the internet if say, like Kamala Harris or Tim Walls for example, did a live stream with like Aiden Ross or Logan Paul, you know, because these are largely eight political guys who don't really know much. But I think if you go in there and make your case,
they'll hear you out. The second thing that I would, you know, advise those that you know who are more powerful than me and the party, would be to kind of display a strong narrative that actually resonates with young men. And I think the narrative that I would push is a strong man stands up for himself, and a stronger
man stands up for others. And what I mean by that is a strong man stands up for himself by you know, eating healthy, taking care of his body, going to the gym, but also taking care of his mind, you know, going to therapy and being open with his emotions. You know, it isn't weak to take the time to
grow as a person. It's actually strong to go against the social norm of kind of having to man up and suffocating your emotions, but also stand up for others in the sense of championing LGPDQ rights, championing a woman's right to choose for the women that are important in your lives, you know, championing a greater minimum wage so those who are less fortunate can you know, be able
to put food in the table. But also you know, being able to support your family by or your loved ones or whoever, by going out there and being successful career wise. And I think we've got to you know, make this case of kind of the modern man, but also say that you know, we don't we just believe this.
We're going to help you get there.
Yeah, we have to be about boring. Like that's the thing is like Joe Roganen said out to like I'm going to riminge doctor. It was just like, you know, he's entertaining and people want to listen to it. And if you have some like Democrats can be like you said, kind of too high minded and stuffy, where it's like this is not entertaining.
You know.
Well, I mean that's my last question actually say is basically like that message.
I think it makes sense.
But are there ways that Democrats have to change their making of the message. I remember Nina Turner during the DNC saying that the Democratic Party feels too feminine for black men, that it's it feels like it's been totally feminized, and James Carvell has said something similar that for men, you know, it's almost like it would be unmanly for them to vote for Democrats. Just the way that the party messages on some of these issues, it's sort of
it feels like it's it's undercutting masculinity. So how do Democrats make all of those cases about you know, what it means needs to be a strong man or for example, even on positions I would disagree with on you know, whether it's you know, you could take any issue immigration, anything like that, like, how do you make that message not feel you know, whether or not we agree it's it's feminine or feminized right now, how do you make it so it doesn't hit the average male voter as feminized.
Well, I mean, I think it comes down to, like, you know, the narrative that I was mentioning just about strong man being someone who stands up for others. You know, I think for standing for a just and more just immigration system shouldn't be seen in feminine. I think, if anything, it is incredibly masculine, you know, to stand up for kind of the best interest of marginalized groups. And honestly,
I think it's just a slight messaging issue. I think largely we're right on a lot of these issues across the board. But I think once Democrats are largely willing to kind of go into these mano spirit spheres and directly speak.
To the concerns of young men, they'll be fine.
You know.
It's tough for me to kind of talk about like the feminization of the party because I feel like, as a guy who considers himself a feminist, I don't want to you know, tap in too deep and the kind of talk about something that I don't know if I have the credentials for but I think just at the very least, as long as we go into these spaces and directly make the case about uh, you know, kind of connecting these policies in a way that kind of helps us young men kind of go out and live
kind of like the provider esque lives that we hope to, I think we'll be successful.
Well, I think I think there's models. I mean, Bernie is the obvious model. No one felt like Bernie's campaign was like too fem. In fact, it was the opposite. It was Spears being way too BROI you know, and that was like, you know, that was used to tag all his supporters like your toxic and you hate women, blah blah blah. So he went out a way, that's right. He did go on like three, but he went on with Joe Rogan. He got Joe Rogan's sort of endorsement,
and that was very controversial. But I mean I would also say Hassan Piker, you know, I mean, Hassan is very lefty and no one would code him as being like too fem And I would put my husband Kyleculants in that bucket too, and I think part of the problem is that Democrats, while Republicans are happy to go in any of these space you know, many of these spaces democrats don't, like, not even on our own, Like
very few go on with Hassani's gigantic right. The only Democrat who basically will come on the show is Rokana, which kudos to him, but like there should be more, you know, and we're trying, you know, like even now after this whole reckoning about new media reach out to Senator Chris Murphy's office, crickets really crickets, yeah, and so so you know, it's not just they won't go on the like right wing coded spaces, they won't even go in the left wing coded spaces.
What do you expect?
And a lot like, you know, the audience here is disproportionally mail All the YouTube audiences are, whether they're on the left or the right, Kyle's audience is disproportionally mail Yit like all these spaces are disproportionately male. And they won't even go on, you know, the people who are more ideologically aligned with them because they know they won't just get like, you know, a shoulder massage the way they will from an MSNBC or a CNN.
No.
Yeah, I think I think you're splot on with that.
I mean, I think that when you look at the future of the party, I look at Rocana, you know, I think he's one of advisors of College Democrats of America and the fact that he's willing to go on breaking points or just new media in general is testament
to what to the future of the party is. And I think, you know, at this point, it's not a choice any you know, we saw what happened when we didn't, and now we're gonna have no choice but to let go of like these easy scripted conversations and actually go and you know, talk about what we really think. You know, I think I'm not the biggest fan of Joe Rogan's antics as a whole, but I do appreciate the medium. I think the medium of a three hour unscripted conversation
is just good for democracy in general. And I would strongly hope that you know, those the top of the DNC embrace that sentiment and start pushing our candidates to be more authentic and be able to survive.
Through hour long conversations Sunday really insight thoughts and comments from you this morning.
Really grateful for your time.
It's nice to meet you, to meet you as well.
Thank you so much our pleasure.
Sager did text Emily to weigh in on the Matt Gates pick. Of course, he said he wanted it to be registered that his biggest complaint about Matt Gates is that he is pro weed.
So that sounds right. That sounds right for me.
We should have just anticipated that take and it included it in the show yet anyway, I wanted to get that in here at the end.
Also more inside baseball. Crystal fully took her microphone off.
That was done.
Wires hanging out, ready to get out of here.
Was great though, that was He's really interesting. I liked his three buckets of same.
Yeah, he really had thought like he had organized thoughts about this which were helpful. So think is always good to see someone from within the party apparatus who you know, the college Democrats are kind of a pipeline to bigger like party influence, et cetera. So I think we'll be seeing more of him.
And you know we should also will say his friend was After we wrapped the interview, he showed us he moved his camera his friend was on the couch, So shout out to both of them, because they're both big fans of the show and have been watching you and Soccer all the way back to Rising, so shout out to them. It's always so fun when we have like very flat young Democrats or like young even people on the right. Ryan went to a gathering of young conservatives recently.
And oh, realate him.
Yeah, so he went with soccer. Actually, oh that's right.
That was on election night, yes, yeah, yeah, because yeah, which is crazy to me because I was like so exhausted, but then I couldn't sleep, so I should have just done.
Something like that.
You may have gotten a different reception, Crystal.
Yeah, among the.
Right wing bros.
And they're like, oh, this Ryan guy, he looks like he he looks like I got a beer with him.
He's okay, this one don't know about her? Well sus Yeah, fair, fair enough.
Well anyway, all right, guys, enjoy the weekend. Soccer will be back here for part of next week, and then we will have a lot more Emily and a lot more of them the Ladies.
Show, So forward to Madam.
That's right.
It'll be a blast, alright, guys, see you soon, ka