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All right, Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints.
And we have been thinking at some point what we need to do with that little of words down at the bottom and spell out an actual sentence, because right now we've got Israel fight shut down Wall Street in my orcas and that's getting close to mad libs to something that's almost legible, yeah, not quite. What's missing from there is Ted Cruz. He was supposed to be on during the show today. He can't get here till a
little bit later in the morning. So we don't want to hold up the entire shows, so we're going to put the whole show out, which you can get on Breakingpoints dot com, Spotify Premium, you can get it on YouTube. We will then put up the Ted cruise interview after the show, because I know people are itching and whenever we get the show out late, we hear about it. So we don't like to hear about things.
It's fair enough.
Because there's also just a ton of breaking news this morning. One of the weirdest days on Capitol Hill yesterday. We have tons of audio video.
Three different fights.
Right, it just says fight.
There are many fights, and we will take you through them, from the tweets to the video clips. You will go on this journey alongside us, because it really is a journey. Also, China and the United States reached.
A climate agreement last night.
The State Department announced that are around ten pm last night because President Biden and Shi Jinping are meeting today. The climate agreement is on joint efforts to as the New York Times put it, ramp up renewable.
Energy as we're heading forward.
So that's a huge today. That was a big piece of breaking news last night.
China has basically cornered the market on clean energy, and the US, through the Inflation Reduction Act, put hundreds of billions of dollars into it. So what they're selling, we're buying.
Yeah, there's no question about that also last night, Ryan, this is where we're starting today, the Israeli invasion of Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza began.
It's just an incredible kind of phrase to use in a news show.
So right in the Israeli side, we can put the first element up on the screen.
This is from the IDF.
They announced that, based on intelligence, information and operational necessity, IDEA forces are carrying out a precise and targeted operation against Tamas in a specified.
Area in the Shifa Hospital.
The IDEF is conducting a ground operation in Gaza to defeat Hamas and rescue our hostages. Israel is at war with Hamas, not with the civilians of Gaza.
Now.
They went on to add there the IDEA forces include medical teams and Arabic speakers who have undergone specified training to prepare for this complex and sensitive environment. Ryan, Complex
and sensitive environment is one way to put it. I mean, that's you know, that funny, but yeah, you're right, yeah, And I think that's why people were sort of as this became clear that it was happening yesterday afternoon and into the evening, people were sort of glued to the scenario because the humanitarian situation is we can actually even roll clips of what we're getting from Gaza. So far we have this, Yeah, look at this, this is from
inside Schifa Hospital. Already incredible scenes. Now Israel I think a lot of people can probably predict. Beyond the IDF piece, there's senior administration officials talking senior Times from the US saying that there are Hamas tunnels underneath the chief of hospital and Tabot Magazine before we started, Ryan, you said, well, yes, Israel knows there are tunnels under the hospital because Israel built the tunnels in the eighties.
Yeah, Israel built the tunnels and they built a kind of bunker down there. So they're going to find a bunker and tunnels. We know that for sure. So Tablet Magazine wrote, I'll even read it while we're rolling this and people who are listening on the podcast, this is a scene. It looks like an airstrike debris kind of
blasting through the hospital. Tablet Magazine wrote, the Israelis are so sure about the location of the Hamas bunker, not because they are trying to score propaganda points or because it has been repeatedly mentioned in passing by Western reporters. And we'll go back to that point about the Western reporters again, but because they built it back in nineteen
eighty three, when Israel still ruled Gaza. They built a secure underground operating room and tunnel network beneath Shifa Hospital, which is one among several reasons why Israeli security sources are so sure that there is a main Hamas command bunker in or around the large cement basement beneath the area of Building two of the hospital, which reporters are
obviously prohibited from entering. Back to that point about Western reporters, So a lot of reporters have talked about how if they're going to interview Hamas officials, oftentimes those interviews and at Alshifa Hospital, Hamas soldiers are treated at Al Shifa Hospital. There's no question that you know, the mystery of health is run by Hamas. Like the idea that you're going to find the bunkers and tunnels used by Hamas is as obvious right that if you are Hamas, you're you're
the Quasi government. You know of the of the Gaza strip, and there are all of these tunnels, you're going to use them. So I've never been able to connect and maybe you can explain to me, how people on the right make this connection. I've never been able to connect the idea that there are tunnels underneath the hospital, and let's say there's even like a command and control center,
and therefore we need to bomb the hospital. I would understand, Okay, we're going to kind of surround the hospital, We're going to ask everybody to who's involved with Hamas to come out. If not, we're going to raid the bunker. I understand that, But I don't understand the connection between there are tunnels underneath Gaza. Above those tunnels are hospitals and schools and et cetera. Therefore we need to bomb the hospitals and schools. Like, how do people in their mind make that link?
Well, I think this is actually why this entire hospital question is in many ways representative of the fault lines in the larger conflict, which is that I find it believable that because of how dense Gaza is, how small of an area it is, how densely populated it is, it's it's almost impossible to quote eradicate Hamas without mass civilian casualties. I mean, I don't know how you accomplish the eradication.
Right it's a social movement with a military wing, right right embedded in the population right exactly.
And so at the same time though, that then requires you to place an enormous amount of trust in what the IDF is telling you and what the Israeli government is telling you.
And for a lot of.
People who want to be fully pro as rule and who understand that, you know, Hamas has put its own people in horrible danger, who understand.
That Hamas has.
Taken steps that led to the does of many people, because Israel can't just sit back and say we're going to, you know, allow our civilians to be massacred without a response.
So even from that perspective, you have to.
Then trust that the IDEAF and the Israeli government are saying that they are minimizing civilian casualties and that they are doing everything they can. You know, we put that first element up on the screen, which was the announcement from the IDF that said, we are putting health personnel doctors in the hospital, We're doing everything we can. At this point here in the United States, we just have to trust that. And I think that's really really difficult
for a lot of people to do. I think there are some people who are far too trusting, reflexively sort of trusting of the Israeli government. Sometimes that's for cynical reasons. Sometimes that's because people really just have a reflexively positive impression of the Israeli government in the United States more than the people of Israel have a reflexibly positive view of their own government.
And I think sometimes it's because people are hearing from the Israeli government what they want to hear and not what Israeli government is actually saying. IDF spokesperson said, quote, our focus is on damage, not on precision. A defense minister at Joev Gallant, we will eliminate everything. They will regret it. Agriculture minister'll be dictor we are now rolling
out the Gaza knock. But I was pulling together some of these quotes to see what centaer Cruz thinks about these, since he has said that we need to give unconditional full support to Israel. But when Israel is so kind of openly saying that we will eliminate everything, our focus is on damage, not on precision, then when they actually get damage and not precision, it's easier for people to be like, well, that's you said that's what you were
going to do. That's what you did, So we're going to go ahead and connect to them.
Yet there No, that's a great point, and we talked last week about the Rafa crossing and some of the hits that people have taken as they're trying to get to southern Gazo.
In the areas where told them we're safe, and it is.
I'm highly unusual for a country that's attacked to then in any way facilitate a civilian evacuation in the course of human history. Now, that is the right thing to do in this case, but that also requires trusting the Israeli government. It also requires the people of Gaza trusting the Israeli government to have safe passage and to do everything they can to have safe passage. Nobody is saying
that Hamas isn't going to interfere with that. I mean, maybe some people are saying that, and if they are, they're wrong. Obviously, the people of Hamas have put their own people in a very difficult situation, in a tragic situation. But that does require a lot of trust and saying that what the Israeli government is purporting to do is the whole truth. Even if there's even if there are
legitimate obstacles, and that is very difficult. It's even very difficult for me, and as people can probably tell, it's very difficult for me. That doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean any endorsement of Hamas, it doesn't mean anything like that. It just means that this hospital situation, I really think Ryan does reflect some of these broader fault lines really really well in a way that kind of makes it clear where the difficulties are here.
And Israel has alluded to this being an intelligence operation, as you quoted earlier, and so if the kind of tunnels and the punker underneath the hospital are being used for kind of command control, command and control, it's possible that Israel will be able to obtain some hard drives or something else, some other intel if AMAS hasn't been able to spirit away. And that's if they were still
using it at this point. I mean, I think Israel probably has pretty solid intelligence that at one point they were using it, because if you have a concrete bunker and tunnel system that was built before you got there, you're probably going to use it. I think I thinks the people from left to right admit that that's a plausible scenario, be almost stranger, like you said, if they
were not using it. And so we're going to see a kind of round of propaganda warfare, you know, after they have kind of taken over the basement and the tunnels in this bunker. We saw that kind of CNN face plant where they took a they took a kind of crew, not a crew. They it was weird. It
was a robot. And at one point there was like an IDF English speaking IDF spokesperson doing like a Heraldo rivera thing where he's like, you're feeling vault vault and he gets there and he shows he looked here as a calendar with the names of the terrorists who were watching the hostages, and half a million Arabic speakers immediately were like that says Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Like do you think we're all stupid? Or are you stupid? Or do
you just not care? And you know that your supporters are going to like reflexively kind of cling to whatever you give, so it doesn't matter. So we'll probably see some more of that type of and kind of back and forth. Meanwhile, it's gotten really cold and it's raining, and one point seven million people don't have homes. You know, a lot of those people are staying with family and friends and others who are have taken them in, but a lot are not, and a lot are out in
the cold in the rain. It's like absolutely miserable situation. And we talk so much about the death toll that I think we forget about the living and the wounded, and then the psychologically wounded, the traumatized. Just spending the night out in the rain and in the cold after losing your home, even if you haven't been killed, it's like a life changing experience.
I was thinking about that yesterday also from the other I think that's absolutely true.
I mean, we're talking about millions of people.
Well, and then I was thinking about this hisestuy, when there are people who actually still have family members that are being held hostage, and they also then have to trust the Biden administration, they have to trust the Israeli government,
and they have so little information. And that's so I mean, if you think about the network, this is actually how I was thinking about the network of how many people know you have two hundred hostages, the amount of like ripple effect that has into the population of people who are on pins and needles waiting to hear.
If their loved one is okay. They have absolutely no idea. Is just unthinkable, and.
That brings us actually to our next segment, which is that so many family members of the hostages have been calling on net Yahoo to stop the bombing and agree to a ceasefire with Hamas so that hostages can be released. There's been news over the last several days that Hamas is willing to release a significant number of hostages if Israel will stop the bombing for a while, and that
makes a lot of sense. The families don't want bombing across the Gaza strip while their family members are being transferred, because a lot of the strikes are targeted at moving vehicles, and there was a case recently where the IDF said there was a car with suspected terrorists in it uh and then it turned out it was three children under the age of ten and a mother and a grandmother, and the only survivor was the mother out of those.
What they mean by suspicious is that it's moving, and so is Israeli families very obviously do not want their loved ones being put into a moving vehicle on their way to safety to be reunited with their family and then hit at the very last moment Israeli strike. And so that brings us to a march held in Washington yesterday that Mac and I went to cover.
The producer producer, Mac, this sound does not look like a young Mike Johnson.
Not.
We would never say that.
We kind of messed up to sound. So sadly you're not going to get the same compilation.
You were interviewing people and interviewed why.
They were at the street, why are you here? Generally no, it was, you know, to support Israel. This is what the rally was for. You had some people that said, you know, they're standing up against anti Semitism, and you had a lot of people that we talked to say that they were sorry about the civilian casualty level, but it was just an unfortunate fact and this is you know, this is just how it's going to have to be. There was an very interesting moment very early on in
the rally where they said next up Van Jones. Yes, Van Jones is a former Maoist revolutionary, Yes, who's been on quite the journey over the last forty thirty to forty years of his life, became an Obama official, and then was kind of fired.
There's the green jobs are jobs are and he was.
Fired when Glenn Beck and Steve Bannon onearthed the fact that he used to be a mauist revolutionary.
It was lit. It was like two thousand and nine.
One of the first guys that was my one. I scooped that back at the Huffington Post when you're still in middle school or whatever. This was two thousand and nine. I guess I actually said that it was a win for Glenn Beck. He got a furious email from two thousand and nine Steve Bannon saying, this was my win. How dare you give this to Glenn Beck. We did update also Steve Bannon's went fine, you guys can both
have this. Since then, you guys all know him as CNN commentator Van Jones, but as as a person of the left who's long an anti war, who's long spoken out against the occupation in Israel, stood up for Palatinian rights. Surprising to see him there. He started out his talks saying he was there to stand up against anti Semitism, But then he did broach the subject of a very gentle let's stop bombing, and the reaction was quite profound. Let's roll his speech from yesterday.
I'm a peace guy. I pray for peace.
No more rockets from Gaza, and no more bombs falling down on the people of Gaza. God protected children, God protect your Let's end all the horror and all the heartbreak in the Holy Land.
Let's end all of this.
Let's end all of them.
I don't feel powerful to do something about what's happening over there. What I do feel powerful is to maybe do something about what's happening here. Let's take a stand here against anti Jewish bigotry, Let's take a stand against Muslim Let's take a stand here against hatred.
And you can see how uncomfortable he gets there. Initially, when he said that passive formulation of the there shouldn't be any more bombs falling from the sky. Are they're falling out of clouds? There was that initial cheer, and then it took a little while for the crowd to kind of build up the chant of no cease fire back at him, which he then hears, and then you see him kind of stumbling a little bit.
I don't know what he expected.
Yeah, like, what did you think you signed up for here.
He seemed surprised by the reaction, which is surprising.
Which is surprising by the reaction, right, And then he finished with what frankly, I think we have to call islamophobic. He said. At the very end, he said he doesn't want to live in a world where people need to worry about letting their Uber driver know that they're Jewish.
Is he referring to a specific thing that I think I think there was something.
There were people I think on social media saying that they were nervous about telling their drivers O that there so the people are there are some people that are legitimately nervous about that, but that doesn't make it okay. Like if you are walking past a black person in a parking lot and you you know, clutch your purse or you like run the other way, like you're legitimately afraid,
but that doesn't make your fear okay. You as a culture were so like, no, that's wrong, like stop right, that's racist to think of every single person as a threat to you. And so for people to say that, like every Uber driver is going to be a threat to you if you say that you're Jewish, I thought It's just kind of an ugly way to think about it.
You were watching that live while you were there. I saw you as you were tweeting it. You were trying to figure out what Van Jones was, Yeah, Jones, what he was doing.
We have a lot of actually video from this because it was a bipartisan affair. There were thousands and thousands of people. This was a big turnout. I don't think that's entirely surprising. They had some.
Security probably at least it was big.
So the mayor here, Muriel Bowser, she said that, you know, as as NBC News put it, took steps early on to make sure her police force in the National Guard were ready DHS so a Department of Homeland Security quote raised the security level to the highest designation and anticipation of an enormous crowd, and because members of Congress were expected to attend. So I mean, it was the Palasynian youth movement asset supporters on Instagram quote not to engage
with participants at Tuesday's pro Israel event. Huge turnout was entirely peaceful. It seemed to like no skirmishes at all yesterday. So that's fantastic that nobody had to that these security concerns were perhaps unfounded, or perhaps the security deterred.
Anything that would have happened.
That said, those members of Congress were eager to take the stage, take the microphone. So let's roll some more clips from people who were talking.
On the astronom lawn. Yeah, we have speaker Mike Johnston continues to confirm that he's a real person.
He continues to exist, and he was sharing a stage with Chuck Schumer. Wait until you see the picture of John Fetterman we have, but let's start with these clips here.
The calls for a ceasefire are outrageous, I'll see.
So the minute I heard of what happened in January seventh, I knew I had to go to Israel as the first ranking Jewish Senate majority leader, in fact, the highest ranking Jewish elected official in American history. I not only had a desire to go to Israel, I felt a special obligation to go.
He's so used to saying January sixth when he talks about tragedy, Chuck Shimer, that is, he said January seventh, which is perfect in some ways and just so pathetic. We also have this picture of John Fetterman. We can put this next picture up on the screen so you can see him literally wrapped in the Israeli flag. That's actually saying a source pass along that photo of him from.
The National Mall.
Ryan the Mike Johnson and Chruck Schumer comments. I think they were almost like back to back in their presentations that were on the stage together. Right, Nothing surprising. I don't think anything was surprising. There was Isaac Hersog, obviously the President of Israel, zoomed in, beamed in over video and said, Jews all over the world are assaulted for being Jewish. The hatred, the lies of brutality, the disgraceful outbursts of ancient anti Semitism are an embarrassment to all
civilized people and nations. Jews in America must be safe. Jews all over the world must be safe. Nothing really surprising in the speeches, though.
The most surprising thing I thought was that they invited John Hagey and he agreed to. At ten, we can put up this next element for Willie Shahead. Hagy is kind of the pharakhn of this issue, like extremely.
Farkon is the farakhan of this issue.
Well, that too, well, fun for the right, like Hagey is just this out there, wild anti Semitic, Islamophobic guy who believes that he's one of the leaders of this idea that it's a good thing that Israel is a Jewish state because in the end days they'll be like cannon fodder or whatever for like the Second Coming. I don't I purposely don't know too much about the theory.
I know it's out there, but to me, it'd be like, imagine if at the pro Palestinian rally a couple of weeks ago or a week ago, whatever it was, time is so compressed that Farah Cohn spoke every single person who had anything to do and wasn't even at the rally, everyone in the squad, everyone who supported sees Fire resolution, everybody who had been remotely critical of Israel would have been asked, do you condemn Lewis Farakhon? And do you
condemn the organizers, you know, for inviting Lewis Parakhan? And you know what, maybe that's fine because he is beyond the pale. So what on earth would he be doing on that stage. This guy's beyond the pale, and the fact that he can share a stage with these politicians, and the politicians don't get pressed other than on this on this program. Cruise will be later about his about sharing the stage with this guy is a kind of mind blowing double standard to me.
Although, like again I'm an evangelical Christian conservative, I've no idea who this guy is. I actually never heard of him. I am vaguely familiar.
Like you, you're in.
Luck keep it that way. He's uh, he's about he's so yeah.
I mean, after you pointed this out to me yesterday, I was kind of going somewhat deep on it.
And again, this.
Is some of the even his speech was crazy. He didn't even like tone it down.
Some of what he says is familiar. You know, the language about Israel and d Times and how some Christians may see the political question of Israel through that lens. It's not something that I hear a lot. I don't think that there are people on the right that make that argument.
I think it's basically when they put him on the stage, it just validates the whole thing.
Yeah, I was just gonna say, yeah, I think it's like it's one of those figments of it's easily made into a straw man to represent the whole right when I think it's something that represents a kind of faction of the maybe like Evangelical Christian right. But even then it's not representative of the whole movement by long shot.
But you're right.
You put the guy in stage, you're undoing any effort to say hell, no, no.
No, this isn't us.
Yeah, how he keeps getting out there reflects the power that he has. In Walid's post, it quoted one of his old sermons where he basically says that Hitler was helping to usher in some biblical prophecy where he says God says in Jeremiah sixteen, behold I will bring them, the Jewish people again, onto their land that I give to their fathers, and they the hunters, shall hunt them, And then he says that would be the Jews. Then God sent a hunter. The hunter is someone who comes
with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. This is he like, this is the guy that literally was on stage yesterday.
Absolute bananas. There's no excuse to put someone like that on stage.
So the people that we it was a very peaceful affair like it was, and the fetterman kind of get up that you saw. There was kind of standard attire, like a lot of people draped in flags, a lot of flag waving. You did have some you had some offensive signs like finish them off and stuff like that, but not many. It was most most people did not have signs. There seemed to be a lot of young people, high schoolers, college students.
Bust in the cheers for Schumer actually was interesting to me. I assumed that there were a lot of probably left people there.
Well, And I asked a lot of the people how they felt Biden was handling this situation. All of them said they were either they either were happy with how he was handling it, or they were pleasantly surprised interesting they were handling it. All the people who were pleasantly surprised with it, I asked them, did you vote for Biden? They said no. Would you ever vote for Biden? They said absolutely not. So it's not like he's winning people over with that, which it matters when it comes to
the political calculations. But yes, there was a lot of there was a lot of support for Biden's handling of this so far at that rally.
The question about Hagey also gets to something we wanted to discuss here, which is an inter nice scene squabble at the Daily Wire that has erupted just in the last twenty four hours, and this.
Will be a good segue into the congressional fighting.
There's just so much fighting today. But let's take a look actually at this clip of Ben Shapiro responding to question is about Candace Owens, who works for the Daily Wire.
Ben.
I think his title now is editor at large at the Daily Wire.
Don't think he's super.
Involved in you know, news curation and and you know the daily like line editing or anything like that. So someone asked him about Candace Owens, who's been a critical of the rights approach to the question of Israel in.
The last month. Let's take a look at the video.
Yes, then the backhand his own. Her behavior during this is be destrisful, that is it's my company, yea. And I think she's been absolutely disgraceful. I think that I think that her sophistication on these particular issues has been ridiculous.
It's sophistication. It's ridiculous.
Everybody can see those that she's thinking, the things that she's saying, and I'm distractable.
So the sound on that wasn't great. He's basically saying she's been absolutely disgraceful and her fo you see a woman in the background. Her jaw has just dropped mouth and Gate cannot believe that she's seeing this savage attack from benchmia on. Okay, someone, So what's what's the background here?
I mean, I don't know, I don't know like that.
So what has she been saying that is absolutely disgraceful? Yes, what's got him so upset? So let's let's actually roll that all of their personal drama.
Well, let's just roll that clip.
Actually, here's Candace Owens a little a small flavor. You know, she has a show, so she's in a Twitter account, so she's talked a lot over the course of the last month and mostly has been asking questions.
I think that.
People take as oh, you're just you're just asking questions.
Is this before or after? Okay? So this is before? Okay.
So here's one clip.
I am here today to endorse Nicky Haley for president of Israel.
I think she's earned that.
I think BB and Yahoo is going through a very bad time right now. Support for Israel has virtually collapsed socially. If you're paying attention to the trends, and you're paying attention to what people are watching, you're paying attention to protests.
And the one person that.
I think is capable of getting it back is Nicki Haley with a enough money from foreign interest lobbies. So there it is, guys, I'm endorsing Nicki Haley president of Israel.
Well, first of all, it wouldn't be foreign money. It would be domestic money if she's running for president in Israel, right.
Well, or it would be millionaires in the United States.
Oh okay, very very Also, it's not president's prime minister. President is her dog. It's just a ceremonial role right where you come on, Candice, come on, yeah, if you're gonna endorse somebody.
She had an embarrassing moment last week that I.
Think that I think that was actually kind of incisive. Maybe even though she stumbled on all the details, the whole thing is supposed to be a joke.
I don't I don't think Ben Shapiro would be particularly upset about Nicki hale joke about how Nikki Haley is you know, so pro is rule that it, you know, is problematic. But actually this is interesting as we're taping right now. Candace Owens announced that she is dropping their Tucker is dropping a Tucker on X with Candace Owens at six pm. So that was announced late last night that they were they were sitting down.
Ben Shapiro and Tucker has been really mad at Tucker too.
Yeah, that's they don't get along. They don't get along and have been sharply critical. But actually, I think one of the broader takeaways here Candas owns we can put her response up on the screen. She had a very cryptic post that, Yeah, that's what actually what media called it a cryptic post. She was tweeting from the Bible right after this whole thing was blowing up. So she tweeted, busted or the peace makers, they should be called the
children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for Righteouster's sake? For theirs is the Kingdom of heaven, and she went on in a thread. Her second tweet was Christ is king. So the kind of cryptic message there is you can interpret that in a lot of different ways.
So you cannot serve both money and God. She's quoted that too.
Yeah, So she keeps going and says no one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. Again quoting from the Bible, she says, you cannot serve both God and money. And so I think if I were Ben Shapiro, I'd probably interpret that as an anti Semitic trope. And so this is again a company that he has some staken.
And leadership of.
He is easily one of the most visible political commentators in America, not just on the right, he is very very powerful in the right. The Daily Wire has a lot of clout on the On the right, kanz Owens
has a huge audience as well. I think Ryan, what this speaks to is the sort of ironic because Donald Trump did, you know, a lot of very very pro Israel things, but I think he ushered in this era in the concerntive sphere where all of the prior I guess things that were held sacred, you know, total unconditional support for Israel, all of these other things that you used to not be able to say, for example, I won't touch entitlements.
They're different things like I won't criticize.
NATO, all of those prior things that were considered sacred and untouchable in the conservative movement. There is now a significant contingency of people, at least in conservative media spaces, who have a lot of fun poking at that stuff. And I don't just mean fun in like acute way. I mean there's obviously something ideological there, and there are also, I think, you know, the motivations of social media to kind of poke around at those issues. There's something that
can be very gratifying to people about that. I don't personally love Candas is just asking questions approached the last couple of weeks, she's had again some embarrassing moments. Last week, she was asking about the Muslim Quarter and the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem, thinking that it was almost like Jim Crow and got corrected in the middle of an interview.
And I think it's great that people are learning more about what's actually happening in Israel and what's actually happening in Jerusalem and not just taking what they're being told from the media as though it were gospel, so to speak. I think that's great, but I think you should probably save the like gotcha, just asking questions things until you feel really comfortable with what you know.
Yeah, And as for her comments, I don't think that there's a as far as I understand, there's no get out of Trope's free card by quoting the Bible, Like, no, it's still like that was that's dicey stuff. Yeah, she's pushing. And I think your point about how Trump unleashed some of this is interesting is the other thing that he unleashed was both anti semitism and extreme pro Israel politics. Like he has said some of the most antisemitic stuff
any president has ever said. Or he'll be like, you know, you know, those Jews they control Washington, but that's great that they do because they love Israel and I love Israel.
You're like, that is deeply anti semitic what you just said, and he's like, he would probably say, no, that's pro semitic, like or he would say something about how they're good with money, like just the grossest anti semitic tropes, but then he would follow it up by talking about how it moved I moved the embassy to Jerusalem and how
much he supports Israel, and so it was. It ended up becoming a cover and then eventually a substitute for not being anti Semitic, and so I think when you unleash that, maybe this is kind of the discourse that you're going to get around it.
Yeah.
No, I think that's absolutely true.
And I think we yeah, we see it in other areas of the conversation as well.
Not just in Israel.
But this is a real I do think it's really interesting because there's no cracks in Israel support in Congress. You know, even people who are jd Vance for example, when he was trying to divorce the funding of Ukraine from the funding of Israel.
That was a very intentional specific thing.
So even somebody who's questioning the extent of our military assistance Ukraine has zero interest in, you know, even starting to nibble around the edges or question the aid to Israel, or flirt with the idea of a ceasefire.
I mean, there's virtually no one.
I mean, maybe I haven't followed Thomas Massey closely enough on this.
Actually last week on the.
Show, Rand Paul went further than any other Republican I've heard talking about civilians in Gaza. But there's very little of this has translated into Congress, and I'm not sure that much of it has translated into the voter base, the sort of Republican body politic either. I'm not sure how much of it has actually sort of escaped the chambers of online right wing discourse, but it's definitely there. And people you know in media Canvass has a huge viewership,
Ben has a huge viewership. So there's going to be more polarizing polarization on this issue in the right going forward, I think, especially the longer this lasts.
And so back in Washington, we had some actual class war breakout in Congress and then also a couple of petty ridiculous fights. We'll get to the pet petty ridiculous fights at the back end of this. Let's start with the class war. We can put up this first element here. So there were union leaders came to the committee chaired by Bernie Sanders to talk about some of their recent victories.
Sean O'Brien, the head of the Teamsters, had gotten into a tussle which we're going to talk about in a moment with Mark Wayne Mullin, who was also a real person senator from Oklahoma. I was elected to the House back in twenty twelve. Now over in the Senate, he's run ran a plumbing company, which and that's going to be relevant to this fight that we're going to see break out. I didn't want to spoil too much of it, so let's just roll this clip from the Bernie Sanders Help Committee yesterday.
Boddy knows this here in the last time, him and I kind of had a back and forth. Appreciate your demeetor today it's quite different. But after you left here you got pretty excited about the keyboard. In fact, you tweeted at me one, two, three, four five times. So let me read what the last one said, said greedy
CEO who pretends like he's self made. So I wish he was in the truck with me when I was building my plumbing company, myself and my wife was running the office, because I should remember working pretty hard in long hours. Hrtunds like he's self made. What a clown fraud always has been, always will be. Quit the tough guy act in the Senate hearings. You know where to find me any place, anytime, cowboy. Sorry, this is a time. This is a place. If you want to run your mouth,
we can be too consenting adults. We can finish it here.
Okay, that's fine, perfect, you want to do it now, I'd love to do it right now.
We'll stand your butt up then you stand your button.
Hold stop it, no, sit down. You know you're United States.
Okay, sut down please.
All right, hold it.
That's a grandfather move.
Yeah, that's I mean Bernie breaking up the fight before we get into the background on why they went to war like this, uh, anything you want to tell us about Mark when mullin or like why is it?
Okay?
But also if you were listening, he stood up. So if you were listening to the audio version of that, Mark Waynemullen actually behind the desk stood up.
The camera didn't know what to do because all of a sudden, Now it's just.
Like what the hell, cameras don't move that high?
Yeah, why did this guy just stand up.
They're not on a swivel. They're just in the same spot.
So yeah, he physically stood up as though he was going to go down towards the witness stand.
Yes. And so back in March there was another hearing of these same union leaders and the background is that so Mark Wayne Mullen inherited his father's plumbing company in Oklahoma, and it was a large company that was involved in a lot of large product projects. And so the Teamsters, the pipe fitters, which are part of the Teamsters, tried to unionize Mark Wayne Mullen's company. They protested outside his house,
outside his business. Shame on Mark, Mark Wayne Mullen, you know, this is very standard like union stuff that they were doing. Drove him completely batty. So he confronted O'Brien last time. So let's roll this first clip here.
I started with nothing, absolutely nothing. In fact, I started below nothing, and I started growing this little plumbing company with six employees to now we have over three hundred employees. And back in two thousand and nine, you guys try to unionize me. My guys were making money. They're getting paid more than the union halls were paying their plumbers. Our benefits were better. But because we started bidding jobs at reunion jobs and winning those union fighte fitters decided
they were going to come after us. They would show up at my house, they'd be leaning up against my trucks. I'm not afraid of a physical confrontation. Fact sometimes I look forward to it. That's not my problem.
So when most of the coverage of this was sort of an inch deep and didn't go to this context from earlier in the spring, which, whatever you think of Mark Wayne Mullen, that is a much more substantive line of questioning at a hearing then just going through someone's tweets. It's so ridiculous, I mean again, Yeah, anyway, I was glad that you dug up the context because it all makes so much more sense when you recognize that this goes back years between the two.
Yeah, and this is real, this is a real class war. And so they he then so then Mark way Mullin then presses O'Brien how much money do you make? They then fight about, you know, how much the truckers who work for the teamsers make, and then it finishes with with this again, this is from last March, which predated this near fight. So let's roll the last little bit of this, sir, you what artworks schedule?
Secondly, ups feeder drivers and you can quote Carol Tomey who quoted this, they make ninety three thousand on the lower ends, some of them making.
Fifty thousand, I said, feeder drivers feeder drift. Try to trailer drivers, some of them making a one hundred fifty thousand dollars per year.
Tell them, dude that over you've been there four years.
Most of them make over a thousand. Okay, most of them make over a hundred thousands.
Reclaim my time. I go back to the whole fact that, sir, you haven't created a job.
We haven't.
You haven't been there, You haven't. Sure we have, you haven't.
Sure we have.
Tell me one job that you created.
What are you talking about?
Specific you're in a four nomp No, but you know it's funny.
We create opportunity.
Job.
We create opportunity because we old.
We hold greedy CEOs like yourself accountable. You call me a greedy seat.
Oh yeah, you are.
You want to attack my salary, I'll attack y'all.
What do you make?
What did you make when you own your company?
I made my company. I kept my salary down at about fifty thousand a year because I invested every pinny into it.
Okay, all right, you mean you hid money? No I didn't. I.
Oh, hold on a second, Okay, he said, that's out of line. Even we're not even, we're not close to me, and even you think he's smart. You think you're funny.
No, you're not. You think you're funny.
No, I never said, did you open?
That's the you framed your statement.
Continue continue, But sir, this is I think.
I think it's so not not hard to see how it rolled from that eight months later, Mark Waynemullen demanding satisfaction.
Yeah, well, I mean, listen, Mark waynemullen was right that they were not even close to even because Sean O'Brien got the best of him in that exchange, because again he's the one testifying. He's not the United States senator who's going through mean tweets from the podium. And also another thing I'd like to say is I enjoyed that both of the union leaders were named Sean, so Sean Faine was also there, obviously the head of the U a W. Sean O'Brien, as as Ryan mentioned as head
of the Teamsters. And they did have an actual exchange about electric cars. And I'm not talking about Mark waynemullen, but they were actually changes between the senators about electric cars. The title of the committee's hearing was standing up against Corporate Greed, How unions are improving the lives of working families. And Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisianas said that this was quote a taxpayer funded PEP rally for big labor unions.
Bernie Sanders says, quote, how do we create an economy that works for all of our people and not just the few? We have more wealth inequality than the Gilded Age. Sarah Nelson was also there. Fain spoke about some of his history that you've covered really in great detail for years. He talked about the deals that were just made, and it was there's so much substance right now when you have all of these union leaders in front of you.
To ask him about mean tweets. I mean, do I think that the head of the Teamsters should be tweeting like that about us sentators?
Probably not, But my god, you're a senator.
Whose constituents are being affected by these deals every single day, affected by these deals, and that you would waste the people's time reading mean tweets because your ego is more important than actual questions, because you want to push this guy on personal beefs.
I mean, I just thought was pathetic.
And also, if you actually wanted to get into a fistfight, that's not the place to do it, because you know you're gonna get broken up before the punches ever start getting thrown. Yeah, you got to go actually to the Teamsters Hall. It's actually right on Capitol Hill at the building. Yeah, you could call him and say, hey, let's meet me down the sidewalk.
It's a nice building.
It's the nice thing they got.
Speaking of the Gilded Age, it's like literally a gilded building. Incredible buildings. I just walked down there.
If he really wants to fight, so he just wanted to clip, Yeah, and he knew Bernie wou wouldn't let that happen.
One of the better exchanges Diana firsch get Ross. She's at the Heritage Foundation and takes very predictable conservative positions on energy policies, but she actually raised this really interesting point about union jobs and electric cars. And this is again one of the least discussed but most serious fault lines happening right now. And any person who's cares seriously about, like Sean Fain who does, has put a lot of
thought into where the Democratic Party wants to go. I mean, the Biden administration struck a deal on renewable energy with China yesterday. That announcement happened yesterday, and they were talking about mean tweets. In this hearing, Dana furtchgitt Roth raised this point, but that should have been I mean, if anything, if Republicans in the Senate wanted to have a conversation when you have all these union leaders in front of you, it should be about that.
It should be about actually where the party.
That these in many cases unions are giving the political on the political side that they're giving donations to. How is that affecting the existence of the jobs that their workers might be able to have in the next five to ten years. Obviously a much more immediate and serious question than why did you tweet that I'm a greedy CEO.
Or something like that.
So that was pettiness that kind of picked was over top of an actually substantive difference. We have for next week. Move the pettiness over a vote around round speaker. It's like, looks like Kevin McCarthy gave somebody a kidney shot in the hallway. Who voted against who voted to Alison from speaker, let's roll this.
Explain to us what happened with you and Kevin McCarthy.
Well, I was doing an interview with Claudia from NPR A lovely lady, and she was asking me a question, and at that time, I uh got elbowed in the back, and it kind of caught me off guard because it was a clean shot to the kidneys. And I turned back and there was there was Kevin and and I. For a minute, I was kind of what the heck just happened? And then I, you know, I chased after him. Of course, he's a as I've stated many times, he's a he's a bully with seventeen million dollars in a
security detail. You know, he's the type of guy that, when you're a kid would throw a rock over the fence and run home and hide behind his mama's skirt and he just you know, he he uh from behind that kind of stuff. You know, that's not the way we handle things in East Tennessee. We we have a problem. So might I'm gonna look him in.
The eye and okay, so he walked down the hallway hit you in his album with his elbow.
You can you can go on Claudia's Twitter account. It pretty much ex account. It's very accurate. Okay, So then just explain, So he chased him?
What do you mean you chase?
I just ran after him. I was like, what the heck? You know, why'd you do that? You know, because it was, like I said, if you ever been hitting the kidneys, it's a little little different. You don't have to hit very hard.
Well, So at least he's giving McCarthy credit for being precise that he really got him in the kidneys. I think this whole thing might be giving Kevin McCarthy too much credit for uh, you know, taking any type of what aggression into his own hands. It doesn't seem like something Kevin McCarthy would do, to be honest, but he is right.
The NPR reporter has said that she witnessed this.
There you go.
That's Tim Burchett, by the way, who voted against McCarthy, is one of the what McCarthy caused the quote hateful eight voted against him.
So Matt Gates, the leader of the hateful age, the crazy I also called him the crazy eights, Crazy eight Gates, greats Gates, Crazy eights. Is that like it. He filed a an ethics complaint, and so McCarthy has said the entire thing organized against him was about Gates his own ethics complaint, that McCarthy would refuse to halt. So now Gates has filed an ethics complaint saying that it was unethical to give a kidney shot in the back to a member of Congress. McCarthy himself responded by saying he
didn't do it. He just kind of tapped him a little bit. And if he hit somebody the kidney that they would be on the ground. So this is the kind of this is. So this is not the complete state of Congress. We have one more even well, so.
We even have McCarthy's response, which is great. Right, Yeah, here's what he said. If I hit somebody, they would know it. If I kidney punched someone, they would be.
On the ground.
And to the point about they would know it, well, I mean they're they're saying they do.
It's not on the ground. But he said it hurt a lot. It's still hurt.
And I shouldn't say that it's giving McCarthy too much credit for taking any aggression into his own hands, because popping a guy in the back when he's not looking, come on, not an honorable way to settle your dispute with a hateful eight leader. McCarthy. If a former leader McCarthy, if that's what happened. But what a ridiculous state of affairs That only got more ridiculous.
In another hearing, Ryan, So there's an Oversight committee hearing. James Comer starts out attacking Dan Goldman as a trust fund baby, which no lives detected.
There sounds like he's been reading your Twitter.
There you go, and then he goes on, let's just roll this one.
You and Goldman, who is mister trust fund, continue to try. No, I'm not gonna give you your time back. We can stop the clock. You all continue to You look like a smurf here, just going around and all this stuff. Mister chairman, you have and.
So we fact checked this claim of him looking like a smurf. We can roll this. U're if you're watching, I mean, if you're not watching and you're listening, he's got a smurf outfit on the kind of bright blue This is Jared Moskowitz.
Bright had to toe fact check.
True, fact check true, I feel confidence, back check rude and true.
Yeah, the counterpoints is able to verify the claims of Truman Comber Muskwitz looks like a smurf.
He was probably also right in whatever that dispute was over. Oh, they were fighting about Comber's allegations.
About some hunter Biden, right, yes, and they're going back to Holm.
We're getting on over his skis on again on they were making me saying that he can prove more than you can actually prove.
Well, they're making allegations about Comer's own family deals, and Comer sort of went off after that.
That's right, because he thought he had a smoking gun because there was a check from James Biden to Joe Biden and they're like, look, two hundred thousand dollars moving, and the Bidens are like, look, he lent him money and he paid him back. What families do, And oh it turns out that Comer's family has done the exact.
Same thing in this case.
Agree with Comer that there's like the pattern of how that money moved is really specific. It's not definitive or conclusive, because you know, short of having a confession nothing would be. But actually like when the money was transferred, that when.
The timing lines up, the timing with the Republican theory of the case here.
And the amount of money.
Yeah, absolutely so if Democrats want to deflect to James Comer instead of dealing with the question of hunter bid and by all means go for it. We'll talk about you know who looks more like a smurf. We'll talk about if someone did pop someone in the kidney.
We'll continue to get to.
The bottom of these important questions if these are the important questions they choose to focus on.
Meanwhile, they did do actual legislative business. And whenever we move on to the actual legislative business of Congress, viewers also tend to move on elsewhere. So this time, let's try to keep people in suspense. Did they actually end the shut down yesterday but or not?
And I would say also, they didn't actually do the business. And this is going to be the line that you have of legislation. This is the line you're going to hear from Freedom Caucus people, I think rightfully, so because they're punting on the question of whether how they should be funding the government. And so yes, right, and we can leave people in some suspense. We can put the first element up on the screen here because this happened.
Before the decision Tuesday morning day.
Yeah, so Dems prepared to save another GOP speaker from a shutdown. So did DEM save another GOP speaker from a shutdown. Let's take you along for the ride. Here's a SoundBite from Chip Roy yesterday afternoon.
I oppose the Continual Resolution, the so called extension of funding, which will continue the Nancy Pelosi spending levels, the Nancy Pelosi policy priorities, which you saw Congresswoman Gipaul the head of the Progressive Caucus, out applauding the fact that we're going to continue to spend twenty twenty three levels, that is the one point seven trillion dollars omnibus bill that
Republicans roundly opposed last year. And now we have all of the credible evidence with move last week threatening the downgrade with respect to the outlook where we're seeing in terms of the Treasury auction last week, which was absolutely abysmal, because we know that under this administration we've raised interest rates some five hundred basis points, and for every hundred basis points, every one percentage, you get about one hundred
and eighty billion dollars of additional interest expense. We are creating our economy by spending ourselves into oblivion, and we should stop that. Republicans ran on cutting spending, and we're going to continue to kick the can down the road. Now, look, I applaud not having the Speaker's position of not having an omnibus bill before Christmas. But you know the best way to do that is just tell Schumer. No, you don't have to have some magic tricks to do that.
Just tell the Schumer, no, you're not going to have an omnibus before Christmas. Instead of doing this bill where we kick it down to January and we pile the farm bill on top of it and spend five hundred billion dollars about four hundred million dollars sorry by January, to continue to wreck up debt, I think it's a mistake.
And so let's follow up with that actual clip of Primilajia Paul applauding the deal that Mike Johnson was pushing yesterday.
And the deal basically is Mike Johnson split the split government funding in two. One of the spending bills would expire at the end of January, around mid the end of January. The other expires in February. So with that gimmick, you kind of say, hey, I'm doing something as the new speaker. What do you guys think of this? Keeping spending levels where they are. Here's what Jayapaul, Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair, said about this.
Look, I think two of the big things that we wanted are in this bill. I mean it is a big win that it is twenty twenty three levels, that is what we've said from the very beginning, and that it doesn't contain any poison pills. And so I think those are very significant.
Wins for us.
I have had concerns about dividing up the you know, the Continuing Resolution into two and separating it. To me, that makes no sense. I think the reason Speaker Johnson is doing this is because he needs to give a bone to the Freedom Caucus. I worry that it's two fiscal cliffs, but I think we're going to have to weigh the fact that the Senate seems to have not acted, and so I think it's a very big win that it's twenty twenty three levels and nothing else.
So I was easy to pick up on Ryan's point. So this is from Reuters. The legislation would extend funding for military construction, veterans, benefit, transportation, housing, urban development, agriculture, the FDA, and energy and water programs through January nineteenth. Funding for all other federal operations, and that includes defense then expires in February second, and so this is Mike Johnson's as some people were saying, innovation is that he
laddered the CERs or tiered them. And Giapaul said there she thinks that was the bone to the Freedom Caucus. And the Freedom Caucus loved that clip of Giapaul guarantee you because it says enhanced to them their argument on a silver platter that Mike Johnson just made a deal with Democrats essentially, and the vote yesterday, Ryan, here comes the spoiler. We can put the next element up on the screen. They passed it, and in fact the vote reflected the Freedom coccuss argument that this was a deal
with Democrats. More Democrats ended up voting for it than Republicans did. And it's now headed to the Senate where it has to be passed by believe Saturday. The Senate has to pass this bill by Saturday. It is going to be tough with certain senators. How this ends up happening, I don't know.
I think probably they'll get to the votes.
But to the point about poison pills, Republicans wanted to tie this to a lot of different things.
The border they wanted to tie it to.
They figured they could tie it to different things. Basically, the Farm Bill got rubber stamped yesterday. I mean, a huge piece of federal spending got rubber stamped yesterday for another year because they couldn't get to a deal on that. In and of itself is a huge piece of news. Because Washington fusses over the Farm Bill for a year basically before it's set to be reauthorized, the think tanks
have a field day. Everyone's trying to figure out where they can get their little goodies because it's so much money.
Is rubber stamp for the next year yesterday.
And so ninety three Republicans voted no on Speaker Mike Johnson's plan here and only two Democrats voted against it, so he kind of the Republican Party split basically, you know, roughly down the middle. Democrats overwhelmingly supported this or like whatever. Now it doesn't have funding for Israel, it doesn't have funding for Ukraine, and so the Democrats and McConnell had been hoping that they would use you know, the specter of a government shutdown to get both Ukraine and Israel
funding through. Now it seems like they're going to have to use the specter of there not being enough Israel funding in order to get the Ukraine funding through as well, or wait until January February to lavish money on these clients.
Yeah.
I think that's exactly where we stand right now. And the point is a good one. That Okay, So to avoid the Christmas shutdown, which Congress hates for personal reasons.
Let's be real, nobody likes it because it doesn't make anybody feel good.
About their country going into the holidays. It's not fun for staff, it's not fun for Congress people, and it's it's definitely not fun for the public either to watch the country, you know, seem to be in shambles. But that's you know again, the Republicans just are boxed in. Mike Johnson is boxed in the Freedom Caucus. What they would have wanted is some as Jiapaul would put it, poison pill. There's nothing in here about the irs. There's nothing in here about the border.
Uh.
And that to them is there's nothing even though there's no Ukraine or Israel in it. That this has been sort of disentangled for now. We'll see what the Senate has to say about that. It's saying we control the House. Voters elected us to control the House, and you're going
to pass a spending bill with Democrats. Well, from Mike Johnson's vantage point, there's one person motion to vacate that Matt Gates used and the quote hatefully used, spent weeks tied up just trying to figure out who the speaker would be.
That's why they're on the crunch time.
That's why they don't have time to talk about the farm bill. So why they don't have time to or find a deal on the farm bill, it's why they didn't have any time to find consensus. Even if they had more time, they would it would almost be impossible to come.
To any consensus on.
This anyway because of you know, the one person motion of vacate being used, and just really it's the numbers. There's just Mike Johnson's numbers game that he has to play unless he wants a government shutdown, which people in the Freedom Cocass say is fine that you know, Republicans would be fine you let Chuck Schumer shut down the government, Let Joe Biden shut down the government.
Even though of.
Course the media is never going to take that argument and give it to the American people.
You're stuck. You're stuck.
So it brings us to our next segment. So while it looks like we're not going to have a government shut down at least until January or February, or maybe a half government shut down January, the other half in February. Sorry, we put this element up here. The goldilocks soft landing that the FED has been talking about appears to be
actually getting closer to reality. Yesterday, the market boomed on inflation data that showed no change in prices from month to month, which is the first time that that has happened in the last you know, basically since we started getting inflation went eighteen nineteen months ago. And so for the regular consumer, they don't want to see prices there where they are. They want to see prices come down. Now,
careful what you wish for. Deflation can have some far more corrosive effects sometimes than inflation, because you start to see because the system, the system is not built to work in reverse, and you will start to see job losses like you haven't seen since two thousand and eight. You could have maybe some very gentle inflation for a little while, but not not for long. It just throws everything for a loop in a system that is premised on infinite growth, not not de growth. However, this news
added to people's optimism. And when I say people, i'm talking about like bond traders and like money people, their optimism.
Bonders are people to bond traders are people too.
They're optimism that there wouldn't be further interest rate hikes by by the federal by the Federal Reserve. Do you think there are any political implications of this or do you think that the the idea that the economy is worse for many people is so baked in that that's that that's just is what it is at this point.
Yeah, I mean, I think the Biden administration and actually we have a clip of Koreem John Pierre kind of getting pressed on so called Bidenomics that we might as well actually just roll right now as we're talking about this, let's let's roll the next clip here.
And I'm gonna keep going.
I'm gonna keep go to keep I'm gonnakeep.
Going ahead working, but I'm just gonna want they just keep ahead.
Thanks.
Stream Meta Platform said that it's going to require advertisers cringe.
Jean Pierre not really wanting to get into the question of of is Bidenomics working, because they rolled out that term Bidenomics ahead of twenty twenty four, and I've noticed it's kind of falling flat, falls flat with people who are on the left, falls flat with independence, falls flat with people on the right, does really well with the key Krugman demographic. Paul Krugman loves it.
Uh.
He's said it makes no sense, like consumers are crazy to say the economy isn't working for them. Bidenomics is doing just fine. I'm paraphrasing him there. I don't even know if he's used the word bidenomics, but basically, the economy is doing all right. The other political question here is obviously the FED, and that one I don't know. I mean, I don't know what even Biden wants the FED to do at this point.
And there was a poll recently that said that the public wanted Biden to focus more on inflation and they felt like Biden was focused more on jobs and unemployment.
And I think for what people need to remember is that if you're under the age of between thirty and thirty five, you didn't let's just say under third, if you graduated in twenty fifteen, graduated college, say twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, you have experienced economic growth and shrinking unemployment every year basically except for that weird pandemic year, but then you had so much kind of federal stimulus pumped
in that for the last ten years. So yeah, if your early thirties, you don't know what it's like to be in an economy that has a ten percent unemployment rate and the way that that can crush the soul of not just every individual who experiences that unemployment, crush the soul of the entire country, which turns in on itself and completely drains the labor force of its strength
and of its militancy. Like this, all of the all the gains that we're seeing from unions are undergirded and would not be happening without the unemployment rate being what it is now three point nine percent. Is if you push back against your boss and you try and you say, yeah, you know what, I am interested in forming union, and you get fired, you can go get another job, and so I get it. People like things are more expensive, like it sucks that that part of it sucks. The housing,
housing and rent situation is a complete catastrophe. But I think people have forgotten. I'm glad they've forgotten, but it's it's leading to I think, taking for granted the idea of being in a tight economy where you can get a job if you need one.
Have you watched Dumb Money yet? The Hollywood take on the Game Stop situation. No, it's very, very good and one of the characters and it explains actually how the recession in eight affected her family.
She's in college at the time of the Game Stop.
Situation and actually ends up gambling on the stock to pay for her student loan debt. And so I think for people who are you know, in frankly my age, that are in their their early thirties and maybe graduated college round the time period you said, or have graduated college recently, they have in the last couple of years been yanked around on the student debt question to a point that is just untenable. I think part of that is why credit card delinquencies are going up, because people
don't know where their money is going to go. And so I think the kind of Kraugman take on the economy that we've seen not just from him, but from other sort of professional economists misses that for example, if you're in California, what you're paying for gas is insane, And if you happen to be in your early thirties, what you've been dealing with in student loans in the last couple of years is also crazy. They're just it's
so uneven. Things feel really uneven to people. You're experiencing it in different ways at different times for different reasons.
Yeah, and it's great that people are employed at the same time, Like you said, if your money has run out by like the twentieth of every month, and you're spending every month the last week and a half of that moving things around and just holding your breath, you know, waiting to get to the next next month, and then as soon as the next month comes, your rent or
your mortgagees do, so you're pushing that back. Like if that's how you're constantly living, and that describes tens of millions of people, if not even more, then I understand why you know, there's so much hostility around it. But at the same time, unemployment under four percent was previously thought impossible, Like they economists came up with the term called natural rate of unemployment narrow, which they were guessing was five or six percent. They completely made this phenomenon up.
There's nothing natural about an economy. Is a construction of a society, doesn't come from the earth or something.
Well, we also have the highest level of working age men out of the workforce that we've had since like the nineteen sixties. Like that is another part of the economy that I think feels pretty awful to people too, That there are some people who don't even feel like it's worth it to look for work anymore.
And so when we have low unemployment that high level.
Nick Ebersat has done an economist, he's done work on that question of working age men outside of the workforce.
That question of just abject.
Misery is another good one that I think, you know, when you're trying to figure out this picture of how low levels of unemployment are translating into these you know, questions of is the economy working for us? As the president doing enough for us, I feel like that's another important part of it.
It just does not get talked about enough at all.
Although even the labor force participation right rate is doing better than.
It was a lot of women back in the world.
Yeah, yeah, Yes, there's a lot of bleakness out there. There's also a lot of things that are going much better than they used to be. And what's interesting is that if you take any particular economic indicator and say this is why people are feeling hurt, and then you roll it back ten fifteen years, you find that the economic indicators worse back then, yet people felt better about it.
And I think a lot of that has to do with the debt people have around student debt, the cumulative price increase, and also the inability to find sustainable housing. It plus fears about the future, I think fit into a lot of this. So it's an interesting moment where we have people in misery, feeling miserable, yet also some of the many of the economic indicators better than they've been in a lot of people's lifetimes.
Yeah, And I just think to close the loop on this, especially since this is our last show before Thanksgiving and it's thanks were preparing for.
Thanksgiving meals next week.
There was an American Farm Bureau Federation analysis of Thanksgiving dinner prices that I saw on Axeos this morning.
I'm looking at it now. This is what's really interesting it is down in total.
They sort of put together their standard package of a Thanksgiving meal. Down in total compared to last year. That is still up twenty five percent compared to twenty nineteen, which is really interesting because it gets to the Reagan reelection line, ask yourself, are you better than you were? Better off than you were four years ago? And politicians, whether they're Democrats or Republicans always want to be able
to ask some version of that question. And you know, for the suburban moms that the Biden campaign really wants to win back, we're the ones that do a lot of grocery shopping and you know, cooking and are looking at some food prices. Where As Matt Stoller would accurately argue there's a lot of consolidation and supply chain issues post COVID, they're still real and that weren't the fault of Joe Biden. They were the fault of of the
COVID economy. They're the fault of a worldwide pandemic. Some of that is still trickling into prices, and that twenty nineteen comparison on food stuffs, things like milk still that's I think when you're it's hitting people's pocketbook in one of the more visible ways, just the ways that they feed their family, and that is unfortunate for the Biden administration and something they were going to have to, i think, answer for in the next year.
Let's turn to our regular update on the effort to impeach Alejandro Majorcas.
This is another we covered the If you look on the screen, you see just the fight block. We covered a lot of fights in that block, but not all of them. It gets but wait.
There's more.
So what are they upset with Mayorcus for now?
So Marjorie Taylor Green and we can put the first element up on the screen for this one. Marjorie Tayler Green tried to send a vote to impeach Mayorcus to the floor yesterday. So I'm reading here from the Associated Press the House voted Monday to push off or This was this happened on Monday, to push off a Republican effort to impeach my Orcus, ending for now a threat against the Cabinet secretary that has been brewing ever since
Republicans took the House majority in January. Marjorie Tayler Green forced to vote. She forced the vote Ryan on impeaching mayericas to the floor through a rule that allows right. It allows any single member to force a snap vote on resolutions, including constitutional matters such as impeachment. Eight Republicans joined with Democrats to vote two oh nine to two OHO one to send her resolution to committees for possible consideration. Like any other bill, they are under no obligation to
do anything. Green then takes to the floor and accuses me Orcus of quote a pattern of conduct that is incompatible with the laws of the US, and she cited as the AP says record numbers of illegal border crossings and influx of drugs, and quote his open border policies. She then went off on Republicans yesterday, we can put the next element up all on the screen. This is a tweet not at darryl Isa, but about darryl Isa from Marjorie's Taylor Green.
Daryl Isa is right.
I am a hard working member of Congress who puts the American people first. Green tweeted, but we all know what darryl Isa lacks.
Dot dot dot.
And then there's an emoji of a football, an emoji of a basketball, an emoji of a baseball, an emoji of a tennis ball, and even Ryan an emoji of an eight ball, which you initially took a second to get.
I was like, what's going on? I wasn't In my defense, I was, I guess I wasn't entirely focused on her posts, so I didn't absorb it, and like, what's going.
On at the bottom there you had in your coffee either?
Yeah?
Why is a tennis ball green?
Yeah? Yeah? So why is a tennis ball? You think it should be yellow?
I guess yellow doesn't show up very well.
Yeah the emoji isn't the emoji always green?
I guess, But I just I guess I've never used a tennis ball emoji before.
Surprising for a middle aged white man.
I know.
How about that?
Yeah? How about that? Didn't even know there was? When? Of course there is?
Though, But actually, in all serious sness, we do have border numbers and it makes sense. So the reason that I think this is fairly important news is that CBP released data yesterday saying that it apprehended nearly a quarter of a million people at the US Mexico border in October.
So a quarter of a million people.
That's actually a decrease from September's numbers, and that's how a lot of the media ran with the story. So illegal border crossings into the US drop in October after a three month streak of increases. Again from the Associated Press, still it's actually a record high for all Octobers in history. That's a you know, that might be the headline rather
than they decrease a record high for October. So last month it did have the all time record high of two hundred sixty nine thousand, seven hundred and thirty five apprehensions. That means more than two point four to seven million on the year, So now that's about two and a half million for the year. That also broke the number for the record of migrants attempting who are on the government's to watch list in September, which is in the entire context of what's happening in the Middle East as
well Indian migrants. There was a story, and I think it was The New York Times about how there's surging numbers of people coming from all over the world, desperate people who may not qualify technically under our asylum laws,
and maybe we should change those asylum laws. But people who are going to be in limbo for the next couple of years waiting for those asylum laws and may end up having to go home after their case, you know, actually makes its way through the court system, or maybe their case never will make its way through the court system, and they will have these sort of shadow existences that are very sad and difficult in sanctuary cities actually, like the one that Chi Jinping is visiting today, Ryan, So
Republicans really did want to go after mayorcus.
They thought that.
Maybe still people, if you talk to people in freedom coucass circles, still wish that instead of abiden impeachment, the House had focused all of its political might on a Mayorcis impeachment, because what's happening at the border is something that you can really persuade independence with, and something that you can really persuade you know, republic the Republican base and centrist Democrats with in a way that you can't with Hunter Biden in a way that you can't with
sort of that back and forth and law fare over subpoenas and whatever else. And I mean, I think the bottom line is that you have a quarter of a million people every month now being caught in our political crisis.
I just don't quite get why impeaching majorcis is the thing that they're focused on rather than putting well, I'm about to answer my own question, rather than putting forward their own solution legislatively and then kind of forcing the question there because.
Like they did pass it, I mean they passed I think it's HR two and then put it into that was one of the poisons, right, the primila Jiapaul was talking about, but it is then it goes to Chuck Schumer, and Chuck Schumer says, the House knows that this is not starter, and it was a non starter from his perspective because you know, basically Democrats have a really hard time getting around any changes to.
Asylum law, right, and that is like really the.
One thing that has to be confronted, and obviously I have we may disagree on what that is, but Democrats, that is their non starters.
Is starting to have this conversation about asylum law.
And impeaching a cabinet official just seems kind of like a funny concept to me, because what do you think that he's rogue and like Biden is telling him to do one thing and he's out doing something different. So you get may orcus out. There's still going to be a Biden Cabinet secretary who's running the Department of Homeland Security, So what do you You impeach him the first day.
But also you need two thirds in the Senate, which obviously it won't even get up floor boat in the Senate, let alone get anywhere near the two thirds that would be needed. So it's a way to highlight the question, you know, elevate the issue.
Yeah, one hundred percent.
And Daryl all Issa said, quote the history. He said that Marjorie Taylor Green lacked the maturity and the experience to understand what she was asking for. And the reason for that, I think is this question of privileged resolutions, the force the vote type of resolution, which he says, they're brought to the majority by the majority leader or the minority leader. Privilege resolutions are not have not historically
been brought by one member. When they do come from one member, they're most often referred to committee, as it was yesterday. So Margeri Taylor Green didn't it did not have a support of her own party to do this, not even from people, I think who are substantively on her side of the question. And that's interesting because dere Issa, you've covered this longing that I have is right about the history of the privileged resolution.
Yeah, about forcing the.
Vote, Yeah, you're not Yes, he's right.
Yeah.
And it's Keim McCarthy back in there who could tell her, like how this works culture?
Yeah, yeah, Well, and you know she's not wrong that her base doesn't give a damn about dryl on the history of privileged resolutions. The average Publican voter, let alone the average Republican voter in her district, darryl Issa would tell them that.
They'd be like, yeah, so what dream swamp.
Like, we have a quarter of a million people coming over every month and you're talking to me about the history of quit privileged resolutions and parliamentary procedure wouldn't really make a difference, but it does make a difference in Congress, you know, when you're trying to make actual law. It does make a difference how you relate to your colleagues and how you're able to use the various parliamentary mechanisms.
And this was an alp Marjorie.
Tiller Green, although I think probably a w in the public relations from her goals.
That's kind of the that's a mo right, All right, well I'll do it for us today. Let me finish with a plug. If you haven't picked up your copy yet of The Squad, AOC in the Hope of a Political Revolution is kind of a sequel to my last one. We've got people. If you like that, you're like this one. If you didn't read that, you don't have to. It's still you don't have to stands on its own. It's a sequel, but you can just jump in. Can you just jump into the Marvel movies if you've never seen
the other ones? Or do you kind of need to start from the beginning, You're not asking the right person, okay? Us any idea which I went with?
A Marvel movies ESK Sager.
But no, I've heard great things about the book. I'm excited to read it. It's out December fifth.
Out December fifth, kryst Andal. I will be at Politics and Pros November twenty seventh, if you're in DC. I'll have some other events elsewhere that I can talk to you guys about.
So can I come and hackle?
Absolutely?
Excellent, excellent.
I'm sure there's all kinds of great stuff about the Squad. So I'm excited to crack it open. We won't be here next week because of Thanksgiving. Reminder, though, a week from today is the anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, So another thing that we'll certainly be thinking about in the week to come.
There's a Paramount plus documentary that I really want to watch that has apparently seven of the operating room doctors, oh amazing, changing their story about what happened that actually there's an entrance wound, not an exit wound. So maybe we'll solve the assassination of Kennedy.
In the next week.
Next week, stay tuned to Counterpoints for that. And that's why you should go to breaking Points dot com and get a premium subscription because then you get the full and all seriousness video without right you get it early, you get the full video. You don't have to go through separate videos on YouTube playlist.
It goes right to your inbox.
You get all of Counterpoints there instead of just a few videos on the YouTube side. But we really appreciate everyone watching. We hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
See you on the other side.