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All right, let's go ahead and move on to this whistleblower who spoke to George Sheridan over at Status Kou who used to work at United Healthcare for the CEO of United Healthcare, was shot and killed in New York City, sparking a whole national conversation about the health insurance industry and healthcare and this vigil ante killing, etc. So I want to be careful about characterizing her claims, and you
can listen here. She worked there, She did not work directly in the process of denying claims.
But she claims that.
She knew multiples, she worked closely with MULTIP employees who did, and that they felt like they had come under pressure to deny a certain number of claims. So denying people care that you know, their doctors are saying that they need in order to meet some sort of effectively like monthly quota system. So let's take a listen to what she had to say.
I would hear people, you know, on break time or whatever, when we would all kind of come together in this kitchen clutch, and people would be talking about what they were told to do their job. It wasn't my job. So I can't say one hundred percent, yes, we have to deny so many claims per month to meet our shareholders' expectations. But I do know that people were complaining because you know, they had to meet a certain amount of claim denials.
So people were telling you that there was a quota for how many denials yep, which is kind of like less deadly. But you know, cops, towards the end of the month, do you have a quota how many tickets you have to give out?
Right?
So you know this is a claim that needs more reporting, more verification, but I think worth putting out there because this is someone who used to work at the company has no reason we know of, at least to lie about what she heard that was going on there. There was also let's put this up on the screen. There was someone online who said, listen, I've heard the same thing. My mom used to work for a different insurance company. I remember her coming home crying because she got in
trouble for not denying enough claims. She got fired for
not meeting quota after a couple of months. I would also say Wendell Potter, who was a former health insurance executive who left the industry has become a whistleblower, has also spoken to these type of behavior, and just you know the pressure that exists throughout these companies where if you're going to make as much profit as possible, you are inherently incentivized to deny as many claims as possible, so you're having to pay out less, but of course
still taking in the same amount in terms of premiums. We also know Sager based on the data that's been reported out the United Health Group. United Healthcare was particularly bad about the number of claims that they would deny. They had the highest rate among the major insurers. We also know they were being sued for implementing this AI algorithm to deny claims that had, according to the claims
in the lawsuit, a ninety percent error rate. So, like I said, this is a claim that needs more reporting and more verification. But it would not be shocking to learn that there was some either official or unofficial quota type system within this insurance No.
Yeah, definitely not. And look, I don't know.
I mean, in terms of the insurance industry, things are very much up in the air right now, just because of the Trump administration that's coming in in which direction that they decide to take things, And you know, you could see, you could foresee a situation where they try to mess with pre existing conditions.
Or the healthcare marketplace.
The individual mandate is already gone, so that's not the big change that they might want to do, But there's a lot of things on the edge is that they could change in terms of how the insurance marketplace themselves would work.
Literally going through this right now.
Shout out to open enrollment, it's a pain in the ass, you know, it's like every American, it's justlievable, unbelievable.
I remember I had a.
Deductible of like eight thousand dollars. I think it was like eight years ago, and everyone thought it was crazy.
And I was like, I'm a young guy.
So now when you go in you shop for insurance, you see deductibles that are fifteen grand, like fifteen thousand dollars, and you're still paying hundreds of dollars per month, you know, and add kids onto that. Good luck man, and you can just see how nightmarish it is. And this is what I was talking about with the healthcare system. Most
people like their healthcare in terms of employer based. They don't like the health insurance companies, but they like their healthcare like employee provided healthcare.
But there are thirty to forty million.
People including the self employed like yours, yours truly and you where we have to go out there and shop in the marketplace, and that is where the nightmare situation really starts to happen. Yes, you don't get the benefit of themmployer subsidies or usually get a lower deductible plan in those situations like that too, and that's when people really get screwed.
Yeah, absolutely, it's also been you know, the political response here has also been really interesting. We mentioned with Joss Stin I just want to repeat this again that in the CR there actually is one good provision that it's not going to solve our healthcare woes, but it would modestly improve them, which is to rain in these pharmacy benefit managers, which they are these totally, as far as I can tell, totally unnecessary middlemen that control what prescription
drugs are covered by health insurance agencies. And so they strike these deals in between the pharmacies and the health insurers and they take a cut of these rebates for themselves. Again, it's just a sort of unnecessary middleman that helps to drive up the cost of your prescription drugs. And so there is a provision in the CR that would rain them in. This is something that has bipartisan support, something Josh Holly and Elizabeth Warren have worked together on in
the context of the Senate. So there are some small reforms that have the potential to move forward. The other thing Soccer that's in here that is funny and telling is that the previously members of Congress were they are right now required by law to shop for their health insurance on the same health insurance exchanges though Bombcare exchanges.
That you and I have to shout for out insurance on.
Right and have no other options.
By the way, they stuck a little provision into the CR to get them out of having to do that and be able to participate in whatever the federal government employee system is, et cetera. So you know, they are well aware of some of the problems in the current system, in spite of the fact that they apparently don't want to.
Fix that for everyone, just for themselves.
They want to better their own situation here, but not necessarily yours or ours.
You don't need Congress enough, you know, and everyone.
I mean, there's been a lot of discourse right now because they tried to put a pay raise in there, the cost of living pay raise. We're like, well, we got to pay our members of Congress enough, and like theoretically, like maybe I could get there, but you know, in the in the current introim, no, like no, not in a time when you guys are multimos vast majority of you what ninety percent they're making.
Most of their money on the insider trading, That's.
What I mean, over ninety percent of these people are net worth over one million. You know, a lot of them are extraordinarily wealthy in their own right.
It's like, no, we shouldn't pay you more.
Well, here's my thing.
You're trying to exhibit yourself from Obamacare and all this other stuff.
No, no, no, no, and not happen here.
Here's my thing is I am totally willing to strike a deal with Congress. You ban stock training trading, and we will give you a giant, a big race, not just this was going to be like a.
Few thousand dollars or whatever.
We'll give you a big race if you just ban inside of your insider stock drink you're stock trading at all. But I'm not going to hold my breath on that one. The other political response you put this up on the screen Ken Klippenstein, who continues to do great work on reporting out the story. Kavy Hogel, Governor of New York, and incredibly like she's like the definition of you know, middling. This woman she wants to create a crisis hotline for CEOs.
So her response isn't hey, you know, clearly there's a problem with the health insurance industry based on the way that people are reacting to this cold blooded murder in the streets of New York City. No, no, no, let me make sure that CEOs have a special hotline exclusively
for them to report perceived threats. This is the same woman that Ken report it on, and we brought you this information here as well, who convened one hundred and seventy five CEOs and other corporate representatives as well as homeland security and counter terror officials discuss how to share intelligence with corporate security. So you know her, you see whose priority, who she prioritizes in terms of making sure their lives are smooth and that they feel total comfort
and you know, are fully protected by the state. And then you know the other thing that Ken notes here and Ryan and Emily covered the fact that they they charged Luigi Mangioni with terrorism, which was not unexpected. And listen, I mean, I think he did intend to cause terror, so on that. From that perspective, I understand the charge.
But I'm also concerned because between that between the arrest of this woman in Florida for just like saying something mean to health insurance representative and Seb Gorka, who's the incoming terrors are is out now comparing people who have been, you know, expressing their upset at the health insurance industry, and some going so far as to sort of lionized Luigi Mangioti as some sort of folk hero, characterizing them as a sort of domestic terrorist akin to the Weather
Underground in comments that he made to Newsmax. So, you know, the concern is that this is one more justification for the US government to use to surveil and violate civil liberties, and you know, have a whole new group of quote unquote anti corporate extremists that they are using to quash free speech and censor and surveill, et cetera.
So that's something to keep an eye on.
Terrorism laws are mostly unnecessary. They're like hate crime statues. It's they're just like socially acceptable ways to smack even more years onto people when we have perfectly good.
Laws on the books already.
Like they're political and arbitrary.
No, that's what I mean. Yeah, And then also you get to enforcement.
It's like, well, if you kills somebody because they're white and not because they're black, it's like, what do you still hit them with the hate crime statue? That's literally happened before, by the way, and of course there's always a big debate.
It's a prosecutorial discretion, et cetera.
That's why I just think it's stupid, because it becomes political and we just use them as as enhancements instead of we have perfectly good laws on the books in every state against murder. Yeah, that's that's all you need, you know, to lock somebody up. If you want to consider all that other stuff, you can take it in
for sentencing or for you know, probation or whatever. But yeah, I just think it's crazy because they do this to circumvent going around a normal murder charge gets somebody with even more mandatory time or I don't know the exact in and ounce, but this was all passed usually in the post nine to eleven hysteria era, and we have enough now to know that this stuff is just grossly like unconstitutional, deprives people of civil liberties, and it's just
a socially acceptable way of just hitting people with political charges, none of which you even need. And this is not a defense of Louisian man gionn prosecute him for murder, Okay, first degree murder you can easily do that money.
Yeah, exactly, we'll probably still spend life in prison. So what's the point.
Because you could because here's the thing, you could make the case that basically any murder is terrorism. And you know, they have really stretched these definitions in the past, So you're absolutely correct, it's unnecessary to have these laws on the books whatsoever. And you know, we've seen the way that these panics over quote unquote domestic extremism have been used again the American public and to gravely violate people's civil liberties. We certainly saw it during the War on Terror.
We've covered some of those cases here where you know, basically, if you didn't have the FBI, the deep state in there actively radicalizing people leading them up to that, Hey, let's let's do this plot together.
Here's the money to be able to affect.
Why don't you buy a ticket to you know, go fight fight the jihads here and then then so they radicalize these people, they set them up, and then they swoop in, Oh, look we've disrupted this grand plot. So you saw that during the War on Terror, and then we saw some really crazy stuff like with that Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping quote unquote kidnapping plot, which also you know, similarly, the FEDS were deeply involved in trying to facilitate and radicalize and set up these these individuals.
Oh, you know the jan six people got hit with terrorism, remember that.
No, No, that's actually one of the things people have been pointing out is none of them have been hit with terrorism, whereas these you know, where's luij Mangione is. So again it just shows you it's very you can just sort of pick and choose who and what you consider to be quote unquote terrorism versus you know, the January six people were charged with other things that were laws on them.
It was illegal that shealt with that's legal entry.
That's why there was a debate, I just because I thought that they had Yeah, it had been.
Some because that's one of the things people are pointing out. It's like, oh, you're going to charge Luigi, but you didn't charge any of the January six ers, And you know, clearly, like whatever you think of them, that was clearly their political aims. That were very clear in their in their goals of what they were doing that day. So in any case, that's a little bit of what's going on there.
The last thing that people were taking note of and I don't want to overstate this, but I think it's interesting. So the Economist has a running tracker of what Americans say their top issues are. And in the wake of this debate, after Luigian Mangioni allegedly shot and killed Brian Thompson, though you know, Mac and Ryan say, actually he was here in the studio during those hours, so and actually said that while he was back in the control room, he told him that he's allergic to McDonald's.
So there's a lot of pieces here that don't have it.
But in any case, in the wake of that murder, healthcare has shot up to be the number two issue, surpassing immigration in the Economists ongoing tracker. Inflation still number one. I don't want to overstate the case because it actually already was a pretty significant issue, so it only spiked up a little bit.
We could put the chart up on the screen. You can see for yourself.
This is the three month tracking, and this is a little bit difficult to see. The top line is inflation. Okay, inflation and prices. Twenty three point five percent say this is my most important issue. And this is the type of poll where you could only pick one. Some poles are like, you can pick multiple. Okay, So twenty three point five percent of people say that is my number one issue. You now have healthcare jumping up. It's that purple line to be just above immigration and jobs in
the economy as the second most important issue. So clearly the conversation around this has, you know, has sparked a lot of interest in American people in some reform, and this is a ball that the Democratic Party has completely dropped. There was almost no talk of significant health care reform
in this last presidential election really from either side. But you know, historically it's been Democrats who have been trying to push this issue forward far far, fall from back when Bernie Sanders put Medicare for all on the table and made it a national debate and where this was an ongoing conversation. Kamala Harris back to medicare for all allegedly back in the twenty twenty primary before donors got mad at her and she ran away from that position
full steam, never to be embraced again. So in any case, that's where the political debate is there.
It is all right.
So at the same time, this was an interesting story. Yeah, both of us were interested in this one. So obviously Supreme Court struck down firmative action. We've got new numbers. I'll show you that in a minute. Of minority enrollment,
especially into elite law schools like Harvard Law. But some of these ellege universities have been embroiled in a lawsuit alleging that they have basically ripped off their students the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and that they have violated an agreement that they had with the federal
government that allowed them to legally violate antitrust law. And without getting too deep in the weeds of this, effectively, they had to agree that their admissions would be one hundred percent need blind, meaning that they would not factor in a student's wealth income family wealth income at all in their admissions, and in exchange for that agreement, they
would then not be subject to federal antitrust regulation. So this has been an ongoing lawsuit as part of this discovery process, and in one of the new filings, we are learning some very interesting details about how not need blind these universities were and how much they privileged the admissions of high net worth families. The students, you know, coming from high net worth families who were well connected to let's say the president of the university or other
influential people, or given massive gifts to the school. And let me just go ahead and put this article up on the screen, and I want to read you some of this because the details here. Listen, this is not a shock to any of us, but seeing the details out it really is something else. So the headline is Suite accuses Georgetown penn An Mit of admissions based on wealth.
The schools were accused of giving special treatment to wealthy students who might not otherwise have been admitted, so they say, for years, Georgetown University's longtime president flagged eighty students to be added to a special admissions list, but not apparently for their academic or athletic prowess. Documents in a new lawsuit claim those on the president's list were virtually assured of admissions simply because of their family's wealth and donation potential.
According to a filed on Money Monday. In this long running lawsuit at MIT, two children recommended by a wealthy banker with ties to a university board member got special treatment, according to the documents, and a deposition, the school's director of admissions that the two children who appeared on a quote cases of interest list were among those who quote,
we would really have not otherwise admitted. At the University of Pennsylvania, some students designated BSI or bonafide special interest have a dramatically higher rate of admission than other applicants, according to expert testimony. Penn's former Associate Dean of Admissions, Sarah Harberson, testified last year in a deposition that a BSI tag meant the student's family was a big donor
or had connection to the board. Those students quote, were untouchable and they would get in almost one hundred percent of the time, according to this former Associate dean of admissions. She also said the admissions office was powerless to deny the student even if the student was incredibly weak, even if the student had.
A major issue in the application.
So this is the affirmative action that has undoubtedly continued even in the wake of race based affirmative action being overturned at the Supreme Court. Where if you come from money, if your parents are well connected to the board, well connected to the president, if they've made big donations to the school or the school even thinks that they can
make big donations in the future. You are put on one of these special lists in some instances, and you are on a glide path to get into these elite institutions that helped you set you up for life, regardless of whether or not you actually merit being there and seeing it put plane like this is really quite a strong.
It's amazing. I love it.
It's just like the original affirmative action lawsuit. I'm so happy to actually And by the way, I met plenty of these folks in school, or remember them, well, some of them the daughters of kings and queen. We won't mention any exact countries, shall we, But let's just say their academic prowess was never particularly provative or impressive when
they did show up to class. What's funny is that when you pair it, you can see a complete freak out now of modern academia because these people they don't bring in a million two million, We're talking hundreds of millions. Like one of the things that you learn from the Varsity Blues case is that being worth a cool twenty thirty fifty million.
They're like, that's a joke. That's nothing. You can't buy your way into Harvard with that.
That's why they needed the varsity coach to get them and the way you buy your way in and the kids that they're talking about here, we're talking about ten fifty, twenty fifty, you know, one hundred million dollar donations to some of these universities.
That's why they do it now.
It's an existential threat to the universities, which is why they've been protecting this stuff for all time. Because we're talking about millions per year in annim that many, you know, alumni will donate just to increase their chance of admission by for their kids by what five percent, six percent something like that. So you see that together, combined with now the affirmative action hit that these places are taking already, of which the DEI freak out on, this is huge.
So let's put this up there on the screen.
This is the new admissions data from Harvard Law, but it includes MIT, Pennsylvania and a few others and says black student enrollment and Harvard Law drops by more than half to the number not seen since the nineteen sixties. Not just so happens when affirmative action was invented. By the way, just three point four percent of the class.
But what's astonishing is lo and behold the Asian number skyrockets, which is exactly what the people for the Students for Fair Admission lawsuits were able to prove at the time, which is this was a systematic racial discrimination campaign in the face of all of this talk about DEI and others. So, and of course the fairest critique was, well what about you know, what was.
It, legacy admissions. It's like, well, great, let's get rid of them both.
So now, if we have a five year time span to get rid of a racial based affirmative action and legacy admissions, we will have one of the most meritocratic higher education systems that probably in the history of the United States, because even in the early sixties you had all that crazy stuff with anti semitism and racism, etc.
So this is a very very positive outcome.
Another reason why it matters is because as this starts to trickle down and already we have race based admissions that's been nuked on the on the admissions level for universities. Is as we have this filter down to state and state colleges that are publicly funded, it becomes even more important.
And you have it so that the actual public funded universities the best single way to go from middle class upper middle class, or from lower class to middle class, and you remove some of these admissions practices, then we actually can really set things set things straight. Next we have to do tuition, but we'll get there.
I mean, my feelings about this a little more complicated than yours, because when I say, like, oh, the number of black students and Harvard dropped to levels of the sixties, I'm not like, yay. But but my opposition, my opposition to affirmative action has been that this is it's fundamentally a neoliberal policy that says we're not going to change the distribution of wealth.
And by the way, if you look within.
Racial groups, you have a very similar level of like mass inequality within those groups, and primarily affirmative action that has benefited like upper middle class or wealthier individuals within those minority groups. So we're not going to change the distribution of wealth. We're just going to diversify this rarefied few and not deal with these larger structural issues and make it so that you know, even if you don't go to Harvard and you don't go to the top school.
Even if you don't go to college at all, you're going to be able to have a stable middle class or working class life. You're going to be able to have a home, You're going to be able to car, You're going to be able to afford to, you know, a family, You're going to have health insurance or health care and not have to have health insurance, but actually
just get the care that you need. And so rather than dealing with this this is sort of like you know, a band aid on white liberals concerns that about the racial inequity that genuinely exists that they see in the world. So, you know, that's why I've been I haven't been a supporter of affirmative action, but I think it does underscore.
You know, our education system starting at pre K is wildly unequal, very much dependent in spite of it being a public school system, very much dependent on what zip code you happen to be born into. What is the wealth of that zip code. It determines how much funding goes into that education system. We have some really great public schools. In fact, there's one, you know, just a
few miles down the road here in Alexandria. That's one of the top high schools in the entire country where you're sure to get a fantastic education, and you have some that are completely and utterly failing. Not to mention, you know, the more that we have this mass class inequality, and I think we truly are in a second Gilded
Age now. Even if you look at you know, Elon Musk and him basically taking over the government, and the way that the rewards are just constantly rigged to flow to the top, you you know, you have to deal with that structure in order to You can't jerry rig it at the end and say all right, well, we screwed you all the way up here, but we're going to give you a few token goodies here once you get to the top of the food chain and make us all feel better about the fact that you have
more black first year law students at Harvard. The one other thing I wanted to note is, you know, this didn't just look at Harvard Law. It did look at other law schools. It was not a universal trend across the board. There were a few schools where black first year law students actually did increase. I think Stanford maybe was one of those, but most of them saw some of a decline. Harvard and un C were two that saw the most severe decline because they were specifically named in the lawsuits.
Yes, so I think they felt.
Particularly like, you know, they needed to really aggressively go in the opposite direction. So you know, the differences in the data here are also worth noting.
Right, So I mean, look, I'm not saying ya, I'm saying ya to the idea they have more merit based admission. That's what I would say is good. And so if things drop dramatically, that tells you something about how things used to operate there, and it gives Look, there was also lack of trust.
It was unfair to discriminate against asiancudents in particular, you know, is another piece of them.
They're literally penalized for being like for having higher test scores and for having higher GPAs. That's insane in the profession of law, especially in medicine or at MIT any of these other places which there was also significant problems that are there.
You know.
The other thing that you see here is actually black student and Hispanic enrollment went up at the state college level, which tells you what which is that's a very good thing, isn't it, Because you can see that having access and having a merit based administry, merit based admission system to more accessible quote unquote colleges and others, means that everybody can have a fair shot, which is which is allegedly you know what the country is founded on and what
we want. So it's very important for what you just said to understand about the wealth gap and return it. We've talked a lot about this a lot, but everyone talks about, Oh, if you look at the white black
wealth gap, those statistics are bullshit and completely fake. The vast majority of the quote unquote wealth gap between whites and blacks is in the top ten percent of whites, in the top ten percent of blacks because there are way more one hundred billionaires people like Elon and others as opposed to you know, I don't even know Oprah and a few others. If you take the median, the wealth gap is not nearly as pronounced as what it is.
People use the aggregate data.
This is something what's Matt Bruneg has talked quite a bit about this. He has some decent charts from a few years ago that I remember cribbing a lot of these stats. From a point on this is that if you focus on median and middle class equality, then you actually come much better or much closer to restoring the quote unquote wealth gap that actually matters, and that's the one of between rich and between poor. But of course that's very inconvenient, and it's much easier, as you said,
is to diversify the top echelons. I mean, my favorite example is the Nasdaq, where you're not allowed to go public unless you have a person of color on your board. Nothing to do with your business practices or any of these others. You literally have to have a woman and a person of color. It's like, that's what we've decided to change at the highest echelons.
So the white families on average hold around eight times more wealth than black families, so if you are comparing on a racial basis, there is a significant difference. My point is that what we really need to do is there needs to be a better sharing of the pie. You should not have it be so concentrated at the top, where the only goal is to just diversify the highest heights and keep everybody scrapping amongst themselves for who can make it into the upper middle class, the wealthy, and
the top. That is my point, because I don't want to deny that there continues to be discrimination, that historic discrimination, especially housing, which is such a key building block of wealth, continues to you know, haunt this country and continue to drive a significant wealth gap between black and white. So it's not my goal to deny that. What I was pointing out is if you look within any particular racial group, you see a similar distribution of wealth in terms of
the gap between the haves and the haves. Now that's what I want to close. That's what I'm committed to. And you know, there is no there is no indication that affirmative action was a part of helping to close that wealth gap between you know, the top one percent, the top point one percent, and everyone else.
And those are the policies that I'm interested in.
Absolutely, I don't disagree with that. I just say the average. Remember that average includes people like Elon. You have to look at income quintile of the medium.
Should they just be thrown out?
Yeah, well yes, actually, because it's ridiculous, you know, to skew things by including people who are worth hundreds of millions or hundreds of billions of dollars in the overall things.
Well, but I mean, that's kind of a core part of the problem. Though I agree with a lot people that have hundreds of billions of dollars.
When that are separate out the top ten percent, it's not even close to eight times. It's it's complicated in terms of what it actually isn't I'm not going to deny that the gap isn't there, but it's not eight times for what it is. I'm trying to find the Matt Brunneck statistics that I was criving this from from a few years ago. But the point stands that that's part of the reason why average is actually not a good statistic.
The median wealth for a white family was two hundred and eighty five and twenty twenty two, the median wealth for a black family was forty five thousand dollars.
So that's what five domes, right, It's a large gap. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. That's definitely true. A lot of that also comes back to housing, like you just said. But the part of the problem too is even in terms of housing, is there is that big skew for working class, for within whites in terms of generational access to housing. Yeah, obviously that was a big problem with redlining, et cetera. That's one thing I will give them. It's true in
terms of denying wealth. There's also though, there was a big problem after two thousand and eight. Matt Stoler has talked a lot about this in terms of where bailout disparity happened with a lot of people's access to housing because it was specifically Black and Hispanic households who lost access to a lot of those loans were most susceptible to the subprime crisis lost access to their houses, and then after the real estate explosion of twenty ten forward,
that increased the widening of the gap as well. So that gets to a lot of Barack Obama discourse, et cetera, which I know that he's been excellent on. So anyway, it's an interesting conversation in terms of how he actually moved forward in the country. And it's one where a lot of the people who were posting about affirmative action
always were very conveniently ignoring. I was always one of those who was like, yeah, let's ban it, get rid of it, you know, I think getting rid of legacy admissions is extraordinarily important to make sure that there's not a continued aristocracy in the country, because everybody knows that if you just have somebody write your letter or whatever at one of these universities, you go from a five percent admissions rate to fifty and then if you donate some money, you go up to like seventy five.
Yeah, which is as sweet as it gets.
The details here of like, oh, if you're on this list, you just get in period.
Whether you deserve to be there or not, must be nice.
Let's really focus on ending that type of affirmative action after Timothy Shallomey recently went on the Theovon podcast and they both were had fawning praise for Senator Bernie Sanders, which, of course I love to see.
Let's go and take a listen to that.
Yeah, we had Bernie Sanders on him. He was saying that he said Pete Seeger was one of his favorite.
Scouet McNay could play Bernie Sanders in a biopic, right, Yeah, totally could. Bernie has an aged.
Now, Bernie still looks at same.
He's the best he's in the last Yeah, he's like a real folk hero.
Great point.
Yeah, Bernie is is he is a folk hero. Yeah, he's folk music. Mitchell Lama. You know about Mitchell Lama. Mitchell Yeah, the Five the Restaurant Stars or no, no, no, no no. Mitchellama is like, uh, there's like two vert to my understated is two versions of like good arts housing. Here you got section eight that means you're paying like under eight hundred bucks. Mitchell Lama.
Yeah, oh that damn Mitchell Lama.
Brother absolutely, Oh that's me baby moderate Mitchellama. Program FRIDS, Affordable Rental and cooperative housing and motterate and middle income families.
Also give you a little taste there of them busting out the housing policy discourse.
Yes, Mitchell Lama, which apparently Shala May I think he was raised in.
That's what he talked about. They're on the podcast. I don't know.
I've seen this passed around this whole like, oh, so I saw somebody respond to this and like this shows that Bernie Sanders would have won.
And I was like, because.
Shallow May likes Bernie Sanders. I mean, Kamala had plenty of uh of celebrity endorsements last time I checked. Also, if I remember, there were a bunch of celebrit who backed Bernie in twenty twenty or even in twenty sixteen.
What what's her name?
Uh, the supermodel Radakowski Emi, Emily Radakowski, if I recall, there were definitely a few others.
I think Cardi b I think it was it.
Wasn't so much about Shada.
Obviously it's simplistic to be like this bruise, but I'm just saying very viral.
But no, no, I think it's about shallow May Backingham. I think it's about Bernie was capable of going on the Theovon podcast and Theovon being like, I love this guy.
Yeah, guy's great, he's.
A phone here team too. He still didn't win.
Yeah, he got screwed.
Yeah, and it was but the only reason.
But we're also talking about, you know, a general election versus a primary election. Obviously, one of the big learnings out of this election was, oh that like bro podcast comedy, that whole sphere out to be really important, and you know, there's a whole I think important conversation about number one KMA even Okay, I never bought that she should have gone on Brogan because I just don't think she would
have done well there. So there's number one, the problem of just like having a candidate that you would want to see in any one of these venues. But it recalls the fact that back in twenty sixteen and in twenty twenty. But I think especially in twenty sixteen, Bernie had huge support among the bros, among the Latinos, among the working class, all the groups that have fled the Democratic Party the fastest were his strongest basis of support.
And he was smeared for that.
You know, he was the whole Bernie brow was meant as a smear, and they were derided as being toxic, et cetera, et cetera. Now it was always inaccurate to paint his support as being completely male.
In fact, there were, you know.
Young women, young men overwhelmingly supported Bernie Sanders both in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty. But I think it was more The point here was that he's someone who Joe Rogan did support, that this ecosystem did support.
Even though his.
Politics are obviously very different from Trump, he taps into that similar desire for something different and a challenge to the establishment.
I think Trump's challenge the stablishment was fake.
Blah blah blah, but there's no doubt that that is how he is perceived and has successfully per positioned himself as being the sort of anti system politician. And Bernie Sanders fits that same model. And you know, if Democrats are losing the bros here, you got a couple of bros.
They're like, oh my god, I love that guy. He's a folk hero.
Yeah, I'm just I still am not so sure I buy that analysis, just because with Bernie it was fundamentally irreconcilable to the Democratic coalition, Like you had rich white people who are was obsessed with race in twenty sixteen, who yes, you know smeared ber Look, I agree the Bernie Sanders bro thing was bullshit, but people ate it up right. Well, that was kind in the midst of Russia Gate and all this other crap. I mean, he was them out of the coalition because they hate.
Them, No, they so if you looked at the polling twenty twenty, we covered this extensively in every primary, including the ones that he lost got blown out by Joe Biden, like in Mississippi. If you ask people about his policy platform and about their personal feelings about him, he won on the policies he won on his approval rating. People were convinced he couldn't beat Trump. They're convinced about that in twenty sixteen, they're convinced about that in twenty twenty.
You know, we saw have seen how that ultimately worked out. But they bought into the narrative that was fed to them about by MSNBC and other places that you can't vote. You may like this guy, you can't vote for him because he's not the right person to go up against Donald Trump. Now, listen, Ultimately we'll never know what would have happened if he had been the nominee and he you know, in twenty sixteen or in twenty twenty, and
how that ultimately would have gone. But I would submit based on history, based on you know the fact that that he sort of has a modern version of the New Deal left populist approach to combating what you wouldn't but I would characterize as a fascist appeal. That is
what has been successful in the past. And I think given the groups that he had the most traction with, there's certainly a good case to be made that he would have been a much better candidate to go up directly against trump Ism than this like lukewarm dover milk toast neoliberalism that just promises to protect a system that people hate and is fundamentally unjust.
Yeah, the problem with that is that Bernie himself then decides to go along with it. He goes into Russiagate, he goes into the wocism he runs on, adopts a lot of the stuff into his campaign in twenty twenty. He shifts a lot of his own positions, moves away from what made him so independent on war, on so much stuff. Right, He's been a huge disappointment, if anything, to a lot of the people who originally joined his movement in twenty sixteen.
And so I just think.
That that shows where the power or lies in the Democratic Party. It's with these DEI academics, not now. Maybe it's broken now. I don't think so, though, because what I think is that now the only people who remain committed Democrats in this country are rich white people. That's basically it. The good news for I guess for you is that you can convince these people of anything as long as they think they'll win.
That's all they really care about.
But which direction of all of that will come from the pages of the New York Times, the pages of you know, like people like Jon Favreau and others for what they think and continue to be told you got to give people some agency. You know, Sure, it's MSNBC's fault, but they trusted them in the first place, right, Like they're the ones who bought their stuff and decided to vote against them. So at a certain point, like, it's
not MSNBC's fault. They have a bunch of people who are brainwashed enough or whatever to be able to want to listen to them.
But who's doing the brainwashing here?
I mean, I think you had a lot of earnest people who were deeply troubled by the threat that Trump POWs and you know, we're looking for answers, and this was the network that they, you know, had been had been sort of primed to trust and think that was not going to lead them astray. And you know, I do think that there's a moment now of reckoning among that liberal base, which is fleeing MSNBC in droves, which has lost a lot of trust in The Washington Post
is another place that saw a huge subscriber exodus. You see a huge search in a lot of like left populace and my husband's in particular online where I think there are a lot of liberal refugees who were like this did not work, Like this line that we were fed about how we had to abandon caring about any issues in order to defeat Trump, Like this was bullshit.
This failed, and.
We were led astray, and we were lied to when we were manipulated. So there is an opening there. Now I have been very upfront about I think it's much more likely the Democratic Party just does like a trum trump Ism light, that they pull a Bill Clinton that they you know, sort of rather than having a direct rebuttal to trump Ism. Instead they go in the direction of will just like be a a kinder, gentler version
of that. I think that's the most likely outcome, But there is a possibility here that didn't exist before.
Another thing that.
I would say is, you know, it would be a mistake to think that these political coalitions, and this is the mistake Democrats made in the past, are immovable and unchangeable and locked into place. There is a lot of I think one thing we've learned is people are continually adjusting, evaluating, shifting loyalties, even in this election, Like you know, it's not like Trump. Trump didn't even get fifty percent of the vote, and plenty of swing state Democrats did win.
You saw candidates who outperformed like Cherry Brown. He loses, but he outperformed the top that take it by twelve points. You see candidates who are able to stitch together a somewhat different coalition hold on to more of that historic Democratic working class base. So well, I wouldn't treat people as like, well, they're just this is how they are now and that's it, and the coalitions are never going to change again, because that obviously over some period of time is not.
Going to be the case.
My theory is that if Democrats win, it will have nothing to do with Democrats in the next two to four years because of what's.
What's the shit that's happening right now?
A governments shut down, you try and cut social Security?
Okay, okay.
In twenty eighteen, do you think that the twenty eighteen Democratic victories were because of Democrats or because of Trump's trying to repeal Obamacare.
I think it's because of Obamacare.
I don't think I had a damn thing to do with the Democratic Party, And I think here.
I think twenty twenty, I would say the same thing. I don't think that Joe Biden's victory had anything to do with you. It was look at it, it was because people didn't hate him. Then they felt fondly towards him. Even now I think they feel more fondly towards him than it's.
Really justify, which is the lowest of all time.
But he you know, I think he is able to barely egan a win because of Trump's faults. I think you're one hundred percent correct about that. But yeah, look, Elon is like running the government now. He's in a already minded like you know, iin Randy and hobbyer Malay type who wants to slash social services. So they go
in that direction. And there's tons of ambient chaos, and the Middle East is still a disaster, all of these things going on in the world, and you know, you could imagine Democrats running like a union leader, like a Sean Fain. And if Trump has sort of abandoned his pledges on leaving social Security in place, leaving me to karaen place, he has not created the you know, the utopia that he promised to people. Yeah, you could see
those coalitions shifting again. It's not impossible to imagine again. I think it's an uphill climb, and I think you're right. Probably a Democratic success is most likely to come just because Trump is a disaster.
But nothing is written in stone. You never know that.
You have seen some interesting people like David Brooks and others be like, you know, maybe Bernie Sanders had a boy.
I just think it's too late at this point, but I listen, you know it could be wrong. What do you mean it's to though it's too late, you can't abandon and all of that. Like, these people are just Republicans in terms, not even Republicans.
But anti lest That just is like, that's just to me as foolhardy a statement, as when Democrats said, these people are just they voted for baracka problem, They're just Democrats. Now, young people are always going to be Democrats. Latinos are just going to continue to fall more and more into the Democratic camp. Black people are always going to vote like close to one hundred percent for Democrats.
People change their minds.
No, I'm talking about time.
And Trump is a very unique figure too.
Yeah.
What I mean by that is a time horizon picture. So I think are we talking about twelve years or talking about four years? I would say in the next four years, I would say they're pretty solidly Republicans. So the so called Reagan Democrats, right, the Reagan Democrats who eventually then voted for Bill Clinton twelve years ago. Yeah, it takes a while, but you know, with the Obama people.
It took eight years.
It took twelve years actually for some of these people to flip around. I'm not saying they're set in stone, but I don't think they're rapidly going to shift right back esthetically, especially with where the Democratic Party is today. So do I think that all of them are going to rapidly shift their vote in four years. No, I don't think so, especially the so called ro Coalition and
all of that. They have too much, there's too much appeal, there's too much lack of institutional trust that just doesn't mesh with where Democrats are. I mean, there's still the Institute, the Party of Institutions, still the Party of the New York Times and all those others. Yes, they can turn off MSNBC. I think they'll be back. They always are. I think that they'll come back to some bullshit Russia
Gate or whatever. Immigration will be a great test. Will Wilson will right back to AOC crying at the gates and all these other things. So I predict that actually that will make people more hardened, especially when the next media reaction is But I could be totally wrong. You know, you could have the other so called asteroid austerity and all these other folks. But you know THEO Vaughn. Look, he may say he likes Bernie, he loves RFK Junior. You know, he's the first person who has.
Rump on anti system, yes politicians, right, yeah, And I mean the other thing is Trump is assuming that they don't try to pull some whatever, is not going to be running again.
And I do think he is this sort.
Of very unique figure and there is no proven ability in this way.
He is like Obama.
There is no proven track record of another Republican really being able to position themselves the way that he has. So you know, whoever runs next, very likely JD is going to be coming off of this sort of who knows how the next four years is going to go, but probably people are going to be dissatisfied because people are really dissatisfied, and you're going to have to own that you're going to be in the position of having to defend an unpopular four years of administration. Now you are
going to be the system pro system politician. And so yeah, if Democrats want to not just be able to coast off of Okay, those guys are unpopular now, if they want to be able to actually win and hold on to power and build durable and sustainable majorities, they're going to have to do something different.
Am I particularly hopeful they're going to do that.
No, but there is an opening, there's a possibility, and at least some people in the party are grappled with that. And I think most importantly, large chunks of the Democratic base have been shaken out of this view that they've just got to line up behind Pete or Kamala or Gavin or whoever the hell they line up and tell them next is like, you must vote for this person because that's.
The only way to win.
I don't think the most hopeful thing is that the MSNBC's of the world are never going to have the power over the Democratic base that they did in twenty sixteen and in twenty twenty. And that's the only thing that really creates like a different possibility, a different outcome.
I don't know. I still think the Pete syop is strong.
I don't like saying that, but I think that the Pete the Buddhaje edge sy op. Imagine his Senate run in two years. You could see it, you know. Can you see in Michigan he's already working. Him and Chastin have moved there, allegedly for childcare purposes. I think we all know that that's fake. It's a nice swing state. He can get the veneer of a swing state politician. He's got what was that place where he raised money in California, Cave.
Wine Cave Pete he never left.
Oh, it's very like, don't get me wrong, very possible. I love like him, We love on Fox News and whatever.
So maybe, and he's making the rounds.
I'm not sure if you've seen this breakfast club. He's everywhere right now. Yeah, tell you're talking about Actually, here's why he was the greatest transportation secretary in history. As we all have sky high airfare and all this other bullshit that we have to deal with.
Listen, I think that is most the most likely outcome. I don't deny that some Pete Gavin whoever is the next Democratic nominee, that is the most likely outcome. But but the fact that you don't have that iron grip of the liberal institutions helps create a little bit of possibility.
Hopefully in Shalla as they were saying, Okay, everybody, thank you so much for watching our last show of the year. We love you guys so much. Merry Christmas, Happy holidays. I guess, well, maybe we'll be around if there's something crazy.
Crazy breaking, and I'm going to keep my eye out.
We'll keep our eyes with the government shutdown, in particular, I'll be around more so than you so I can some updates.
You guys will have to put up with me.
I'm on strict orders. I'm on strict orders.
We also don't want to give our producers and our team, you know, break, and so we're going to try to, you know, just lay off the concept. But that doesn't mean there's gotten not going to be anything that is posting. I'm actually gonna have a conversation with Matt Burning today that's going to go up on the channel about healthcare that should be was name checked in this very show.
About that well thing will tell me to send me that post because I can't, okay.
So we'll have that up.
But then also we've put together some of the segments and crazy moments throughound the year that you guys responded most to, and we've done a little you know, some introductions to those, and it's just a crazy When we were recording, it was a crazy trip down memory lane, like the Biden drop down and the RFK brainworms and all of these wild things that unfolded. So that will also be going up on the channel, so you can do a little trip down memory lane.
That's right.
Well, have best of segments and a few others. Special thank you to our crew, to Mac, to Griffin, to everybody back there control room.
It makes just all this stuff work.
Steve, our audio man genius who baked these cookies, to the graphics team, to all of the other people who work on this show, but perhaps most importantly to our premium subscribers, who literally we could not do any of this stuff without. We love you guys so much. You guys have helped us build this incredible thing. It's gonna
be a great year. I'm really excited already. Today we get to the whole show about CRS and policy, I mean, this is this is really what I think makes this show tick and gives it a lot of strength in the next couple of years, which I think will be really interesting.
So we will see you all in the new year.
Maybe some interim updates or whatever in the future, but excited for this, and please enjoy your time with families and off and others, and we'll see you later.
Indeed, happy holidays everybody, see you in the new year.