2/10/23 Weekly Roundup: Krystal Responds to Rogan Controversy, State of the Union Reactions, Jeff Bezos Washington Commanders, Ohio Train Disaster

breakingpoints dot com. Hello everybody. I hope you're enjoying our State of the Union content that we brought everyone yesterday. However, there is another major event that bears addressing on behalf of the Breaking Points community. You might have noticed we were on the Joe Rogan experience and Joe actually brought up what happened with ilhan Omer eilhat Omar her removal from the House Foreign Affairs Committee over alleged anti Semitism.

In the course of that discussion, he made a joke, a joke which is, let's just say, not being well received. We are going to play the full context for all of you and then break down the ensuing controversy that has embroiled all of us here at breaking points. Let's take a listen to the clip. First, I just saw

like Nancy Pelosi is endorsing Adam Schiff for California. When you read through the way that man lied to the American public through all of Russia Gate, your leg Yeah, he should be should be like in prison for perjury, not being bolstered by one of the most powerful women in the country sitting next to Ilian Omar where she's she's apologizing for talking about it's all about the Benjamins, Yeah, which is just about money she's talking about apologized, that's

an anti Semitic statement. I don't think that is. It's about Benjamin's or money. You know, the idea that Jewish people are not into money is ridiculous. Listen, It's like saying Italians aren't into pizza. I understand that the way she phrased it, like she could have phrased it a different way so that people would have less of a freak out. But can you not talk about the influence of money in d C. I mean, this is very obvious.

There's a very obvious reason why for my entire life, there's been a uniparty consensus around our policy visa VI the Israeli government and a total inability or unwillingness to criticize the Israeli government and has everything to do with organization and yes, money, just like every other fucking interest

in DC. And so yeah, the fact that she said that she got kicked off the Foreign Affairs Committey, Look, I have issues and disagreements with ilhan Omer, but she actually is one of the more courageous voices on foreign policy, is willing to call out some of the hypocrisy and bullshit in US foreign policy, extremely rare in terms of the United States congressman. So it's actually kind of a

real loss that she got kicked off that guy. Get she Whether you agree with her or not, she has a bold opinion, and that opinion is not her own. There's many people that have that opinion, and they should be represented. My point is she's sitting right next to Adam Shift and no one says shit. She doesn't say yeah, yeah, I probably shays that, hey, motherfucker, what did you say? Yes, very correct, she said some crazy shit that wasn't true at all. No, Okay, So that's the clip. Now you

have it in its full glory. You can decide for yourself whether he was being anti Semitic or not. However, many people have decided to use a bad faith view of what happened there and accused not only Joe Rogan, however, Crystal and I as well as somehow being anti Semitic. So let me go ahead and read this tweet from Representative Josh Gottheimer, Democratic congressman best known for trying to

save the millionaire salt deduction. He says, quote, it is despicable language like this that leads to attacks and threats against Jewish people. Joe Rogan has a massive platform. It's infuriating to watch him and Crystal Ball promote blatant, dangerous anti Semitic tropes, including those masquerading as anti Israel sentiments. So Crystal, I just want to throw it to you for your reaction, because not only Gotttheimer, but the ADL,

the Anti Defamation League, is now condemning Joe Rogan. Their condemn I'm honest, we have multiple pro Israel groups calling us somehow anti Semitic for talking about the role of money and politics in the way that lobbying works. So what was your reaction to all of this nonsense? I mean, first of all, I went back and thought through you know, our time with Joe and like that particular moment, and to the to the extent that I really thought about

what he said that deeply at all. It was sort of like, oh, it's an off color like women be shopping level of joke. And so then I went on to make the points that I think are really important that I one hundred percent stand by, which is that it's not anti semitic to talk about the influence of money and politics with regards to any topic, and even when it comes to the topic of our government's relationship

with Israel and Israeli government policy. I think it is nonsense that Ilhan Omar got taken off of a committee because of her comments. I don't think anything she said was anti Semitic. I don't think there was anything wrong with what she said. And I think we have to be able to be honest about the way money works in DC without just casually throwing around these very harmful

and damaging and ugly labels. So, you know, Gottheimer's tweet, I don't even really one hundred percent understand what he's saying there about you know, masquerading as anti Israel or something like that. I'm not even clear on what he means by that, but I can tell you personally, I one thousand percent stand by the comments that I made in my view of the situation with Ilhan Omar, and I would say it again any day of the week. You have nothing to apologize for for all of the

people who are out there saying, how dare you? Why didn't you confront him? First of all, he's a comedian and he was making a joke. Now I'm not going to say it was the most artfully phrased joke or whatever in the world. And you know, if he wants

to clean it up, that's on him. Number Two, you were having a substantive discussion around the removal of a United States Congressman, around allegations that she made that influence of money in politics, something that we all seem to agree affects every platform on earth, but we're not allowed to discuss it here. As people can probably tell, I'm really upset because people, I'm not going to just sit here and let people smear you and Joe Rogan as

anti Semitic. We've got every pro Israel group and all these congressmen on the planet denouncing us as somehow like what is it anti semitic by ally ship or some bullshit like that, because we sat by and didn't immediately call him out. Once again, I don't think that it was the best phrase joke at the same time, like who are you? What? You're the editor now? And you know even that, take a step back. Do you believe Joe Rogan is an anti semi I don't believe that.

I don't believe that for a second. Do I believe Crystal that you were being anti Semitic whenever you were talking about, you know, the influence of money and politics and how that relates Israel. No, it's complete and utter nonsense. And this is how they smear people who want to talk about this at all. So I'm really honestly outraged by this entire thing and the way that people have

reacted to it in the broader establishment. And here's the worst part, as you and I know, Crystal, how many people will watch the full episode in a full context, in the full clip. How many people will even will dismiss what you said about that substantive point because of the joke that preceded it, and just so much of this is just completely ridiculous. But they got the headlines that they wanted, you know, that got the headlines that

they wanted. Breaking Points is anti semitic, Joe Rogan is anti Semitic, and a lot of people aren't gonna, aren't gonna look past this. That's actually what's the most disgusting part of it all. There's a whole outrage industrial complex. And so the fact that you know, he makes this like offhanded, off color joke, and that we don't immediately jump how dare you, Joe Rogan and jump on our high horse, but instead use it as a moment to talk about the legitimate criticism of DC and the way

that money and politics works. I mean, I just listen. Honestly, I don't let it bother me that much because I think these people are bad faith. I think they're just looking for a way to take shots. I don't think they really are like deeply offended or morally outraged or like you know, people were saying, oh, this is so dangerous. Come on, I mean, it was the State of the

Union last night. There are so much, so many larger issues at stake than one off color joke made by Joe Rogan and how we responded to it in the moment in you know, our one hour and thirty minutes into a three hour plus podcast. So listen. That's it is what it is, like I said, for me personally, the direction I steered the conversation in the commons I made about il haan Omar, about the way DC works, about what you're allowed to say, what you're not allowed

to say. I stand by it. I'd say it again. I just said it today. And I don't think there is anything remotely anti semitic about talking about the influence of money and politics. And it is absolute bullshit that Ilhan Omar was pulled off of a committee because she was honest about such influence. I agree. You know, actually we didn't even get a talk to comment about that substantively.

I think what happened is totally ridiculous. I mean, especially you know, you're actually playing into the trope that you're not allowed to talk about it by removing them from the committee. And actually that's what this entire thing has revealed to me, which is that you are like, what are we not allowed to have that discussion? Now? I deplore anti semitism. I think it's terrible, but conflating criticism

of Israel with anti Semitism is freaking ridiculous. And you know, even to just to come back to what Rogan was talking about, as you said, he was making, as I understand it, and as I understood in the moment, it was one of those things where like everybody likes money. Now, look, I wouldn't have phrased it the way that he said. But also like, who are you You're gonna, you know, sit in the room with us while we're all laughing or whatever, having a good time and being the editor

of all this and then having your faux outrage. I've seen a lot of so called free speech warriors, crystal people who believe in free speech. Oh this is so terrible, pushing this, you know, cancelation campaign. They're like, we got to get right wingers to stand up or whatever against Joe Rogan. These people are all complete frauds. In my estimation,

they're jealous of him. They're jealous of the fact that they don't have as big of a platform, and they are they are the ones proving the trope that we're not allowed to have this discussion by without being called anti Semitic and that is where that is why I remain outraged by watching people supposedly Chrystal on the side or whatever of the free speech come out and you know, denounce us and denounced Joe. They're full of it. Like, let's be honest, this is always the issue where it

really comes down to it. I mean, I've said this for a long time. The issue you're most likely to get canceled on is supporting Palestine criticizing Israel, and that's one of I mean, listen, I care about free speech for the principle of it, not because of which side it happens to help or hurt in the moment. But yeah, there's a lot of hypocrisy that's kind of exposed by this moment. Listen again, off color, offhand joke made by a comedian in the middle of a three hour podcast.

Is this really what we're like going to the mat over. I just feel like there are so many more important things for people to actually care about and get outraged about. And back to mister Gotttheimer, by the way, one of those things perhaps people should be outraged about is this is one of the most corrupt members of Congress. As

you said, Sager. He's like the the guy pushing for the millionaire assault tax cap tax break and one of the top funded congressman from the private equity industry that he has gone and like carried water for and us what, I think we should be able to talk about that, and I don't think that it's anti semitic to do so, yeah, yeah,

he's the one who calls himself mister Salt. His entire thing is bringing back a tax deduction which disproportionately helps millionaires and multi millionaires, specifically in California and New York. And he has the gall to come after you, to come after Rogan for talking about it. Also, you know, somehow making this into an anti semitic thing. So anyways, I thought we owed people our reaction to it, as people can say, I'm pretty hopped up about this entire thing,

And yeah, I don't know. I just I'm often reminded of like just how disgusting and how discussing an inconsistent so many people claim to be whenever it comes to free speech and secondary on the mainstream media. I mean, you got to go look every headline, Variety, Mediaite, all these other people. They're like, you know, rubbing their hands together relishing this complete BS controversy because they have it out for Joe. Joe is going to be fine, all right,

you know, it'll be fine. We will be fine here over at breaking points. But that's not the point. You know, you can't just call people anti semitic. You can't just throw these things out there and try and spin it into a whole thing in the service of your agenda. And we are not going to apologize. I can tell you that right now. For all the people who've reached out and said, oh, you guys got to put your distance between yourselves and Joe, Yeah, you know, I'll save

my most vulgar language for my response to that. The last thing that I'll say about all of this is you can go back and look at our record of you know, how we've talked about these issues many many times on breaking points, about our you know, full throated condemnation of real anti semitism, like what was on display

with Kanye West. I mean, the record is clear. So if you're super outraged about how we you know, navigated this one moment in the middle of a three hour podcast, I would encourage you to look at the larger body of work, and again listening back to it, listening back to the comments that I made immediately in the wake of it, where you know, clearly directed the conversation right to what really matters, the influence of money and politics. One hundred percent stand by it, no regrets. I'd say

it and do it all over again. Good. All right, So you guys have no where we stand. For all of those who have asked us about the controversy, this is the last thing that we will say about it. Unless they want to keep this thing going. We can go all day, but everybody enjoy all the content out on the channel today. We've got our breaking points State of the Union for the podcast, we have the full audio of all of our pre and post coverage of

the State of the Union. And also shout out to many of the people taking advantage of the premium discount we have going on right now ten percent off for all of the jri listeners who joined us since that podcast. I don't regret going on that podcast. I don't regret anything that we said on that podcast. And for the critics, you know, I'll save it for later for my more

off color comments. All right, you have of course been listening to the President of the United States delivering his State of the Union, leaning heavily into an economic message front and center at the top. But I think probably the thing a lot of people will pay the most attention to is how raucous the Republicans were. You had Marjorie Taylor Green yelling You're a liar. Lots of especially over his comments about Social Security and Medicare. There's a

big uproar. They were yelling at him about the border and other things. Kyle, let me go to you first of all, what were your sort of big takeaways big? Yes, Well, I like the fact that most of the speech was economic, and the early part was economic. I feel like that, you know, if you lean into that, that's positive and that'll get a good reaction, I think. But obviously, yeah, the bigger story is how I'll go with the word annoying. How annoying the room was, and I'm very curious to

throw it to you guys. I don't know if it's just because I'm getting old. I don't know if it's because I'm tired and as my bedtime, but every single time somebody chirped up, I was like, shut up, just wrap it up. I don't want to hear it. It's annoying. He's speaking. He's the president, even if he wasn't the president, if he was Bob from the PTA meeting. It's like, let Bob finish his thought. Because they're all just trying

to get a viral moment. They're all just trying to fundraise off FI because of the Joe Wilson moment back when Obama was president and he screamed, you lie, and the a massive fundraising numbers. It's like, I get it, I get it, I get it. You're all virtue signaling. You're all trying to get you know, the spotlight on you. But it's it's dumb and it's annoying. Do you guys agree with me? I'm not so sure. Here's the thing. In terms of my objective feelings about or in terms

of my personal feelings about it, I'm indifferent. If anything, I actually do kind of enjoy it, just because I like the idea of a raucous house of representatives that said, look, if it's all fake and it's all a stage, then these people are gonna have to play their part. Right. You pointed to that Marjorie knows exactly what she's doing. She's absolutely going to raise a lot of money. But I would even step back. I don't think that was the biggest story that's going to come out of that.

It might be a twenty four hour thing and some people will be like, oh my god, my norms. Guys. The biggest story the takeaway is whenever he would confronting them directly on Medicare and Social Security. I mean in terms of the take like, in terms of what we will be talking about probably for weeks now. That moment is going to get replayed over and over again when he's like, Okay, are we all agreed here? Oh, so you agree with me, So it's not going to be

a problem. Stand up if you agree with me. That was actually Look, I'll give the man credit. That was the best absolute part of the speech. It was the only part where he went off script and it did actually work for him. There were a couple what did he say, name a man who would trade places with Jijinping. I still do not know exactly what that means. All right, So, like my meta takeaway, I was telling you guys this during the speech. Vast majority of people stop watching the

State of the Union after about thirty to forty five minutes. Yeah, the first thirty four forty five minutes was all an economic message. Most of it was made in America. I mean, look, not even President Obama ever gave a made in America speech like that. And to me, that just shows me the way that Donald Trump really changed politics forever on maide in America and on China. So those two issues,

it's solidly in this state of the Union. No president even almost disagrees now at that point, so for the Medicare and the Social Security and then I thought overall it was an effective speech as far as Biden ones goes. If I were him, you know, I'd be pretty happy with my performance. Marshall, I want to get your thoughts. I sort of feel like with the Republican interruptions, etc. Biden really led with this message of like bipartisanship and unity.

He made a long show at the beginning of congratulations to Kevin McCarthy, congratulations to Mitch McConnell. We're going to work together. We did work together in the past, so he wanted this message of like, I'm the guy who's here to work with anybody. We've gotten some things done together. Et cetera. And so it certainly serves Marjorie Taylor Greens and whoever else's interest to get their little viral moments

for their Republican based fundraising. But I also do feel like that sort of plays into Biden's hands as well, when he's trying to portray himself as the grown up in the room and the one that's serious about actually reaching out and getting things done. Yeah, that's It's what we're talking about, the start of the real, you know, live show here, which is that voters like hearing that

you know, you could, you could. Obviously, I think I think it's important to separate the like annoying DC version of like, oh, back in the eighties, everything was super jail and everyone was best friends, the Gipper and Tip O'Neill like that, you know, you know, the Joe Scarborough thing.

But at a baseline level, the centerpiece of American politics right now is what like suburban moderate voters think, and they want to hear that Marjorie Hiller Green's district may be interested in her doing that performance, but no one else is. And that's a real misjudgment that could be effective in twenty twenty four. Yeah, exactly, I mean, look,

let's step back. What did we say at the top, or at least for what I said, I said, the balance is at co of me, lead yourself, try to gaslight a little bit about oh, everything's great, you know all of that. At the same time, you're like, I'm a bulwark again, So what did he lead with? He goes, here's all the things I've done, goes straight into the bulwark against Medicare, social security, I will veto And what

does he end on? He ends exactly on stop the steal. Now, look, saying the Popolosi attack at any to do anything to do with quote the big lie and not schizophrenia is ridiculous. However, politically savvy move I think, say, right, yeah, so it's like one of those where it wasn't you know, you tie those two things together and you know it's savvy. I think in that regard, you end on the democracy thing that really kept people there. So look, I think

he hit all the notes. It clocked in and around an hour fifteen minutes, as State of the Unions go, that's pretty average. I mean overall, again, I just come back to him like effective job, I really think so. So one of the things I had. I jotted down a bunch of stuff that I thought was most interesting.

One of my favorite lines was he was talking about the fifteen percent minimum tax rate for corporations worth over a billion dollars and he says they have to pay a minimum fifteen percent and then he said like kind of casually and flippantly, God love them. Yeah, and that got a decent laugh, and you know, I was chuckling here. I thought that was a good line. I noticed early on. One of the very first lines was like, we've created

twelve million jobs. And then ah, everybody starts clapping, and Kevin McCarthy sitting there like, yeah, I will not clap at twelve million new jobs. It's like, dude, this is one of the ones that it's like you have to do it just to look like you're saying and then like you were pointing out the Social Security and Medicare moment there, what I was getting really annoyed by is like, just own it. It is a lot of the Republican's

position too, that they want to cut it. They might soften the language to try to blunt the effect by saying no, we're just trying to reform it or save it, but functionally they want to cut it. And when he says that's what they want to do, and they're like boo boo boom, it strikes me as so ingenuous, like just say, yes, this is our position, and we would like to debate that on the merits and we would

like to defend the position of cutting solid security. They get so weasily about it, and that's what was driving me crazy. I was screaming about it here in the studio when we were watching that. So the thing that he's referring to specifically when he talks about like sunsetting these provisions was what Senator Rick Scott, who was in charge of the Republican Senatorial Right campaigns this time around, so not like an instant significant player, it was part

of the plan that he put out. And this was Mitch McConnell was basically like, shut the f up, we don't want to talk about that. We're trying to run on nothing here and just like bash the mon inflation. So this is not without basis. And you've had other Republicans also talking about the dead ceiling, talking about cuts to entitlements. You have had some others who say no, no, we don't want to do that. Donald Trump obviously said like,

this is off the table. But what's sort of more interesting to me is I feel like in previous eras in the Mitt Romney Paul Ryan era, they were much more comfortable owning the fact that they really wanted to cut social Security in medicare. Like if Obama had said that at a State of the Union, they would have been like, yes, we do, and here's our plan, and here's Paul Ryan with the PowerPoint of how he's going

to do it. And so I mean, this is another way that even though you still have a lot of the same ideology, even though many of them still are committed to it, would like to cut social Security and Medicare, et cetera, et cetera, the fact that they're offended that this is suggested about them, that they want to cut these programs represents a pretty remarkable shift in terms of the Republican Party and what they want to publicly put forward. What do you think of that, Marshall, Yeah, I think

that's a great way to put it. In Crystal, I mean, the core thing, as you guys are particularly, this really reminds me of the defund the police debate in terms of like how you could identify our vulnerable area. So think of defund. Back in twenty twenty, there were some Democrats who were very defund. There are plenty of modern Democrats who weren't vulnerable. You can take the more extreme position as the party's trying to figure it out, and

that's as a as an attack point. That's basically what's happening with social Security. Back in the two thousands. I think of when George W. Bush tried to reform slash cut, slash privatize social Security after one re election in two thousand and five. Like back then, the party consensus was that this is what we do. We fight against the new deal. We're fighting against the great society that's our party.

After the social Security privatization failed, after Paul Ryan flopped as a VP, and then after Trump then ran in favor of social Security and in favor of Medicare Medicare. Also, when you need to add the failure of the repeal oh Obamacare, Republicans genuinely don't know what to think. And I think, as you see. And the thing that's funny, Kyle, I get your pointbout need to have a fair debate.

And I agree with you most of the time, but like Jdvans, for example, Jadvans like, actually wouldn't be in favor of cutting social Security. He came out, I don't think he's I don't think he's the I don't think he's the best. I don't think he's the majority of

the party. But especially with younger Republicans who were basically grown up in an America that's accepted the New Deal, but it's accepted social Security, it's actually not quite clear what the actual position is, which is why it's perfect for Joe Biden to attack in that direction. I completely

agree with that. Characters. The defund is exactly right right, which is one of those they're like, no, no no, no, what we want to do is raise the retirement age, and it's like, well, okay, well you know you're still when you're already within that heuristic, it's like, it's not

going to be good for you. Just so people know, cutting social Security and Medicare is probably up there with defund the police and affirmative action as the least popular things that you could actually try and do in politics. Hence why he beats him over the head with the club with it, which is exactly what I would do. I was surprised that he didn't have been mention abortion more in the speech. My count was a single line. It came let's say, like two thirds or so into that.

I was pretty shocked by that. Actually, that's something I would have led with if I was president. So I just want to say, look, I hope I'm wrong, but we just saw with this whole fight with getting Kevin MacArthur to be speaker, there was a whole fight, and there were was a right flank that was pushing back against him. And one of the things they settled on is we're going to have a debt ceiling showdown. And our whole position in the debt ceiling showdown is we

want to force cuts to Social Security and Medicare. So I think the overwhelming majority of the party is going to be on board with that. Now, whether or not, you know, I hope Biden is telling the truth when he's like, I'm not going to do some sort of grand bargain. I'm not going to cut it at all. But I think the predominant position in the Republican Party

is let's cut it. Well, I'm not so sure, because remember that's only seventeen people right who tried to extract that those are like the Tea Party of Freedom Caucus die hards. What the look the majority? I genuinely have no idea. I do not know if you were to ask me my gut feeling, I think most of them would say what I said, something around like they want to raise the retirement age, but of course we don't. But that's cutting. That's the cutting. Yeah, I agree with you.

What I'm saying is like, that is what I think most of them. They don't. They don't want their position to be characterized as cutting, disingenuous and different. That's the line, right, But that is even just them not wanting their position

to be characterized that way is very different. Oh and of course the fact that I mean Joe Biden was part of the Obama administration that actually put a deal on the table that would have cut social Security and now clear and he you know, over the course of his career a number of times talked about cutting social Security. So it does show you the way that the politics

around this issue have clearly shifted. Now, one thing I think that's really important to say is that in terms of the big money institutions, within the Republican Party, like the think tanks and you know, the coke industry, the coke network. They still are very much looking for every opportunity they can possibly find to cut these programs, and that matters a lot. I think they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to like

piss on people and say it's raining. So they want to do the debt ceiling thing, force the cuts, and then go, oh, we're not cut, we're just performing it, we're saving it. So that's that's what they've that's their game. That's what their game has been for a long time. So I think that's the goal. It's not like they're actually becoming more moderate on it because they're afraid toledge with their actual positions. They recognize how toxic and terrible

the politics are for them. They recognize that they cannot be out and out being like, yes, we want to cut social Security because they have realized that that is devastating for them. I want to pick up saga on what you were saying, because that was something I noted too. You know, in advance, you were saying like, okay, here's the formula, yes, economics, but clearly the stop the steal stuff in January sixth and abortion, like that's what won the midterm, so he's going to lean into that. He

really didn't both he closed with democracy. He closed with January sixth. Paul Pelosi with abortion was also in the latter part of the speech, but the part that really counts in terms of what they're you know, focused on and what the message they want to take away. It really was loaded up with economics, and I was also surprised that you had very little mention of abortion ultimately

in this speech. I mean, the two themes that he leaned into very heavily to start with was the side idea of like, I'm the guy who can work with anyone, bipartisanship, let's get things done for the American people, and then laying out the case of what he thinks he's delivered and what he still wants to do now. One challenge for him is the fact that we were looking at a poll before the speech, very few people say they

feel like they've been impacted by the Biden agenda. So you know, whereas I think, if you're over selling the economy and the rosy picture of the economy, you're going to have a hard time. There probably is some benefit you can get just from selling here's the things we did, and going down the list and trying to persuade people

that know, actually we have been doing some stuff. What do you think, Marshall, Yeah, I think it's I just want to go back to a quick thing you said about the lack of focus on the abortion and the democracy thing, Like maybe I think this kind of goes to my early comment about how I'd be curious about Joe Biden's like political analysis here, and it seems to be the political analysis is that you need to move on from twenty twenty two, like you're going to reach

those heights, you're going to be successful that midterm. But maybe that's just not going to be successful running on that retread when it comes to twenty twenty three, Like there could be an instinct of like, man, we're going to still like you're still talking about that. It's not

for grabs as much. So Yeah, I'm really I'm really curious how the right responds to the economic stuff, especially soccer, to your point about how Biden and Team Biden are clearly taking the like Made in America compete with China bit that Trump added so that, especially given the I think attempt to bring these back to the culture wars is going to be interesting ship there. Yeah, I already know what they're gonna do. They're gonna go culture war.

They're going to criticize them on the border, and they're just not going to talk about econ because that's how it goes anyway. Kyle, let's get our last thoughts from you before we bring in Ryan and Ryan and Emily. Sure. Yeah, So I wanted to point out the fentanyl line from Biden. So he's over there talking about fentanyl and you have Marjorie Taylor Green and other start screaming at him. And I heard somebody say China, yes, and then somebody say

like it's your fault or something like that. To be fair, the vast majority of the fentanyl comes from China. So okay, I know I understand it, but I always get super triggered over this because I feel like the approach from many people is just brain dead. Because Chris and I have talked about this, about thirty thousand people a year die from overdoses. When it was the pain pills. Then we cracked down on the pain pills with all the good intentions in the world, and then people went to

the black market and they got heroin. Some of that heroin was least with fentanyl, and now we have about one hundred thousand people dying every year. So it's this like the tyranny of good intentions in a sense, because if I were to tell somebody like Marjorie Taylor Green, like, hey man, we need to legalize, tax and regulate drugs in order to get past this whole fentinyl crisis, you'd be like, you're insane. That would add to the problem. Well,

I mean, I think that's a fair point. I think it's also a fair point to say, like, there is a lot of fentanyl coming across the border, and from what I've seen, they've said that actually, if you did at least have some more enforcement that was happening there, it would make it much harder and raise the price, which would increase actually the amount of pure heroin. Now I'm not saying that's necessarily a good thing. What I'm

saying is it's complicated. I also would remind you we have to talk about what's in the realm of the possible, and in that, what was it in the polling data that we had there, which which one is that if we have that element, is that a three? Can we go ahead and put that up there on the screen.

Pre research, I think cracking down on illegal drugs was at like fifty seven percent, So I mean, the public is just not there whenever it comes to now I understand that like legalizing there it is, reducing the availability of illegal drugs is right there at fifty three percent. Biden also doesn't get credit though, when he'd a lot of Biden gets a lot of shots from his left on the border because he's continued a lot of the Trump policies on the border. So he does a lot

of the things Trump has done. And it's not like anybody on the right goes, hey, we agree with you on this one. Fella, Well you're talking about like he's not doing it. They act like he's in favor of open borders or something. Well, you're talking about migrants. So to be Fair's administration has tried to end majority of those policies in court. And it's only after they weren't able to end those administration policies in court that they

ended up keeping. They not only kept him, they expanded them. Well then they also there has been a fentanyl seizures at the border, There's been a number of there's been some. I mean, he's not trying to see. My point is, Look, we can keep going round and round in circles trying to do the same policy that's not working, or you can do the actual solution. But she's not interested in

a real solution. She's interested in yelling at Biden in the middle of a speech when he's talking about a very serious issue like fentomyl I don't think to get serious on it. Two, I don't think anyone on this stream has claimed Marjorie is interested in and neither is there. We perhaps can can close this out with a something that will unify us in the spirit of what Joe Biden wanted to bring, which is both Kirsten Cinema and

Marjorie Taylor Green apparently dressed like it was the Hunger Kid. Yes, what is going on? Since the wearing some yellow, big bird ass looking thing, people will have all kinds of memes and Marjorie Taylor Green and some white fur she looks like from lying lying the witch in the relevant wardrobe. I mean, look, I'm gonna break my cursing thing This is driving me insane. What the fuck is going on?

Like kirston Cinema literally is dressing like she's going to the goddamn met Gala after presiding over the Senate in a T shirt with a heart on it. She is solely responsible for breaking a lot of female dress code that is there. And I blame her for Marjorie looking like she's literally in the Hunger Games or lying the Witch. And there I am losing my goddamn mind over here,

Marjorie over the collapse of dress code. Go ahead, Marshall, is that if we're gonna, if we're gonna, if we're gonna rank, I think we have to say, George Santos orange tie isn't great. I think Marjorie, I think margin. Well, let me put it this way. I think Marjorie' is more compelling than Kirsten Cinema. Is it this way? Like? If Marjorie showed up in yoga pants and a T shirt and you met at a coffee shop, she would still like have like a lot of like main character

energy to her. I really think kirstin Cinema is someone who accessorizes to make up for the fact that she's just like boring. Very I think that's insightful, insightful comments. Okay, everybody stick with us. Just give us five minutes. We're gonna switch the chairs out. We're gonna have Ryan and Emily in here. Thank you all so much for support control room. Let's throw the graphic up there and we'll start mishall tyles a fantastic job. Thanks for listening. Okay,

we're back. Thank you everybody for sticking with us. Look at that wide shot we got Ryan and Emily here, We got counterpoints, which is in the house. If this were any other time, we would be doing a little bit of camera adjustment. But this is what looks like when it's live. When we have a brand new, beautiful studio that you premium subs are helping us with, it will be different, we promise. Okay, so people have heard us talk a little bit. Now, Ryan, Emily, you guys

watch the speech with us. What do you guys think? Ryan, you go first? All right. I mean, the thing that's most important to me about this is that it is the launch of his presidential campaign. So you're really not going to make a whole lot of policy, and you're not going to make a lot of you're not going to move the needle on public opinion and really on the ground or in the room. Except for that Medicare thing and Medicare and security thing, which was absolutely remarkable.

We want to talk more about that in a minute. But if this is what he's going to run on, this is kind of exciting, Like this is this is a party that like working people could get behind. I mean, what did he talk about. He talked about, uh, you know, supporting organized labor, past the pro Act, go after big pharma. We're going to address climate change. So we're gonna you know, cap insulin prices, you know, Medicare, billionaire attacks, We're going

to bust up monopolies and all the different fees. I'm going to a resort and it's not even a resort and I'm playing a resort fee, but and his friends charged him a resort fee. But so so you can. Yeah, and he's going for the identity theft and some funny stuff like that, like so many people are getting to him. Yeah, but in general, it's that's a platform that people could

get behind. It's strange, it was a lot of Matt Stoller was very excited in this because he's talking about antitrust, what was at first present the first presence, it's nineteen seventy nine, to mention ante to mention anti trust, you're talking about industrial policy, you're talking about making baking thanks in America. And then you know, I mean, I'm not big on this whole squishy like bipartisan comedy whatever, but there are a lot of people who are really into that.

That's a very normy sentiment of like, why can't we all just come together and get some things done? What I said earlier, Emily, and I want to get your thoughts on the whole thing, though, is I think the fact that you had this sort of ugly raucousness from the Republicans in there really did kind of play into Biden's hands of looking like the grown up in the room. He looked in control too. He was almost like engaging with the cloud. He let them finish. He wasn't and

he wasn't heckling them back. He let them finish. So I think optically that's one hundred percent correct. That did not work the way that let's say, Marjorie Taylor Green or whomever else was involved, and it wanted it to work. That said to Ryan's point, and actually Kyle made this point too. He gave a speech that was so front loaded on economics, and that's really smart. If you're Biden's speech writers, you should be really happy with how this

turned out. He's sort of checking down, going through the laundry list and flashing out actually not just listening off, but fleshing out things like infrastructure, things like the Chips Act. Now to the bipartisanship point, I think that's a fascinating point because it works with people until the country stops working. Because he had a line earlier where he talked about basically decades of hollowing out the middle class. Who was in the Senate, who was the senator from MasterCard with

identity theft? Yes, middle class. I mean it's just like, so that's a real problem for Biden, and I think he has never had a real answer to confronting it. Had on politically, but tacking in that direction, it's not just good news for Democrats, it's good news for the country that Republicans, at least optically were so vehemently offended by what Joe Biden said with Social Security, medicareacters. They said, Kevin McCarthy gave his whole speech last night. It's off

the table. It's off the table. That's good news for the country because it tells you where the Overton window is. You know what's funny, I'm monitoring the professional press corps. What are they all talking about decorum in the House. I'm like, who cares about the decorum? Like, look, I'm not saying it isn't a thing, but social security, people, medicare that is that is going to define the next couple of months of our politics. It's driving me nuts.

And like that was the first thing I zeroed in on. I was like, man, that's a big moment. That is going to be every ad, the Biden ad, the launch. I'm the one who protected it. I will veto the Bill Crystal, picking up on the fact that Republicans are not willing to go there yet. This also puts Trump on the back foot where he's like, no, they're lying that we don't want to cut those security but he doesn't have a unified coalition. I'm like, this is it.

This is the whole ballgame, Ryan, So what else do you want to dig into on? Yeah, And for decades on the left, there's been this internal argument do you work within the Democratic Party to try to make the Democratic Party a better thing? Or do you work outside at you start a third party and try to pressure them from there. As as the working class is kind of being divided by between the two parties, here a kind of new answer is emerging, which is that you

actually work within both parties. And Joe Biden did that tonight, Like I've never seen a speech like that kind of change the negotiating table, change the game in the way it did before this speech. Republicans had their game plan for when it came to the debt ceiling crisis. You know, they're gonna hold it hostage. They're going to force Biden the table or get some cuts, and then they're gonna agree to it the same way that they jammed Biden

up ten years ago. They come out of this speech with nothing left, right, like, so what do they gk Okay, well, now what are you gonna do? You're not cutting military spending because you're Republicans. Now you can't sold security and Medicare because you just told the whole country that he's a liar and that you would never do such a thing. So you're left with the E. P. A and like Noah and the BLM, they can cut BLM and tell their base that it's Black Lives matter, and actually they

can trim the Bureau of Land Management. Yeah, I was gonna say Bundy alone, right, understand he's gonna fly back for that meeting and defend his budget. Well, I do to your point, because they obviously took great umbrage at

the suggestion that they want to security Medicaid. They want to save it was strength it right, but I mean the numbers just don't work out, Like the math just doesn't work out if you're like, I want to slash the budget by this huge amount, right, which they do in which they've said publicly, But I don't want to touch those Security Medica like it just literally the Pentagon or the Pentagon, if we put those together, it's not

going to work out for you. And so that's why it is a fair hit to say to that, like, no, you want to hold the debt sealing hostage. You want to cut these programs. You have a track record of wanting to cut these programs. Center Rex Scott said, you want to cut these programs, And it was pretty remarkable to see how much they freaked out about that and a good sign though, again because this is post Paul Ryan politics and Republicans have realized, I mean, you can

cut the entire Pentagon. This is per Brian Riedle at the Manhattan Institute. You could literally get rid of the Department of Defense, and you can't balance the entitlement balance sheet in the way that Republicans say that they want to. And there's a reckoning with that on the right right now. That doesn't mean that Mitch McConnell wouldn't love to get his hands on and strengthen Social Security in money of it,

but I think it's at least sort of becoming. And again I think this is good for the American people. You have jd. Vance, Donald Trump coming out and saying the same thing and setting the tone. You have Russ Vote, who's hugely influential in the new right and Republican politics. His entire plan to balance the budget he was omb under Trump is don't touch those Security and Medicaid. You can get rid of to the point that you guys are making all of the woke policies and you don't

have to. You can bounce the budget in ten years without touching anything else, and just the fact that the wheels are in motion on that tells you that Republicans are like, no, we literally cannot even whisper a word about it, and if it comes out of your mouth, we are putting you in the corner. That's a really interesting point. We got Marshall and Kyle's reaction. I was curious for your guys reaction. So right now Sarah Huckaby

Sanders is giving rebuttal. I don't know who's watching it, but we have an excerpt, and I think the excerpt is important more so, and what's not in it and what is in it, and what the case of what the potential Republican pushback against this is going to be. I'll just read this again. In the radical lefts of America, Washington taxes you and relights your hard earned money on fire. You get crushed with high gas prices, empty grocery shells.

Our children are taught to hate one another on account of their race, but not to love one another or a great country. And while you reap the consequences of your failure. The Biden administration seems more interested in Wolke fantasies than the hard reality that Americans face every day, most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom of peace, are under attack and left wing culture war

that we didn't start and we never wanted to fight. Emily, what did you think of the strategy there to really go hard at the culture war? To be fair, she didn't actually watch the speech before she really said excerpt so clearly. But I mean that's kind of how all these things work. You get a predetermined little fact sheet and all that. What do you think of that strategy? That's a really good study in contrasts, I think because

she expects Biden to come out, which is wrong. I mean, it's a good example of how Republicans are disconnected from the Biden that they're actually fighting as opposed to the straw man. And then that's not to say that Biden

isn't doing stuff in the culture war. Of course, he is sort of bureaucratically in the executive that's in its year jay right, it's not a national name, right, and the Education Department and all these things that people aren't necessarily able to follow on a single day to day basis.

But that Sara Huckabee Sanders comes out anticipating a Biden culture war Speeds speech, and what she gets is something like what Stolar points out, the first president to champion an anti trust performists State of the Union since nineteen

seventy nine. I haven't seen the full Sarah Hockeby Sanders speech yet, but man, is that going to miss the mark if Biden is out there talking about increasing manufacturing, increasing jobs, increasing decreasing unemployment and all of these economic metrics. She said the choices between normal and or crazy. This is a quote I just saw from Twitter. Republicans punching at a culture warst straw Man is not giving people

that choice very clearly. She's saying, yeah, right, that's but that's their problem because Biden is the one that comes off as normal. This is yeah, that's right, and that that's why that's Biden's strength is in some ways his weakness. He's this like centrist old white man and it's just not gonna land. You're just not gonna call him a radical wokester, and it's that have its stick. Yeah. Then Jesse was like Jesse Waters or somebody said, people just

don't hate Joe Biden. So on the other hand, let's go ahead and put what is this be three guys that we could put up on the screen here from the Washington Post, where you have the latest Post ABC poll, which had a lot of bad numbers for Joe Biden, says more than six and ten say the president has not accomplished much, despite they say the passage of numerous bills, which is true. Sixty two percent of Americans say Biden has accomplished not very much or little or nothing during

his presidency. Only thirty six percent say is accomplish a great deal or a good amount. His approval rating is low. We shared a poll earlier that has him losing to Donald Trump. Of course, a lot of polls out there too, having losen to Ron DeSantis. If DeSantis ends up being the nominee, you have a majority of Democrats, Ryan, who say we don't want this guy to run again. We

want someone else. So, even as you know, I listen to that speech, and there's a lot in there that you know, I respond to, I think it's a good case he makes about what he's done, about what he might do going forward, laying out industrial policy, anti trust, pro labor, et cetera. But there's a lot of signs American people aren't really feeling that right now. The flip side of nobody hating Joe Biden is that nobody really likes him either. He's just he's just kind of exists.

Percent of people they were exciting the cast of Nicole Wallace a low rating, not even if there is such a thing. Yeah, so yeah, I don't know nobody. So, yeah, nobody's excited about him. But that's not that's not that's not how you govern anymore in America, and it's not necessarily how you win elections. Yeah, Like Hillary Clinton's problem was nobody was she had. She had this small group that was really excited about her, but in general, people

weren't excited about it. I was just qualified and most qualified, et cetera. But people intensely disliked her on the other side, and it became a contest, if you remember, in the polling at the very end of who was the least disliked by the American public And Biden ended up beating Trump four years later because he was less disliked than Trump was. That's a good point with Trump. He has very high favorables and very unfavorable nobody feels ambivalent to right,

whereas which everyone's ambivalent to problem. Yeah, everyone is basically, and he's fine. I mean, only the thing I keep coming back to with Biden and his reelect is, I don't know if you remember ron Klain after Emmanuel Macron won reelection in France, where his approval rating was total trash, right, it was like in the thirties, and he's able to win, and he won pretty easily over Marine La Penn because

people really hated her a lot. And so you know, ron Klain tweets a sound was like, oh interesting, he won re election with a thirty six percent approval rating or whatever. I mean, that kind of seems like the

path that they are hoping for for Biden. And so that's why you see, you know, not only in the speech, he really did front load with what he's done and what he wants to do and where we are, etc. On the economy, but there's also quite a bit in there which obviously Republicans got upset about about the Republican plans and why they were the wrong directions. So, I mean, in some ways, I think his re elect hinges on how much people dislike the Republicans, how extreme they are,

and how much they want to avoid going in that direction. Again, right, and that's why it totally depends on the nominee, and

we've seen that show up in polling. But it's a really important point because I think American politics is lurching towards that reality for the foreseeable future period where you have people with really low approval ratings, maybe even low favorability ratings, that are just able to muster the right, cobble together the right coalition and just scraight past or get to that fifty percent mark or forty nine, whatever it is. And that's the reality I think we're facing

in the country that we're too divided to have. I think, like Ronald Reagan's re election, you know, where he's just trouncing absolutely everybody. This is not gonna happen. Or Bill Clinton. I mean, we're just we're not in that world anymore. And so Republicans, I think, need to realize that if they want to create this dichotomy of normal versus crazy, they need to figure out how to make that stick. To Joe Biden, they need to be there, not be crazy.

Well yeah, yeah, yeah, you can't have to do both. Got through the grill of the viill thing and stand up and yell. It's a tough thing. I really don't know how they get their way out of it, because it's like I can make the case on either side, like if I'm Ron DeSantis look like Okay, let's say try. We had a fun debate at our live show, what happens if Trump and DeSantis both die? But what's more likely let's say Trump's wrong with it was a funny. It was a fun Honestly, it was a fun second

so many times. All right, if they what they both do, they both get arrest. My scenario was that they were both on Air Force one and Air Force one crash on the way, they blow up the Chinese balloon floor and the debris takes them both out and Santos arrested for Santos actually know George Santos killed them both. Okay, so move on. Part of what we got too much

from that. Part of what we got from that dialogue was that they need to try and reconcile the craziness of Trump and the energy of that with the fact that they still won six percent of the national popular vote during the midterms. Like this can be done. Joe Biden is weak. We have all of the pulling data to show that it is Trump and that wing which is dragging them down electorally. However, they hold so much power institutionally go ahead of Yeah, no, I think that's

one hundred percent true. And Biden is picking up on this with his own party in a way that Republicans who have seen the culture war sort of path to victory in a Virginia or of Florida. You cannot just translate that to Sarah, How could be standards going all in and having absolutely no answer to Biden's very sort of like Normy aimed square at the middle economic speech. That's like a kitchen table, real person speech. You can't

just come out swinging with that kind of stuff. And Biden, for instance, he didn't say much, as you guys pointed out earlier, on abortion. He didn't say much about the border.

You didn't say much about LGBTQ issues. He said, we had one mention of young of transgender young people, but the bulk of the speech was on the economy, on the he didn't even talk about Ukraine that much at the bottom thirty well, right, And so the I think Democrats have realized probably picked up on the number from the midterms, which the midterm narrative was one thing, but it is true. Republicans did have a decent night, not nearly what it was projected to be, but they did

okay in the popular vote. So if Democrats see that, they do have a lot of culture war problems, there's just no question about it. You did a great podcast this week, I'm Deconstructed, where you sort of talked through some of this. They do have those issues, but Republicans can't fight them in a way that handicaps themselves going into those battles. Siden doesn't give them a lot of ammunition. And I'm not aware of a national election that has ever been won on the question of what local schools

should be teaching or not teaching. That is our destiny, though, to have presidential elections. Hinge on who gets to play on the lacrosse across team will be like eventually where this system is heading. I don't know if it'll be this one or four years from hour, but it's part of the like the process of just removing more and more decision making away from elections. But you still have

to give people something to fight over. But speaking of not having anything to fight over, it's like the Democratic Party seems like they don't have the civil war that they had over the last kind of six seven, eight years. It's it was basically won by the establishment with you know, Biden finally beat beating Bernie, but they also absorbed a

decent amount of what Bernie was fighting for. And so that's why you see so much frustration on the outside that Bernie's not fighting more than you know, Bernie's become a big supporter of Joe Biden. Because Bernie, as you know, budget chairman, writing the reconciliation package, he's you know, he's he's seeing trillions of dollars of spending go through. You're seeing you know, unemployment knocked down to what three point four percent, lowest and lowest since like nineteen sixty nine,

and so you have this. He talked about the four hundred billion dollars in climate spending, and so he called himself a capitalist. Yeah, they said, yes, yes, right exactly. So they kind of they kind of ended this civil war by a beating Bernie, but then uh b bringing in a decent amount of what he was fighting for, just enough to kind of keep them happy together. And because Democrats, Democratic voters are so fired up about electability

and beating the evil Republicans. You know, they're going to keep putting forward people like Biden probably, whereas Republicans still are, you know, fired by the by the cultural issues, and because I think they were told that Trump was unelectable, they said, screw it, we don't care. We're electing him anyway. And he got nominating him anyway, he won. They don't they don't want to hear about electability crap anyway, great people, and they're not going to want to hear that for

a long time ago. Emily, what do you see as the contours of the coming Republican I mean, the Republican civil wars sort of upon us. You know, people are kind of choosing their sides and the battle lines are breaking down, Like is there are there economic issues that are involved in that Republican civil war? Is it primarily around culture warriors? She's clearly Ronda Santis is positioning himself as like the you know I was during COVID, I

was the guy who was open for business. Donald Trump was shuting things down, whether or the facts of that whatever. That's how he's positioning himself. Is that going to be the key dividing line, how do you see this playing out? So it looks like Nikki Haley is going to announce formally and do a roll out next week, and that's already what I've seen some on the kind of new right talking about is like, what an embarrassment that this is just a tea party ghost who has not updated

herself whatsoever. But then the question is what is the substantial difference between Ronda Santis and Nikki Haley? Because with Donald Trump, we know to some extent that it's just a mixed bag. It's the same thing with his foreign policy. You're going to get some new, some shocking new, and some of the old stuff. It depends on who wins the fight at any given moment, the tug of war

at any given moment. But how substantially different is Ronda Santis or Glenn Younkin mister p Patagonia vest going to be on that issue? And I think that's a really open question, and the primaries are going to be a place where that's sorted out because Republicans do face pressure now after Donald Trump, this is post Paul Ryan era not to do things to Social Security and Medicare, Like this is a huge source of pressure on Republicans, so I think a lot of it will be hashed out

in the midterms. I think it's completely up in the air now. I think anybody who says the Republican Party has been, you know, permanently changed for good and turned into the party of the working class is absolutely wrong. That's not to say there isn't some reason it's possible, right, Stolar talks about that like this is good for everybody. The Republican Party is never going to be a beautiful, wonderful, pure party of the working class. It's not going to happen.

The Democratic Party is not going to be either. One might be better than the other, but the Republican Party at least being dragged, kicking and screaming to say things like, if we're going to balance the budget, we're not going to do it from stealing and rating from your entitlement funds. That's a good day for everyone. But the question is

still open. I mean, I see that, and I don't, because at the end of the day, the McCarthy holdouts also begged and demanded a vote for the freaking fair Tax, which is you know, terrible, terrible, regressive, like total tea Party throwback stuff and the whole contours of the debts healing fight outside of them just not publicly wanting to be accused of cutting Social Security medicare. This is tea Party two point zero stuff. I mean, this is all

tea party tactics. Their asks are tea party asks. So it's you know, when I look at something like that, I'm like, this is really change. Is really different because now that Trump is sort of less clearly in command too, you know, a lot of their talking points and their economic policy has just floated right back to that Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan era ultimately, and I mean it's Trump himself. His bigges accomplishment was a jug into corporate tax gut

that they all are perfectly happy with. Well and the other thing. You'll definitely have thoughts on this, But anti trust is huge, and I'm actually very curious if Sarahuckaby Sanders had a word about anti trust because Republicans have actually made significant motions. Some of the most powerful anti trust suits have been filed by people like Ken Paxton and Texas and the Trump administration against Google. There's some real meat on the bones. That's like one of the

areas where there is actually truly a realignment. To borrow word from Sager and Marshall that you can see happening. And what's who is Ronda Santis, Sarah Hackaby Sanders, is Nikki Haley? What are they going to say about that? How would they govern? That's a complete Nicky Haley is already He's already on record against what is knocking her lane out of it. Now is not the time to rethink capitalism, is what she famously said in her speech.

So good luck, Nikki. I'm going to enjoy watching you fail. I really will. I could say that is the Indian American who doesn't want to see you be the first one on the stage for all of us. But Ryan, I'm curious here also on the Democratic side. So at the end of the day, you know, the laundry list of here's what I want and all this, it's not going to happen. This was all just oppositional. So to that extent Biden we were talking about this is the kickoff of his campaign. It seems like it did pretty

good job. Like overall, this is probably as good as you could probably hope for. And he didn't step into any of the pitfalls I saw that he's on his way to Wisconsin and Florida. In Florida, I'd just be like, give up, mister president. That ship sailed, sir, Wisconsin. That's a smart move. But yeah, like going into those two states in the next couple of days, like this is probably going to be a pretty high point for him,

and especially coming off the midterms. Right, there were two paths he could have taken when when Republicans said we're going to hold the debt stealing hostage to force demands. He could have taken the last Joe Biden approach, which was great. You know, we all need to get together. We'll do a commission and we'll Simpson bowls and balls, will hold hands together. I got Bruce Reid here, he

was my staff guy and he's still in the White House. Yeah, dust the plans off, and yes, like people want to work longer, and Medicare is too generous, and Medicaid you know, you know people people need to be incentivized to get back to work. Like they could have been that Joe Biden, right, or it could be the Joe Biden that we saw tonight.

It's like who baits them with the Rick Scott plan, and then he could have baited them with the Kevin McCarthy plans, saying that we're going to strengthen solid security and medicare. He gets them to call him a liar, and he said, oh wait, we got a lot of

converts here. I'm so great. We're not going so so he goes the other direction and says we're not going to go down that path, which means that the Biden who came out of the gate with the you know, he said, here's my offer on the American Rescue plan one point nine trillion dollars, and Susan Collins comes back, She's like, here's our offer, five hundred and fifty billion dollars or six hundred whatever it is. Two hours later he puts out a statement. He's like, we're doing this alone.

We're not taking six months like Obama did, and like allowing Susan Collins to just like dictate this to us, that was a shocking moment in democratic political history. But as he did, then you know how he's been like conferring with John Meacham and trying to step into the FDR shoes and this is like actually reported accesses head repeat on Biden like genuinely trying to rescue the soul of the nation and seeing himself as this FDR figure, not like FDR light, but like FDR next generation truly.

And he had a line in the speech where he talked about I think it's the Inflation Reduction Act provisions of it not going into effect until January one. So people are just starting to feel the economy heating up, and the economy is heating up in different ways. And that might explain the disconnect between the mood of the country and polling and what Biden sees as a hot

economy or heating up economy. But to that point, is it some of that seeing him slotting himself into that care charter, this FDR like figure, that has made him say, I'm not the old Joe Biden. Screw it, We're not waiting for Susan Collins. But at the same time he did say Republican friends over and over again in that speech. Notice that I mean this is in particular a real break from the old Joe Biden. Here's the line from the speech. If anyone tries to cut Social Security, I

will stop them. If anyone tries to cut Medicare, I will stop them. I will not allow them to be taken away, not stay, not tomorrow or not ever. Now he doesn't say, and they're not yesterday because he's multiple times, so it's forty years. I tried to cut security. But if you say no, not tomorrow, not ever, take a

week in the future. Yes, So yeah, I mean, listen, I don't want to oversell it because on the other hand, you know, went on of his way to like bust the potential rail strike and hand power to the bosses there, like,

hasn't fought for lifting the minimum wage. You know, mentioned the pro act here that fell off the table, didn't really put the screws to mansion and cinema over build back better and so you know, we were all happy when we got something in the Inflation Reduction Act, but it's easy to forget how much the actual original vision was trimmed by a lack of willingness to play hardball and willingness to like just accept the rulings of the

parliamentarian and things like that. So I don't want to oversell it here, but I do think there are some noteworthy shifts in terms of I mean even just industrial policy and anti trust. These were like anti trust. I mean, the Obama administration was terrible on anti trust, terrible allowed some of these gigantic mergers to go through that. Now people are raging about, right the Ticketmaster being a primary

example there. And you know, so industrial policy was basically a dirty word in both parties for my entire life until now, up until literally I think three years ago. Do you remember when Biden put out what was it? Just like Made in America? I praised it on Rising in here. I was like, hey, listen, that's pretty good. I was like, you can tell you whatever, you know.

I was like, by the way, I was like, Jared, please release the maid in America thing from the National Security Council, which I know that you held up for two years and then didn't end up passing for literally no reason. So in a lot of ways for Trump, this is dangerous territory. I mean, Biden is taking the two most singular popular things that he did, which was

China and it was made in America. Look at that, you know the way that he talked about China in the speech and then no he didn't talk about it much, but look he did not say that what seven years ago, what he was trying to say in that whole switch places with she I speak by niece is because I used to watch him whenever he was coherent, and he would always talk about how he was one of those

people he was so pro engagement with China. He often says this, I'm the only person I've spent more hours with Shishingping than any other Western leader in the world. I've sat there and I've talked with him across the table. That was his big selling point. He was so excited, he oh, I know, yeah. Actually, there's a lot of business dealings going on. That was a side of the big guy. That's all on air Force too, another story for another day, of which we have covered several times.

But the point is is that he has gone from engagement to confrontation. Clearly that is without Trump, that doesn't happen. And he's also now gone completely with Made in America, the full embrace of all that. I do want to know who he is. He goes Many people don't like when I say this, but we're going to buy American. I'm like, who is saying that, outside of like JP Morgan CEO, who is saying that. I like that. Most people like that Larry Summers. Yeah, okay, got some got

some flap in the country club. One last thought and then I want to hear you guys' final thoughts as well. But you know, one thing we talked about going into this, which maybe it shouldn't matter, maybe it should matter. I think it's reasonable for people to have concerns about a man who would be eighty six by the end of

a next term. And so as much as The New York Times was running a story that I know was planned by Biden AEDs about how he's preparing to overcome a stutter in this speech, sort of trying to set the bar low that if it doesn't go well, don't be an asshole, it's because he has a stutter. It's not because he's old. Guys, don't say that. But ultimately, you know, I mean, he's still Joe Biden at eighty years old. It's still not what he used to be.

It wasn't like an incredibly masterful oratory, but Ryan, I think, you know, in terms of what he's capable of, this was a pretty well delivered speech and as Emily was saying, you know, being able to do a little give and take with the audience, that's not easy to do. So I think also he did himself some favors in terms of persuading people that this is a man who is still capable of conducting the business of the presidency and that we're not all going to be left in the

hands of Kamala Harris, your guy. I think we're also starting to all grade him on a curve relative to what we expect from him. Like, I think he has successfully set the bar really low his public performances. Every time he tried to go off the teleprompter, off script with a little riff. Yeah, you're almost holding your breath for him. Outside of the Medicare thing, they were all bad, every single one. He starts out by saying, I get to be here because Jill's going to get the game.

Marwin anyway, are you talking about the Super Bowl and the Eagles. Yeah, you have Donovan McNabb perform like he should. He should have. He should have finished with the go Birds at the end because he's not winning. That's doctor, but a doctor's saying flag yes, well on that point. And he did seem to get Tyree Nichols name wrong.

It wasn't old Tyler, it wasn't great, sounding like Tyler, Yeah, it wasn't a perfect performance, but I do think that because the bar is so low for him every time he clears it and looks like he can give a normal presidential speech for an hour. Again, because the bar is so low. And part of that, by the way, is because Donald Trump was the preceding president. That's good. And Donald Trump's State of the Unions tended to be pretty boilerplate and conventional. That wasn't true of the rest

of his communications. So Joe Biden being able to just give a speech for an hour, talk about his Republican friends and make America at least sort of be back in the political theater that people are comfortable with. I guess that's a win for him. Yeah, all right, Okay, guys, thank you so much for your analysis. I hope everybody enjoyed this stream. Thank you so much also to our premium members who help support the show and keep all

of these things going. They are expensive to put on, so we really much appreciate you and we love you all. We're going to have some content for you guys tomorrow. Hint it involves a congressman attacking Crystal Ball, my partner over here and Joe Rogan as a vicious attack calling them anti Semitic. We will get into all of that tomorrow. We'll have a full show for everybody on Thursday. Lots of great content in the interim, and we will see

you all later. We've been tracking a lot of Jeff Bezos news and respect to the Washington Commanders, and it looks like there could be some developments here. Let's put it up there on the screen. So Charles Gasperano. He reports that Bezos is considering buying the Washington Commanders and that the commander's sale will take place weeks after the

Super Bowl and owners meeting in March. Despite the denials, people inside the NFL think that Bezos's bid will come after the initial bids because given his wealth, he is capable of making any numbers work for a purchase. So he's going to see what other people put on the table, and then he's going to be like a little bit more, here's a billion more. So can we just wrap this up and everybody be like, yeah, all right, let's do a handshake. Yeah. I don't know how it's gonna work out.

As you pointed out as well, Dan Snyder doesn't like Jeff Bezos. Why because Bezos's paper, The Washington Post, is the one that exposed a lot of his wrongdoing in his organization. At the same time, money's green, no matter whether somebody took you down or not. But these guys are billionaires, so they operated at a different level. You know,

it's an extra billion here or there. But the other question is that the previous reporting from The New York Post said that Bezos was exploring a sale of The Washington Post to possibly finance this. So maybe Snyder would be like, Okay, you can have the you can have the Commanders, but you have to sell the Post if you want to do that. So I could see him

being petty enough to do that. Bezos, I think he absolutely is going to end up with the Commanders because listen, I mean, these guys are like gods in America, these NFL owners, like nothing comes close to being like a pop culture icon. That's what he loves. You know, Bezos loves me in Hollywood and you know the Instagram thing. He doesn't even work anymore Amazon. Yeah, he loves Lizzo. Apparently the guy is like he's no longer interested in

being quote respectable, which is what the post bottom. He's interested in just being super rich and being culturally relevant, So buying the NFL an NFL team is the best way to do that. Yeah, you know, he could turn the stadium into one of like the biggest stadium or the best or what. He could outcompete Jerry Jones and be one of those sizes of people and you know, like,

I'm sure people would like it. That absolutely would. And don't forget Amazon HQ two being built right here in the DMV area in Crystal City where thousands of Amazon employees are going to be. Already, he already owns the biggest house in Washington, d C. This would just step it up even more. Yeah, this is what it looks like to go through a midlife crisis when you're one of the richest man on the FA. Yeah. Right, Like, I'm gonna buy and I'm a NFL team. Maybe I'll sell.

This newspaper's kind of a pain in my ass. Let me get rid of it. I don't know, some far I'm not gonna lie. It looks pretty fun. The other thing I have to contribute to this conversation is as a long suffering Washington football sports fan, Dan Snyder has got to be one of the worst owners in the history of the NFL and perhaps all of sport. And one of the good things that The Washington Post has

done under Bezos's leadership is exposed all of that. But you know that being said, I'm like not cheering for either one of these men. So we'll see how it all unfolds. He continues to deny it. They're also, I mean, the Washington Post is in not great financial straits. They've been having to make lays off telling you they bet all the way in on like Trump and political news coverage. They didn't really diversify in the way that New York Times did, so the financial position there for them is

not very good. That being said, you know, he's a billionaire. He could prop them up easily without any problem. But does he want to do that? And more importantly, does he want you know, I think he didn't like that when he was going back and forth with Biden on like tax policy or whatever. He didn't like that people were like, hey, dude, you own a really important newspaper. Maybe you shouldn't be putting your hand on the scale

the way that you are here. Ultimately, and by the way, we see this as sort of like reflected in your paper's coverage, which is a problem as well. And I'm not sure that he liked that and the implications of having actually some real responsibility with owning the Washington Post. So oh that's what happened. Look, the best move for him sell the Post, get rid of it. Don't put your hands in this and become a pop culture figure. You already kind of are, you know, the whole Jack

Bezos meme with his girl. And and also look Washington like people have ever been suffering for a long time. By the way, Chris, we actually have some fans on the Washington Commanders. So shout out to them. Two guys. Yeah, and I won't out anymore. I'm not going to out them before they out themselves as breaking points. They have made it known to me that they are fans of the show. What I think would be cool is that, Look, there are a lot of people who you know, they

have very low season ticket holders. It's very hard to sell the game, and DC doesn't have a good enough sports community. Ever. You know, when the Caps are good, then people get excited. Us used to be different. It was the I mean, this was the most valuable franchise

in all of sports when I was growing up. I mean, these are Super Bowl winners, and when the stadium was here in the city, it was totally Ever since they moved out to Maryland and it's a still FedEx field wherever that gets called, it's the expand experience is terrible. The vibes of the team are terrible, like all that tradition history was kind of swept away. Daniel Snyder terrible owner.

So yeah, listen, I'm not super excited about Bezos owning the team, but getting someone different in there, I would hope it would kind of revive what this great team used to be. An extremely dangerous situation in Ohio, five thousand people had to actually be evacuated from one part of that state after a Norfolk Southern train derailed. It was carrying some toxic chemicals, burst in flames when it derailed, and then there was a danger that would actually explode.

They had to do a so called controlled release that also released a gigantic fireball. So a really terrifying situation, one that could have gone bad. Pun off the rails. And now we're getting some reporting from our friends at the Lever about how corruption may have provided the backstory that led to this extraordinarily dangerous situation. Let's go ahead and bring Julia, Roxy's journalist with Lever News to break down the story. Great to see, Julia, thanks so much

for having me. Yeah, of course, So let me go ahead and read the headline that you have here. You say rail companies blocked safety rules before Ohio derailment, Norfolk Southern helped convince government officials to repeal brake rules, and corporate lobbyists watered down has met safety regulation. So tell

us exactly what you found here. Yeah, so this is basically a story about how, you know, over the past decade or so, as the biggest railroads were spending a lot of their profits on executive pay and stock buybacks, they were declining to upgrade their Civil War era braking systems, which basically make it impossible to stop all of the cars on a train at once, to electronically controlled braking

systems where you can stop the entire train simultaneously. And the sort of point of these upgraded safety systems is that you know, in the US, lots of trains are carrying things like crude oil, hazardous, flammable chemicals and so the stakes are very high if something goes wrong and the train derails. So during the twenty tens, the Obama administration tried to impose some more stringent safety measures on

these trains carrying flammable, hazardous materials. But the railroads came in, including Norfolk Southern, They lobbied really hard against these rules. When a limited version of the rule was finally put into place, they got the Trump administration and congressional Republicans

to strike it down. I mean, I think we all got a close up look at how much these freight companies really don't care, particularly about health and safety, given the way they laid off workers and push them out the limited amount of time off if they got any at all. And you know, these are like it's not easy to conduct a train and you can have we've had an increase in derailments as a result in part

of the way that they have their workforce. What is their side of the story here, Why did they push back against what seems like an obvious important safety innovation in terms of these braking systems. Well, so you're right, the backdrop is exactly the same as what they've done with their workforces. You know, like you said, they slashed them by about thirty percent in the past decade or so. You know. The argument of the railroads wasn't even that

these brakes are not safer norfolks. Southern had actually tested out some of these breaks back in two thousand and seven and said, like, they are way better than the conventional air brakes that we use. They reduce stopping distances by up to sixty percent. But then when the Obama administration turned around and said, okay, install them on your trains you know carrying hazardous chemicals and oil, they said it's too expensive. The benefits of it do not justify

the high costs. That was their argument. It wasn't that the brakes weren't effective, It wasn't that they would make the trains more safe. It was simply that they were too expensive. You have another piece here. It's not just regarding the brakes, but they also sought to limit what could be classified as hazardous materials. Let me read a

little bit from your piece. You say, alongside their campaign to kill the brake rule, industry lobbyists push to limit the types of chemical compounds that be covered by new regulations, including the brake rule. They propose limiting the definition of high hazard flammable trains, mostly to cover oil trains, but not trains carrying the industrial chemical on the Norfolk Southern train that necessitated evacuations in Ohio. So I want everybody

to think about this. This train derails, catches on fire, you have to evacuate the area. They do a controlled release that results in a gigantic fireball, and this was not classified as being a high hazard flammable train. Yeah, so people in the area were told that the railcars could explode and launch deadly shrapnel as far as a mile. But this train was not being regulated, like you said,

as a a highly hazardous flammable train. And that's in part because of successful lobbying efforts by the chemical industry as well as other industries to very narrowly limit the types of sub substances that would give trains this classification as high hazard flammable trains, as well as sort of create this high threshold whereby a certain number of cars had to be carrying the material, and the cars had to be sort of either next to each other, there

had to be even more cars spread out over the train, so they create a very high threshold for a train to even be subject to these regulations that are supposed to impose more safety features on trains carrying really dangerous chemicals. And finally, Julia, help us understand who were the political players involved here? How much of this happened under the Obama administration versus the Trump administration. Has the Biden administration

had anything to do with it? Yeah, So the Obama administration, you know, if you look at the coverage from the time, sort of surprised people in imposing this requirement on railroads to install these breaks, I think, surprise them because there's been so much industry pushback. And as we know all too well, the Obama administration was was always welcome to folding under industry pushback. Trump Trump moves to repeal it, and and the Biden administration has not attempted to reinstate

these rules. You know, Biden railroad regulators say, yes, these breaks are much better, we endorse them, but it's not on their rulemaking agenda. They haven't. They haven't indicated, you know, any intention to do it. And and and you know, the point you made early on I think is worth again highlighting here that again the backdrop is, uh, workforces have been slashed on these trains, Inspection times are getting much shorter. You know, workers are exhausted, they're coming to

work sick. Of course, that is making all of this more dangerous. And there's also plenty, as you've talked about on the show, that the Biden administration could do, you know, to help these workers and and and and force better safety standards on these railroad companies in all sorts of regards, and they haven't done it yet. Yeah, I'm just shocked that Mayor Pete hasn't gotten right on top of that, Julia.

You know workers when we were covering the potential rail strike and their negotiations, this is exactly the type of accident that they were warning about, saying, I mean listen, and when you stretch people so thin and you are working them to the bone and they have no time off even for the basics of going to a doctor appointment, guess what's going to happen. It's not just their health and safety that's going to be compromised, but they're going

to be massive spillover effects. And this is just a really sad and horrifying example of that great reporting on this getting this backstory, helping us understand how we got to this point really super important. Julia, great to see you, Thanks so much. Yeah, our pleasure. Thank you guys for watching. We'll have more for you later