Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here, and we here at Breaking Points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent.
Coverage that is possible.
If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support.
But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Good morning, Welcome to Breaking Points. I'm Sager and Jetty kidding. I don't know how many times I can use.
That joke, Crystal, I think it lands every time. It's almost like our ritual part of the morning routine when you're here. Nice to see you, by the way, Emily, great to have you as always, girl.
Show Yes, always fun indeed, and we have a big show.
Actually, yeah, there's a lot to get into this morning. So apparently Obama is back. He's going to try to rescue Biden. He's all in giving advice, et cetera. We'll break that down a' so kareem jump here having an inexplicable meltdown on a radio program that we will share with you as well. The rn C has an interesting new hiring process and the litmus test that you definitely.
Definitely want to know about that.
We had a big abortion oral arguments at Supreme Court this week. This is with regard to that abortion pill and whether it could be potentially banned nationwide. Seems like a lot of the justices were very skeptical of the arguments that were being made, so we'll break that down for you. We also had, related to that, a special
election for a House district in Alabama. I know you're on the edge of your seats to find out the results, but it was noteworthy because Alabama, of course, was where that court ruling on IVF came down, and the Democrat ran really explicitly.
On that IVF ruling and she cleaned up like.
The margin is actually really shocking. So that's why it's worth paying attention to. Also have some major media fails with regard to Israel coverage that we want to bring you both The Atlantic and The New York Times. We have Joe Rogan coming out and saying Israel is committing a genocide and what he even described as a mini holocaust. Speaking of genocide, I'm taking a look at a UN report arguing that there are reasonable grounds to believe Israel
is in fact committing a genocide. Of course, the author of that report was immediately smeared by State Department spokesperson Matt Miller as being you guessed it anti Semitic. And we have Max Alvarez, who is both a Baltimore City resident and also a fantastic reporter, taking a look at the very latest we know with regard to that horrible bridge collapse in that city.
Very eager to hear Maxi's thoughts.
Let's start with this outrageous Korean John Pierre meltdown in North Carolina.
Now North Carolina.
Is where Joe Biden and Kamala Harris we're visiting on Tuesday.
Hence why karrein John.
Pierre, I didn't realize that actually.
She was on WBT local radio AM radio in North Carolina. And this is per the Daily Beast. They describe it like this, they say in the audio. John Pierre called out WBT Charlotte news director Mark Garrison for quote incredibly offensive end quote, insulting question about President Joe Biden's health.
During the phone interview earlier in the day.
I would add to that she also was offended that he asked about people's grocery bills, and later ended the chat by cordially thanking the interview first time and hanging up. The White House contended in a statement to The Daily Beast that John Pierre had offered the interview seven minutes of her time sandwich between other interviews, and that the station was well aware of the time constraints.
There's a lot to say about this. Let's roll the tape first, though.
When I told a number of people that I was talking to you today that it was interesting though, they all said, would you please just ask her?
Does the president have dementia? So before I move on from that, does he that?
Mark?
Mark? I can't even believe you're asking me this question. That is an incredibly offensive question to ask.
But you know people ask you.
Wait, no, no, no, no, no, you Mark, you you're taking us down as rabbit hole. Let me let me let me be very clear about this.
Uh.
For the past several years, the president's physician has laid out very in a comprehensive way, the president's health. This is a president if you watch him every day, if you really pay attention to his record and what he has done, you will see exactly how focus he's been on the American people, how historic his actions have been. And so I'm not even going to truly truly uh really,
you know, take take the premise of your question. I think it is incredibly insulting, and so we can, you know, we can move on to the next question.
So the next question was in fact about grocery prices, and these are basically crystal and cares for your take on this. The two issues that Normy voters actually really are focused on with Joe Biden specifically, is are you okay? And why can't I pay for my groceries in the same way that I used to just a few years ago?
If they are incapable of having good answers to those questions, and by the way, there are good answers to those questions from a political perspective, from the perspective of strategy, maybe not so much the first one, but you can at least, you know, go full Paul Krugman talking about grocery prices.
Yeah, absolutely good.
They have plenty of data they can point to.
Is it, you know, totally representative of how the American people are feeling and doing?
No, but there are things they could point to.
It's not that hard, and the Daily Beasts character is she cordially hung up the phone cordially okay.
After seven minutes, almost like they took the White House's line that she only had seven minutes.
She was generous with her time.
Yeah, I mean, it's just she very huffily after she gets asked the grocery question, just like you know, it's like I gotta go, hangs.
Up the phone.
And if you do have look, i know she's a busy lady. I'm sure she did have other things scheduled whatever. There's an actually cordial way to handle that of like, hey, can we do like one more question. I'm really sorry, I'm just you know, super slammed. And there's the not cordial way of just literally hanging up the phone.
It's we're done.
Listen, if you don't want.
To get asked tough questions, don't take this job.
Your whole job is to take these questions. You're the press secretary. It's crazy, and you have the thing like.
This is not out of line.
People have a right to ask that question because we have seen this man had to give an entire press conference to assure voters that he was like mentally there, and then he went ahead and confused the president of Egypt with President of Mexico in the very press conference, in the very like I'm not Senile, I promise press conference. Pull from February, eighty six percent of Americans think the President Joe Biden is too old to serve another term.
So you can't get all snippy and offended when a radio host asked you a question that is clearly on the mind of some eighty six percent of Americans at least. But you know, this is kind of a it's a typical I would say democratic strategy, but I think strategy in general with politician rather than actually trying to deal with this, which how do you deal with the age question in particular? They're you know, all you can say is like the nonsense. She said, Oh, just watch him,
which that's the problem we have been watching against. That's why we have the concerns. Okay, but that's really kind of all you can do with it. And he's not getting younger, so there's no real effective way to parry that. Whereas with the economic stuff, you know, there's at least, like I was saying, there's at least something there you can work with. Consumer sentiment is up. I do think that is part of why you're seeing a little bit
of Biden positive movement in terms of the polls. But you know, to just get snippy and hang of the phone, is like, why did you do this interview in the first place?
Then yeah, well, no exactly, and she should be perfectly capable of handling these interviews great questions. I thought, like, this is not getting down in conspiracy theory rabbit holes. He did a great job. He just asked two clear, fair questions.
Now.
This is also on the heels of the New York Times reporting that President Obama is getting a former President Obama's getting increasingly involved in the twenty twenty four election. We can put this tear sheet up on the screen. The headline from the New York Times is Obama fearing Biden lost to Trump, is on the phone to strategize, They write, as the election approaches, President Biden is making regular calls to former President Obama to catch up on
the race or talk about family. But mister Obama is making calls of his own to Jeff Zeinz, the White House Chief of Staff, and to top aids at the Biden campaign just to strategize and relay advice. This level of engagement illustrates mister obama support for mister Biden, but also what one of his senior aides characterized as mister Obama's grave concern that Biden could lose to former President Donald J.
Trump.
So we've seen other people start really sounding the alarms, saying this is not you cannot, for example with Karreean Jean Pierre, you cannot just expect to be morally indignant at questions about Joe Biden's age and people's concerns about the economy and expect that Trump will be so crazy you will just cruise to reelection. That is not going to be a winning strategy. You have to have something better than saying, look at Joe Biden, because to your point, Crystal.
It's kind of the problem.
So they've had that interesting relationship Obama and Biden for a long time, and obviously this was even in the Special Council. Her transcript, Biden conceded that Obama didn't want him to run back in twenty sixteen, but now Obama said, gotta get in there, Joe, because this one is going to.
Be pretty close by the way.
I think Obama's political instincts in twenty sixteen were dead wrong. I mean, obviously it didn't work out with Hillary Clinton. I think Joe Biden, you know, he was much more at the top of his game in twenty sixteen. I think he was probably a more talented political figure. And I think Joe Biden is right to feel like he
had a shot. I mean, if he could beat Trump in twenty twenty as a diminished Joe Biden, I think he had a decent shot at beating Trump in twenty sixteen as well, and was better positioned than Hillary Clinton to do so. One can never know, but I do think that Barack Obama's political instincts in that regard were
dead wrong. And with Obama, you know, in terms of his political instincts, they've really never served anyone except himself, Like he was very good at getting himself elected and getting himself re elected did but also during his time, over the course of that eight years, the Democratic Party was really decimated, especially in rural areas. There was just you know, a thousand state house seats that were lost.
It was at a critical time because it was twenty ten, and that's when redistricting happened, the number of governor's matches that were lost. You know, ultimately, the lose the House, and they lose the Senate, and then they lose the presidency to Donald Trump. So while he is himself personally an extraordinarily talented political figure, there's no indication that there's really an ability to transfer that over to anyone else.
Now that being said, Obama, even though he kind of stays out of the political limelight, he seeks other SERTs of limelights that stays out of the political limelight. He obviously has been incredibly influential in crafting the trajectory of the Democratic Party in his post presidency, and basically, you know, his goal, his interests in terms of securing his legacy have always been to make sure that no one does anything like bigger and.
Better than he does.
So that's why he was on the warpath against Bernie Sanders, because how does Obamacare look in retrospect if you end up with Medicare for all, well, that kind of really diminishes him and his legacy ultimately. So he uh famously, you know, was very involved in DNC and putting Tom
Perez in charge. He was very involved then in helping Joe Biden secure the nomination in twenty twenty, even though all the indications were that once again he was very reluctant about thinking that Joe Biden was the guy.
He waited.
He you know, flirted with Pete and Bato and a whole cast of other Democratic contenders before it was clear like, okay, if you actually want to beat Bernie, you got to line up behind Joe Biden right now. And he made the calls and got every ready to drop out and fall in line behind Joe Biden. And so he really does to a large extent, which I think probably greats on him. Ohe his election and you know, his success in winning the nomination to Barack Obama, as you reference,
they've always had. You just has an interesting relationship, a beautifulship. It's a complex relationship because Obama is this you know, Ivy league intellectually, He's got all those sorts of types around him. That's the ecosystem that he's comfortable in. Joe Biden, I'm a Scranton you know, with is like working class.
Affects, a powering intellect.
I'm not saying he's a stupid man, but he's you know, they're they're sort of like oil and water when it comes to their style of politics. Biden is all about the personal and not way. He's kind of more like Trump. You know, it's very hands on. He wants to be in there working this person and that person.
And at this point, you.
Know, the politics have really moved past that era and is sort of like, you know, very outdated that mode of doing politics, and he and Obama just you know, they kind of clash in terms of their political style, though Obama people kind of look down their nose at him. Reportedly from other reports, Joe Biden still is like talks about Obama all the time, like, oh, I bet Obama wishes he could have done that. So I think a big motivation in his presidency is just to like prove
the Obama people wrong. So anyway, that's you know, when you talk about their interesting relationship, that's some of the backstory there, and that's why part of why it's noteworthy that you know, Obama's jumping into the freight here wholeheartedly to try to rescue Joe because clearly he feels that this campaign is not exactly off to a stunningly successful start.
You know, there were people in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen that said, you know, bregsit really had a chance, and there were people who didn't, and Obama was very much among the people who didn't. And then that pretended what happened in twenty sixteen with Donald Trump. And yeah, I agree, I think that's that's a really good point. And now, actually, here's an interesting glimpse also at maybe
how Democrats are trying to have good political instincts. We can put this next tear sheet up on the screen from Axios that writes for the first time in more than two months, President Biden. On Tuesday, he was in North Carolina again publicly uttered a word that he and other Democrats have largely abandoned, quote biden nomics. It was the first time that he did that since January twenty fifth.
Shout out to Axios for tracking the times that Biden uses the phrase Bidenomics, because if you look at that chart, it's extremely detailed. They also, i mean it started, yeah, twenty nine, twenty nine times in July twenty one and fifteen, thirteen fourteen. They have these like very detailed counts. But
it's also gone to congressional Democrats. They have a chart in the same article where they show congressional Democrats mentioning Bidenomics way less in the fall and now basically not using that phrase at all.
Meanwhile, Republicans have.
Used bidenomics quote nearly five hundred times this month in their public statements.
So there you see, And this is interesting.
It goes back to the Korean John Pierre interview, right that she could have had some type of answer to what was going on with the grocery bills and that just basic question that is in a lot of people's minds, even though Democrats don't want to admit that, some people still aren't super happy with the economy, and a lot of it comes down to, you know, the rate of increase of inflation can decrease, it doesn't mean that prices are any lower than they were when people remember, and
so they just it's like they're flailing to come up with a good answer to this question. Yeah, Chris, it actually shouldn't be that hard. Just from like a political.
Perspective, Democrats famously horrific at branding and messaging, just terrible build back back, come on the inflation reduction. I like they're so bad at this Apparently Biden was kind of reluctant about the Bidenomics label to start with. I don't know, his political team seemed like they were into it, and he was like a little bit reluctant with it to
begin with. And his instinct in this case was much better than the teams, because you don't want to own with your name branded oh every aspect of this economy right now, you really don't. And so I think, you know, when they saw the way that Republicans found this branding very useful and seized on it, and they sort of realize, oh, people are not feeling great about this economy. In fact, the economy is not great, and they still have a
lot of really legitimate problems with it. And there's also like I could explain to you what Bidenomics is, you know, I'm sure that their team could explain to you what Bidenomics is, but I don't. It's not like there's a super clear like this is the biden way of approaching the economy that most normies would be able to explain to you. So it was a fail on every level. It does sort of remind me of you know, the
Obamacare Affordable Care act Oba versus Obamacare debate. Back in the day, Republicans wanted to brand it as Obamacare because they wanted him to own anything that people were dissatisfied with with the law, and they also wanted to put you know, he was very unpopular at the time, so they wanted to brand it in that way also to
undercut the program itself. And you know, at the time that was listen that you guys know my thoughts on healthcare, like it was better than the previous iteration, but obviously still has a whole lot of problems. So at the time that branding was really bad for them. Now it's not as bad as things have worn on, and so maybe ten years from now people would be able to speak to a Bidenomics that they understand and that they
could relate to. But right now, in the here and now, obviously this has this particular branding exercise has not worked out well for them, and.
They've taken more to wanting to blame Trump.
For any dissatisfaction that people have with the economy, which is a polar opposite approach of branding the economy like Bidenomics and trying to own all of it. Instead they're actually now trying to more like shift blame, like, oh, well, if you're not happy, it's because of the last guy, and we're trying to clean up his mess.
If unless you're mailing people checks in an emergency or any at any time like Donald Trump did, you're not going to want to put your name on the state of the economy because there are always a big chunk of people who are like this is the nature of the American economy. There's always going to be a big chunk of people that are deeply dissatisfied with the economy, especially after a pandemic and then recession and all of
the various economic fallout from that. It's just an incredibly stupid move to want to put your name on that again, unless you are literally mailing tecks and signing them Joe Biden, Yeah, it just makes no sense from a political perspective.
I mean, I said in a minute ago, I could describe you a Bidenomics is I mean, if you actually look at the record of this administration, because I'm not one hundred percent sure what they mean by Bidenomics, to be totally honest with you, like how they would describe the policy. The actual policy record is allowing all of the pandemic era social safety net pieces to expire, allowing the child tax credit to expire, so.
Basically up student loan forgiveness.
Yeah, so basically like undercutting the social safety net that's been one part of Bidenomics. You've got the infrastructure, You've got some sort of like you've got antitrust, You've got the NLRB, which is much more muscular than it's ever been. Those are the pieces that I would put on the positive.
Side of the ledger.
So those are like the actual realities of Bidenomics.
But I don't know that that's how they would.
They would probably not emphasize that stripping of the social safety net piece.
Probably in particular.
They just like to talk about cracking down on corporate greed, which I mean from the anti trust perspective, sure, but they never talk about their anti trust policy.
Is funny enough. Let's take a look at the polling though.
So this is where things are going to get really interesting because we talked about Ryan and I talked about the RFK junior vice presidential announcement on yesterday's show, and you know, as much as I know, it's fun for people online to like dunk on RFK Junior, there's going to be there's potential for this to really affect the Trump and Biden campaigns, So there's no question about it. So if we put a four up on the screen, what we will see is just Joe Biden and Donald
Trump head to head. So to Crystal's point she mentioned earlier, Biden has seen this is quinnipiac. Biden has seen some better polling recently, so he's at forty eight here and Trump he's at forty five percent. So that's that may or may not be within the margin of error. It's pretty close. And the RCP average has Donald Trump up one point four. So Trump's at forty six point seven and Biden's at forty five point three in the RCP average. But that said, it's actually been tightening for if you
look at it about the past month. So it's a close race, and then it gets a whole lot closer because increasingly the Biden Trump binary is not what is going to be on the ballot. It's not realistic from an electoral college perspective at this point either.
So we have more polling that we can put up.
The next element when you add third party candidates, and that's an additional seven percent support if you're looking at this on your screen for Jill Stein and Cornell West, so not just RFK Junior, but if you put all of them together, he's around thirteen percent. In that Quinnipiac University poll, you are around twenty percent of support for
third party candidates. People have looked at the support for both of the major party nominees and said the polling is on track when you add a third party candidate in the race for them to be at Clinton esque eras when Ross Perrot was a bit of a spoiler in nineteen ninety two. That's obviously hotly debated still to this day, but the point remains that he took a share of the vote away from both candidates, and that
meant Bill Clinton. I think he was what forty two forty three percent he won the presidency somewhere somewhere in there where it's not like the big mandate. When you have somebody like Barack Obama winning in two thousand and eight, you're realistically looking at a candidate that's going to win with perhaps low forties or even high thirties percent of the vote, and could be you know these candidates in a state like Pennsylvania, right, And I talked about this
yesterday to Crystal. Jill Stein only basically needed to be on the ballot in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in twenty sixteen to make Hillary Clinton blame Russia for losing. Because Jill Stein actually did take a decent chunk away from Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin electorally.
Well, that also is hotly content because if you ask a lot of jill Stein voters, if they're like, I was not going to vote if it wasn't for Jill Stein.
I think that's true and obvious.
I mean, obviously, when you lose and you blame some other entity, it's almost always cope. So we'll put all that aside. But by the way I looked it up, you were very close. Bill Clinton forty three percent overall, George hw Bush thirty seven point four, and Ross Borrow eighteen point nine. So we are right in that ballpark of those potential results.
Jill Stein, when.
You look at these three candidates, is the one who actually has the clearest path to being on the ballots in the most states. And you know there is a chance she'll take a few percentage points from Joe Biden. She's certainly not taking any from Donald Trump or very minimal Cornell West. I think has probably the most challenging path to getting ballot access in potentially any states.
I don't know.
RFK Junior, you know, he also has a challenging path, but he has much more money behind him. He's got apparently a real organization trying to get on the ballot in a number of key swing states that they have targeted. In Novada, yeah, well, maybe he did obtain the requisite number of signatures, but my understanding is that you know, they may they This is not really his fault. They make these procedures as onerous as they possibly can to
try to keep third party candidates off the ballot. Apparently, when he filed his signatures in Nevada, you had to have a vice presidential pick. He didn't quite have a vice presidential pick yet, so not with's in doubt whether he'll actually get on the ballot Nevada.
I don't know what the.
Latest is with that, but it is a good illustration of some of the obstacles that he faces, even with a well funded campaign and now a vice presidential pick who can further fund the campaign as you and Ryan were, I think abstutely discussing which to me. You know, I know people are a little confused in some ways by
his vice presidential pick. But if your number one challenge is ballot access, is not the craziest thing in the world to bring in a billionaire who can, you know, front you one hundred million bucks and help you get on the ballot.
If that's like old.
Number one, and you got your eyes on the prize, then maybe that's not such a crazy, such a crazy choice to make.
You guys should have picked billionaires to host counterpoints, be.
Doing this from like fund the top of the Empire state building.
I'm happy with our choices personally.
No regrets, No regrets. That's from one of my favorite movies, We're the Millers. Oh really, ma gosh, Crystal. Okay, you know it's a pretty it's a pretty let's say basic movie. Now, Donald Trump is pivoting to RFK Junior.
Let's put this next image up on the screen.
This is a truth social post for Donald Trump, who says rf K Junior is the most radical left candidate in the race by far. He's a big fan of the Green new scam and other economy killing disasters.
So if you're watching this, you see.
Trump posted a pretty hefty paragraph on truth social at one am on March.
Six, always a sign of a cool, reasoned and rational social media posting when it drops at one fifty two am.
Oh Man, well, soccer was already like doing his morning workout.
Is could plunge?
That was for soccer.
But so this is actually again, this is interesting, really interesting from my perspective because I think we are going to see more of this from Donald Trump. I think he's actually like, really rankled that any group of sort of anti establishment Republican voters that he has owned, he has created to some extent this movement that is now sort of looking at RFK Junior. Now, I don't think that they're going to shift from in huge numbers from
RFK Junior to from Donald Trump to RFK Junior. I do, though, think that Trump is really bothered by it. He knows that those margins could be thin in a place like Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. And as Trump pivots to RFK Junior and says, for example, he's a fan of the green news scam. My theory is that actually made more Biden leaners become interested in RFK Junior. People who have only heard of him as a crazy anti vaxxer from the media turn and realize this guy.
Clean up the Hudson River.
Well, like, this guy has some real progressive bona fides going back decades. So I think, I that's one of the interesting things. Yeah, potentially about DEM voters Biden and RFK.
I wish he was actually in favor of the quote unquote green new scam. But I mean I've interviewed him a couple times and asked him specifically about his environmental policy, and he was very explicit that he believes in, you know, the free market's ability to clean up the environment. He doesn't want to really talk about climate change because he thinks that it's like off putting to you know, some of the independents or Republicans potentially that he wants to
win over. So he does not in fact support the quote unquote green news scam as much as I actually wish that he would.
And that's why Trump is threatened by him, because he's not talking about it.
Well, and let's put the next up on the screen. This is the other reason why even though I know, recently, polls have shown that more Biden voters defect RFK Junior than Trump, although it continues to be pretty close.
You still have.
These favorable ratings that are much higher for RFK among Republicans than they are among Democrats. So keep this up on the screen so I can explain this. This is from a New Economist you gov poll that I found, and they ask rfk's favorability by voter intent. So if you say you're you're you know, Biden and Trump are the only choices, and you say you're going to vote for Biden. Out of that group, only nineteen percent have
a favorable view of RFK. If your intention is to vote for Trump fifty eight percent, so much higher number. You know, large majority have a favorable view of RFK. And of course the favorability is the polar opposite. Sixty five percent of voters who are Biden intending voters have an unfavorable view of RFK and for the Trump number, it's only twenty seven percent. You have a negative view of RFK Junior. I mean, he really is kind of a prism, like depends on what issue, depends.
On what era.
Even his anti vax stuff, right, just ten years ago, that would have read as like kooky left liberal, Hollywood right viewpoint right right now it reads j yeah, exactly
now codes very heavy right wing right. You know, the way he talks about censorship, like he really leaned into Ukraine, which you know, his view of ending that war and stopping the weaponship, the things I support, by the way, but that codes at this point right wing, which is kind of ridiculous, but anyway, that's how it often codes. And then, like I said, the fact that he's so prominent in the anti vax movement, I want to really
the leaders there that obviously codes right wing. So and you had at the beginning of his campaign, when he was running in the Democratic primary, all of these Republicans who found it very convenient, including the Fox News types two boost him and thought that was really useful as
a weapon against Joe Biden. And then when he switched to running as an independant, they couldn't just turn that off and be like just kidding, Actually, we hate this guy and he's a liberal and he loves the Green News crist who.
Was on Epstein's jet, Like that's the stuff that bubbles up on this right in these corners of social media, but truly like it's when you look at, for example, how he's courted the Libertarian Party's vote and whether he would run on the Libertarian Party ticket, which had the infrastructure to get on the ballot in some of those states in a way that you know, the knowledgeable people that were doing this and had, like Jill Stein, she
knows how to do it. If you look back at how he tried to court libertarian voters, a lot of them had a problem with that sort of regulatory question. But he's running to address that because he seems to think that's his best path to getting significant numbers in some of those states. And how that evolves if the Republican Party starts really amplifying Trump's message. They have done
it a little bit before this true social post. It's not the first time they've waited, Yeah, put out statements and stuff.
Well they also, I mean, Sean Hannity had been like his best buddy while he was running in the Democratic primary. And then he comes back on and Hannity drops like but clearly a whole abo file that he had gotten from Trump of like here's all the ways you're a liberal global is terrible whatever. So, I mean they did try to turn on a dime with regard to their attitude towards them. There were even some conservatives like on Twitter who literally were like, now I'm going to attack
him because now he's no longer useful to me. All of this is a long way for in terms of you know, my perspective saying, it's very unclear to me who ultimately he's going to quote unquote.
Take more from.
I think, you know, with Jilli, with Jill Biden, Jill Stein, and Cornell West much more clear, like they're lefties. You know they're going to pull from that side of the spectrum. That's very clear. RFK Junior. I still think it's a giant question mark. The Kennedy name obviously very democratic coded some more recent views, and the ecosystems he was inhabiting
much more Republican coded. Now he's got this new vice presidential pick who does seem to be like a lib you know in the causes she's funded, etc. And then there's always the question of what ballots will even be on, which is where the Libertarian Party nomination potential really comes into play.
Yeah.
Absolutely, the RNC, speaking of the twenty twenty four election, the RNC is gearing up to actually address concerns about the election itself, which are rampant in conservative circles, in conservative movement circles, in conservative supporter circles, conservative donor circles. So you can understand why the RNC is then going to try to make this a focus of its sort of campaign on the ground in the next several months.
But Crystal, oh my goodness, a lot of people know probably that Trump's daughter in law, Laura Trump, who's married to Eric Trump, is now a co chair of the RNC after the sort of soft coup that ousted Roni McDaniel, who then faced another soft coup at NPC news just can't get going from the revolutionaries in the Republican Party. But Laura Trump is now a co chair of the RNC,
which is obviously the Republican Party's official apparatus. Here in Washington, DC, she sat down for an interview with Garrett hak of NBC News and they had a conversation about basically the way they're going to handle the question of the twenty twenty election, which is huge because it affects the way they're going to handle the twenty twenty four election. It affects the way voters decide whether or not to even go to the polls, whether or not to how to
think about election results. So let's first start by just rolling the clip and we'll dive into it after that.
Is it going to be the position of the RNC in twenty twenty four that the twenty twenty election was not fairly decided or the was stolen somehow?
Well, I think we're past that. I think that's in the past. We learned a lot. Certainly, we took a lot of notes. Right now, we have twenty three states that have seventy eight law suits in these states to ensure that it is harder to cheat and easier to vote. We want fairness and transparency in our elections.
Does that support for him financially include paying his legal bills directly, not from the RNC.
It does not support paying his legal bills.
How do you tell people who are sending money to the RNC, people who may have never hired a lawyer for themselves before in their life, but it's more important to put their money towards paying the legal bills of a billionaire than helping elect Republicans in Pennsylvania or in Michigan.
Well, if you've never had to hire a lawyer, you're doing great stuff.
You're in great shape.
I'm very happy for you.
Look, that is the waterfall of the Joint Fundraising Committee you're referencing, and anyone who does not want to contribute to that very small amount of money is able to opt out of that.
So I think he expected her to give a different answer to the question about whether the RNC is going to pay Donald Trump legal bills, because then he tried to say, well, what do you say to R and C donors who are giving money to pay Trump's legal bills when she had just said that's through the.
Joint Fundraising Committee.
Now, obviously money is fungible and people are telling donors where to put their money to do X, Y and z. So that's still obviously part of the conversation. But you know, Chrystal I was prepared based on the media coverage of that interview. She stumbles, especially a little bit in the beginning where she's like, that's in the past, it's in the past, and kind of didn't know where to go from there.
But it's a really really hard question.
I mean, I thought, if you were just watching that and not like looking at a transcript. She came out fine, But that question Republicans still don't have a really really good answer for it, which brings us to this tear sheet we can put up. This is B two from
the Washington Post. Those seeking employment at the RNC after a Trump back purge of the committee this month had been asked in job interviews if they believe the twenty twenty election was stolen, according to people familiar with the interviews, making the false claim a litmus test of sorts for hiring.
In recent days, Trump advisors have quizzed multiple employees who had worked in key twenty twenty four states and who are reapplying for jobs about their views on the last presidential election, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity. So that's from the Washington Post. That is
why the RNC is in an incredible pickle. So a lot of people lost their jobs but were invited to reapply for them, as the story shows, And what they're trying to do with the Trump people are trying to do is filter out anyone who kind of like Ron McDaniel.
In her first interview with NBC News, when being pushed about the twenty twenty election claims by Kristen Welker, said, you know, when you work at the RNC, you just got to take one for the team and I can be more myself now, which is such a swampy thing
to say. They're now trying to filter out the operators for the true believers, Like they want people who are genuinely committed, and what they might end up getting are people who are genuinely committed to acting like they're genuinely committed, which is a real skill in Washington.
Well, in the end, what's the difference?
That's good?
Truly, you know, if you're in to me, that's well what it is.
I think there were people who did that in twenty sixteen, and they learned that those people when the going gets tough, like in Alyssa Farah.
Yeah, So are you willing in your job interview to basically like accept these preposterous.
Things and state it publicly?
Like are you willing to kind of like debase yourself to jump through that hoop? That's the requirement. They're being hired back to the RNC.
They don't want Mike Pences like people who January sixth, comes and they are not listening to what Donald Trump and Johnny Sman are saying should be done with the electors, Like that's what they're trying to screen out.
Yeah, and it's very I mean, it's obviously very dissonant with what Laura Trump was trying to say in that NBC interview, like, Oh, that's in the past.
Oh really, why is it.
A central part of your hiring process? Because Trump has made this a central litmus for the Republican Party and the Republican base. I think sees it as a central litmus test. That's why you got the slate of candidates you did in the midterm elections, which was really, you know, unfortunate for Republicans who were hoping for better results there.
And obviously it's not in the past for Donald Trump, who continues to talk about it all the time and put this up on the screen from Truth Social just recently saying how many times is Fox New is going to put on Rhino Bush apologist Mark Tieson he was wrong about me in twenty sixteen, twenty twenty, I got more votes than any sitting present in history, but the election was rigged, et.
Cetera, etc.
This is still you know, very standard at his rallies, in his speeches. This is not the past for him, and he's not going to let it go. He's not going to move forward. And it has implications not only in terms of this like R and C takeover and making sure that they're you know, totally aligned with him in every single way, which, let's be honest, the party committees, like you know under Obama are now under by like that. Obviously, the DNZ is fully aligned behind Joe Biden that primary
for him effectively. So it's not like it's unusual to have the party apparatus totally in lockstep with whoever the current president or the current nominee is. But it also matters a lot when it comes to this question of early voting. Yes, hugely because and that's part of what Laura Trump was kind of like gesturing towards in that interview. You know, if Trump had just leaned into getting people to vote early and by mail, it's very possible he's
president right now. But instead of casting doubt on that process, that everybody had to show up on election day, and you guys, know how life is, right, you may have every intention of voting and then you forget, or your kid gets sick, or you got to stay late at the job, or you're just really tired, or it's writing on.
You don't feel it like there's a million reasons. Yeah, there's a million reasons. I can come up on election.
Day where you're like, Eh, this isn't going to happen.
For me today. This just isn't the cards.
So if you are banking on trying to get your supporters there on that day, you are putting yourself at a profound disadvantage.
Trump has clearly.
Been told by his political advisors that this was a problem for him. At times he has signaled like, Okay, now we got to do the mail in balloting thing, But he also is very reluctant. And the views of this among the Republican base are also pretty baked in now, where they feel that this is susceptible to ringing. They feel like they need to wait and show up on election day. And so in every election we've had since then, the early vote comes in more heavily democratic, the day
a vote comes in more heavily Republican. That is reversal by the way of previous trends prior to COVID so they're trying to reverse that. But the fact that this election denialism and stop the deal stuff is still so central to the Republican Party and so central and important to Trump himself makes it very difficult to move beyond that orientation towards early voting.
Yeah, it's just like an incredible catch twenty two. If you talk about this and you tackle the issue head on, which is exactly what your voters want you to do, you also so distrust in the electoral process, which can hurt turnout.
Yea.
So it's a really hard problem.
And I think that's one of the things that you know, the Democrats made Katie Porter apologize for saying that she felt her primary was rigged, which it's.
Like, clearly money does rig elections.
And as much as I hate to test the quote stolen talk, and that's one of the interesting things about Trump's true social posts is that he said rigged, and he kind of started off staying stolen and has now moved to using that rigged parlance. More that takes a lot of money to push back on. You know, Molly Ball had a long report and Time Magazine about all of the money that Mark Zuckerberg poured into early voting efforts, ballot curation, all of these things.
That party apparatuses.
Democrats just realized during COVID that they can use all of these mechanisms put a lot of money behind it in Democratic districts.
And that's politics.
So as much as I have an ideological disagreement with huge early voting, which is a totally fair debate, I think it's an interesting conversation.
As much as I might not like that, it is the reality.
And so that's why they want to have loyalists stacking the RNC because they know they need to get on one page about this question, because it actually when you have such a close match that could be within one point between Trump and Biden, and you have all these third party candidates we already talked about, you need to be confident that you did absolutely everything you could in those respects and that your voters wanted to vote because they felt like their votes were going to be counted
in a place like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, whatever. So it's a hugely difficult issue for Republicans. They're in a pickle catch twenty two whatever you want to call it, and it's not there's really no easy answer, But I guess they've realized from a political perspective, it's better that they're on the same page.
Yeah.
The proof that this is a real problem for them comes from those Georgia elections that happened right after the runoff election for those two Senate seats. And typically, you know Sager and I when we were looking at the election day results and we're like, oh, it's going to a runoff. These are probably both going to be Republican seats because that usually historically was the way the trend went, that Republicans would out turn out Democrats in the runoff period.
And I think two things ended up being really critical. Number One, Democrats, for once in their lives, actually had a really good message that was very clear, which was vote for us and you will get checks.
That worked very effectively.
But the other thing was you had all the stop this Deal staff and you had people literally going down to Georgia ostensibly the campaign for these candidates who were calling into question whether your vote is even going to be counted. So, yeah, if you're a voter and you're like, what why am I going to take time out of my life to go and vote when these people are telling me, it's right and it's not going to be counted.
So I do think that that played into as well the fact that they lost both of those seats and therefore control of the Senate.
So let's pivot over to Alabama, where a fascinating special election for a state House seat was just held.
There are results.
I you know, Chrystal, the media has talked a bit about it, but I don't think they've talked about exactly how impressive this margin of victory is for Democrats based on what happened just in the twenty twenty two election in this district. So we can go ahead and put the first graphic up on this up on the screen. This is Alabama State House District ten where Marylyn Lands ran against Teddy Powell. She ran against a different candidate, David Cole, back in twenty twenty two. You can see
the margin there. It was fifty two to forty five Republican. Marylyn Lands just won this district sixty two to thirty seven thirty eight Democrat. A huge flip and she even as a conservative. Media and Alabama has pointed out she ran explicitly against the IVF decision in the Alabama Court that got headlines for literally weeks because it was so huge.
She made that a centerpiece of her campaign, to the point where, actually, Crystal I took a look at conservative media and Alabama's coverage leading up to the vote on Tuesday, and a lot of people seem to think that she was running this national media campaign that wouldn't necessarily resonate in a hyper local statehouse race. Oh interesting that the other candidate, the Republican candidate, had localized it. Yellowhammer News had an article I read them for like the conservative
take on Alabama politics. They have some good stuffy They wrote basically that he was focused on these hyper local issues and that she had made the abortion conversation a centerpiece of her campaign.
And look at the margins. Wow, it wasn't you know what.
Some people might have expected, which is if she nationalized a really local race and talked about these heavy, divisive issues, she would turn off voters. And it wasn't you know, resonant with people in this is like a district are Huntsville who wasn't resonant That's actually turned out to be very resonant.
Yeah, well this is a district.
I know everybody, you think Alabama, you think super read this is a swing district Trump wanted by a single point, but she won it by a whole lot more than a single point. I mean, I was kind of shocked when we put this graphic up. I actually didn't realize that it was that large of a margin. It's quite astonishing. And I think there's a couple things going on here in these special election results, which.
This is not a one off.
We've consistently seen a trend of Democrats really outperforming in these special election off year elections that we've seen this year and before. I think there's two things. I think one row is absolutely huge, the fact that she tied this right into that IVF decision and just went after it really hard and you have this kind of a result.
I mean, that's it's pretty undeniable, right. But the other issue you have for Republicans is now that you've had more of this realignment of college educated voters like white collar voters.
Into the Democratic coalition.
Republicans used to always have this advantage in mid terms, off your election, special elections, et cetera, which is that their coalition was more likely they were the more reliable voters, and that's not the case anymore. You partly have the issue we were talking about before about how there's a deep skepticism of things like early voting or early in
person or mail in balloting or whatever. So you're limiting yourself in terms of options you have getting the polls anyway, making onerous on you anyway, and then you have these ships in the coalition that lead to Democrats actually having more of the like sort of I come out every single election no matter what voters, and you end up with these you know, consistent outperformances in the special elections.
It does make me question too, you know, the polling we've been looking at it hasn't been reflective in terms of I don't know that there was even any public polling done in this race. But we've seen in other instances, we've seen Trump underperforming in his primaries. We've seen you know, Democratic out performances consistently again outside of the poll in these special elections.
So it also does make.
Me question, like, are the polls missing some dynamic that's going on here that may have an impact on the presidential race. Now, on the other hand, that benefit of you know, the Democrats having in their coalition the reliable voter that's going to turn up. Even in the off year election, that may not matter as much when you're talking about a presidential election, when you know you have a large turnout and so then you you know, are bringing in more of the Republican coalition to the mix.
But you've had this polling trend as well where Biden does really well with people who actually voted in the last presidential election. Trump in one poll I think is the New York Times Siena poll, he was winning people who hadn't voted before who said they were going to vote this time by twenty three points. So this will be one of the central dynamics of you know, whatever happens Trump b Biden.
That's a really good point.
And actually, if we put the A C two back up on the screen, the actually this is probably not entirely surprising, but the Lands campaign or Lands herself said today, Alabama women and family sent a clear message that will be heard of Montgomery and across the nation. Our legislature must repeal Alabama's no exceptions abortion ban, fully, restore access
to IVF, and protect the right to contraception. The president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, it's the big dem organization in Alabama that's sort of squarely focused on these state races called the victory quote a political earthquake, And of course Democrats are going to spin something in a
way that's best for them. But it's extremely telling that when Lance declared victory in a local house race, she said women and families sent a clear message about the no exceptions abortion ban, access to IVF, and the right to contraception. I mean, it's interesting because Republicans and conservatives in Alabama weren't necessarily wrong to look at a campaign like that in a local race and say other things like don't we need new sidewalks or bike trails or
something like that. That's it's a common, you know, strategic mistake that people make.
Not in this environment, all politics as national now, you know, it really is. It's just a different it's just a different landscape. And I also think it's very telling though that the Republicans decided to run the hyperlocal race and just avoid because you also, I mean, the other thing is, it's not like this IVF decision was a national decision. It was an Alabama situation, so it is also local. It's not like she was opening on something over which you would have no say and no input in the
state house there. But I do think it's it's a tell because you see this dynamic often, you know where let's say you have a Democrat running in a rural area that's trending red. Let's say in Ohio. You know this trending rud or whatever. Yeah, they'll try to localize that. I'm not like those Democrats in Washington. This isn't about them, This about us right here in this place, et cetera. And that used to work very effectively, and I just
don't think that it does really anymore. And you know, you can certainly point to certain examples where the trend goes in the other direction. But I think buy in large politics, it's national and if you're fighting against some big national issue that voters really have on their mind and you just don't want to talk about it, and then you're just trying to push it off to the side, like, don't think about that and don't worry about that. It's
a challenging landscape to try to operate in. But like I said, the fact that the Republican just didn't even want to really approach this, didn't ever I don't know what their response was.
I don't know how they were talking about it, but.
They clearly didn't want to lean into that in their campaign. Is indicative of how, even in a district that Trump did win by a point, this ruling was so toxic that they know they just have to run away from it. And even when they did, they're losing by you know, more than twenty points.
So now, speaking of losing, yeah, a lot of people predicted that the Supreme Court's oral arguments in Actually it's a case where conservatives are running against the FDA right because of methipristone, which is the oral abortion drug that is now accounting for more than half of abortions.
We'll talk a little bit about that.
But Aaron Hawley, who is actually the wife of Senator Josh Hawley, was arguing on behalf of an alliance of doctors that is upset about the FDA's fast tracking of MEPhI Perstone.
This was back in like two thousand.
This happened a really long time ago, and finally someone brought a case about it. That was the Fifth Circuit, which Ryan calls the crazy Circuit.
It tends to be more conservative.
Agreed that the FDA was wrong to fast track the approval of MEPhI Perstone when it did so at the time all those years ago. But basically standing was a huge question during the oral arguments that happened this week, and yet on standing and other issues. That question of standing meaning whether or not the alliance of doctors that Aaron Holly was representing has the sort of standing, has the legal sort of not right, but the legal case to present this argument to object to the approval.
All those years ago.
Aaron Hawley was getting really tough questions from the Conservative justices, so not just Kentanji Brown Jackson, but also from Brett Kavanaugh, also Amy Cony Barrett, who of course was ushering in the era of the Handmad's tale when she was confirmed, and others on the Supreme Court. I think even Justice Roberts joined the sort of pile on against Aaron Hawley. So there's an interesting exchange here with Neil Gorsich. Just listen to how he asks. It's a pretty pointed question to Aaron Hawley.
If we were to find that there are conscientious objections that say hospitals take them into account, and these doctors do have a way to not do these kinds of procedures should we in this case on that basis, No.
You're honor, we would welcome that holding, but it's not broaden up to remedy our doctor's harm. Why because these are emergency situations. They can't waste precious moments scrubbing in No.
No, no, I'm saying, assuming we have a world in which they can actually lodge the objections that you say that they have, my question is, isn't that enough to remedy their issue?
Do we have to.
Also entertain your argument that no one else in the world can have this drug or no one else in America should have this drug in order to protect your clients.
So, again, your.
Honor, it's not possible given the emergency nature of these situations.
So let me interrupt there.
I'm sorry.
I think just as Jackson's saying, and let's spots you all that, okay with respect to your clients. Normally, in Article three traditional equitable remedies we issue and we say over and over again, provide a remedy sufficient to address the plaintive susserted injuries and go no further. We have before us a handful of individuals who have asserted a conscious objection. Normally we would allow an equitable relief to
address them. Recently, I think what Justice Jackson's alluding to, we've had one might call it a rash of universal injunctions or vacatures, and this case seems like a prime example of turning what could be a small lawsuit into a nationwide legislative assembly on an FDA rule or any other federal government action.
So what you heard there is a heavy focus on the question of standing. If you were listening to this and not watching, you heard Kontanji Brown Jackson ask questions about that, and then you heard Neil Gorsich trumpet pointed Justice interrupt with some really pointed questions of his own.
Yeah, for Aeron kind of came in over the top, like, let me break this.
Down right, Crystal. Are you surprised by that?
A lot of conservaives are not remotely surprised by how Kavanaugh, Gore, such and Amy Cony Barrett have expressed their skepticism. Obviously standard disclosure. You never know based on oral arguments. People are often very surprised by what happens after oral arguments. Yet this one was sort of resoundingly against Aaron Hawley and her alliance of doctors.
I'm not particularly surprised because I think the Supreme Court is trying to almost like rescue Republicans from the most extreme conclusions of the positions that they've you know, staken, staked.
Down, staken out.
So it's just sticking.
Sticking, sticking down.
Yeah, we'll go, We're going to go with that in any case. I so, you know, they also are very concerned with especially Roberts, with the standing of the incredibility of the court.
So if the Court is.
Going out there and like, hey, Ivey have his band and no more you know abortion pill that is used now for sixty three percent of abortions, and they're just like going wild after Dobbs, then you're going to have a real problem of legitimacy of the court. You could have a real movement to you know, stack the court or term limit or age limit or something. And by the way, those sorts of things, certainly the age term
limits really popular if you ask the American public. So you can easily see some momentum getting behind an idea like that. If you have decisions routinely coming down that are wildly at odds with where the American people are.
You know, my view of the court is that they take into consideration more of the political aspect of things then they do necessarily like then they'll find the legal grounding for wherever they want to be politically, ideologically, etc. But in terms of this legal question of standing, in particular, multiple of the justices, many of the conservative justices, we're saying basically like, listen, Okay, so you're a group of doctors that has this religious based objection to prescribing mif
of pristone or performing abortions.
Ordinarily, the normal.
Sort of resolution or solution to that problem would be to give you a conscience exemption.
You already have that. So now rather than you know.
Being fine or filing some small lawsuit as Gorsich was suggesting there, now you're trying to clean injury even though you already have an exemption here. You don't have to prescribe mefipristo. No one is making you do that. You're trying to stretch to find some sort of harm that could theoretically be done to you. And in the course of you know, establishing that standing, then you want to take the ability of the entire nation to have access
to this FDA approved drug. So a lot of the questions focused on that and didn't even get into what's called the merits of whether or not you can, you know, use this process to overturn what the FDA found because the FDA said, hey, this is safe. There's lots of studies that say it's safe. You know, there are very few problems or complications with it. And their argument is no, no, no, the FDA was wrong and they didn't go through they
didn't do enough to make sure that it's safe. And so that's part of why we're harmed as doctors because we could hypothetically, theoretically have to treat a woman who's been injured by these pills even though we didn't prescribe it. And so I do think it's fair to say it's a bit of a stretch. They couldn't point to an
example where this has actually happened. They're just sort of theorizing that maybe it possibly could potentially happen and using that as a way to try to, you know, undercut the FDA's approval for this drug for everyone in the entire country. So I mean, bottom line, listen, like you said, you never know how it's going to come down. You gotta wait and see and how it's going to go whatever.
But if you've got Amy Coney Barrett, who is obviously very religious and very ideological on these issues, if even she's looking at your case like, no, this doesn't make any sense to me in terms of the harm, in terms of the standing, then I think you are in a pretty tough position in terms of prevailing here. And you know what, I bet there are a lot of smart Republican and operatives out there who are praying, oh for the Supreme Court to say no to this and
to you know, keep MiFi pristone legal. Because of the results we were talking about in Alabama, and because of the national trend which has now consistently been postdobs for more and more and more people to actually embrace abortion rights. I mean, it really has sort of tipped the scales on an issue that previously was very much a fifty to fifty issue.
Yeah, and you know, our viewers know that I represent the minority of the minority on the question of abortion, pretty anti abortion. I do think there's some scary stuff out there about MEPhI pristone, and mostly it relates to doctors not doing a good job of prescribing it and saying this is what might happen. You know, these are possible complications, and there are some stories of women having awful experiences. You know, that's not happening every time people take mephipristone.
But that's why.
That's at least an explanation for why conservatives felt that they should bring this case, and why religious doctors conservative doctors felt like they should bring this and so one exchange that was interesting just on that question of standing was between Justice Alito and the Solicitor General, who was representing the FDA. Alito said, so, your argument here is that it doesn't matter if the FDA flagrantly violated the law, didn't do it was what it should have done, endangered
the health of women. It's just too bad. Nobody can sue in court. There's no remedy. The American people have no remedy for that. The Solicitor General replied, well, I think it would be wrong to suggest that if the FDA had made a mistake and a drug were actually producing safety consequences, that there was nothing to be done.
I thought that.
Exchange was sort of the best clash of both sides of the sort of Alito objection and the Solicitor General the government's position here.
It is just an interesting question also.
Again, christ kind of like a flipping of the general political positions on like the FDA versus doctors. Like a lot of times you would have the FDA is basically funded by pharma, and you have a lot of conservatives that are very in the past have been very defensive of the FDA because generally the positions of pharma and so here you have that like totally different clashing of opinions. So it's definitely like reading the tea leaves here, it looks like Thomas and Alito might be the only descents
in this space. And especially because like Gorsach, Amy, Cony, Barrett, and Kavanaugh, a lot of conservatives see them as being more libertarian than quote unquote like a conservative like Burkian conservative positions, whether or not that's true Gorsis, especially, people suspect that of So just a really interesting presentation at the Supreme Court and the political consequences to your point, Crystal, We've got some polling.
Yeah, this is pretty interesting. Our producers pulled this. Let's go and put this first one up on the screen. So we've got specific question here from Fox News on that liberal rag outlet Fox News views on mifipristone and on a nationwide abortion law, and you have sixty eight percent saying that access to abortion medication if a pristone, should be legal and only twenty eight percent saying it's illegal.
I would actually like to see the partisan breakdown there, because that level of support means there is a significant chunk of Republicans who also think that you should have legal access to this.
They also asked about.
Support for a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide sixty five percent, so more than a supermajority say yes, we're in favor of that law guaranteeing access to legal abortion. Only thirty two percent of pose That would have been a very different result predobs in terms of views on abortion. Here you can actually see the trend which continues to move only in one direction. So now in March of twenty twenty four, you have thirty five percent who say
abortion should always be legal. You have twenty four percent who say it should be legal most of the time. You have thirty two percent who say it should be illegal except for the tipical exceptions for rape incests and life of the mother. And you only have seven percent who say it should always be illegal. And you know that matters because there are a number of states where that is the de facto positions that should always be illegal. That's how you end up with a decision like in
Alabama even outlawing IVF. And you can see the way that this has shifted over time to move where people are moving more and more to the pro choice position as it becomes really clear what the actual landscape looks.
Like if you don't have those rights enshrined.
In law, and people very you know, people very unhappy with potential IVF limits are going back to the stem cell debates or banning myth of pristone. These are wildly unpopular positions with a majority of the American public.
One thing I wanted to point to in the polling is if you're looking at the movement between April twenty twenty two and March twenty twenty four, a lot of Republicans, conservatives, anti abortion groups will say Democrats' biggest vulnerability on this
is the always legal group. That group has gone up since April of that's the largest group now look at that thirty five percent right now in March of twenty twenty four, and I agree, I think politically that is the sort of anti abortion side's best, like that's the best political message to defend themselves.
I don't disagree with that.
I think they're right about that, but it's getting less and less effective when polls show people say the should always be between a woman and their doctor. You know, if they want an abortion in the third tremester, its must be for a good reason. That's the argument now that anti abortion candidates groups have to address, and it's actually getting even that's becoming more and more of an
uphill battle. Also, what you see there is the legal except for rape incest, say the life of the mother, that has gone down to thirty two percent from forty three percent since April of twenty twenty two. And it is generally and it was back in twenty twenty two that was the biggest group and now always legal is the biggest group.
To your point, Crystal H.
One reason for that might be people are having experiences with mephipristone that aren't the exceptions we can put the Washington Post.
This is actually c five guys. You can put this up on this screen.
The Washington Post headline here, abortions outside medical system increase sharply after row Fell study fines abortions after row Fell are actually going up. And I think a lot of that is because of MEPhI pristone. I mean, undoubtedly a lot of that is because MEFI pristone. Pro abortion groups have made a concerted effort to increase the availability of MEPhI pristone and to increase public awareness about MEFA pristone. So this is something that has to be contended with
in ways that I don't think. And of course it was clear Ryan and I said this as it was happening on air when the Dobbs decision came out. The Republican Party has never been prepared for this, never been prepared for this, even though the writing was on the wall that something like this could be coming and that people would be really deeply unhappy about it. And Chris, with your point about the Court's perspective on itself, you know how it the threats to the sort of institutional
trust of the Supreme Court. I bet that is weighing on their minds as they consider this huge case.
Yeah, because I mean, they're looking, they're consuming the news, they see this what has been an extraordinary backlash. I mean, I really underestimated just what a massive, massive shift this would be in terms of the politics of the issue, how much it would matter to people, how much it
would dictate the results of elections. Every time, no matter what state you put it up in, if you've got a ballot initiative that's a bout abortion, the pro choice side has won every single time, you know, results in Alabama where you're winning by close to thirty points based on you know, the fallout after this decision.
They're very aware of that.
They're very aware of that, and that, you know, if they continue to you know, push in that direction and codify things that go even further than the Dobbs decision, that they're going to be on really thin ice. Because one thing that was noteworthy to me looking at some of that polling is that it's not like after Dobbs there was a major shake up and opinion and it
just stopped there. The trend continues in this direction of more people saying, you know, I should just always be legal, or it should at least be legal in most cases, and the people who are on the pro life side. That number is dwindling and dwindling and dwindling, even within
the Republican Party. And then the other thing that has really changed is previously the group that was most organized and most activated on this issue, we're almost all on the pro life side, where this was like the voting issue, and that's just not the case anymore. Now you have, i think probably many more people who are really activated on the other side of this equation. And that's why you see such a tremendous shift in terms of electoral results.
We played previously Trump getting asked about abortion, his instincs on.
This are much better than most Republicans.
Yeah, but you can also tell like he knows it's a problem, yes, and there is no He did the thing that you suggested of like, oh, let's talk about you know, these partial board the versions or and the third trimester or when the baby's been born, which of course doesn't doesn't happen, but anyway, he tried to pivot to that. But that's just not the landscape that things
are being fought on right now. The landscape that's being fought on is if of pristone and IVF and how much are you going to curtail the rights and you know, personhood bills and is there going to be a national abortion band, et cetera. And so I really don't think there is a messaging fixed for this. So, like I said, I'm sure Trump and a lot of other Republicans are very happy that the Supreme Court is going in the other direction with the Smith of Pristone decision, likely because.
It would be a total political catastrophe.
For them if they went in in the other direction. And they're just hoping that emotions around this die down and that they're able to reassure people enough that they're you know, not totally out on the fringes on this. But Trump is the guy that put those justices there, and you can't really, you can't really run away from that ultimately, Like it's very difficult. Like I said, I don't think it's something you can message your way out of because the reality has become so apparent to people.
No, it would need to be a culture shift for the politics to shift, and that would be a dramatic, it would have to be a dramatic, major culture shift.
Churs.
I hear the media is.
Doing their thing as usual again all right, So let's go and put this up on the screen from the New York Times. So leave us up for a moment, because I'm going to give a little bit of a preview here. You guys will recall we've been covering it here. Ryan's some great work on this. Grey Zone has done a lot of work. There's a lot of journalists who
have done a lot of work on this. But New York Times published at the end of last year this piece that was supposed to be this seminal investigation into systematic rape as a weapon of war used by Hamas
on October seventh. Okay, this piece drops, you know, they news alerted, they get it in under the deadline to try to submit it for Pulitzer, etc. And immediately some of the accounts are called into question, in particular the main account in the story that they lead the story with that makes up you know, a third of the
written out reporting in the story. The family of this woman that they're alleging in the piece was subjected to sexual assault by Hamas says, we don't think that happened, and we didn't know that this is what you were reporting on. You interviewed us under false pretenses. Some of them went so far to say this is just not true, this.
Is a lie. They have other evidence that contradicts is.
So you got that.
Then you have the reporters themselves very much called into question. So there were three people on the bilining of Jeffrey Gettlman, who's sort of like the heavy hitter, Pulitzer Prize winner, etc. He comes out after the pieces is like, well, what I do isn't really providing evidence, It's just telling stories.
Like wait what. The other two on this who.
Shared this byline had very little journalistic experience. One of them are not Schwartz, literally a none. Prior to October seventh, she had been a small time like document documentarian and they're sent into Israel to do all on the ground reporting and are this is an incredibly sensitive topic, Like the fact that they're working with the New York Times, the pinnacle of journalistic excellence around the world, and they're
put on this assignment is crazy. And she gave an interview Ryan Unearth Thiss in Hebrew talking about her process. As she's going around the country talking to the hospitals.
She can't find podcast Yeah, right.
Can't find a single survivor, can't find any for forensic evidence, but she finds this. She finally lands on this account of a medic who claims, and they write this out in the piece, that he saw two teenage girls murdered at Kibbutz Bier and describes them in this state seamen smeared on one of these their backs, horrific things that
he describes. Right, So she runs with this, this is put into the piece, etc. Now, the New York Times itself is debunking that portion of the story, so they say, Israeli soldier's video has undercut this medics account of sexual assault at Kibbutz Bei a re. Kibbut's residents concluded that two sisters killed on October seventh were not victims of sexual violence. And again, this was a key part of
the story. And in fact, I believe, if memory serves, when she came upon this account, this was what Anna Schwartz said, convinced her that, oh there was something systematic here. You've got two teenage girls here, and this is what persuaded her that there weren't isolated incidents, that it was a pattern of conduct. Well, this turns out to now, according to the New York Times, have been debunked.
Let me read you this. They say.
New video is surface that undercuts the account of an Israeli military paramedic who said two teenagers killed mcmas led terrorist attack on October seventh were sexually assaulted. The unnamed paramedic from an Israeli commando unit was among dozens of people interviewed for a December twenty eighth article. Even that is very disingenuous because most of those dozens of people
said they had no evidence of sexual assault. He said he discovered the bodies of two partially clothed teenage girls and a home in Kibbutz be Are that bore signs
of sexual violence. But footage taken biden is Raeli soldier who was in Beery on October seventh, which was viewed by leading community members in February and by The Times this month, shows the bodies of three female victims, fully clothed with no apparent signs of sexual violence, at home where many residents had believed that the assaults had occurred. Let me just tell you you know what they say. They say that it's unclear if the metic was referring
to the same scene. Residents said no other home in Beery were two teenage girls killed. They concluded from the video of the girls had not been sexually assaulted. A member of that Kibbutz said, quote, this story is false. By the way, Ryan had also gotten a statement from the Kibbutz, also saying this story is false. Of the Times backing up his reporting, of course, he doesn't don't
give MA any credit, but put that aside. I also em I mean, you know, these are human beings who were slaughtered in a horrible and brutal way, two sisters alongside their mother. But one of the people at the Kabbutz says what happened to them was horrifying, but it was a great relief to find out they.
Were not sexually assaulted.
So think about what the Times did here to these people and to their families. Like, on top of all the horror, you have to go with a now thoroughly discredited account claiming that they were raped and that there was semen smeared on one of their backs and totally debunked and ispriven. And by the way, in that original report,
screams without words is what it's called. Rather than take out that section, rather than retract the whole thing, which, based on all of the questions that have been raised on is what's really called for At this point, they kept that reporting in about the you know, semen smeared on her back and the partially clothed, etc. Which they are now reporting is not true based on this evidence, and they just added this note in so they still have all the language there.
And then they add in this note update.
Newly released video viewed by the Time show the bodies of two teenage girls in kilbots be a refully closed, undercutting this account from an Israeli military paramedic who recovered bodies in multiple locations after the October seventh attack. It was unclear if the paramedic was describing bodies he discovered elsewhere. There is no indication that there are any other bodies elsewhere that.
Could have fit this description.
So it's just one more incident where The Times has found itself has created this incredible controversy for itself, and you know, it really has gotten to that level of like WMD or the Caliphate podcast. And I saw one person who's been involved in you know, really digging into this story online saying it's quite noteworthy that the three major scandals for The Times recently from a journalistic perspective, all had to do with reporting out of the Middle East.
So I mean, yes, that this original time story the end steps piece on this. As you've mentioned, Crystal and other people have done work in the space too on that particular screams without words a piece. I like the way that Ryan puts it, which is that there's about a zero percent chance that there was no sexual violence on October seventh. There's like, it is overwhelmingly clear that there.
Was some sexual violence.
So to see this time story I think get absolutely ripped to shreds. It's like the byline problem is shocking, and it shouldn't be shocking, but it's something that happens across the board on a lot of stories. So this is it's kind of the tip of the iceberg as to corporate media doing that the byline. There were people at the Wall Street Journal who were former members of the IDF who were writing covering this stuff and it
wasn't disclosed. Meanwhile, they are sneering at the standards of other publications, looking down at New Media US as though we have no editorial standards, which is absurd given all of this and I say that as someone I like you said it. Chrysal ninety seven civilians were slaughtered at this commits. There were I think more than twenty hostages taken. I think it was close to thirty hostages were taken. Some of them are probably still in Gaza. This was
a traumatized and absolutely devastated community of people. That was just the fact that so many people the way you put it, also about people being upset to and relieved to learn that these daughters were not victims of sexual assault. They're turned into political pawns by people with partisan causes, and that's not journalism. Don't do it in the service
of journalism. I don't do it period, but definitely don't do it in the service of journalism, which is a giant lie that just completely completely eradicates credibility for the
entire industry as a whole. Again, as a pro Israel person, if you are a pro Israel, you should be upset with this because it has undermined the credibility of the pro Israel position because now people are going to look at all of the reporting on it and have these lingering questions, how could you that story was, as you pointed, out. It was like a watershed piece of reporting is how it was treated. And so the people who are now
learning that there are questions about the story's credibility. That's lingers in your mind when you read the media going forward.
And the response from the Times was not, how did you know these incredibly inexperienced junior reporters get put on the story? How did they get so many pieces wrong? Where you have families who you have reached tru I mean, you have added to their pain and suffering. Who are coming at you saying first of all, you lied to give this interview. Second of all, this isn't what happened. You know, here's video evidence, et cetera. Rob figuring out
what the hell went wrong here. Instead, they went after the leakers and launched a whole leak investigation to figure out who was providing, you know, internal information to Ryan and other reporters. That was their response. And so, yeah, they had a partisan agenda. They wanted this story to come together in a specific way. They didn't want to show,
you know, a few isolated incidents. They wanted to be able to paint this picture because this is what was being offered both by the US government, by the Israeli government of rapes systematically used as a weapon of war.
And they basically found.
The facts or fit the facts to create that narrative. And it's just peace by piece been falling apart. But you know, I always come back to it. I'm not sure it's again. She had never worked so bad. She didn't have a single byline before she gets picked up by the New York Times. Journalists spent their entire career winning a byline at the New York Times.
How does this happen?
Does not make sense.
On such like the most sensitive issue you can imagine, mind blowing.
It's inexplicable, and it doesn't make a lack of sense. Her career path does not make any sense whatsoever to be to sort of be a documentarian and then to be suddenly plucked to the New York Times as a reporter on the ground, right, you said, Crystal, Like people have to you know, sort of pay their dues in you know, like Middle Eastern bureaus, you know, doing the driest.
Copy like wire reports. Basically, so it's very very odd. I think.
Let alone, it's odd enough that the byline was there without any disclosures, but it's it's odd that that byline exists.
Well, as you're noting, because I don't think I mentioned that she had previously served in the idea.
Yeah, in an intelligence unit. So in an intelligence unit and then randomly gets a job at the New York Times.
Riddle me that one.
Guys, all right, we have another incredible use of journalistic resources coming at you from the Atlantic.
We can put this up on the screen that's.
Got a lot of a lot of interest for reasons that will quickly become a parent. So headline here in the war at Stanford, I didn't know that college would be a factory of unreason by fo Baker some of New York Times reporter.
Heater Baker No way really, Oh oh yeah.
His mom is also a journalist. So you know, he's a sophomore at Stanford and gets this big cover story at the Atlantic. I'm sure it's fully on his merit, emily, and absolutely nothing else. So in any case, in this story, he says he spent five months reporting on basically any views of his fellow classmates that he felt he should hall monitor as being a little bit outside of the norm or the mainstream.
Starts the story, I'm not.
Even going to read this piece because I find it inappropriate. Starts the story by basically doxing this twenty three year old Stafford student that he goes to school with and you know, calling out, like listing out his views and framing them, you know, as inappropriate. There certainly, I think outside of the mainstream, it's fair to say, but this
is a you know, powerless twenty three year old. You would think that the Atlantic would have journalistic resources like better spent in other directions.
While there is this.
Massive assault going on in Gaza that a majority of Biden voters and probably a majority of Stanford University students think is a genocide. You might want to focus on the powerful people that are involved in the policy making versus these powerless students whose views you find to be uncomfortable. There was this one part of the story though that
to me, Emily, it almost irritated me the most. I think there are genuine, like privacy issues with this Tattletale Hall monitor putting this person's name in highlighting their views first and foremost, like, I think that is inappropriate and incredibly unfortunate. Again, this is just one person, but in any case, he also writes, Elite universities attract a certain kind of student, the overachieving driver who's won all the
right athletes for all the right activities. Is it such a surprise that the kids who are trained in the constant pursuit of perfect scores think they have to look at the world like a series of multiple choice questions with clearly right or wrong answers, Or that they think they can gamify political cause in the same way they ace a stand test. Everyone knows that the only reliable way to get into a school like Stanford is to
be really good at looking really good. Now that they're here, students know that one easy way to keep looking good is to side with the majority of protesters and condemn Israel. So he smears this entire group of student protesters who are opposed to Israel's onslaught in Gaza, which un report has just called a genocide. I'll be breaking that down in my monologue. He thinks he smears all of them as basically just like disingenuous drivers who are trying to
be on the cool side of a popular cause. Rather than saying, hey, maybe, just maybe they see these images of kids being murdered with weapons that our tax dollars are paying for.
Perhaps they have a genuine.
Issue with that, maybe that's like actually a moral problem for them. So it's just astonishing on every level. I mean, the NEPO baby part is always present.
The fact that The.
Atlantic again spent apparently five months of journalistic resources doing tattletale work on college kids and frame this is important journalism in the context of everything that's going on, and the way that these kids were just sort of lumped together and our college students, I mean, they are mostly adults, right, but college students lump together and smeared as having disingenuous motives and you know, being extremists, I think is just wrong.
It's just wrong, and it's inappropriate.
So here's a line on this piece of recess. I've watched many of my classmates treat death so cavalierly that they can protest as a pregame to a party.
And what's interesting about.
That is, listen, not to like both sides things, but this is, as with any like extremely politically charged hot button issue, people on both sides are treating death very cavalierly on this question.
You know, And that's that's something that you've talked about.
Yeah, I would.
I would argue that by fixating on what college students say or don't say in the middle of tens of thousands of people getting slaughtered, you tell me who's the
one who's treating death cavalierly? Right, because you know, to spend that time and energy and you know, precious space in a very prominent elite magazine fixated on what basically powerless people are doing and saying and painting them all with this very broad brush, rather than you know, actually challenging the powerful people who are running the Israel policy.
You know, again, you tell me who's treating death more cavalierly and who is you know, more interested in like college debates than what is actually happening to people right now in Gaza, all of whom are one hundred percent of whom are suffering from, you know, on the verge of famine, ten children to day, starving to death, et cetera.
Well, Stanford is also the home of the Hoover Institute, which, by the way, is the sort of home of a lot of the architects of the Iraq War. So it's you know, there are criticisms of the university system that I actually think are really important, and I do have a different perspective on this. I think it's I've actually always found what happens on college campuses to be newsworthy and salient.
I've reported on a lot of the.
Stuff myself because I think what people were so caught off guard by everything that happened in twenty twenty. It's like, well, if you were paying attention to some of these trends on campuses, the public would have understood that young people have very different ideas than they think young people do,
and people have been shocked. For example, we're blaming TikTok for all of the anti Israel sentiment and the sort of disparate pro Palestine versus pro Israel sentiments that were going viral on TikTok after October seventh, And it's like, again, if you were paying attention to college campuses, this wouldn't have been surprising to you at all, and you wouldn't have blamed China. You would have understood that this is organic.
And by the way, we know that it's not China that was manipulating this sentiment entirely because it was repeated on different social media platforms that are not controlled by China because young people are supporting Palestine on the questions, so I don't necessarily take issue with the concept of reporting. Like he talks about how people have had massusa's ripped from their doors at Stanford, and you know the quote that he has from his his section leader saying he
thinks Joe Biden should be dead. Someone should kill Joe Biden. If that's true, that's pretty wild. And I think it's uh, you know, like messusas if people are rippingssusa's off people's doors, then you know, and Stanford isn't doing anything about it.
That's insane.
But that's one of the crazy issues on this is how poorly college campuses have been able to defend their own like anti speech policies and then like that of silence and suppressed conservative ideas and then tried to explain away, you know, punishing students who take issue with israell It's been a glaring incoherency and it's one of the I've
talked to Ryan about this before. It's one of the issues where elite the polarization and elite opinion is unusual, where you have some very virulently pro Israel voices in academia, high profile academia positions like this is what Bill Ackman has basically been reacting to. And then you have some people in academia that are deeply pro Palestinian, and there's this weird clash happening on college campuses. Now I don't think so. I saw someone tweet this and say it
was ritually reported. I wouldn't call this story richly reported.
I think that might have been as Dad. That's right in that he did tweat something to the fact.
Well, let me just say that, I think you know, your nuanced perspective is well taken and appreciated, because certainly we talk here like about the pulling about young people and how their perspectives are different generationally. To me, I find that very relevant. Yeah, what one kid thinks about Joe Biden at Stanford when he has literally no power in the context of what is actually happening in terms
of our foreign policy. Do I find that particularly like relevant, certainly relevant enough to like dox him in a way that could direct a lot of hate.
And horror in his way.
No, And to use that quote then to paint with a broad brush.
Well, did he know that that was being reported on when he said it, by the way, because that's another thing, like if.
You he very much disputes some of the quote unquote facts that are in the in there, including that you know, THEO Baker says all I move sections and apparently even that he says, that's not why.
He moved, et cetera.
So he does dispute some of the way that he was characterized. But you know, I think what we've seen is if you had a similar piece reported about let's say, a crazy Trump supporter who says some QAnon insanity, and then that's used to say, and I think everybody at the Trump rally or everybody that's supporting Donald Trump, like this is what's really going on with them, not picking
would I object to that too? And that's what we don't do that, you know here, and we really to avoid these like you know, a man on the street type things where you find the craziest person and then you use that to say everybody thinks this way and this is now should we look at pole Okay, how prevalent are q andon theories, What are the actual views of Trump supporters? What can we glean from the data very different? And why are people coming to those conclusions,
not smearing their intentions. So I try to be consistent in objecting to that form of quote unquote journalism, whether it is with people who agree more with me ideologically or oppose me ideologically. So you're right that there is something important and relevant about what's happening on college campuses and the fervency, the fervent emotion that many young people see and have voiced and you know, come out and protested and engage in whatever activism they can figure out
with regard to that conflict. I'm not saying that's not important, but to you know, smear them, tag them all as extremists to engage in this like five month long journals stick odyssey in order to accomplish that goal that I find to be disgusting well.
And to be congratulated for like a journalistic accomplishment. We don't need to not pick on the show like and find someone throw a microphone in their face and have them say something crazy, because.
We have Sager.
That's why he's like the crazy perspective of like your cousin on the street, like spend ten minutes every day staring right into the sun when.
You wake up. Sorry, Okay, don't drink booze.
Let's transition into what mister Rogan is thinking about this conflict, because you know, to the point of whether the views of these college students are extremeor mainstream. At this point, when you have a majority of Joe Biden voter saying this is a genocide, when you have the International Criminal Court of Justice saying that's plausible, when you have a
new UN report saying there's reasonable grounds to believe. And now you can add, oh, you have Alex Jones saying it's a genisid I believe, can't someone's has said similar things. AOC has now come out and said the same. You can add to that growing list of voices Joe Rogan, who made.
Some very interesting comments on his podcast.
Let's take a listen, even in the right, like look what's going on with Candice Owns and Ben Shapiro, Like what did she say? I want to know what was what she was fired for? Because was it criticism of Israel?
Was it?
I mean, did she show that Edward Snowden video that he put up on Twitter that shows them Jrome bombing those kids? That are those men, I should say, unarmed people that were walking towards the rubble that clearly weren't causing any danger to anybody.
Yeah, just bombed them, yeh know, it's your duty.
It's just like for Biden or whoever you like, you're supposed to cover up for them because things.
Like they're always saying they're only targeting Hamas and everybody else is a casualty. Well, if those guys are just unarmed civilians and they're walking alone, that's what they appear to be, Dresden and you just blast them from the sky with robots.
This is that of war.
Yeah, this is insane and no one knows what to think now, because if you can't talk about that, if you can't say that's real, then you're saying that genocide is okay as long as we're doing it, And that.
Is what we're saying.
And if you're saying that from a perspective of someone who literally went through the Holocaust or your your people, your tribe went through the fucking Holocaust, and now you're willing.
To do it, I hope the irony is not lost on you.
It's so nuts.
It's so hard to imagine that someone where a culture, like a country was like officially founded in what forty seven, forty eight, okay, officially founded. So that's so recent, and you guys are willing to do what was done to you that led you to believe that you need to start your own country. You're willing to do that, at least in a small scale in Gaza, like there's nothing left if you see the videos, let's let's see some recent footage of Gaza.
So some really pointed the Atlantic would say those comments were extremist.
Greg greg Abot would say antisemitic.
There you go many and apparently Matt Miller would as well talk about that also in my monologue, but I mean he really, he really goes in. Apparently that video that Al Jazeera obtained, the drone footage of them striking and killing these four unarmed civilians who are just walking along in con Unis.
I mean, it's it's horrible to watch.
We played just a little bit of it, but if you do watch the whole thing, you know, you see the initial drone strike, You see one of them at least like crawling after being hit initially wounded.
And then hit again, and all of them killed.
And you know, you can't butt hamas that, you can't, Oh human shield that it's just so naked, and I think one of the things that people have reacted to so strongly, because I've been rapping trying to wrap my head emily around why this video. This seems to have been the thing for Alex Jones, that's what he quote tweeted. It seems to have been, you know, the thing for Joe Rogan, and just judging by the tenor of the commentary and the shift, you know, AOC then comes out
shortly thereafter. I also calls it a genocide. I've been trying to wrap my head around what it was about this video because we've seen so many horrors play out in front of our eyes, and I think it's the fact that all the typical justifications are null. You can't, like I said, you can't, but hamas it.
You can't.
There's a tunnel there, you can't. You know, it's anti semitic to say this. All the normal justifications are they're not human shields are kind of null and void, and then there's something so nightmarish and terrifying. Alex Stroen is called a robotic mass genocide. I believe about the fact that they're walking along totally unawares and then out of
the sky boom, it's over. And also the David and golithe nature of that, I mean, they're unarmed, they have nothing right and everything around them in the video too, is complete rubble, as Rogan is saying, right there, look at gods, there's nothing left his guys.
It's like Dresden.
They're completely unarmed, they're completely vulnerable. And meanwhile Israel has this incredibly high tech killing technology, and that's what they're up against. And there's something about that video that marked a real turning point for the way a lot of people were viewing this conflict.
So Alections apparently has also been calling Rabbi Shmooley the butt plug Rabbi.
They had a debate. He did, Yes, he did?
Okay, good? Interesting enough.
Well, the Rogan clip to me is fascinating because he goes back and says, listen, this is really recent history, like the Holocaust is really recent history in the living
memory of many people. That the founding of modern Israel comes in nineteen forty eight, and what also happens there is Brian and I talked about this a little bit yesterday, But the new definitions are the formal international agreement on what the definition of genocide is, because basically, the UN come together after World War Two and says we need to prevent Dresden, we need to prevent the Holocaust, we need to you know, all of that, and that living
memory is also why you know, you see net Yahoo and other leaders in Israel, and even by the way, some well intentioned liberal Israelis feel the need to turn Gaza into a quote, parking lot, because those threats remain so ingrained in the minds, and that's what Rogan is reacting to and saying it's strange, it's a it's a strange like dissonance between you know, saying we want to prevent another Holocaust and then seeing the destruction of Gaza
and calling for the destruction of Gaza, calling for it in the name of stopping another Holocaust be turned into a parking lot. And I understand, you know why, that's why that hits home.
With people like Joe Rogan.
I completely understand the perspective of UH being grown out by the drone attacks and the sort of like it is, this is a different kind like since we have since World War Two.
This is a new.
Kind of conflict, and I don't think the net and Yahoos and the Joe Biden's of the world were prepared for how the public was going to react to it. It's similar to other conflicts like high like urban warfare, but Syria other places, but it's it's different, it's completely different. And I think they underestimated where the public would be when watching this, because I mean, it's just these videos are tough.
Yeah, you know, it is sort of There are quotes from the early Zionists, and I think it's very much illustrated in not just the Israeli response here, but in you know, wars since they're founding basically this notion of because of the whoors that they were subjected to, and this idea that they're quote unquote in a tough neighborhood. Part of why they go in with such overwhelming you know force and commit these ores and war crimes and you know, totally annihilate all.
Of Gaza is this idea.
But we have to demonstrate that actually were the biggest assholes, that we are just as tough, tougher.
And badder than anyone else.
And they talk openly about you know, restoring deterrence and that's code for basically what I said, we need to put on display that we can be the brutal barbarians
just as much as anyone else. And so you know, it is a deep horror and deep irony that the people who you know suffer through the Holocaust, and you know, the state that is founded out of, you know, the ashes of World War two and the holocausts that then would turn around and repeat some of the same ideologies some of you know Rogan calls like on a small scale, and obviously the death count isn't approaching on what the Holocaust is, but it is there is a similar like
quest towards annihilation. There is a similar I mean, there's a Jewish supremacist ideology here. So I think his comments are entirely appropriate. In another way, it's not. It shouldn't be surprising because you see this on a human level too, people who were victims of abuse and then they turn around and become the abusers. I mean, that is a common pattern that plays out psychologically.
In human life.
So obviously, you know, for Rogan, who's kind of like you know, Limus tests from normy opinion, you know, it's not a particular ide logue in any direction to have come to this conclusion, and again like that it was this video that seems to have led him there. I just found that very interesting, very noworthy, And obviously he's very influential, very impactful, So in and of itself it matters a lot.
When I was going to say, just another kind of wake up call, probably for Biden and Yahoo and people like Ted Cruz who sat and respectfully talked to us about this, would be that Joe Rogan also isn't going to deny that Hamas and like actual Islamic extremism isn't genocidal towards Jews, it of course is, and he's not going to He's not the kind of person that's going to make the Judith Butler argument about Hamas being a
resistance organ a part of the global resistance whatever. He's not that kind of person, like you said, crysl his normy opinion on all of this. And so that's where this becomes. And even I'm going to mention this Chris Rufo reacted to I've made a little joke about Greg
Abbott earlier in this segment. That's because Greg Abbott instructed universities in Texas to update their speech policies to ban anti Semitic speech, and Chris Rufo, obviously a conservative, obviously pro Israel, and other kind of conservatives on the new right like Sager and people like myself who have objected to the new speech policing since October seventh on the ground that it's sort of hypocritical from people like both
wrong and hypocritical from people like Greg Abbott. Chris Ruffer reacted and said, what's the difference between this and banning anti black speech or anti white speech. It's not how we do things in this country, and that has been again wildly underestimated by people like Greg Abbott, who probably had no idea or had no nobody in his circles was like, you're going to upset people like a Chris Rufo, like others in those circles that take issue with this.
They just they don't have awareness that it really rankles people because it's a bubble.
Yeah, that it is a bubble all the way around. And we have some polling that shows you also the public shift that I think speaks to some of the points that you're making here. So these are the overall numbers and you can see the difference between November twenty twenty three, so we're talking about shortly after October seventh versus now, in November, a majority fifty percent of Americans approved of Israeli military action in Gaza versus forty five
percent who disapproves. So it's pretty closely split, but you've got a majority in favor. Now totally different, only thirty six percent approve, fifty five percent disapprove.
It's interesting to me in these.
Polls, the no opinion number actually goes up in all of these poles. I'm about to show you just kind of in that as a conflict has gone on, there are more people who are moving from that approval to just like I don't know, I don't have an opinion, I don't want to talk about this anymore, which you'd see some in the discourse online where people who were previously like staunch defenders have just kind of gone quiet.
I think we have additional polling we can put up, don't we guys that has the partisan breakdown here, because the way that Democrats have moved has been interesting. So here we've got an indication of how closely people have been paying to the conflict and what their views are based on whether they say they're following very closely or not. Those who are following very closely fifty five percent disapprove. Those who are following some closely fifty six percent disapprove.
Those who are not following closely fifty four percent.
Disapprove.
The numbers in terms of approve are highest among those who are following very closely. So there's a bit of an indication here. It's not like a huge shift depending on the biggest difference you see is just the number of people who are offering no opinion and then put the next one up on the screen. Guys, this is the partisan breakdown that I was mentioning. So we'll start with the Republicans relevant to the Chris Rufo and Texas discussion.
So back in November, seventy one percent of Republicans say yes, I approve of this military action.
Only twenty three percent say no, I do not.
Now both of those numbers have shifted. Sixty four percent say they approve. That's still a large number, but thirty percent is a significant minority who now say they disapprove. Independence big movement here. So it was split basically fifty to fifty forty seven approved, forty eight disapprove. Now you only have twenty nine percent of Independence who approve, sixty
percent disapprove, and the Democratic numbers are just overwhelming. So you've always had a majority of Democrats who disapproved.
Now that number.
Has shot up to seventy five percent and only eighteen percent say that they approve, And once again you have an increase in the number who are like, no opinion, count me out. I don't want to talk about this, let's just move on, which I did find noteworthy, given that you would think that as the conflict goes on, where people form an opinion, but it actually has been
the opposite here. I read into that people who previously were on the approved side that are now like, I don't know, I'm just going to say no opinion.
Yeah, I think that's right. But this is a huge blind spot. This isn't the same. The public is not reacting to this in the same way that the public has reacted to other conflicts, frankly, in Gaza, in Israel. It's just completely different this time around, and people were unprepared for that.
Yeah. Absolutely, all right, Chris, Well.
I'm excited to hear your monologue.
What have you got for us today, Well Atlantic Magazine was dedicating months worth of journalistic resources to investigating whether powerless college kids have opinions slightly outside of mainstream acceptability. The UN Special Rappertoire for Human Rights in Palestine was engaged in what one might reasonably say was a slightly more pressing endeavor, reporting on whether Israel is in fact committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Here is Francesca Albanies explaining her.
Task following nearly six months of unrelenting Israelia Sultan occupied Gaza. It is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of, and to present my finding the anatomy of a genocide. History teaches us that genocide is a process, not a single act. It starts with the dehumanization of a group as ada and the denial of that group's humanity, and ends with the destruction
of the group in all or in part. The dehumanization of Palestinians as the group as a group is the whole mark of their history of ethnic lensing, dispossession, and apartheid. In the words of Edward's Eyde, Palestinians were made orphans of a homeland by the creation of the State of Israel and its continuous policies intended to there is their
presence from their land. Genocide is defining international law as specific sets of acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.
As such, it.
Is often referred to as the crime of crimes due to its complexity and because of the challenge of proving the specific intent as the Convention requires. And yet this complexity is not about the creation of a hierarchy among atrocity crimes. It's rather a reflection of a different nature and scale. The height and th threshold for intent, namely to destroy a group, was prescribed by Article two of the Genocide Convention must be proven directly or inferred from
facts which admit of no other reasonable inference. But when genocidal intent is so conspicuous, so ostentatious, as it is in Gaza, we cannot avert our eyes. We must confront genocide, we must prevent it, and we must punish it.
I hope you really took that.
In here we have Albaniz She is a human rights lawyer hired by the UN Human Rights Counsel to provide analysis. She is telling them, in no uncertain terms that there are quote reasonable grounds to believe that Israel is in fact committing genocide. The viewpoint, maligned as fringe and hysterical by the US media, is now finding widespread validation among everyone from un hired experts to the International Court of Justice, to the majority of Biden twenty twenty voters, to cultural
figures like O goodness, we showed you earlier. And as time passes an awareness of what has already unfolded seeps in. The truth is only going to become more undeniable, which is why when questioned about this report, US State Department spokesperson Matt Miller reacted in the most predictable way possible. Rather than engaging with the compelling facts of the report, he smeared its author as an anti sentmite.
Let me ask you have you did you see or read the report made by Francisca alban As yesterday in Geneva where she cited where she actually what she showed was irrefutable, as far as he's concerned, a refutable evidence that is well engaged in genocide. Did you see the report? What is your comment?
I did see the report?
Let me say a couple things about it.
First, we have long, for long standing, for a long standing period of time, opposed the mandate of this special Rapperteur, which we believe is not productive. And when it comes to the individual who holds that position, I can't help but note history of anti Sybmitic comments that she has made that have.
Been reported and made anti Semitic comments.
She has and comments she made in December that appeared to add justify the attacks of October seventh, So I think it's important to take that into account.
But with respect to.
The report itself, we have made clear that we believe that allegations of genocide are unfounded. But at the same time, we have are deeply concerned by the number of civilian casualties in Gaza, and that's why we have pressed the government of Israel on multiple occasions to everything it can to minimize those civilian casualties.
Yeah, well, she's been getting a lot of the death threats and other threats and so on because people think she made anti Semitic comments.
That's on.
Let me just go, Oh, can't make a comment like that without letting obviously, death threats against anyone are inappropriate.
Of course, Francesca Albanize has not made anti Semitic comments.
It's a baseless smear.
She has, though, and critical of Israel, and is now offering compelling evidence and analysis of grave crimes which directly implicate the United States and Matt Miller himself. His nasty response there is an indication of how significant this report actually is. It's especially impactful for three key reasons. First because of the clarity and analytical precision with which it
is written. Second because, as a report by UN hire and expert delivered for the benefit of that body, it may carry special weight with the International Court of Justice itself a UN body. And finally, because it calls for specific actions to be taken by UN member states, including or perhaps especially, the United States of America. Now, let's start with some of the details from the report which led Albanies to her dramatic conclusion. She identifies three genocidal
acts as defined by the Genocide Convention. Number one killing members of the group, Number two causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, and number three deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
now as evidence of these acts. She cites everything from the tonnage of explosives used in just the first several months of the onslaught the equivalent of two nuclear bombs, to the lifelong trauma those who survive will no doubt struggle with after seeing every aspect of their civilian lives destroyed, and the siege which is causing ten children to starve to death every day. She writes in the report, quote,
Gaza has been completely sacked. Israel's relentless targeting of all means a basic survival has compromised the ability of palace means in Gaza to live on that land. This engineered collapse of life sustaining infrastructure corresponds to these stated intentions to make Gaza quote permanently impossible to live in where no human being can exist. She also, of course, critically
spends quite a bit of time on intent. The mensrea or mental state required to prove genocide includes both a general intent to commit the acts and a specific intent to eliminate a group in whole or in part. This would be the now somewhat infamous Dolls. Here is a portion of what Albanese writes with regard to how intent may be established and why she believes that intent has been demonstrated with regards to Israel in a uniquely clear
cut way. Quote, the nature and scale of the atrocities, if demonstrably capable of achieving a genocidal outcome, are strong evidence of intent.
The words of.
State authorities, including dehumanizing language, combined with acts, are considered a circumstantial basis from which intent can be inferred. Dehumanization can be understood as foundational to the process of genocide. Evidence of context may help determine the intent and must be considered with the actual content conduct. Intent should be evident above all from words and deeds and patterns of purposeful action, such that no other inference can be reasonably drawn.
Now in the latest Gaza assault, direct evidence of genocidal intent is uniquely present. Vitriolic genocidal rhetoric has painted the whole population as the enemy to be eliminated and forcibly displaced. Eye ranking Israeli officials with command authority have issued harrowing
public statements evincing genocidal intent. She then proceeds to list a selection of such harrowing public statements, many of which you will probably already be familiar, and which taken together, paid an undeniable portrait of dehumanization and intention to annihilate, coming from every level of government and echoing throughout society.
For anyone who has acquainted themselves with the South African filing against Israel, the facts and utterances offered in these sections will likely be pretty familiar.
But there were two.
Areas in which I thought Albanese's report was particularly illuminating. First, she systematically exposed the way that Israel's perverted the language of international humanitarian law in order to justify crimes against humanity. Albani's writes that Israel's use this jarkin to transform all civilians into human shields who can be murdered at will,
all civilian infrastructure into legitimate military targets. Quote After October seventh, this macro characterization of Gaza civilians as a population of human shields has reached unprecedented levels, with Israel's top ranking political and military leaders consistently framing civilians as either Hamas operatives, accomplices,
or human shields among whom Hamas is embedded. In November, Israel's Minister of Foreign Affairs defined the resonance of the Gaza strip as human shields and accused Hamas of using the civilian population as human shields. The Ministry defines armed groups fighting from urban areas as deliberately embedded in the population to such an extent that it cannot be concluded from the mere fact that seeming civilians or civilian objects
have been targeted that an attack was unlawful. Now, two rhetorical elementary rights of this key legal policy document indicate the intention to transform the entire Gaza population and its infrastructures of life into a legitimate targetable shield. The use of the all encompassing the combined with the quotation marks to qualify civilians and civilian objects. Israel has thus sought
to camouflage genocidal intent with humanitarian law jargon. Another particular strength of this report is how Albanese acknowledges the context of this process of genocide, arguing that since the birth of the Zius settler colonial project, the groundwork has been
laid for exactly this current outcome of annihilation. That's a radical departure from the liberal Zionis claim that Israel simply lost its way under BB in the current horror or due to a few bad apples, rather than being the logical outgrowth of a decades long attempt to ethnically cleanse this land of its Arab inhabitants. Take a listen to how she describes this logic and its importance to the present.
The genocide in Gaza is the most extreme stage of a long standing settler colonial process over issure of the native Palestinians. For over seventy six years, this process has oppressed the Palestinians as a people in every way imaginable, crushing their in the inalienable right to self determination demographically, economically, territorially, culturally,
and politically. Israel has attempted to displace them, expropriate their land and other resources, and ultimately replace them the colonial Amnija of the West as condon Israel's colonial settler project.
From the violity story of the very birth of the State of Israel to its oppressive occupation since nineteen sixty seven, the crippling enclosure of Gaza since nineteen ninety three, and its military assaults on Gaza since two thousand and seven, the world now sees the bitter fruit of the impunity afforded to Israel. This was a tragedy foretold.
Tragedy for told. Now.
The report's not particularly long, It's about twenty five pages. It's not intended to be exhaustive, but it is a highly affected summation and analysis of what's becoming increasingly undeniable. This is not it's never been a targeted hunt for Hamas. It's an excuse to attempt to finish the job of Zionism by fully dominating the Palestinians, destroying them in Holler, and part establishing a new demographic reality that can safeguard
their state policy of Jewish supremacy. The second reason that this report is consequential is because, as.
A report prepared for and delivered.
To the UN, it may carry special weight with the International Court of Justice, which is of course a UN body. The International Court of Justice has already determined that South Africa's case against Israel on violation of the Genocide Convention is strong enough.
To be plausible.
I the chance to speak with Muen Rabani this week for Crystal Colin Friends. Fresh off his debate on the Wex Friedman podcast. He went so far as to say that Albanes's report obligates the ICJ to take seriously.
A finding of genocide. Take a listen.
I think the significant issue here is that the International Court of Justice, unlike the International Criminal Court, is a UN organ It's one of the principal UN organs, and therefore you could almost consider it a kind of obligation,
even if that's putting it too strongly. The ICJ will take UN documents particularly seriously, and I think this is part of the reason that it ultimately rest on it positively to South Africa's application in December, was because so much of the information contained that the South African application was based on UN sources, so the ICJ basically had to either confirm the validity of what the UN was saying or go against its own organization, so to speak.
I think this report is a little different because of the way it was produced, but nevertheless it will now become an official UN document. It will have to be carefully studied by the ICJ, and again I have to read it in detail, but from what I've seen it seems to be a well argued summary of the case against Israel, which once again finds that there is a plausible case against Israel for genocide.
And finally, this report is significant because it demands action of the UN and its member states. After all, it is incumbent on every signatory to the Genocide Conventions not just to abide by the conventions themselves, but to work to prevent genocide and to punish genocide. Specifically, Albaniese calls for a complete arms embargo of Israel and suggests sanctions
may also be required to secure an immediate and lasting ceasefire. Unfortunately, of course, the US has gone in the polar opposite direction. The very weak that this report, titled Anatomy of a Genocide was presented, the US outrageously claimed that Israel was acting in compliance with international humanitarian law, accepting that country's perversion of such law and the logic that all civilians and civilian infrastructure can be safely marked for destruction and extermination.
This certification was granted specifically in order to enable the weaponshipments on which Israel is wholly dependent for continuation of their genocidal acts. The US State Department additionally asserted that Israel is not blocking humanitarian aid, which is funny since the US has been reduced to dropping aid into Gaza from the sky at great danger to civilians, as if into some hostile territory rather than into a strip of
land controlled by our great ally Israel. Those of us who have been paying attention have been watching this genocide unfold clearly for months, from the reporting on how civilian power targets were being intentionally destroyed, to the early announcement of a complete sage in which Palestinians were described as human animals, to the dire warnings of starvation, and seeing
those dire warnings becoming a nightmare reality. But for some reason, the last couple weeks do seem to have really shifted perceptions that Al Jazeera drone videos showing four unarmed Palestinians strolling along obviously before being killed by a robot which was controlled by some murderous human being who was doing the bidding of their entire genocidal government, seems to have
been what flipped Alex Jones Joe Rogan. The Flower massacre, where over one hundred Palestinians were murdered for the crime of seeking aid for their starving families, that seems to have brought home from any the scale of barbarism and cruelty, the levels of absolute desperation that Israel had has driven these people too with our help. Of course, a new poll taken after the Flower Masker actually shows the majority of Americans now disapprove of Israel's military action. Democrats disagree
by a margin of seventy five to eighteen. In addition to everything else, this report is validation you aren't crazy. The horrors you're watching every day are exactly what they seem to be. The powerless college kids who oppose this genocide, they're not the maniacs, They're not the monsters. The supposedly civilized class of DC elites who have turned the Gaza Strip into a pit of human misery, death, starvation, and despair, they.
Are the true demons.
One day, I'd like to see some deep reporting on how these supposedly liberal humanitarians learn to love the crime of crimes. So, guys, we still have our eyes on that horrific bridge collapse just outside of Baltimore.
Now.
The expectation is that six construction workers who had been there repairing potholes are presumed dead after they plunged into that river after the bridge collapse, where fortunately joined this morning by Maximilian Alvarez. He is editor in chief of
the Real News. He's also the author of the fantastic book The Work of Living, and also happens to be a Baltimore resident who had just gotten back from a really important reporting trip to East Palestine, Ohio when this bridge collapsed, and was there on the scene talking to some people who were associated with those workers.
It's great to see you, Max.
Great to see you too, sister. Thanks for having me on.
So first, let's talk about who these workers were. We have a little bit of a report here from the Washington Post we can put up on the screen. They write, six presumed dead in bridge collapse were immigrants, soccer fans, family men.
They say.
The key bridge, now twisted wreckage submerged in the Potapsco, once held six men high above the river. They were fathers, husbands, and hard workers. At least some of them had traveled to this country for a life they hoped would be prosperous and long. Just reflect a bit Max about the circumstances that put them in this position of danger and who they were in their lives.
Well, I'll start with the men we have identified so far, because I want people to know their names right, because as we try to show every week here at the Real News Network as I try to show on the Arctic Class Wars segment breaking points, and you do the same with your coverage.
Right.
These are not just you know, name tags and job titles. These are human beings who had lives and families and backstories and dreams, and who were just trying to make a living and provide for their families, just like all of us are. These were workers, just like you. These were you know, community members. And so far, we, according to the New York Times, have been able to identify four of the men, two of whom were recovered in
the last twenty four hours dead in a car. But the names we have so far are Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes thirty aged thirty five, dor Lean Ronean Castillo Carrera twenty six, Miguel who was in his forties and from El Salvador, who was married with three children and been living in Maryland for nineteen years. Maner Yasir Suazzo Sandoval, who was in his thirties from Honduras and immigrated here more than
seventeen years ago. What we know, and what I've been reporting at the Real News is that we all know what happened to the bridge. This this cargo ship on its way to Sri Lanka that had just left the port minutes earlier, experienced a catastrophic propulsion failure, issued a may Day call about ninety seconds, where we had about ninety seconds from that call to respond to it. And that is why police responded to that call to block traffic from entering the bridge. And you know, credit to them,
they did save lives. But you can hear in the dispatch recordings an increasingly desperate dispatch. You're asking if anyone's going to go tell the work crew on that bridge about what was about to happen to them, And you hear a police officer saying, I'm here at the bridge like waiting for backup, and then I'll go up and tell them. And then the next thing you hear is
another voice saying, the bridge just collapsed. The thing that I've been trying to point out to people and the thing that Hasu's compos another construction worker who works for Brauner Builders, that's the contractor that employed the crew on that bridge. They were contracting with the State of Maryland to fill potholes on the bridge. In the middle of the night, so the rest of us could have a safe, smooth drive to work in the morning. They got no
warning that they were about to meet their debts. They were on that bridge without it like, in a clearly potentially hazardous work environment. And let's not forget the construction is one of the deadliest jobs in the country.
Already.
Six crew members on a similar crew died last year in Baltimore County when a car barreled into their crew on the.
Side of the road. Right, So it was already dangerous.
They were doing that work, they were contracted out, They were doing that work in the dead night while these mega ships were passing beneath their feet, and they had no direct line to emergency dispatch. That's why the police couldn't get to them in time. Was I'm not saying that the police should have raced faster to tell the men on the crew. I'm saying the men on that crew doing that job should have had a direct line to emergency dispatch in case something like this happened. We
see why that's a necessity. But these men were just like so many other men who are and women who were working in this country trying to, you know, make
a life for themselves. Right, They went to work, they kissed their families good goodbye that night to head to their night shift, which went from nine pm to five am in the morning, and they never came home, right, I mean, like, and these are the kind of people people like hasus, people like the men on that bridge, people like me, people like my own foster daughter and her friends. She's undocumented from Honduras as well. Like, I mean, these are just regular people who we are all trying
to make a life for ourselves. And right now, Trump and the people he is poisoned with his ideology are out there saying that we are the enemy destroying this country. But what are we actually doing. We're filling your potholes
at night, We're cleaning your office buildings. Our children are being found cleaning bone saws in meat packing plants and working in parts distributing manufacturers for Hyundai in Alabama, or picking tomatoes in Florida under slave like conditions for the hamburger that you get at Wendy's right.
But it's not just that.
I mean, there are so many of us who are just out there doing regular jobs, trying to live our lives. We're not out here to try to destroy this country. We are helping making this country great, while the people who are destroying it are clear and obvious and in
front of all of us. And yet people have been so brain poisoned by this, this xenophobic crap that they can't they are too cowardly to confront the reality that is staring us right in the face, which is that the rich, the corporations, and they're bought off politicians are screwing over all of us.
And pitting us against one another.
Well, everything from East Palestine to Boeing planes is crumbling all around us. I'm truly, as you can tell, kind of overwhelmed right now.
Yeah.
Well, and I wish we could say it was just Donald Trump or it was just right wing media, but we've seen the way that Democrats have fully embraced the republican position. I mean, you literally have Joe Biden going out and saying, you.
Know, I thought Donald Trump.
Previously they were talking about how he's a fascist on the border. Now Biden's going out and saying, oh, why don't you work with me? I would love to adopt
your your border policy. The media consistently frames immigrants in a negative light, very similar to the Trumpian framing as criminals, as invaders, as a problem to be dealt with, versus you know, when you see who the actual human beings who were here literally risking and losing their lives so that you can have a safer and smoother commute, it's a very different reality that's out there of who these actual individuals are, which, by the way, almost everybody in
this country has to know an immigrant from somewhere, right. I mean, it's impossible not to think about who those people are in your life, Like, think about who those people are, because I can tell you in my life, literally the best people I know in my entire life
are people who immigrated to this country. And so even though it's not, you know, affecting me directly personally my family, it does because I'm personally insulted by the caricature that has been painted of them and the way that they're consistently smeared. Again now at this point across the board.
Yeah, I mean, like, I don't know what else to say at this point, but I mean, like to anyone on breaking points, to sager to to anyone who listens to him, and like, I mean, if you can't think of anyone else at least think of me. You guys watch me on this channel too, Think of me and my family, right, I mean, like you know, and I don't know, maybe that's not enough, but you know, I just really want to stress to people that, I mean, like we are human beings and fellow workers just like you.
Our kids are your kids friends at school, Like you know, we're sitting next to you in the pews at church, right, I mean, we are not some horned, fanged, you know, like monstrous race of mongrels coming here to quote unquote
destroy this country. And you're absolutely right, Crystal, Like, I mean, shame on the Democrats for just jumping on board this crap and totally throwing us and the constituents who voted for Biden in twenty twenty under the bus because we were shocked and horrified by what we were seeing at the border and now we're just seeing a continuation of that, and like what are we supposed to do? Who's gonna
fight for us? And I just want to make like one more point here because you mentioned at the top that like I got back from East Palestine, Ohio, where I've been like like twenty four hours before this bridge collapsed. I was there filming with the Real News. I've been interviewing people from that community. That's Trump country, right. I've been talking to those people all year about the hell that they are going through and lifting up their voices and their stories.
Right.
And I told East Palestinians in East Palestine this Saturday, it's not that working people have forgotten you. It's that so many other people out there feel just as forgotten as you do.
Right.
Because I remember when Donald Trump came to Lordstown, just a few miles down the road from East Palestine, and told all the manufacturing workers they're particularly the workers who worked at the famous GM plant in Lordstown, don't sell your homes because we're bringing manufacturing jobs back. I remember talking to workers at the Lord'stown GM plant who felt
hopeful about that. I also remember when Trump achieved his signature policy goal, which was a truly massive tax cut for the rich and for corporate America in twenty seventeen. I remember him gleefully at mar A Lago going to tell his rich friends, quote, you all just got a
lot richer. And the you in that sentence includes companies like GM and their CEO, Mary Barra, and I remember when GM got their tax cut, they were making great profits, and they still laid off fourteen thousand people and shuttered the Lord's Town plant. In twenty nineteen, I talked to those workers. I interviewed some of them on my podcast. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that Trump's tax cuts alone would cost nearly two trillion dollars over the next ten years.
That's two trillion dollars worth of money, like out of the tax space, into the pockets of the one percent, into the offshore accounts. And now these same people, the same corporate class that is like buying off Republicans and Democrats, like you said, is telling all of us that immigrants
are the ones destroying these countries. They are going back to communities like East Palestine and Lordstown, Ohio, and saying that people who look like me, the workers, the migrants who are coming here for a better life, they're the ones who are ruining your country while they're robbing all of us blind.
We have to be able to see through this crap.
We have to be able to find one another on that basic human level and say I will fight for you.
You are not that much different than I am.
We are working people who are all just trying to make a better life, and we are all getting screwed over by this oligopoly, by this or this oligarchy that is that has taken over our economy, that is steering our politics, that is profiting off of war, that is cutting costs, cutting corners, leading to Boeing planes falling out of the sky, railroads derailing in our backyards. This country is going down the twos because of them, not because
of us. And if we band together and actually fight as one, as a community of the forgotten, as working people who say we will be forgotten no more, we can actually make a difference. But if you are buying into the crap, if you're taking the bait, and you're letting yourself believe that immigrants like the men who are working on this bridge filling potholes for you and me in the middle of the night, then I don't know
what else to tell you. You're being played, You're doing the boss's work for them.
Let's talk a little bit about that ideology that is the problem. To put this up on the screen. I mean, I honestly I shouldn't have been surprised, but this is the type of logic that passes for elite economic thinking. So City Group's Andrew Hollenhorst was asked by Bloomberg about, you know, rebuilding the bridge, which seems like a pretty obvious basic priority, and he said, quote, the US is already grappling with an unprecedented deficit that is threatening to
balloon in the coming years without substantial changes. If the US borrows even more to invest in nuts and bolts, it would be inflationary in the short term, even if longer term.
It fosters greater price stability.
So he's saying, no, the actually the federal Garment shouldn't even.
Pay to rebuild this bridge. That's his argument.
I mean, like again, like this is this is the kind of crap that like you, you the conclusions you come to when you live in this sort of elite bubble and everything that you're talking about is just a concept. But you're not talking to the actual people on the ground, working people, Democrat, Republican, non voter, immigrant, non immigrant, a union,
non union. If you just talk to people on the ground, you will get a very different picture of America than what people like that are trying to present to you.
And we're already seeing this, I.
Think, I know, Ryan and Emily kind of covered this about the you know, ridiculous you know, right wing conspiracy theories that are already like filtering through social media about this bridge collapse. And again I say to people thinking like that, you know like that that stop being a coward. Look at the reality that is staring you right in the face. You don't need to come up with some
boogeyman explanation for what is patently obvious. I understand that people are going to try to use towns like East Palestine and play them off Baltimore and say like, oh, this is Trump country and Biden hasn't helped them, But look, he's going to go try to rebuild the bridge as
quick as possible in Baltimore. And what I would say to you is someone who has been covering this on the railroads in East Palestine and now in Baltimore, that like, actually, what Biden is doing is incredibly consistent with what happened in East Palestine, because that's probably why they made the disastrous decision. In Norfolk, Southern pressured the local officials to vent and burn five cars worth of toxic vinyl chlorides,
set them on fire. Release that massive death plume into the air, even though the manufacture of the vinyl chloride.
Said that that was not necessary.
There were no signs that the contents of those cars were going to explode like Norfolk Southern said they would, which has led people in the community to, I think rightly surmise that the whole reason that they have been poisoned by that decision was not to prevent an explosion, but it was to clear the way so that Norfolk Southern could reopen those rail lines as soon as possible, which I saw trains going through there every fifteen minutes.
That's why Biden is committing to rebuilding this bridge. It is a major thoroughfare. A lot of our trade depends on it. It's gonna hit the economy hard, I mean, like, but that's why they're rushing to again, like protect the sort of business interests, the economic interests, like, but they are not gonna.
Like about the people. It's about protecting capital. Yeah, that's exactly right.
Well, Max, tell people where they can they can find more of your work. And I wish Saga was here today so he could have this exchange with you as well, since his name came up we'll have to have you back on so you can have some of these conversations, you know, face to face and engage on the topic.
Yeah, I would love to.
I'd love to tell you with have heart to heart right because this is you guys. This is personal for me, this is personal for a lot of people that you know. We're not just abstractions. If we can at least talk on that level, I can deal with differences of opinion. But look me in the face, see the people that you were talking about, and then let's talk about how
to move forward. So Sager, I welcome the conversation, brother, and I appreciate again all the work that you guys do, but of course, for obvious reasons, like I feel very strongly about this, I feel very strongly about you know, working people and our collective struggles, which is what we try to cover every week at the Real News Network. Folks can find us at the realnews dot com. Please support the work that we're doing. Like every other media outlet, we're trying to do our best.
With what we've got.
You can find my podcast Working People wherever you find podcasts are listened to, and of course you can catch me occasionally on the art of class war here.
Thank you so much Crystal for having me on.
Oh it's my pleasure.
And we always love your segments that on the art of class war that pop up here and the audience really enjoys them, so I'll have to work on one of those again soon in the future. Great to see you, Max, take care you too. Thank you guys so much for watching today. Sager should be back next week. Thank you to Emily. She has like five different jobs, so she had to run to do her other job as the show went long today, but always fun to spend time with her as well.
And we'll see you guys next week. Y