4/20/23: Trump Humiliates DeSantis w/ Florida Endorsements, Republican Debt Ceiling Demands, Abortion Pill SCOTUS, Big Business Child Labor, New UFO, Fox Settlement, Is Elon Right About AI?, Desantis Disney Fail, Saudis Buying NFL Team

going to be a go or no go? I'm going to say no go, but we'll give you those details as well. Some developments with regards to the Supreme Court. So number one another wrinkle of Diane Feinstein being unable to do her job. It really limits what Democrats can do with regards to the ethics complaints against Justice Thomas. So that's one piece. The other piece is the Supreme Court pushing off a decision on what they're going to do about the abortion pill. So we've got that for you. Also,

Iowa passing a new child labor law. This is the latest state in what has become a trend nationwide. Soig's staying to look at some UFO footage and testimony.

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put this up on the screen. This was accurate as of Wednesday night in terms of GOP presidential endorsements from either congressmen, governors, or other statewide or national elected officials. Donald Trump has now racked up sixty one presidential endorsements, actually sixty three as of this morning because of some late breaking developments, and now three endorsements for Governor Ron DeSantis, including people like Chip Roy and a few other members

of Congress. But those who are actually really on the other side of Trump's are not saying they aren't important,

just noting just an overall number figure. But really a certain incidents sticks out more than any about why people who are even representing the state of Florida are not going with Ron de Santis, and it actually speaks very much to his own political abilit as a politician, not just at the national level in the way you might think about it, like speaking, but in the wheeling and dealing from behind the scenes.

he showed up. Trump, on the other hand, was the first person that Stube remembers calling him in the ICU to wish him well after he was injured in a January tree trimming incident.

on Florida. I mean, look, when you've got your home state and this isn't just one guy, just so people know, like we've got significant numbers. I am. Here's the endorsement that I reference. Is going to put this up there. Specifically about that, he even literally says Trump is the only person that can reverse the disastrous policies of the Biden administration. And in the tweet Crystal that he announced, he said, just had a great meeting with Ron DeSantis,

Proud to endorse President Trump. That is as big of a slap in the face as it gets. And at this current point, guys, Trump is absolutely wiping the floor with DeSantis in Florida. Put this up there, Vern Buchanan late last night, so I alluded to, is now the eighth Republican to endorse Trump?

had a whole stench around him. And he announces right after that, and even Matt Gates couldn't find it in his heart to make his way to Trump's presidential announcement. You'll call apparently there were weather issues. Now we checked the weather. I was like, perfectly sunny here, perfectly sunny down in Florida, but he had to come up with

an excuse not to be there. Now you can see they're looking at the polls, they're looking at the mood, they're looking at the landscape that we're looking at, saying listen, it's going to be Trump focused media, it's going to be indictments, it's going to be trials, it's going to be you know, all about Trump's legal quandaries and situation. There is no oxygen left over for anyone, including Ron DeSantis.

And then you layer on top of that. You know, you talked about Stuby and how there was no hour, which is astonishing to me. I mean, this is someone who is your home state congressional delegation. I'm shocked that they're not buddies, like usually that's the way these things work. And then with Vern Buchanan, they note that DeSantis did not come to Buchanan's aid when he was in a fight to Share the Ways and Means Committee earlier this year.

It did not go unnoticed. Now, listen, these people are egomaniacs. Should any of this matter, No, it shouldn't. That they're like how much they flatter your ego and you know, in Bernie's words, like he's not gonna call you and wish you happy birthday. That's just stuff. Shouldn't matter what it does, but it does. And if you're playing DeSantis is really trying to play kind of an inside game. I know they would object to that, but that's the

reality of where his support primarily lies. You have to be extra good at this type of just basic blocking and tackling political outreach exactly for moments like this. So, you know, to make the Bernie contrast, Bernie at least had a big grassroots based going for him. He was truly an outsider, so you might have forgiven him a little bit for not doing the like typical political outreach.

But even for him, this ended up being a problem for him in terms of the Democratic primary that he didn't even try to change the dynamic in South Carolina with the elected officials, with with Jim Clyburn, they are in particular, so it's even an issue for a candidate like Bernie Sanders. It's definitely an issue for a candidate like Ronda Santis who's trying to play the inside track.

Every single person from Florida knows that if they cross me, they're going to suffer consequences. Guess what they all crossed you, Stuby in particular, he didn't even stab in the back. He stabbed you in the eye and he didn't care. And you know this also gets to again some base political instincts. Let's go think about some of the governors who were elected president and what made them all different

and what made them good politicians. How exactly did Governor Bill Clinton from Arkansas No offense Arkansas, but let's just say, you know, not the most important state in the Union. How did he become the nineteen ninety two presidential nominee and eventually become the president. He was a fantastic politician who stayed up until two am every single night calling every state legislator in Arkansas. The whole state was united behind him. After he solidified his control over the state.

Then he got himself ahead of like the Democratic Governors Association is constantly on a plane, you know, scratching backs and helping fundraise for Jerry. You know, people in California, people in wherever, a all across the country. Became a national figure that way. Whenever he ran for president, he not only had name id, he had institutional backing. That stuff matters whenever you're trying to have more of an

upswing campaign. That especially I think for a guy like Ron de Santis, who so many of the for DeSantis to get to fifty one percent, he needs to unite that never and but also people who like Trump might be willing to move on from Trump. There's no evidence, in my opinion that those people even really exist, but let's say.

how are you? How's your son doing? You know, how's how's Kansas? The rough it I mean, it would have these few little details like a rolodex in his brain. And so what that meant, All of that outreach and all of that sowing the seeds that he did before his presidential race meant that when he did have a little bit of good fortune in the race, wanted to come on board. Whereas DeSantis now has the opposite situation. When he's a little bit down, people are looking for

the opportunity to stab him in the back. You see this in media all the time too, Like you can tell who has been a jerk in terms of like media personalities by whose staff is ready to leak on them the minute that they have the opportunity to. It's the same thing with politicians, like if you you know, invited someone to your event saying they're going to stand with you, and then you don't, that's humiliating for that person.

You don't think they're going to be looking for every opportunity to try to stick it to you when they had a chance, and Stebe certainly found his moment here. So you know, it's an extraordinary just example of how the political wins have shifted where people clearly think things are going at this point. And it's especially devastating for someone who was thinking that they were going to have a lot of institutional support behind them, and that was

really their play in order to win. Clearly that game plan has fallowed.

Here is a little bit from his announcement yesterday. Let's take a listen, and the.

dangerous parts of the earth. And I have never met anybody with such courage. This is what happens when you censored somebody for eighteen years.

again because of the Kennedy name. So between earned media between a genuine like pop culture or at very least like public recognition, I'm not going to say necessarily had quote as a shot. But he could be more of a menace, I think than a lot of people are going to give him credit for.

a strange universe. But still when you have Joe Biden only garnering sixty seven percent of his own voters that already selected him one time, and you have you know, over you have over thirty percent that are either going to RFK junior marian or like yeah, I don't know or not yeah exactly. I think it speaks to how vulnerable Biden really is and how much the media tries to cover for him, because every article that's written about Joe O'biden, it always says in there they've always got

out of the line in there. No serious primary candidate has emerged. Okay, by whose measure? Because y'all sure treat Tim Scott who's at like one percent, and Nikki Haley and you know, potentially Mike Pence and all these other flew of Republican candidates, you take them seriously, Well, they're pulling lower, it appears, than either RFK Junior or Marian Williamson, both of whom are let's put their politics aside, how

are you feel about them for a moment. I'll get to that and how I feel about them in just a second, But both of whom are best selling authors, very well known, have their own base of support, separate

and apart from the current political moment. So to just dismiss them like, oh, they don't have a shot and no one's going to pay attention and no one cares about them, I think this is evidence very much to the contrary not to mention every poll when you ask Democratic voters do you want not the general public Democratic voters do you want Shoe Biden to be your nominee? Again, they're like, eh, thank you for your servicer, thank you for defeating Donald Trump. Can we have some other options here?

So listen, RFK Junior has come to prominence. He's really made it his recent life's work to be he would object to this characteristic, but he's an anti vaxxer. He's been one of the primary people, you know, tying autism to the increase in the vaccine schedule. There's no evidence of that, and the fact that vaccines exist and autism exists, to me, is not remotely proof. So I have issues with his dances. I don't agree with him on some

of those things. Do I think that means he should be censored, shut up, not allowed to be on a presidential debate stage. Absolutely not. And you know, I want to give credit to you. I was listening to some of his interviews in advance of this segment. I was listening to a long interview he did with Megan Kelly. I thought she handled it perfectly. You know, she was very tough with him, challenging him on the science backing what he was saying. She made sure to fact check.

She took her time to record the interview and then go back get comment from people, look at the research, and she was able to present that that's the way that you deal with claims that are not scientifically based

or that you disagree with that's the way you approach it. Now, the Democratic Party, for all their supposed care and concern for democracy, they don't even want to let these people on a debate stage, even though both of them have already achieved way beyond the polling criteria that would be reasonable to allow them on a stage to debate against

Joe Biden. So if the Biden team is so confident in his abilities and so sure that these are not serious candidates, let them on a stage and have a debate, and let's let the American people decide.

at the top of the chart. So look, we don't have a way to know the exact number, but I would guess probably a million books that he was able to sell throughout the pandemic. And that's how people That is like it's like a Titanic best that's like Dan Brown novel level like success or at the very least in a year. So again, ignored by the media, basically

ignored mostly by everybody. But I don't think you know, you cannot deny a serious political people that want to look at things objectively, see a fourteen percent bump in the or at the very least in the general electorates millions of books sold and say this person again. I'm not saying they have a shot, but they will demand attention, and I think rightfully so as you said, Look, if you're so afraid, yeah, if you want to challenge him, then have him on the stage and te him he's an idiot.

I mean, this was he was like sort of in this la liberal lefty anti vax moment, and now that has become coded very you know, hard right wing, and it's certainly you know, opposition of lockdowns and all of those things, even though yeah, he does critique Trump and Biden alike, so interesting figure in that way as well. I mean, he originally is an environmental lawyer. Still, as an environmental lawyer went after a lot of companies for the sort of toxins that they would put into the environments.

I don't want to undermine that work that he's done, even as obviously a disagree and I'm opposed to his views as with regards to the vaccines. But you know, for me, the bottom line here is you now have in this poll, which again it's a weird universe, and I would say probably a significant amount of his support is just people who are like, I don't like Biden.

Here's a Kennedy name. Sounds good to me, right, But fourteen percent in this universe of voters, and Mariam's at fourteen percent in battleground with battleground state voters in a different poll. So you already have two contenders who are putting double digits on the board against Biden, and yet the media still wants to tell you now now he's safe, no serious contenders, etc. Listen, maybe maybe and very likely, right, very likely that Joe Biden is the Democratic nominee, no

doubt about it. But to completely invisibilize these people, to try to shut down any opportunity for people to evaluate their choices, to try to shut down any opportunity to have the three of these individuals on a stage and be able to work through the processes of democracy that again, the Democratic Party claims so much to care about. I think it's disgraceful and I think it's hypocritical.

could not otherwise get through. We have been waiting for McCarthy to put some details down about what exactly the Republican Caucus is proposing, because you know, you've got more moderate figures who represent Biden swing districts in New York that are very uncomfortable with a lot of hard cuts, and you have Freedom Caucus members who were, you know, some of the dissidents who really were pushing Kevin McCarthy to make some extreme deals in order to even claim

his speakership. So he's in a precarious position. The Republican Caucus, which only has a four set majority in the House, is in a precarious position. So yesterday McCarthy put out a somewhat more detailed outline of their approach on the debt ceiling, although there's still a lot of details that continue to be left out, which is noteworthy in and of itself. Let's put Jake Sherman's tweets up on the screen. Now. This is how McCarthy characterized what is in this bill.

He says that his bill provides four point five trillion dollars in savings. Sherman says, we don't have a bill, yes,

so we can't know whether that's true or not. It's also not scored, So we're trusting the GOP's math as to whether the amount of savings, etcetera, etcetera pre twenty twenty two spending levels, budget increase capped one percent per year, clawback billions of dollars of unspent COVID money, repeal funding for IRS agents, green tax credit repeal, prohibits, student loan quote giveaway for the wealthy HR one Rains Act, which I looked at what that was, but I'm forgetting now

work requirements for social programs and prevent executive overreach whatever that means. Do you remember what the Rains Act is? Or Government Loopholes Bill, Government Loopholes Bill? Okay, put the washtpost up on the screen. This has some more of the details. You know, the things that are targeted here. It's not going to surprise anyone. Some of the big cuts are to Medicare Medicaid sorry, and to food stamps or snap. Medicare and Social Security are left off the table,

as well as any cuts to the military budget. Pentagon cuts or originally floated those are no longer being talked about here, and there's a significant limiting of who would be eligible for both Medicaid and for food stamps and increasing work requirements. The expectation is that more than ten million people could be kicked out of the food stamp program if these provisions are put into place. That amounts

to one in four current SNAP beneficiaries. In the case of Medicaid, gop led states have introduced similar work mandates in the past, and they also have seen significant drops in enrollment, which is where the money savings would come from. The Other thing that's really noteworthy here, Sager, is they really take an ax to like all of the green energy, including electric vehicles. I wonder if some of those things,

you know, the subsidies for electric vehicles. I wonder if some of those things might be controversial in some of these Republican districts where jobs are related to the EV industry.

can phrase this as standing up to Biden. The specifics honestly don't matter because at the same time, like, none of this is real.

really one where people want. People want many people actually agree with reigning in the national debt, with reigning and spending, but whenever you ask them, what they really want are cuts to things like the military budget or they want, you know, to see like less spending on things that don't have to do with everyday services right now? More like, yeah, like how many times have we talked here about you know, outrageous F thirty five programs and things like that. Yeah, that's where and where.

you want to cut that prop? Hell no? Right. The only thing people really want to cut is like foreign aid, which amounts to like tiny, little, teeny sliver of the budget and will make no difference whatsoever with regard to

the debt and the deficit. Yeah, if you are leaving social security and Medicare and the military off the table, then you are limiting yourself to making really draconian cuts in you know, the small percentage of the federal budget that is ultimately left because the bulk of the money goes to those programs. And guess what, So Security and

Medicare are extremely popular. They're also extremely successful and very effective at, you know, mitigating senior poverty in particular, and Medicare obviously, you know, very successful as a healthcare program, very popular as well, and by the way, cheaper on a cost per per person basis than private health insurance. We'll put that aside for another day. So, yeah, they've kind of limited themselves in terms of what they can do.

And the important piece here too is even within the Republican Caucus, a lot of the details here of where and how these cuts are going to be made, they're left up to the various committees. So he's still trying to pull this bit of a slide of hand, where by not having all of the details sketched own, he's hoping to keep his own caucus together to put pressure on the Biden White House. And you know, I just don't know how successful that is ultimately going to be.

There's also a line of thinking that the whole debt ceiling thing is a bit of a far citiiturade. The only thing it's really used for is these, in my view, unconsciable hostage shaking tactics where you're like, I'm willing to tank the entire global economy in order to kick more people off of healthcare and like cut food stamp benefits for people. So there's a line of thinking that there are some work around here that the Biden administration could deploy.

We've talked about minting the trillion dollar coin. But put this up on the screen. This is Nathan Tankas, one of the people an economists who's one of the people who's been thinking about some of these options. Put the next hair sheet up on the screen here, So he says Biden can steamroll Republicans on the debt ceiling and

FED chair j. Palell will not interfere. So what's key in what he's arguing here is there's always been a question whether it's mint the coin or one of the other workarounds that are essentially sort of like accounting gimmicks. Would the FED go along with it? And last we discussed the mint the coin thing. Nathan Tankas was one of the people that was like, well, here's what you do. You'd have to like send the military to the FED and like force them. Were like, I don't know about

that one. However, you feel about that? Can you imagine the Biden administration doing that? No, you cannot. Well, in this article he lays down actually Fed chair pal kind of showed his hand a while back indicating that he would follow along with what with the sort of workarounds like mint the coin in his you know, own FED chair way, and so the whole military option wouldn't be necessary.

And he's encouraging the Biden administration to use one of these workarounds in order to just completely short circuit this whole process and deny McCarthy and the Republicans any sort of leverage around the debt ceiling. Now will they do that, I don't know. At the very least, they should very credibly threaten to do it, because that would undercut the Republicans position here. But we all know these are like hardcore institutionalists without a lot of spines.

So I get. But again I come back to picking and choosing in just why I think some sort of sequestration seems to be the most likely scenario is there's no genuine agreement what many Republicans Freedom Caucus them cared more at the time and probably still care today as the overall dollar figure rather than you know, rather than

like which particular programs. And this is also an easy way for them to say, well, the Biden administration is forcing our hand, so we are going to have to have some sort of defense budget cuts, which a lot of Freedom Caucus people secretly do agree with. They just can't say it because it goes against the donor class. We will see, we still have several months. He's going to blink, who can what can even pass? As you said, important thing too, is do all the Republicans even.

terms of you know, jobs and future economic growth. So are they going to be cool with cutting out all of those benefits because that's one part where they really take an ax to every green energy credit, but in particular the EV subsidies that make those cars more affordable for consumers to buy, you know, best case scenario. So that could be an issue. Last time we covered this on Tuesday, we're talking about how the New York Republicans

are very uncomfortable with the food stamp cuts. Are they going to go along with, you know, with one in four recipients being kicked out in the program Medicaid obviously, also, you know successful and popular. Is that going to be okay with people? And then there's all sorts of things that are not the top lines, that are these little individual you know, programs that you rarely hear about that are important to say West Virginia, are important to other

places around the country. And because they've taken Medicare, social Security, and the military off the table, all of that stuff is going to have to get cut. So I think the White House's strategy is the right one so far, which is just to say nothing. Say basically, send me a clean debt ceiling. That's it. End a story, and watch the Republicans try to work this out among themselves and see if they can even get to the finish

line with their own debt ceiling. Bill I saw Biden had some quote yesterday that was like, they're trying to get me to agree to all kind of wacko stuff in order to Yeah.

had two contradictory rulings. You had a Texas judge that said the abortion pill, which is now used for more than fifty percent of abortions nationwide, that it should be banned, not only in states where abortion is banned but in all states, so California and Texas alike. You also had a judge from Washington State that said the status quo with regard to this pill should remain in place. So you got conflict here, and that made it almost guaranteed that this thing was going to head up to the

Supreme Court. They had set a deadline for themselves of last night at midnight to make this decision. But what happened. They decided to extend that deadline, go ahead and put this up on the screen. Supreme Court on Wednesday extended for two days a pause on a lower court ruling that it sought to limit access to the abortion pill myf of pristone, ensuring that the drug would continue to

remain widely available for now. In a brief order, Justice Samuel Alito announced that the pause would lapse on Friday now at midnight, giving the Court more time to consider the case, though it could act before then. And they kind of read the tea leaves here and say the fact that the Court did not meet that earlier deadline suggest there might be disagreement among the justices in their first major case about abortion access since the conservative majority

in June upended the constitutional right to an abortion. It could also indicate there might be a descent in the case. Could also indicate none of that. I mean, it's very hard to read into these things, but you know, I did know you're kicking it to Friday. That's like Friday news dump, right and midnight plastic timing. If you're trying to bury something, you don't want to get a lot

of press around. And you know the fact that it's taking a while for them to work through this, that could indicate that there is real disagreement between some of the more liberal justices and some of the more conservative justices and that this is a difficult one for them to make a decision on. One thing that's noteworthy here, I think as well, is in the Dobbs decision, which overturned Row versus Wide. They really made a big show

of saying, like, Okay, this is great. Now the Supreme Court is out of the abortion We're going to leave it to the states, and we're going to let them do what they want to do in accordance with their democratic process, et cetera. You know, if they back this Texas judge who is saying we want to ban this pill for every state across the entire country. Well, that's not exactly leaving it up to the states, now, is it.

more than two decades ago. So if I had to guess, Crystal, a lot of this is going to focus Unfortunately, because this is how the law works, is not really going to focus on the merits of what we're talking about in your popularity. They're going to focus on the process of approval and appeals. And as I understand it, the way that the Texas judge had issued the order is he had said that the original approval itself was wrong.

Whereas I think that the court is going to focus both maybe on that narrow legal question, but also on the overall question of the validity of the overall approval of the legal process through which that all happened.

this pill, and all of those sorts of things. But you're absolutely correct to point out that if they do decide to agree with this Texas judge who says that it should be ban nationwide, that is an extraordinary new precedent, which would basically say the Supreme Court now has the decision sort of above and beyond the FDA to decide what sort of treatments are popular, and especially since this

has been in use for decades. And by the way, and I went through this in the monologue I did about it, the science around whether or not this pill is safe is really not controversial. There were like one hundred and one studies done on it, hundreds of thousands of women who took this pill. There was one death in all of those hundreds of thousands that had anything to do with it, and it was related to an infection. With regard to the abortion, it is as safe as

like aspirin. So what the judge in Texas ruled is that because this is not like a fun thing to go through, you're basically forcing a miscarriage. And since women went through discomfort while they were going through this process, that's what he chalked up to it. It's not really

as safe as the FDA is ultimately saying. So this would really open up all sorts of potential avenues for challenging other drugs that have been authorized by the FDA and putting that in the hands of these unelected judges instead of the representatives that you know. Listen, we've got

our issues with the FDA. I'm not saying that they're a perfect organization whatsoever, but there's at least a democratic process with regard to that's the agency that is supposed to sort through the evidence, and that we have some sort of transparency into how they're making these decisions.

which is I don't trust period. Really, what we need is more actual democratic, small d control and transparencies into the way that the drug companies, the FDA have a revolving door, the types of studies that they have, the scientific journals, and this entire industrial complex that exists outside of our plane view, where if we got real pictures into some of this data.

So in terms of and this isn't even about how you morally feel about the issue, we're literally talking about whether they improperbly circumvented their approval process by discounting adverse reaction to the drug. Like we're not talking about whether it's murder, and like the anti abortion groups are not bringing the case on those grounds, And I don't think people understand that they think this is like a religious ruling. I'm like technical in the way that it was made.

It had nothing to do with that.

to block the pill nationwide earlier this month. This was a CBS News poll was released just in the past week found that sixty seven percent said it should remain available in those states where abortion is legal, only thirty three percent said it should not. There is a partisan split on this issue, but you know, even among Republicans, they're basically split fifty to fifty. You've got forty six percent, forty six percent saying it should be available, fifty four

percent saying it should not be available. So there's a little bit of a tilt towards the Texas judges ruling with regard to the Republican party. Close to fifty to fifty terms of Democrats and Independence is ain't close at all. Eighty four percent of Democrats and seventy two percent of

Independence say it should remain available. And that in a nutshell, is the issue that Republicans have with regard to all facets of abortion and the current landscape, which is that even within their own base, their own base is not all on board with like the level of extremism that is represented in this ruling, and that's represented in some of the laws that are being passed passed in states and certainly which would be represented by a nationwide abortion ban,

which is being pushed by plenty of Republicans, including you know, potential presidential candidate Mike Pence. They are not only is their whole base not really on board with it, but Independence and certainly Democrats, but Independence being the key group here, they are not on board with it at all either. Every persuadable voter is effectively on the other side of this issue from Republicans, and that's why you see this

and it's very motivating too. That's the sort of deadly combo here is it's unpopular and people are highly motivated by it, which is why we've seen a lot of the election results that we've seen in recent months and years.

And this is not a close call in terms of disclosure. This is very clear cut. If you have a real estate transaction over one thousand dollars, you are supposed to report it. He did not do that. When you pile that on top of there have been previous issues in the past, not disclosing reimbursements for trips, not disclosing his wife's employment, you know, which was both significant because it was ideological and because she was earning significant salaries from

that employment. He's had to revise his financial disclosure over and over again, and never because it was like, oh my bad, I found something that should have been in there. It's all under pressure once he gets caught, which I think is also really noteworthy. So there was a thought of, Okay, we're going to investigate this guy. But Democrats are actually really limited in what they can do. Why because Diane Feinstein sits on the Judiciary Committee and she has not

been present at work for quite a while now. Not only that, but you know, her original idea it was like, oh, you could just replace me on that committee. I'm not going to resign, of course, because why would she. She's doing such a bang up job here. But you know, you guys can replace me on the committee. Well, unfortunately, have to get the Republicans to agree to that, and lo and behold put this up on the screen. They are not going to allow that to happen, because why

would they. I mean, honestly, why would they. They don't want these judges to be confirmed through the Judiciary Committee. They don't want them to be passed through the Judiciary Committee. They don't want Clarence Thomas to be investigated, So why would they give the Democrats an assist? The headline here from PBS News our Republicans block temporary replacement for Senator

Feinstein on the Judiciary Committee. South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, who's the top Republican on that committee, objected to a resolution offered by Chuck Schumer that would have allowed another senator to take Feinstein's place on the panel while the Democrat recuperates from a case of shingles. So that is the lay of the land right now. Republicans certainly not

going to cooperate. You have this vacancy on the Judiciary Committee and is really hamstring Democrats' ability to get anything.

The other thing I can't help but think of listening to Kreeane Jean Pierre there is can you imagine the Republicans allowing something like this to happen and hamstring their ability to push judges through You think Mitch McConnell would allow anything to get in his way of getting his

judges on the bench. Not a chance in hell. But the Democrats are so weak with this stuff, and so oh, you know, it's all about these individual politicians like narcissistic personal journey and then I want to hurt this lady's feelings and putting that above the needs and interests of their own base and by the way, the whole country.

When you talk about holding a justice to account and launching an investigation that is critical to root out any sort of corrupt dealings that may have gone undiscovered thus far, to give you the details on that part, put this next piece up on the screen here in terms of why Feinstein's absence is a problem in terms of any

sort of Clarence Thomas invest litigation. So Democratic Aids says, the Judiciary Committee cannot issue a subpoena as part of a Clarence Thomas inquiry that would require a majority on the panel, and Democrats do not have it without her,

so that option is out of the question. So they are talking about launching some sort of an inquiry, but in terms of actually issuing a subpoena to get Justice Thomas or anyone else for that Hartland Crawl or anyone else, but for that matter, to testify, you need Diane Feinstein, right, So, how much, how effective, and how much teeth is your little inquiry going to have if you can't even compel people to come and testify to what happened and what they know about this. So it's a real issue here.

Conna told us when he was here. He was like, Yeah, behind the scenes, they're all like, thank you, we agree. It's like, okay, we'll come out and say it. Come out and say it. There's one way that you could change the dynamics here if you had overwhelming pressure from the Democratic Caucus. There is a chance she would actually step down, but instead they're all too cowardly.

More Perfect Union did a deep dive into this, including a video that I recommend you all check out, which tracks the roots of where this rollback came from. In surprise, surprise, it's a lot of business interests, including the National Restaurant Association, a lot of locally powerful business interests in the state as well, say the say breaking. The Iowa Senate passed

a child labor law before dawn today. The bill lets fourteen year olds work six hour night shifts, fifteen year olds work on assembly lines, and sixteen and seventeen year olds serve alcohol. The Senate went through the night and voted on child labor at four fifty two am. I

think it's important to note a couple of things here. So, first of all, because you have a relatively tight labor market, that's why all of these business interests have suddenly become like obsessively focused in rolling back child labor protections so that they can keep paying the low wages they become accustomed to paying, and not increase wages whatsoever to you know, try to attract actual adults who should be working in

some of these very dangerous jobs. Right. It's also important to note I always minimum wages still seven to twenty five an hour. So if you can't attract the workers you need for your business without hiring a fourteen year old to work the overnight shift, maybe you should try increasing your wages and see what happens. Then. Child labor law violations have been up thirty seven percent since the pandemic.

So even without these rollbacks, companies are taking upon themselves to violate child labor law or look the other way at the very least. And so there's been a huge spike in companies getting caught employing kids, including migrant kids, by the way, exploiting the fact that they're in a vulnerable situation. There's a big New York Times expose about that. So it's a very disturbing direction that these states are going in, something that honestly, I mean, is sort of

shocking to see how far they're willing to go. And listen, I had summer jobs when I was fifteen years old as well, you know, but they weren't working in like a meat packing plant cleaning bone saws, or an assembly line or construction sites. That's another thing they want to open up to younger and younger kids. Was like lifeguarding and working at a like little fishing tackle store, right exactly.

That was the sort of thing that I was doing over the summer when I was fifteen years old, not like working in a meat packing plant, which no fourteen or fifteen year old has a business store.

with the written permission of a parent or guardian. That's good work in many cases, like especially if you're most of the time you wouldn't even be serving as a bartender, assuming you'd be serving as like a bar back and then participating in a pool tips, so you know, the wages and the money you can even get from that would actually be kind of decent. And I do think this should probably be available to sixteen and seventeen year olds.

We're talking about straight up children, and like, that's where I think some people should have the objection here, which is we shouldn't be there's one thing to want to care for kids and want them to do well and give them access to job, which I do agree with. Even in construction, you knows if you're not working as position.

the summer. We're talking about during the school year. And there's a lot of research about how anything over basically like twenty hours a week really starts to be very detrimental to kids' grades, ability to focus, ability to get the work done in terms of their school work, which is obviously the most critical thing that you should be, you know, dealing with and focusing on setting yourself up for the future when you're fourteen and fifteen years old.

And then the other piece is, you know, allowing them to work later at night. Again that has a major impact on their ability to like focus and do what they need to do during the day at school. So those are the pieces that are to me unconscionable. I kind of tend to agree with you on the sixteen

and seventeen year olds serving alcohol. I do want to give the other side of that though, to play Devil's advocate, which is like, Okay, well this is going to put like sixteen year olds in bars with a bunch of intoxicated.

long hours during the school week. And this again is not about the interests of these children or their parents or anybody other than the corporate interests who want to keep late wages as low as possible. And let me that's why I pulled this statistic, which I think is

important context and backdrop here. Put this next piece up on the screen, which is that we actually had just now, median inflation adjusted weekly earnings of full time wage and salary workers were up in the first quarter of twenty twenty three, per the latest report, for the first time in two years, real wage growth has exited negative territory.

So to translate that from kind of econ speak here, this is the first time, even when accounting for inflation, in quite a long time, that you've had actual wage growth. So of course every corporate interest in the entire country is like, oh my god, we can't have that. We got to keep being able to pay them pennies at seven to twenty five an hour, and we got to keep our fat profit margins, which continue to be at

literal record levels. So what's our solution since unemployment is super low, Well, I guess we're going to have to bring fourteen and fifteen year olds into the workforce and allow them to work longer hours and overnight shifts and in dangerous areas.

let us know what you think. All right, let's talk about UFOs big hearing that happened yesterday and led mostly by Senator Kirston Jill Brand. I have many critiques of Jill Brand, but on the UFO issue, she does genuinely seem to be passionate about it. She's been calling hearing, she's been very involved in a lot of people in the community feel as if she's actually trying to get

to the bottom of this. I hear the same thing about Senator Rubio and a few other members of Congress who do seem again to actually want to get to the bottom. Now, there was some interesting testimony from the head of the new aa ARO office. I'll tell you what that means afterwards, but here's the main takeaway in terms of what they want us to know a little bit of a dual message around possible alien activity.

is developing and implementing its science plan. It has to do so grounded in a solid foundation of scientific theory across the entire range of hypotheses that have been presented for what UAP are. That range spans adversary breakthrough technology on one hand, known objects and phenomena in the middle, all the way to the extreme theories of extraterrestrials.

We have no evidence that it is. It's like, well, you don't have any evidence that it isn't now in terms of what the possible terrestrial explanations are, I did think it was important for me to raise this. This has actually come from the Washington Post. Washing Posts finally

got around actually looking at some of those leaks. One of the things that they talk about, Crystal is that the Chinese are currently reading a supersonic spy drone unit, which would go, let me see here, three times faster than the speed of sound, a high altitude spy drone one that has not yet been seen by adversary or technology, and clearly, if seen by the naked eye or somebody who's not in the military, would be amazed by you know, something is going mock three and is a high altitude drone,

not man possibly a smaller object. So you could easily conceive of a civilian situation where you would think like, oh wow, that's something that we had a note about.

haven't seen anything like that. Those are really the only two countries even possibly capable of creating something like this.

We know what consumer drones look like. We could they could easily rule it out and say we know exactly what that is.

be solved by social media. This is not going to be He's like calling up basically people like us, people like other in the UFO community for building hype around it. It's like, here's the thing, man, we can't trust you to do any rigorous analysis, not after years of cover ups, not after years of lies. Really, all you can all we can trust, in my opinion, are the people outside looking at this independently. Also, it's not just the people who believe it's aliens, people like you know, even Mick

West and other UFO debunkers. At least they are working in a frame where they're being honest, they're being opened. They're trying to put things out there and then taking videos and analyzing them in their own way. Even if I don't necessarily agree with what they're saying, it's at least out here in a public domain, in a public sphere. You know, honestly, if you're a quote unquote UFO skeptic,

nobody's done you more service. Then people like him who are out there giving you, you know, things that you can say of why you don't believe in the phenomenon. It's not the government that's actually helping you out.

it through whether related incidents. It's like, we can't just take your word for it. You have to prove that. You have to prove exactly how you determined that this was a mirror photo or a collade or you know, an optical illusion or something you can't like, we cannot just take these people's word for it. So I think in every case we need a lot more transparency.

and testify about whatever the hell was going on during the Stop the Steal era. So this settlement seven hundred and eighty seven million dollars sounds like a lot, right, Well maybe not so much. Why because they are able to deduct take a tax deduction on a significant amount of this payout. And that's the piece that the lever uncovered. Kudos to them, Our great partners put this up on the screen. So they say Fox can claim tax right

off for defamation settlement. The company says it can deduct the cost of its seven hundred and eighty seven million dollars payment to Dominion over its election lies. Let me read you a little bit of the details here that they uncovered Fox's massive settlement with private equity back voting

machine company Dominion Voting Systems. Didn't just spare the conservative news organization from a lengthy public defamation trial or a full public reckoning for its election lise, it could also mean a tax break as large as two hundred and thirteen million dollars. On Tuesday, Fox News and their parent company agreed to that defamation settlement as the largest known defamation payment in US history. So again you're going like, oh my god, it's a lot. Is significant. It's going

to deter them from doing the same thing all over again. However, thanks to an arcane line in the tax code, Fox can deduct that settlement payment from its income taxes. According to a company spokesperson and tax experts consulted by the Lever, that's because federal law allows taxpayers to write off many legal costs, providing that they are ordinary and necessary business expenses.

The IRS has repeatedly affirmed that for major corporations, paying out settlements is just part of the cost of doing business, and that's how they all look at this stuff. I mean, whether it's this, whether it's big Pharma. Not to mention, Fox may also have insurance that covers significant part of this.

So not only are they able to do a tax write off over this as like the US taxpayer sort of like footing the bill for their own impropriety during the election, but also they may have insurance that covers a lot of this. So what does this ultimately amount to them? Probably not that much.

The insurance company, you know whatever, no contact. So my premiums went up, Like, and it's not even my fault. Do I get to do I get to pay like? Or do I get to write off the increase of their premium?

just skate scot free. The corporate insurance handles it, they write off it's a big tax deduction, and then next time around, you know what, this this was successful for their business. Ultimately, they kept their audience. They sort of pushed off the Newsmax and one American news threat. You don't think they're going to do these same exact calculus all over again. Based on this math, it seems like

it's working out for them. And the other indicator that the New York Times, which cites the Levers reporting, I mean again, kudo's the lever Because you got all these giant news outlets, none of them pursued this angle of the story, which is incredibly important for understanding how this all unfold and what it will mean for Fox News

and other media organizations going forward. So they cite their reporting here, but they also note that, you know, Fox's stock is barely budge since the deal was announced on Tuesday, so their shareholders don't think this is a problem, this historic seven hundred and eighty seven million dollar defamation settlement. Their show shareholders are shrugging this off as no big

deal again, just cost of doing business. So quite extraordinary, quite revealing of exactly who our society is set up to benefit, who basically can get away with anything, with any sort of behavior and pay literally no cost here.

political correctness hardwired into it. Now, imagine a world where you do go to a future Google or a Bing for an answer to your question, and you get one that seems right but is actually completely distorted version of the truth vetted for you by the mainstream media and the politically correct. And we already live in a reality that somewhat resembles that, but the Internet at least empowers some of us to fight back. This would simply completely

solidify total control for them. The problem that we really have, though, is that when the other side talks about AI safety and regulation, they don't actually care about any of this. In fact, their objection is that chatch ept and AI is not politically correct enough, and they actually want the government to set the terms exactly of how politically correct they should be. Take the new so called AI Bill

of Rights. It's released by the Biden administration recently. The document lays out the Biden administration's vision of how AI should be governed, including quote, safe and effective systems, algorithmic discrimination, data, privacy, notice and explanation, human alternatives, consideration, and fallback on their face, all lost on fine like corporate speak. But the one that immediately raises my eyebrow is algorithmic discrimination.

That is some sort of weird nineteen eighty four language board full of nonprofits and governments who get to decide which group is now not allowed to be criticized and then program that into AI. This is what they mean when they say regulation. If you didn't want more evidence of what the left establishment actually wants for the new AI regime, look at this. This is a new declaration

from Open Philanthropy. It's a technology nonprofit. It's funded by several left wing, left aligned multi billionaires in Silicon Valley. Some of their new propositions for AI regulation sound fine like software export controls, but some hint at total dystopia. One proposition, for example, is to have some sort of government implanted chip and inside AI systems.

Microsoft and Google. You think they won't fight tooth and nail to make sure the only ones with a license. Note I am just trying to poke holes in every argument here. I don't have any idea what to think. On the one hand, I am terrified of a Matrix

like scenario unchecked and unchecked power. On the other, terrified if some oligarchic arrangement where a few tech companies controlled by the government a nonprofit industrial complex have a monopoly on information and use it to push their social agenda on the American people and really the world. They're equally terrifying to me, and my view is one I've laid

out here yesterday. But I see people, very few people pushing for AI should be pro human, should have enforcement mechanisms with them, and to assure they're always being working towards a tool, not towards supplant us. I think AI should be required to stay within the balance of the First Amendment here in the United States, and only the First Amendment should also be required not.

to happen. The most likely scenario is the one that really exists today social media and tech, total ideological regulatory capture, effective control over the most powerful sector of the economy. But at the very least, let's hope and try to make sure that doesn't go that way again, because if it does, we could really all be in for a bad time. It's really hard, Crystal right, because you can see there's downside to everything there.

saying there is no one to root for here. DeSantis is hitting an unaccountable giant corporation in Disney, but he's doing it in the dumbest possible way for the dumbest possible reasons. Disney has humiliated Dasantis, which is kind of satisfying to see, but their power does legitimately deserve to be checked and their hollow virtue signaling exposed. Trump is also torching DeSantis, which is also kind of satisfying, but in doing so is standing on the side of unchecked

corporate power. So it is all a bit tangled here. I suppose that is what makes the story interesting to me, though, all right, quick refresher on how we got here. Desanta's passed the Don't Say Gay Bill, which was basically a way to set signal his anti grumor cred in the right wing culture war. Dujore. Disney, with a large gay fan base, has long billed itself as LGBTQ friendly. Under pressure, they belatedly put out some weak ass statement against the

bill and cut off GP donations. Spotting an opportunity to bolster his anti woke cred, DeSantis and his alleys then went on the attack against Disney and their so called wokeness. In particular, DeSantis targeted the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which has since the sixties basically allowed Disney to govern itself, including taxing themselves, loving bonds, green lighting infrastructure, running fire

and police stations. Even provided Disney with the rights to build a nuclear power plant should they ever desire to do so. Unaccountable taxpayer backed corporate power is indeed wrong and bad. But after patting himself on the back for his big alpha male energy, DeSantis took his eye off the ball, and the giant corporation did what giant corporations do in America. They took power, and a publicly noticed meeting, the still Disney backed Reedy Creek Board granted a massive

development deal to Disney. This effectively handed all control of the region back to the big corporation mere weeks before DeSantis cronies were set to take control of that board. Now, Disney's maneuver immediately turned what had been a winning hand for DeSantis with the GOP base into a potentially disastrous catastrophe. He scrambled to respond with some fake blusters, suggesting perhaps the building state prison next to Disney take a listen to that.

he might build a prison next to Disney. Nikki Haley, I guess kicking sideways there. After all, here in part is what Chris Christy had to say.

If you're going to use those levers, you've got to look around the corners to see what the result of that will be for him to have taken the action he took against Disney and did not have foreseen that Disney was going to do what they did in response, which was to completely take over the millions and millions of acres, and his any decisions of that before they got the authority. Well, I'll tell you this much, that's not the guy I want sitting at cars for President

g and negotiating our next agreement with China. We're sitting at cars for Putin and trying to resolve with having Ukraine. If you can't see around the corner that Bob Ig're creating for you.

fight being a net benefit for the governor. With the Republican base base that really couldn't care less about what Nikki Hiali or Chris Christy or christ the New New things about this or any other matter really, But now the big dog has weighed in the way that only he can. In a post on truth social Trump trash, DeSantis writing Dysanctus is being absolutely destroyed by Disney. His original pr plan fizzled, so now he's going back with

a new one in order to save face. Disney's next move will be the announcement that no more money will be invested in Florida because of the governor. In fact, they could even announce a slow withdrawal or sale of certain properties or the whole thing watch that would be a killer. In the meantime, this is also unnecessary a political stunt. Ron should work on the squatter mess. Now. The political dynamics of this, to me are kind of fascinating.

The more upscale chamber of commerce part of the Republican Party that is Governor DeSantis's more natural base, they don't like his move here because it's anti business. And the more downscale populist part of the Republican Party that probably initially liked the anti Disney fight is the most likely to be swayed by Trump trashing DeSantis over it and

basically calling him a cock. And let's face it, the GOP base is basically held together by vibes and aesthetics at this point, so if you get branded a cuck and a loser, the details really won't matter all that much. At its core, the whole situation reveals how confused, listless,

and chaotic the Republican Party is right now. The new goal of standing out up to quote unquote wont capital exists very uneasily along the other longtime goal of giving giant corporations literally everything they could possibly want at every turn, and so lacking any coherent organizing philosophy, the center of gravity and political sentiment generally moves whoever wins the latest alpha male dickswinging contest. Whatever happens with Disney, that is

not a fight that DeSantis can win. I'm clearly not the only one who sees it that way. As we covered earlier, Trump just rolled down a whole newslate of endorsements from Florida Republicans. Florida Republicans six members now eight of Florida's congressional delegation are officially backing Trump, including several who are not hard Trump loyalists, and should have been imminently gettable for DeSantis. I suppose they can read the vibes in the polls as well as anyone else. As

DeSantis once said, just look at the scoreboard. So, Sager, I just read this morning that apparently, you know, DeSantis is trying to make some legislative moves to roll back that deal.

is this money actually coming from? And there are now rumors put this up on the screen that this all cash offer maybe coming from Saudi Arabia. So give us the details of what exactly is going on here, Grant.

other owners. After he is being investigated by an all the way up to the house Oversight Committee Virginia, Maryland has investigated him. There was an ESPN report that the FBI was looking into possible bank fraud because he didn't have his minority owners sign off on a loan they were supposed to sign off on before he bought them out to buy the entire team.

the field for twenty four years out. So he is in the process of selling and it looks like we are almost at the finish line with an actual bid and real money from Josh Harris, who owns the Philadelphia seventy six ers in the NBA, New Jersey Devil's in the NHL. There's a billionaire he's working with, Mitchell Rails out of DC. These two guys are combined with former basketball icon and legend Magic Johnson and thirteen other people

to try to buy this team out of nowhere. Though there is a gentleman named Brian Davis, who is a former star basketball player in college at Duke, who had a cup of coffee in the NBA, who apparently has, as you said, engaged now in trying to buy this team with what he says is his money. He claims he can offer seven billion dollars in cash. He claims he can additionally offer another two billion dollars to do some different things that need to be done with the

stadium and some other financing. And he says he currently has ten billion dollars in the bank account that that he recently got from what he calls not investors, but partners. And so, as you guys can imagine, when there's no recent record via Forbes or any kind of valuation of this person being worth this kind of money. Oprah Winfrey's worth two billion, Tiger Woods is worth a little over

a billion, Donald Trump's worth two point five. You look at some of the people and what they're worth, and then this guy says he's got ten billion dollars who nobody's heard of?

this new owner is to welcome them into their club. So, as an example, when Dan Snyder bought the team over two decades ago, there was actually a person that had agreed to buy the team from the previous owner, John ken Cook, who didn't get approved by the National Football League. They said no to that person. Snyder swooped in and got universally accepted as an owner, which I'm sure they regret now.

of dollars. And we actually had this guy, Brian Davis on our radio station yesterday for a thirty plus minute interview that was somewhere between fascinating and riveting and comical.

Where I mean, there are just so many unanswered questions where he has said he sold his intellectual property for fifty billion dollars, which again just common sense would say, if George Lucas is worth five billion dollars, how is this person that nobody knew a couple of weeks ago, somehow selling his intellectual property for fifty billion, which he explains away is he has a business that creates business and he was able to get someone to buy in on a very small scale at a big amount, which

now makes them worth this much larger amount when you extrapolated out, it just doesn't make a lot of sense, but it has been a fascinating diversion to It looks like a sale to the Harris Rails group that could be happening imminently.

I think there's there's two parts of this. Number One, does he actually have the money? He says it come clean? Number Two, would the league, ever, let's say he does have the money, let's say somethhow he got the money. Would the league sell the team to this person? And that's where, guys, all along my answer has been no. I will badly apologize to him very loudly in a megaphone when he buys the team.

Super Bowl champion was iconic in sports. It was right there with any of the big teams, the Yankees and the Dodgers.

I mean, these things would be utterly unfathomable. And it's most specifically, and I think directly because of people's hatred for this owner. They have decided, I will not put a penny in this person's pocket. I'm not going to buy tickets, I'm not going to buy gear. Subsequently, they have had to change their name, which is a massive story both in and outside of sports obviously, but there are plenty of fans who have left and will never

come back because of that. That just happened within the last few years and also can be tied back to probably Dan Snyder, who, rather than having the name and just proceeding quietly this losing team, he was very vocal they would never change the name. In a USA Today story said right in all caps, will never change the name and basically egged on the idea that wouldn't happened.

Just one playoff win since. On the field, horrific, and it's been better on the field where they were arguably the worst team in the league under his watch. Ben Off the field, whereas I said, he's been investigated over the last few months by Congress Virginia Maryland DC, and apparently according to the ESPN, you know, the FBI has been looking into some of his practices financially, so you know, the allegations are bountiful, and fans just kind of got fed up of trying to explain themselves.