Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal.
Indeed, we do lots of news breaking, especially in the political world, where it looks like current President Biden is announcing his reelect tomorrow with a little launch video, So we'll tell you everything we know about that, including there's some pretty revealing new polls not just about him, but also about the Republican primary and potential head to.
Head matchup, so we'll get into all of that.
We also finally did get a decision from the Supreme Court with regards to what's going to happen in the interim with that abortion pill, which was a Texas judge said Okay, no abortion pill, We're going to rescind that across the country. There was another judge that said, no, we have to keep the status quo in place. Supreme Court is saying for now, while appeals work their way through the system, the current status quote is going to remain in place. So we'll break all of that down
for you. As well as the politics around a porch. We have some new numbers there as well. Elon doing a million different elon things for the past few days.
Shrift of our blue techs Crystal.
Yes, sad day, very sad. It's the end of an era. Truly, we're devastated here and.
Another end of an era, BuzzFeed News now on a business. It's kind of crazy. I mean, this was really news organization that sort of like defined the twenty tens. They were really writing high. They raised like seven hundred million dollars.
I have a lot.
Well, yeah, there is a lot to dig into there about like the past of news media, the present, the future. So we'll get into all of that as well. Before we do any of that, though, we have a big thank you to everybody who showed up to help us, help support us, and to build on a new set that we were very excited.
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All Right, So the big political news this week is we had a couple scoops from various news outlets at the end of last week. Put this up on the screen. Looks like President Biden is going to be announcing his re election campaign next week. Go ahead, a one, put this up on the screen, guys. They've targeted Tuesday to release an announcement video to coincide with the four year
anniversary of his twenty twenty campaign launch. Now, there had been a lot of speculation about when exactly he was going to pull the trigger here, not a lot of doubt that he ultimately would, although given his age and the concerns that a lot of even Democrats, both elite and certainly during in the base, have over his ability to effectively run a campaign effectively you know, office of the presidency for another four years, given that he is
already the oldest president in history, there was always a little bit of a question mark. So all of those questions being put to bed. Now there are every reporter who is putting this information out there is saying, listen, this is a man who can change his mind right up until.
The last minute. So you don't really know until it actually happens. But it looks like this is coming tomorrow.
So the details that we've got here, and mostly the Washington Post had some of the specifics about what this is going to look like. They're calling it a soft launch. There's not a big speech planned, it's just a launch video. He recorded it mostly after he got back from his
trip to Ireland. They also are planning some sort of like a donor meeting, they said, on the heels of the planned reelection announcement, Biden will meet with top Democratic donors in Washington because that, of course, has got to be the priority. At the end of next week. Biden's team has invited roughly fifty to one hundred of the party's top fundraisers and Butler's to a Friday night event with the president with the goal of energizing contributors and rallying support.
Here's more on that.
Because the you know, Biden is very indecisive and so it seems like he decided to pull the trigger kind of in the last few days. There was a lot of debate whether it's better to go ahead and get in and really start the fundraising circuit. Biden doesn't have a big grassroots space, so he's got to do this traditional go and like have the chicken dinner and give the speech and fly around the country, et cetera, or
whether he should wait. And you know, the case to wait was basically like campaigns are really rigorous, and they're very difficult, and this is an old man who doesn't do all that well when his schedule is super packed and when he has to be in front of people, in front of cameras. So looks like they're going forward
with tomorrow. They say that top fundraising officials of the DNC scrambled to make dozens of phone calls, frequently ending up in voicemails, and inviting top donors for a hastily arranged summit with the president to plan events. Other staffers were dispatched to build a campaign website that could receive the first donations of what some of the party believe could amount to a two billion dollar f counting the spending of outside groups, so that is what we know.
Yeah, I just think it's lame, but it is also vintage Biden. I mean, Trump did a big speech, and I don't really understand why when you're the president, you're the sitting president of the United States, you don't use the one thing that you can always have at your beck and call the mainstream media. I mean, he can call a conference, they have to cover him day in and day out. And instead you're behind the scenes, Crystal, you're releasing a video, very low energy. Also, then you're
immediately going to behind the closed door donor conference. I mean, this is not the way that these things are traditionally done. Whenever Bill Clinton announced his re election campaign, it was a big to do. I'm thinking of Trump also, I mean he immediately ran for President Barack Obama. It was a vague, massive event whenever he announced his re election campaign. I mean, it's one of the benefits of being the president of the United States is that you are the
center of all of attention. On the other hand, maybe Biden doesn't want people paying attention to him. And you know, given what we're about to talk about, polling wise and all that probably smart. It's not like people want him to actually run, and the more people see him.
They're like, that's so sure about that.
That's what I was going to say is listen, last campaign, he was rescued by COVID, both because Trump did such a terrible job handling it and people were like, Okay, we.
Got to get this guy on to here.
This is a disaster, but also, and maybe primarily, because Biden.
Really have to campaign.
And you know what we have seen since he's been in office is he's basically continued that sort of basement strategy when he is in front of cameras, when he is taking questions, it doesn't go well. So yeah, I think they are making the smartest decision they possibly could given the feeble candidate frankly.
That they have.
I mean, listen, I've been thinking a lot about some Dianne Feinstein comparisons here, and I'm not arguing that Biden has as far gone as she is where she doesn't even remember people who have been in her life, you know.
Her entire career, et cetera.
But part of how she was able to get real is she didn't do debates, she didn't do town halls, and so she was able to sort of short circuit the workings of democracy by her and her staff hiding the fact that she was so at this point incapacitated. There is a similar energy here of they don't want him to have to do debates. They're not going to host primary debates in the Democratic Party, which you know, all their talk democracy seems to.
Fly on the window.
They have put him in front of the cameras fewer than times than any president in modern history, fewer interviews, for fewer press conferences, just much less availability to the press. Again, in spite of all the rhetoric about oh my gosh, the media, democracy dies in darkness. Suddenly, you know, we have a president who still isn't in front of the cameras and has no interest really in subjecting himself to tough interviews. And I'll get to that specific details in a moment, but that's clearly.
Going to be the strategy here.
They're clearly just betting on not what Biden has done, or that Biden is a great candidate, or that Biden has a great vision, but they're just betting on Trump is worse, or who comes out of the Republican primary is worse.
That's a bet that might pay off.
But let me show you where Biden sits today in terms of his poll numbers. This is from a new NBC News poll that was a fairly deep dive on both sides of the political aisle. Biden's approval today sits at forty one percent approve, fifty four percent disapprove. That's not very good. Should Biden run for president in twenty twenty four they asked? Seventy percent of people said no, only twenty six percent. Only a quarter of the country said yes. So not great there. And if you dig
into those numbers. Of the seventy percent who say please don't run again, sixty nine percent say that age is one reason for them wishing that he wouldn't run again, and a majority say that is the number one reason why they feel he should not run again. Now, on the flip side, here's the record of some of the achievements Biden you know, can legitimately run on. Here pass the American Rescue Plan. In my opinion, that's one of the best pieces of legislation that has passed through the
Congress and been signed into law in my lifetime. It genuinely provided very effective short term support for the American people. Of course, those provisions have almost all laps. At this point, he withdrew from Afghanistan passed the Chips Act to invest in semiconductor production, bringing that back here. We have the Inflation Reduction Act, which has a lot of clean energy tax credits and an effort to transition towards a green
energy future. We have a student loan debt cancelation. We have a new Supreme Court justice Katanji Brown Jackson, and we have the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. I don't know why we made the choice to capitalize some of those and not the other.
The graphics team they've got Trump, They've got Trump style capitalization.
Katanji Brown Jackson.
This is not an endorsement, but we're just leading out. We're like, that's probably what he's going to run on. I mean, look, at the end of the day, I don't even think he's really running on policy. He's more running on I'm not Trump. And yeah, you may not like me. I'm maybe too old that can barely finish a sentence, but I'm not the other guy worked out for more. When you run the exact same playbook a
second time, I guess I don't know. I just find it so pathetic, Crystal that you're going to announce your candidacy as for re election for incumbent president of the United States with the greatest megaphone in the history of the world, the bully pulpit, and you're going to do it as a Twitter video. I mean that just that seems nuts to me. But I also think this very unique set.
Of circumstances, it seems intelligibly the best one.
Yeah, given how people don't want to see this man go through it, you know, it's like it really is almost a I wouldn't call it revulsion, but people feel really uncomfortable every time they seem to be I feel the same way every time you watch. It is hard to worry.
Yeah, even if you like Biden, I think it's hard to watch. And I do think, you know, within certainly the Democratic Party, I think a lot also among a lot of swing voters, many of whom did decide to vote for Biden, they appreciate that he was able to
defeat Trump. Those who did not like Donald Trump and wanted to move on, and they are wishing that we could turn the page and have you know, someone who has more of a vision, more of an ability to articulate that vision more of a sort of projection of confidence and competence in terms of just navigating the office. And of course, four years down the road, Joe Biden
is not getting any younger. Neither's Donald Trump, by the way, but Biden, you know, I don't think there's any doubta But I mean, number one, Trump is a little bit younger than him. But also there just isn't that same visible degradation in his mental abilities that we have seen over the past let's say, decade with Joe Biden. So let me get to some of those numbers I was alluding to earlier about you know, Biden's basement strategy.
Put this up on the screen.
So this is since he has held office in one hundred years, since Calvin Coolidge took office, only Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan held as few news conferences each year as the current occupant of the Oval office. They give some examples here. He abandoned while he was in Ireland, the decades old tradition of holding a news conference while abroad. On Thursday, he was meeting with the President of Columbia, the two did not hold a news conference together. Another
practice of his predecessors. After the meeting, the Colombian president took questions from reporters alone, and Biden retired I Guess to his office, despite his press secretary pledging mister Biden would bring transparency and truth back to the government. In his first two years, the president granted the fewest interviews since mister Reagan's presidency, only fifty four. By contrast, Trump gave two hundred and two during the first two years
of his presidency. Barack Obama gave two hundred and seventy five. There's also a noteworthy selection of interviewers. So rather than sitting for more adversarial or even with the mainstream newspapers, he hasn't sat with the Washington Post or the New York Times, which is also very unusual. They pick more friendly Drew Barrymore to ask him about like the poems he writes for his wife and things like that that are just total softball questions. So you know, this has
been ever since his campaign. Clearly the strategy is to keep him away from the cameras, try to as carefully control the environments that he's in as they possibly can, and hope that in terms of this campaign, the opposition is distasteful enough that they're able to get through. You know, it goes right back to what ron Klain tweeted about when Emmanuel Macron was able to win in France in
spite of a thirty something percent approval rating. Well, it was even though people didn't like him, they felt he was better than his opponent. And that's what they're banking on here very clearly.
Yeah, No, I think you're right, Christel, and I think a five let's go and put that please up on the screen, guys, just shows you very much how he's underwater on some of the most important issues that are before people would pull this from a polo. He's showing you, guys.
Previously immigration at thirty five percent, the economy thirty seven percent, gun policy thirty seven percent, national security forty four percent, China relations forty percent, and even environmental policy forty six percent. And if you consider, like what's very animating to the Democratic base, that's going to be healthcare, the economy, and environmental policy. He's underwater on those issues and amongst Republicans
obviously he's going to be underwater there. But I think most importantly, just in general, he is not above on almost anything at the same time, though, we have to compare those to Trump's numbers, and it's just one of those crazy lesser of two evils elections, second time in a row, and it's genuinely it's just pathetic. I just
can't believe, you know, we're looking at that. I'm watching the Oval Office basically be used as like some nursing home here, and apparently people are cool with that because the alternative to many people is also just as bad, if not worse. And yeah, I don't know, I don't really know how we got here, but you know, looking at all this, there's nothing positive that is happening in this campaign, and I think that that is that's really sad to just to see and to be able to cover this a second time.
In a row.
Yeah, I mean, listen, nothing is a Dundale yet, either on the Republican side or on the Democratic side. Our national history, our political history, is nothing but a lot of surprises, a lot of twists and turns, plot twists, so you never know how this is going to turn out. But yeah, right now you're facing an election between two people that the overwhelming majority of the country wish, not only do they not want them to be the nominee, They don't want them to run at all, and yet
these are very likely to be the two choices. So let's get to what that head to head matchup might look like. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is a six if you put Biden up against generic Republicans. So you're not you just ask, okay, whoever the eventual Republican nominee is, but you're not asking specifically Trump or specifically DeSantis. The Republican nominee has a pretty significant edge here. You've got Biden at forty one, and
you've got forty seven percent for that Republican. Now, most of the head to heads that I've seen both between Biden and DeSantis and Biden and Trump have been quite close.
Some of them have gone.
You know, I think DeSantis more consistently has a bit of a lead over Biden. With Trump, Biden tends to have a bit of a lead over Trump.
But this is very much.
A jump ball, and what it may come down to is, just like last time around, the people who don't like either candidate, they don't like Biden and they don't like Trump, who do they decide to hold their nose and vote for Last time, that group, which was a sizeable group and is going to be probably an even larger.
Group this time around. Last time, the majority of.
Them went with Biden, So will that be the dynamic that ultimately wins him the reelection? Just to underscore this, put this next piece up on the screen. A seven sixty percent of respondents here say they do not want they do not think Donald Trump should run for president, and seventy percent do not think Joe Biden should run for president. So comparatively, I guess Trump is doing a little bit better on this metric, but not an impressive
showing for either one of these candidates. Majority of the public really wishes we could move on for these from these two dudes, but apparently that's not the direction we're headed in. And finally, as I just said, in terms of the head to head matchups, put this up on the screen. Ron DeSantis in the average of polls here from Real Clear Politics, has about a two point lead.
Over Joe Biden.
I looked at the Trump versus Biden head to head overall, and it was actually less different than I expected.
Trump was leading Biden in this.
Average of polls by one point three, So one point nine percent for DeSantis one point three percent for Trump. In any case, even though there is much, you know, much hatred towards Trump, much dissatisfaction towards Biden, this is likely to be a very close race.
Hold.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's really important that we put all that together. I mean, I just think in general though, the weaknesses still remain, and I don't I think a lot of people are really grappling with that.
Let's put this up there on the screen right now.
In terms of the positive and the negative, Biden is a thirty eight percent to forty eight percent positive negative, which is of course better than Trump's a thirty four to fifty three. But in a general election matchup, Biden is at forty one percent and a quote unquote Republican nominee is at forty seven percent, So the so called
generic Republican he is losing there pretty significantly. Now, there is no such thing as a generic Republican in the age of Donald Trump, So all of the negativity and the positivity, both base wise and then general election wise, is going to stick there with Trump. But it does still show you and opening is there, and also that he's precarious. I mean, look, who the hell knows what's gonna happen. Like, we're only a year, We're not even a year out from this thing. We've got eighteen months
to go. There could be a full blown recession. We have no I mean, we're already in kind of a recession, but we could have a full blown catastrophe. I mean, let things go south in Ukraine, same thing, everybody just wakes up and starts paying attention.
Gas goes after five.
I could say the other case on employees beginning to drop, real wages are going. Biden could clean this thing up, even though you know he's basically basically a walking corpse. So I don't know.
The tru uncertain Trump cases against him, the indictments really weigh him down with the general public. There's a million things that could happen between now and then. But the way the race starts right now, it's basically a jump ball. Whether it's Trump or DeSantis as the nominee, it's basically a jump ball. The other thing that we're going to get into more of the Republican stuff in just a minute, But you know, DeSantis is very untested with Trump. We
know what it's going to look like. Right, He's gonna inspire a lot of hatred, he's gonna inspire a lot of loyalty. He's going to drive up turnout massively, and it's going to be a game of who is more enthusiastic the people who love Trump and come out to vote for the people who despise Trump and come out to vote against him. It is not going to be, you know, love and enthusiasm for Joe Biden, because that just hasn't been what he's ever brought really to the table.
But you know, there's this assumption I think that Ron DeSantis would be a stronger under election candidate for the Republicans right now the polls, that is what they reflect. But that's before DeSantis has been under consistent national scrutiny, and I am skeptical that he is actually the more election I don't know.
Let me just say that it's one of the Look I don't know, I do think. Look, we have to be honest, which is Trump turned off? You know, remember that district in Nebraska is like Nebraska two, Yeah, where they have their own electoral vote, where it was like Biden plus whatever ten, but generic Republican actually or their Republican congressman actually one.
There is a lot of people. There are a lot of people in this country.
Specifically like upper middle class or middle class suburbanites, who really really hate Trump, and a lot of them are women. And I think that some of those people, I'm not gonna say they're gonna hate Rnonda Santis, but they're probably more likely to support him. So from that perspective, like, he doesn't turn people off as much. Now, the question though, is are you going to drive turnout up the way that Trump did that?
I don't know.
I mean, do you see the Hispanic Revolution nationwide? You know, and this has significantly gotten a bunch of Latinos to vote for him in you know, in Florida. But you know, people in Florida we talk about her all the time, Cubans and you know, even people largely for the South America, not Mexicans. I mean that we're talking about actual people who are largely of Mexican descent in South Texas. They're going to go vote for Desantish, Yeah, I vote for Trump.
Trump brought people out to the polls who had midt to the polls in twenty five years. I mean, does the same thing exist for DeSantis. I'm not so sure. I think it's a trade off on both ends.
Well, even on the suburban women front, however, I would have been inclined.
To agree with you.
Well, now our abortion, Yeah, now.
Abortion, I mean, that's the number one issue, and we have some numbers to reflect that that is driving a lot of voters, particularly suburban women, and DeSantis is now saddled with a very extreme position on that issue, So that alone could be highly motivated and motivating and basically negate any potential advantage that he had with that particular population. Listen, Obviously, I don't know either. It's all a guessing game at
this point. But I just want to caution that to me, it's not so clear cut that DeSantis would genuinely be the more electable candidate. So let's go ahead and get into some of the Republicans side of the Yeah, I.
Think that's important.
Let's go to the next part here, please, And I think it's very important just to look at the way things are going right now for Trump within the Republican base outside of the general election. Let's put this up there on the screen, from the same polls that we were discussing here, quote, nearly seventy percent of all GOP voters stand behind Trump amid the indictment and the investigations.
Even more significantly, though, that I found within this poll was not only do they stand behind Trump, but they also dismiss concerns about electability despite the recent criminal arrests and the legal investigation. That's why I thought that the statistic was so important. Obviously Trump is a very popular Republican. But the people can say that you're popular and that they think that something is going to hurt you. No, no, no, no. The vast majority of Republicans here are saying this is
not going to hurt him in the general election. Now, you know, there's some pretty decent evidence to say that that's not true.
But the point was.
Is that if DeSantis is going to make a case around electability, people need to believe that this is going to effect his electability, not whether it's objective or not, whether you believe it or not. And look right now, they do not believe it. And also in terms of the lead that he has, it is immense. You know, in the same poll, let's go and put the next
one up there on the screen. Please Trump currently at forty six percent, DeSantis thirty one percent, Mike Pence six percent, Nicki Haley three, Tim Scott three, h Of Hudsinson three, Vivik Ramaswami not even rating there on the pole. So again, what are we learning here? This is a two man race at the end of the day. The problem for DeSantis is this, even if you take all the others the people genuinely support and you add it up, still
doesn't equal forty six percent. So Trump has got a lock and the Dysantis coalition to get to fifty one percent, fifty plus one, you need the Mike Pence voter, the Nicki Haley voter to agree with a formerly pro Trump voter. How do you square that? There's just not a lot of evidence that you can, you know, looking at this, I just think it's so obvious, Like, look, the Republican Party, basically as we know it today is a relative cult
of personality. People can get upset by saying that, but I just think it's empirically true by looking at the way that people are voting in terms of stop the steal in the GOP primary and in their continued support for Trump. How do you run against a cult of personality. Now, for the rest of the country, it may be true that you don't necessarily like that. You see a lot of inconsistencies, you find it abhorrent, or it just doesn't really like do it for you.
But for a lot of people, it really does do it for them.
And to watch this, you know, kind of play out, I just think a lot of people are not grappling with reality here. I mean, it's very clear DeSantis has a massive structural disadvantage, which will require a level of political jiu jitsu that I just don't see him having any real track record of.
Yeah, I agree, And I think on the electability point, because this is really important, there were always two questions here. Number one, does the Republican base really care about electability? There's not a lot of events for that, Okay, that's number one. Number Two, it's very hard to make an
electability case against someone who was already elected president. Yes, Remember these Republican voters went through twenty sixteen when the entire media class said there is no way this man can win the White House, not a chance.
Hillary is a lock.
The Clinton campaign was popping champagne that morning thinking this was in the bag. That experience is still very fresh and very visceral. So you saying no, no, no, this guy he actually can't be elected. It doesn't surprise me that they're like, we don't believe you, because he already got elective presidents, so definitionally, he clearly.
Was at least electable.
And also a majority of them don't believe that he lost the twenty twenty election as well. You know, you still have a majority of the Republican base that he thinks he actually won into twenty twenty. So if you are betting the farm on an electability case and you're Ronda Santis, I think it fails on multiple levels here and then at least to this point, and you know, I want to say, look, he's not in the race, so he's a little bit handicapped in terms of making
a direct case against Trump. And we've also seen that even when he throws a little bit of like a job at Trump, there's overwhelming backlash two, which makes it very hard to make a case against him as well. I just haven't seen him be able to put together an argument that is likely to land with the majority of the Republican base. It could change. Listen, there's no
doubt about it. Things happen, it can be crazy, But to be honest with you, there's more support for Donald Trump and more commitment and more enthusiasm for Donald Trump among the Republican base than there is for Joe Biden with the Democratic And.
Let me also explain this for some of these Republicans. You know, I'll try to understand the mindset. The mindset is this. We did what we were told. We nominated John McCain, you told us to do. We didn't ever like the guy actually all that much. He didn't agree with us. He wasn't a fighter, you know, he stood up for Obama all this stuff. We swallowed our pride and we went with it. Then we really hated Obama.
But yeah, you guys told us, you said we got to cut taxes, We got to nominate Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. Again, we didn't agree with Mitt Romney Paul Ryan. We didn't like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. We liked a whole lot of other people, people like Michelle Bachman and all this. But we said, okay, okay, we'll listen to you. And then those people all lost. They got creamed in the general election. And then we went with
our heart. We went with Trump, and you guys told us it wasn't gonna work out, and you told us over and over again, but we backed him because we love the guy, and then he won.
So why should we listen to you?
I mean, when I put it that way, it's actually kind of em easy to empathize, right if you're a person who really believes that in Trump, and you're somebody who's been wanting to go with your gut for a long time but haven't been able to felt restrained by kind of the Republican elites in Washington, people like Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and all these figures, and then one time that you do go with your heart, you actually win. There's pretty good evidence right right there. But then you know,
the twenty twenty election happens. So it's one of those where it's more money than I am painting. But I'm trying to show you what their internal mindset is on this.
And to the extent that the Republican primary contest will be fought on an issues based landscape, which I think is probably minimal at best.
Trump is in a better position on all the issues.
I mean, He's in a better position with regard to Social Security and Medicare. He's in a better position with regard to the Ukraine War and how the GOP base feels about that at this point, He's in a better position with regard to abortion. Even with respect to the Republican base, it is still a minority contingent that once the sort of you know, really extreme restrictions like DeSantis assigned into law or like a national band like Mike
Pence wants to push through. So he has positioned himself in a much more intelligent place with regard to the issue set as well. So again I think it is I think the media has this portrait that Trump is really vulnerable and that he's on the rocks and his power is diminished and anyone could come in with a strong challenge and now's the time that they could take him out.
I just don't see it. Again.
I think he is actually in a better position with the Republican base than Joe Biden is with the Democratic base based on the numbers that we see and also listen, based on the fact you've got seventy percent of public that doesn't want Biden to run again, only only sixty percent that doesn't want Trump again. So that's the landscape as it exists right now.
Yeah, Look, we'll see what happens. I certainly a lot of things could. But at the same time, somebody is being a little bit rankled by a lot of what we discussed. Mister DeSantis is in Tokyo for some reason, I don't know exactly why, and was asked about his declining poll numbers. Had a bizarre response. Here's what he had to say, Well, hil you falling behind.
A Trump things thoughts on that I'm not a candidate. We'll see if and when that changes.
I don't know what's going on there, Crystal. He seemed okay, So here's my thing. A obviously annoyed, b irritated. He also, I think it's kind of getting to him a little bit with the media attention. Look, I could be reading into it that said he's usually a little bit more calm, poised and collected. But you're also coming off probably your worst month yet on a national level, from the abortion legislation, which you know, any objective person could admit that that
was a disaster. I actually was reading this morning in interview with Congressman Lance good. And this guy is full blown pro Trump. He's one of those people who endorsed Trump. Immediately after a meeting with DeSantis, he did an interview with The New Yorker and actually he literally said this. He goes, Look, I'm from a conservative district. I support a national ban on abortion. But DeSantis just signed this legislation and strictly politically, that's not popular. Wow.
So to watch to look.
At that, you can go read it for yourself. Wow, that's incredible, insane quote.
Wow.
And really, Christal also got to kind of bad mouthing DeSantis for his lack of personal politics that Trump simply appears to be at least much more of a master of than DeSantis. And it actually highlights a big problem that DeSantis faces. Put this up there on the screen. I actually thought this was handled quite well. Maggie Harman
from The New York Times. She writes, DeSantis faces Republican scrutiny on issues, while Trump's gates by Republican voters seem to be creating Trump on a curve in his third presidential campaign, while Governor Ron DeSantis faces a more traditional form of scrutiny.
And it's true, Let's think about it.
You know, Trump changes his mind literally every day on Ukraine. One day, We're supposed to bomb them and sparkle war between Russia and China. The other day, he's like the greatest dove that the world has ever seen. DeSantis issues like a heavily calculated answer to Tucker Carlson, then faces pushed back and then comes out and then changes his
tune a little little bit. That's actually something Trump does all the time, but DeSantis gets hammered for it by his political allies in the media and in general, also by the conservative press. Let's on abortion, right, same thing Trump literally wants us to believe he's not. You know, he's more pro choice than Ron DeSantis is, Like, dude, you appointed all three of the other or sorry, pro life, you appointed all three of the justices to overturn rovers
Yeah's true. Are who are we kidding here? You can't have it both ways, but somehow he manages to have it both ways. Now, we do not cut him any slack here on the show, but in the mind of voters, I think it's just simply impossible. Because Trump is a cultural figure DeSantis is a politician. They're simply different. I really don't know what to tell you.
And also at the beginning, Trump has already sort of been through the phase of getting covered like.
Sort of like a normal politician would.
Where you would, you know, really take his statements and they would generate their own news cycles, et cetera. And now there's just a lot of fatigue around that, and so people just sort of are like, yeah, whatever, that's Trump. And even on the attacks against DeSantis, you know, this is a phenomenon that we have pointed out here.
DeSantis does the.
Little mildt like, you know, I don't really know anything about hush money to porn stars. It very freaks out. Trump is out here, Colin DeSantis a groomer. I mean, now he's saying Florida is like some hellhole. It's just he goes all in every single day, and everyone just kind of like laughs and chuckles about it and moves on.
Yeah, including me.
Yeah, it can't help alive, to be honest, yeah, I mean.
And part of it is he's a cultural figure versus a political figure. Part of it is he's just as a skill to pull it off, you know.
And DeSantis feels like a normal like carefully calibrating judging his words, calculating politician. That's what he feels like, and so that is the way that he is ultimately great, and it makes it so it is impossible to go against someone who is being judged on a total different grading scale. It's you know, it's it's not going to be an easy thing to pull off.
Yeah, I certainly.
I think it's going to be very very difficult there politically. And just to reference, like what you're saying, let's put this up on the screen. This is the latest Trump campaign release about Desanta's It's unbelievable.
I can't help laughing. The real disanted record.
Desanta's record is one of misery and despair. He has left a wake of destruction all across Florida. People are hurting because he has spent more time playing public relations game instead of actually doing the hard work needed to improve the lives of the people that he represents. And you know, he actually even issued one last night, which is so funny. He is going against the Club for Growth, he says, the globalist, China hawking rhino infiltrating Club for Growth,
which now wants to give backing Ron DeSantis. They realize there is no personality or people skills there are beside themselves. They don't know what to do. Florida has the sun and the ocean was great long before I put Ron there. The semi elite no growths are considering sending Ron to the Great Walter Reed Medical Center for an emergency personality transplant. His poll numbers are collapsing. I mean, I don't really know how you deal with that, you know, and Desanti's
clearly is getting rattled. It reminds me of the way that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were in the primary. They just didn't know what to do with this guy because they were, you know, used to like a cookie cutter operating. And I think people who like rond de Santas always take this as in criticism of the man. Listen, he clearly he won twenty points in the gubernatorial race. He's got a talent, statewide talent. No question. Trump is
simply on another level. And sometimes you just have to realize that whenever you're playing a game, you know, there's sometimes people are just much more gifted, much more talented, have built in advantages that you simply will never have as a traditional Yale law school military you know, Desanta's is like that guy and student council always want to be president, and Trump is just Trump and ended up
kind of ended up being president. Despy himself. They're just different, you know, in the eye of public.
Yeah, no doubt about it. Santa's. The thing that he has been.
Very effective at is identifying where the like cultural outrages in the Republican base are and coming up with some sort of strategy to put himself at the center of those discussions, using legislation, using press conferences.
But those are all sort.
Of planned, choreographed set pieces that he's able to execute on very effectively, right with people around him, and coming up with his talking points and being able to sort of roll this out under his own control. It's a very different thing when you are taking you know, live fire in real time. It's just a totally different skill set, and to me, it appears that Desanta's doesn't really have
that particular skill set. That's why we're talking about how Biden has limited his time with the press because of his aging and ERNs from his aides that he's going to step in it every time.
That he gets in front of the camera.
You know, I think there's a very a similar concern around Rond de Santis, who also has been very unavailable to the press outside of really friendly you know, becausehy Fox News interviews with his best allies over there or other ruper Murdoch properties. And we know that Murdoch reportedly sat down with DeSantis and his wife even before the twenty twenty election told him like, we're going to be behind you. So, yeah, those are the quote unquote journalists
that he sits with for interviews. So to go back to that clip that we started with, Yeah, it's a small moment. You know, you don't want to make too much of a big deal of it, but it shows a level of irritation and inability to handle like real time live fire that could be very difficult for him, because you know, this is an obvious question. How are you not ready for the most obvious question that you
know you're going to get asked? Now? Imagine yourself on a stage with Donald Trump, who knows what the hell that to is gonna throw at you. So if you can't handle this like really obvious basic question from you know, some random journalists in Japan, how do you think you're going to be able to tell that situation.
I'm not a candidate. I'm really happy to be here in Tokyo working for the people of Florida.
Next question, Yeah, come.
On, man, And like he's like a visual case because part of if you're only listening, you don't see, like his mannerisms are the thing that is very unsettling in that club.
Very much.
So put the last one up here on the screen. I just think it's so funny.
An x Goop congressman says Rod DeSantis didn't say quote a single word to him for two years as they sat beside each other during house hearings. Quote He's just a very arrogant guy. Now you could say that this is one person I'm telling you. I have asked around behind the scenes. Everybody says the exact same thing. I'm talking about members of Congress, and some of it is bleeding into the press. That Congressman Lands good In who I reference, same interview, he said.
Honestly, he was very honest.
He was like, look, Desanders is a guy who after work didn't want to grab a beer and would go home FaceTime his wife and his kids. And that's great that you want to be a family man.
But here in Washington.
Every time that you give up a social engagement, you're giving up potential political capital and the ability to make allies. I think he's right. At the end of the day. I think he's true. That's why I do actually think being a congressman on a day to day basis sounds like a miserable experience.
But let's put that aside.
If you are a power hungry drunk, this is a great place to be.
And you know, he doesn't really care about being around your kids.
If you don't like your children, if you don't like your wife, this is a fantastic place to be here in Washington. You can eat for free for five days a week, and you can drink premium liquor on somebody else's dime, namely like the aircraft industry or whatever. And look, he didn't appear to be interested in that. Now on a personal level, I like that. On a insider level, though, if you're not going to be Trump like this huge large than life figgure, then you do kind of have
to play that game. Bill Clinton was a master of the game. Actually. One of the reasons that Obama was not very successful as a president on the legislative level is Obama used to say the same thing. He used to go home and have dinner with his kids every single day at six pm. Again as a father, as a family person, I empathized with that, you know, for
somebody who's doing that. But you know, as a president, yeah, well you probably shouldn't just be president whenever you have small children, to be honest, you.
Listen on team with the kids right too, via my daughter's soccer game later today.
Right.
But you know the problem for DeSantis, though, is it goes beyond him being like family man and just wanting to be with his kids and being maybe a little socially awkward or natural introvert or whatever. Because what comes out, especially in this anecdote that we had up a minute ago, about how it wasn't just he didn't say a word to this guy. It was that this dude was brand new in Congress and DeSantis didn't introduce him, that didn't
make him feel welcome. His impression certainly was that DeSantis is not just socially awkward, that he's an asshole. Like that's the impression that he got from these interactions. And there's another Rolling Stone piece that has quotes from people who used to work for DeSantis and were some of his aids and are now on the Trump campaign and have made it their explicit mission to destroy him and rattle his cage before he ever gets in the race.
Clearly it's having an impact and having an effect. And it's the same thing they say, you know, it was an open joke whether or not he even knew our names, and these were people that were traveling with him. I mean, I think of this with regard to like the media industry. There are news hosts out there who they don't know their cameraman's name, they don't know the makeup artist's name, and everybody hates those people.
Those pebody.
Everybody knows who they are. They're total assholes, the total arrogant pricks. And by the way, the minute that there is an opening to stick the knife in, guess what people do. And to me, that's what this flood of anti DeSantis and anecdotes looks like right now, Right he's fallen off in the polls now that it looks like the writing is on the wall. First of all, like almost the entire Florida Republican delegation is run into Trump's arms.
They're leaking all these stories to the press.
Sometimes they're even willing to put their names on it, which is astonishing. That tells me that listen, whether it was deserved or not, the impression that a lot of people who worked with Rhonda Santis got of him was not just he's awkward and he's a family man, like, no, we actively dislike this person.
I think it's I mean, I actually think that that traveling anecdote tells you a lot. I've been around these types of politicians. You know, you have dinner with somebody, they bring their staff and they don't even look or acknowledge with them, And I remember being like, are you a psycho like this? These people don't want to be here.
They're like part of your life, more time with them than you do your kids in your family.
And that's actually that's the norm. The people who are nice to their staff are you know, they're far and few between, and so yeah, anyway, I think it's really weird and obvious. And also if you don't have that skill set like that we're discussing here, where you at least have the ability to charm the people around you who are right or whenever you need them, Well, if you're both arrogant and you're not you know, at least a good like connector people person here in DC. Yeah,
you're gonna have a tough time. Yeah, And clearly that's what's happening here.
And I think that's important because it's not like Trump's not an asshole, Like obviously he's been a prick to a million people as well, but somehow, again he gets away with it, and he has the charm to sort of like smooth things over after the fact. You see this with like, you know, he said, like he told Ted.
Cruz his wife was ugly and whatever.
But he's able to somehow smooth that over or bring Ted Cruz.
Back into the fold.
That's what he does.
I don't know what skill level that is.
It's you know, sort of a disaster that he apparently has that skill set.
But anyway, that's how I see things there.
You go, All right, guys, significant decision from Supreme Court came down Friday evening, something that we have been previewing here for a while. To set the backstory here, you guys will recall there were two conflicting federal court decisions with regard to this abortion pill called mifipristone. Texas judge said, the Fdation of approved this thing twenty years ago. It needs to be banned coast to coast California, Texas, everywhere
in between. There's a Washington State Federal District Court judge who ruled on the same day, hours apart, the exact opposite thing, that while there are various appeals going through the courts about how exactly this abortion pill should be handled, the status quo must remain in place. So this made it almost certain that the Supreme Court was going to have to weigh in on okay, in the meantime, while these appeals are playing out, what is going to be the law of the land. On Friday, go ahead and
put this up on the screen. This is from the ap They did decide to for the time being, preserve access to that abortion pill. Let me read you a little bit of this article.
They say they.
Preserve women's access to a drug used in the most common method of abortion, rejecting lower court restrictions while a lawsuit continues. The justices granted emergency requests from the Biden administration and New York based Dan Collaboratories as a maker the drug myth of pristone. They are appealing a lower court ruling that would roll back FDA approval of that drug. The Court's action Friday almost certainly will leave access to myth of pristone unchanged at least into next year while
appeals are playing out. Let me give you the details of the decision here now, because this isn't like a full decision. This is just, you know, whether or not to allow these restrictions to go into place or not. It's not ruling on the merits of any of these cases. None of the justices has to actually put their name on it or say how they voted, so we don't know how close of a vote this was.
But we do know that.
Two of the nine justices, Samuel Alito and who authored last year's Dobb's decision overturning Roe versus Wade, and Clarence Thomas, they did put their names on a four page descent, or at least Thomas said he dissented. Alito put out that four page descent. No other justices commented on the court's one paragraph order in the Court did not release a full vote breakdown, so we know there's at least two who wanted the full band to go into place.
We don't know though, what the full numbers here were ultimately in terms of what happens next.
Put this up on the screen.
The Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals is already announced they're going to hear arguments in this case in less than a month. And basically the idea here is it's probably going to take a year for this to play out, and this will very likely end up once again with the Supreme Court having to decide how this is ultimately handled.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting that it's going to have to make its way through the courts. As you said, the fact that they did have seven justices makes it significant. I also question, though, if this is going to make its way through the appeals court.
I'm curious what you've said. I also asked around.
Now because the Texas judge ruling was just seen as kind of so out there, even amongst conservative legal circles. The Texas ones are kind of seen as the like the Hawaii Court in the appeals process. Hawaii is always the one during the Trump era that would strike down basically anything, and then it would get up to a
different could judge and they would reverse it. This does not seem to be like it might make its way all the way up to the Supreme Court through the appeals process, just because it doesn't seem like a lot of people in the legal establishment even necessarily agree with the legal process. But however, it has become a political fight, so some that might change the way that some conservative justices rule in the future. But yeah, yeah, I mean
we're talking here about an Amarillo, Texas based judge. Like, right, if no one's ever been there, it's like Bible thumping and nothing cows and nothing else.
I mean, this person was very It comes through in the decision which I read through. I mean, he uses all the language of anti abortion activists. He insists on calling you know, unborn baby. He has to call them like unborn children instead of fetuses. There's a lot in the decision that really pegs him as someone who's clearly very ideological. And he and his wife has the history of activism.
On the issue.
Fine, you know, on a personal level, right.
But in terms of like the legal how will play out from a legal perspective. Another thing you should understand is it's not like this case just randomly ended up in front of this dude. The people who were behind the case, they went judge shopping, and this is very common, right, There's a reason why some of those cases ended up in Hawaii, and there's a very specific reason why it ended up in front of this judge. He is the
only Amarillo based Federal District court judge. And so if you end up on that docket, you know one hundred percent it's going to be this dude who issues the ruling. And they basically knew that he was their best bet. Now, what's going to happen at the as the appeals process plays out? I also don't know, because now it goes to the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals, that is the most conservative court of appeals in the country. So will they say this guy went too far?
Maybe?
Will they have a lot of you know, ideological sympathy for his position? They almost undoubtedly will. Now does that mean they uphold his ruling or not? Very hard to say. So I'm not sure what direction the legal process will ultimately go in. But what I think this underscores more than anything is Number one, this is this is a
significant issue. As mentioned before, this is actually how more than a majority of women in the country in places where abortion is still legal this is the method that they choose because this is this is for pregnancies that are in the early weeks, and that is when the
overwhelming majority of abortions actually occur. So that's Number one, is there's a very real and very clear impact here, and if this ruling were to stand, it it truly would create you know, it would upend a lot of what is going on in.
States like California.
It'd be very highly motivating issue for a lot of people across the country.
That's number one.
Number two, it really shows you like Republicans are desperate to move on from the issue of abortion. It's exposing all sorts of splits and divides within their own ranks, which we're going to get to in a minute. It has been a disaster for them electoral I mean, there's just no denying that at this point. So they are desperate for the question of abortion and how are the bands going to be, what are they going to be the limits of the law, how's it going to go?
Is it going to be state by state?
Is it going to be a nationwide They're desperate for all of these questions to go away. This is going to be playing out for at least another year this particular case, and there are going to be many more challenges that are working their way through the courts. Like this is not going away anytime soon.
Bottom line, yep, I think you're right. There's no way getting out of it. On a political level, it's very very difficult to work your way through. And then for also for the GOP candidates, watching them twist and turn is really something else.
Yes.
So, speaking of that, there was a big Iowa summit of the religious right that a number of twenty twenty four Republican hopefuls were speaking at. Trump spoke there by video link. And you know, it's interesting because he has taken a lot of heat from the activists, the anti abortion activist wing of the party because he's basically, you know, ruled out a national ban he really wants. He's been very clear that he wants to keep things at the
state by state level. There have been all sorts of reports out about his private private comments basically being like, listen, we got to not talk about this issue because this is a disaster for us. There's it appears that he understood that as soon as the Dobbs decision came down, maybe more than anyone else. He got immediately how this was going to up end the political landscape and be
a really big problem for Republicans. So there have been all sorts of quotes coming out from anti abortion activists about just how upset with Trump they are right now, even though of course he's the person who put those justices on the court that made that Dobb's decision overturning Roe versus.
Wait.
So Trump spoke at this summit, and he was trying to remind them of what he has done for the pro life movement to try to calm the water's there. Take a listen a little bit of what he had to say, you.
Take a look at the right to life issue. So there was I put on three Supreme Court judges, over three hundred judges. Our whole court system is different than it was. Look at the Ninth Circuit, but just so different than what it was, and three great Supreme Court judges. And because justice is and because of the fact that I did that, you have a whole new world out there.
And you know, very few people have done what I've done, and very few people, very few administrations have made the impact that the Trump administration made.
Suger how do you think that those comments will end with this guy.
I'm just not sure. I mean, I think what he the case he's trying to make is I did it, I did it before. I'm your best bet. If anything, I think this is tough. You almost have to make an electability argument to evangelicals who don't necessarily believe in electability or never really have. So you have to say, look, guys, I'm the guy who got it done. I'm the greatest
hero in the history of the pro life movement. But also you got to know where to stop, and you also need to have you're one of your guys in the White House. So at the end of the day, you got to stick with me because I'm somebody who will get it at the best I possibly can without suffering the elect disaster.
Yeah, that's kind of how.
I read it, you know, to be honest with you, even though listen, there will be some small percentage of really ideological activists that you know prefer Mike Pence, for example, and we're going to talk about some of his comments on the same issue. I mean, he really has sort of positioned himself as the traditional.
Religious right candidate.
He has been he immediately came out in favor of a national abortion ban after Dobbs came down. So you'll have some small percentage that, you know, this is truly their issue, They're truly committed to it, and they go with a candidate like Mike Pence or someone else who is more to their liking on the issue.
But we saw evangelical.
Voters sort of twist their previous positions into notts to support President Trump back in twenty sixteen. You know, it used to be very core to that group that like the personal values and personal morality and personal religiosity of the candidate was really important. And obviously, you know, Trump didn't have all of those pieces for them, and they still figuring on a way to justify supporting him. So the evangelical right has been Trump's strongest and most consistent
base since he took office. I don't think that that's going to change, even if he isn't exactly where they would prefer him to be on the issue of abortion. I think that they will justify to themselves exactly the way he Trump is justifying to them, of.
Like, well, he's the guy who actually got it.
Done, so of course we're going to be behind him, and of course we're going to support him.
It all comes back to how they will actually look at issues and electability. Let's put the next one up there on the screen because this is important. Penn says he wants to see the entire pill quote off the market. I'm talking about the abortion pill, MIF and pristone here and also has come out for that national abortion band. The real question is is that how many people actually believe in the issues. How many people believe in some sort of gradation. He's got six percent right now in
a national GOP primary. Not great, but that's about exactly right for people who are like full on for a national book like this is the is is my issue? As opposed to like this is issue number three? I care about it, but you know, not willing to go all the way for it. So, you know, I think we're actually seeing a lot of this in our polling data about how people show their preferences.
Yeah, so put this next piece up on the screen. This is the polling Abortion has become really a top issue for the electorate. Sixty one percent of the electorate say that it is an eight, nine or ten in terms of importance. So they ask them like, okay, on a scale of one to ten, how important is this issue actually for you? And that's a very it's a very good way of doing polling because a lot of times people will say like, oh, yeah, I care about this or I care about.
That, but they don't really and then don't really vote on it.
But you have forty three percent of voter saying it's actually a ten.
For them, like this is so important to them.
And I think that's been borne out by the election results that we've seen. I mean, just recently in Wisconsin, the ultimate swing state, you had a liberal potential state Supreme Court justice who ultimately wins because she leaned into the issue of abortion, and she won by more than ten points.
It wasn't even close.
So you see the way that this has completely upended our politics in a way that I truly didn't necessarily anticipate. So this has become central and it has truly exposed a divide within the Republican Party too. They are scrambling to figure out what is their position.
How are they going to deal with this?
That six percent or so for whom this is their number one issue, they have always punched above their weight electorally, especially within the Republican base, because they are highly organized and so it's been a very important key block to
affiliate yourself with. And prior to Row being overturned, it was very easy for candidates to do that because number one, they could pass something at the national level, and they did pass some theoretical bands at the national level, and there were no stakes because it wasn't real It wasn't actually going to change the landscape of abortion in most
places across the country. So it was enough to just like Trump be you know, in favor of overturning Roe versus Weight, and you didn't have to say a lot more than that. But now that you're sort of having to outline the specifics of okay, how far do we go, it has exposed a lot of problems.
I actually think that the nine out of ten, the eight to nine out of ten, for a lot of voters, that's the greatest defeat for the pro life movement because for a long time pro lifers weren't that they're not that many of them, but it was their number one issue or number two, you know, And now to make it so that that now is the number one or number two issue for people who are against you, that's kind of their apathy based on the status quo is kind of what was letting them float, you know, in
terms of their electoral importance. Yeah, if you're going to go head to head, you're obviously going to lose. I mean, I always thought that I didn't think it would ever go to a nine or ten, you know, in general, always thought the economic issues would count. But you know, look, it's clear, like you don't really don't want to screw with existing things, And I think that's a it's a
tough thing for people to wrap their heads around. Like if you go back and look at Obamacare, Like everyone hated the American health care system, but by not like really fully fixing it and just kind of trying to tweak you made it actually way worse. And you, by screwing with existing people's health care and then not also even really delivering a lot of upside to the people who don't have health care, you got the worst of
all worlds. I kind of look at it this almost the same way where you know, whenever you have a system that was largely in place, people were mostly cool and refined with it. You take that away, people are going to get really upset.
A sense of loss is a very powerful political force, That's true. This is a lot of Actually what animates the Republican base is a sense of loss, a sense of loss of cultural position, a sense of loss of you know, the vitality of their towns, et cetera. And so I think, you know, this is created a real sense of loss of rights that people thought they could take for ranted among a large portion of the electorate.
So it has become highly motivating. And you're right that it used to be that that energy was on the other side that yeah, you had the numbers where a sort of slim majority would think of themselves as pro choice. Most people were never in the camp of we want to ban all abortion at all times or with very very limited exceptions. But now that group has become very highly motivated, and you know, it has completely shifted the dynamics of this issue.
And who has the upper hand here?
No, absolutely, it's one of those where it opened up a Pandora's box. That and I actually, look, I will say, at least to our credit, we did often say that, you know, in the months before, said hey, you know,
in June, this case is coming. We don't know what's going to happen now in terms of the way that it showed up in the polling and all that certainly you know was not weren't able to predict, But like the idea of a Pandora's box being opened was certainly I think one that we tried to feel here for many months and you know, almost a year out before it eventually dropped.
So there you go, Pat myself.
Yeah, let's go ahead and move on to Elon Musk As I said Crystal and I, it's over the era. Let's put it up there on the screen. We lost the Blue checks people we did not subscribe to Twitter.
Blue don't have any intention currently.
I'm not looking for ways of public humiliation. YEA, quite enough of those in my life already.
Yeah, you know, outside of the public humiliation, which I do actually agree. I said this on the red Scare podcast. Just I'm sorry, I can't explain why. I just personally do think it is cringe. But what are the benefits, like, what are the actual benefits we're talking about tweet amplification, we're talking about supposedly better services like longer tweets. First of all, I should barely tweet as it is. I
don't know why I would need longer tweets, third longer video. Now, I think for some content creators that probably is something that you would want. But at the very least, you know, for breaking points and all. This the only reason that either of us subscribe to this if it wasn't going to help our business. We have never seen any conversion in terms of our paid or even our public YouTube
channels only. Honestly, all Twitter is really good for is like publishing an announcement and then taking a screenshot of it and posting it on Instagram, where people actually are and seem to engage with our content. Crystal, I'm just explaining on a personal level. People were like, oh, why didn't you guys subscribe? You guys have a paid business model. Yeah, I mean whenever we ask people to help us out for our paid subscription, Ay, we offer you a service.
You know, we're giving you some benefit. But also, really what it's about is like, do you support our work? And you know, look, I support free speech.
All of that, but I'm not going to lie to you.
I do not really have a lot of confidence in the way that Twitter is being run, right, now just because of the sheer amount of chaos, like this is not really a mission that I personally want to buy into. Let's put the next one up there on the screen to just really show you exactly why. At the very same time that Elon was like, Okay, well I'm rolling out Twitter Blue. Only people will have blue checks who
pay for them. Well, all of a sudden, accounts like Lebron James Stephen King remained having blue checks, and people.
Have started asking questions. They're like, well, why is that.
Well Elon came out and said, oh, well, I came out and I personally paid for their subscription. And yet we have now had hundreds of accounts that have over one million followers who it says in their check mark that they had subscribed to Twitter Blue and had verified their phone number. Yeah, and they're like, I didn't pay for this. And it appears that many accounts with over a million followers had their blue checks reinstated for no
discernible reason. Maybe it was meant as a troll to make it look like they had paid for Twitter Blue, but more likely through some digging of our team and others. You know, here's an example, like somebody like Monica Lewinsky put it up there on the screen about how she also has her blue check and it actually is a tear sheet that she referenced. Elon is gifting to blue
check to celebrities who quote don't even want one. They list several others, but there's no evidence that he's actually personally like eating the cost or personally paying for all of these other accounts that remain and have their blue check with over a million followers. It appears again appears that one of the reasons why it put this up there on the screen is because quote unquote block the
blue was trending on Twitter. Now, one of the reasons why you would may want to make sure that accounts with over a million followers or so remain and have a blue check or are not blocked in order to try and reduce the amount of people who are doing the blocking is because those people with a million followers produce some of the most viral tweets and some of the most viral engaged content on the platform, which is what keeps you there, hence why they have a million
followers in the first place. Well, what they point to is that by giving like former Legacy check mark holders who have over a million followers their blue check. It kind of disrupts the quote unquote block the blue movement, because you wouldn't want to block somebody who is somebody
who you engage with quite a bit. But they also show crystal that it appears with the whole block the blue thing that the would have in a normal circumstance, it should have been trending in terms of the overall trending number of topics, it would have been number three, But it seems that Twitter artificially nuked that from their trending algorithm. So there's a lot of chaos going on, and you know, like, why would I pay for a product when you're also giving it away for free to
other people. Now I have a new tab. Here's a fun one in my Twitter account that I was looking at verified organization. So let's say we wanted a VP account and we wanted to verify it. They want to charge us one thousand dollars a month, and for every additional affiliate account is fifty dollars, So a thousand bucks a month for me, you and the rest of the team. We will not go ahead and say yeah exactly, I mean, look at the end of the day, this is not
our money. This is your hard earned money that you guys happen to help us out with our showy believe in our mission. We're not gonna be thrown this around like willy nilly when we got cameras, sets and lights to build. Sure, it may not be that much, but at this point it's about the principle don't pay for a service unless the service is useful.
Absolutely, yeah, he managed to listen. If you're trying to sell a product, you how do you want a position? You want to make it like cool. You wanted something people want to associate themselves with. You want it to be a brand that they want to post about that they want to like associate their own personal you know, being in their own little personal brand building exercise with Elon has made.
The Twitter blue thing.
Truly, unless you're just like a total Elon stand, he
really has made it a mark of shame. So not only were people not paying for Twitter Blue, people were like offloading Twitter blue because they didn't want to be harassed and bullied for having it on his own platform, And it was not inevitable that it would go that way, you know, but because the decision making has been so radic and because you know the benefits you get for it are certainly not worth it, and because it's not like the previous verification regime was flawed in a million Yeah.
I'm not saying it was fair cool like I didn't, but actually.
It didn't mean it was useful in a sense because you did actually know for some small subset that like, this really is this person, this really is this organization. Now it's completely meaningless except as a badge that you are so desperate for clout you're willing to pay for it.
That's all that this indicates now, And that's why it's so that's like the core of why it's so embarrassing, because you are advertising to the world like I am so desperate for people to retweet me or like my tweets or like pay attention when I have to say that I'm willing to pay this person in order to
make that happen. So then you add on top of that, why do I think that he is giving out these checkmarks to big accounts whatever some of it is because he is trying to mitigate the sense of shame that comes with having the blue check mark. At this point.
So if you've got Lebron James, you got these you know, drill, these big accounts that have the blue check mark, then maybe he's hoping it will make it a little bit more socially acceptable because like the big cool guys have it, so I guess it's okay for other people to have it as well. But then in other instances, and I have to go Chrissy Teagan, who I don't necessarily give a lot of creditude often, but she.
Made a great point.
He's like he's giving them out his punishment, which tells you exactly how most people feel about the blue check mark. So people like Matt Binder, who's been reporting on all of this stuff, who I think he has like one hundred some thousand Twitter followers, he was given a blue check mark because he's been very adversarial towards Elon and he was basically given a blue check mark that he is unable to take off of his account as a sort of punishment.
So imagine what.
That says about the product that you are selling that not only do people not want to buy it, like they would go to great lengths to avoid having it, and you're dishing it out yourself as a mark of shade.
It's also not necessarily any evidence that it's working. Let's go ahead, guys, throw up D seven please, this is an important tweet. I mean, what we can see here is that for the day before the purge, nineteen four hundred and sixty nine of legacy verified accounts had Twitter Blue. The day after that blue accounts were taken off, only twenty eight increase on a net level of nineteen four hundred and ninety seven had joined. Now, this was just simply based on API by looking at it from an
independent analysis. We don't have the current version, but that was the first update the day after the overall purge of people like Crystal and iiz account And look.
I want to say this.
It's tough because do I exist as a elon Tesla SpaceX fan outside of Twitter, Like, dude, do we exist people who are like I support Tesla. I think it's a cool company. I think SpaceX is a cool company. You know, the Starship thing launch, undenial it was awesome. But you can put those aside, but then also be like, what's happening here with tw or is a disaster. If we will all recall, here's what I'm begging you on
to do. Abide by the poll results that we all voted in where we said we did not want you to be the CEO of Yeah. It was like, please leave, go back to the companies that you're actually good at running.
Why did you do this? Well, why are you doing this?
I think the fact that you feel the way you do about Listen. I'mm not a Elon fan and haven't been right, but the fact that you would have been open to this if you saw some benefit to it, Like there was another universe where this thing was run differently. Frankly, there was another universe where if he had truly stuck to like, this is going to be a public town square, and this is going to be run not by market
principles but by free speech principles. And I'm going to stick to my guns the way like Substack has been run in a way that I really admire and appreciate. There was another world where he persuaded me and overcame my doubts about his potential leadership of this company. We do not live in that world. I think that has
become very clear. And that number that there were only a net twenty not twenty eight hundred, not twenty eighth twenty eight additional Twitter Blue subscribers among legacy verified accounts.
I mean that tells you everything too. From a business.
Perspective, this is just a disaster. And you know, I use Twitter less and less, not because I'm trying to make some like principled stand and I'm going to master it or whatever. I just find it sort of moribund. I find it's sort of dead. I find it's sort of sad. There's way too many frickin' ads in my timeline these days, and I just don't find it as useful and vital as I used to.
Yeah, I will say I hate my for you page. I think it's awful. I keep trying to default to my follower page. I follow people for a reason. I do not want to learn how to get into real estate investing. I'm sorry, you know, I've been listening to Christly you know this. I've been on a big Dave Ramsey kick. I've like thirty hours of Dave Ramsey. I'm sorry people, As he says, the tic tac generation will not teach you how to win in real estate. So yeah,
I don't know. I don't really know what's going on. My warrior page is awful, and you know, I think you're it's a good point. I actually pay for a ton of substacks and patroons.
I was going through my subscriptions.
I'm talking about like hundreds of dollars a year, which is probably not a wise decision, but a lot of them are people like Taibi and Glenn Greenwald or even Brianna Joy Gray the Red Scare pot. I pay these people because I support their work. I like them, I support their mission. I don't even agree with some of the people that I pay for. I just think that they're doing cool stuff, and I just like, we have
this stuff for business. I try to do people like Ethan Strauss House of Strauss over sports subste I don't even like sports, but I like the guys, so I'm like, okay, you know, I'll go pay now. Part of the reason why I do that again is because it's mission based. Now Here with the Twitter like yeah, look I support free Spook, but you got to actually do it, you know, on a practical level. I didn't agree with the Kanye Ben I don't agree with the capriciousness. I didn't agree
with those initial suspension of those journalists. I think so much of what's happened is chaos, even the removal of the check marks chaos because now the million it's like, now you're devaluing my product. I pay for this, but if all I had to do was get six hundred thousand more followers, and you know I could do that, Like, oh, why wouldn't I just do that? You know? So it's one of those where obviously that's out of reach for somebody's got two thousand followers, but you know, you and
I combined have about a million followers. If we engage more. We don't even tweet that much we wanted to, it probably could. So it's one of those where anyway, I think you put it all together and I don't see it compelling narrative or a case yea for really paying for this.
Even the okay you can post longer videos, like why would I do that when I'm going to pay you to post a long video? When when we pay post a long video on YouTube? Guess what, there's monetization because they actually value the creators.
You know, I got issues with.
Issues we've made, but they actually understand that the creators on the platform are what gives the thing lifeblood, whereas Elon has just made himself totally antagonistic even to some people like that Tybee, who were you know, supportive and yeah, and so it's like, okay, if you're going to just be an asshole to all the people who actually make Twitter an interesting place to be, then you know, obviously your products is going to be somewhat less useful here because,
as you said, Sager, what we've really realized in running this business is, yeah, we make sure, you know, we do an ama for the premium subscribers. We're going to give them first look at the new set, right because we value you. But full show, full show, all those things. I know those things are important. But what a lot of people come here for is because they believe.
Yeah, they just believe it.
That's it's it.
Yeah, and not a lot of people believe in the Twitter mission. At this point, I would.
Say, well, good luck.
You know, maybe you can turn around. We'll see.
Okay, I'm doubtful. All right, let's go to BuzzFeed.
I have a lot to say about this interesting, a fascinating case study. I try not to dance on anybody's grave, but you know, it's difficult sometimes when you particularly despise a certain news organization. Let's go to put this up there on the screen. Here is the memo that was sent by Jonah Peretti, who was the CE of BuzzFeed, to all of his staff, and in it he announces that BuzzFeed News is going to be shutting down. For those who don't know, BuzzFeed News was the original, I
would say, the demarcation point for news on the internet. Ye, BuzzFeed in two thousand and nine. In twenty ten was booming. It was everywhere. It was all over Facebook. People were taking which Harry Potterhouse or you quizzes When I was in college, very cringe in retrospect, but that was taking off, and they said, we have all this traffic, We've got all these advertising dollars. You know what we're going to do.
We're going to start a news organization. They decided to try and treat news the way that tech companies had treated tech. In other words, get big fast. So what did they do. They hired tons of journalists, all of these legacy with other people like Ben Smith, who will be having it on the show.
Actually it just wrote a book.
I'm excited to talk to him a little bit about this because he was the editor in chief. He brought on all these journal they won a Pulitzer Prize, and all of it was bilt on the idea that you can do award winning journalism at a new online outlet and you can completely change the game and you can replace the New York Times.
Well what happened. They just got shut down. They went out our business.
And one of the reasons why is that Peretti references in that memo where he sent out is they're cutting costs fifteen percent across the board. But really what he admits is I should have been more responsible with our finances. And I think what I have always thought about BuzzFeed, about Mike dot Com, about Bustle, about all of these or you know these places which are you know has beens and you don't even think about it anymore, is they were mainstream media repackaged as what people who are
executives wanted news from millennials to look like. Here's the truth, you know what news from millennials really wanted. You're watching it. I mean millions of people watch the show, the vast majority of them are millennials and younger, and I think what it was is a removal from that kind of mainstream not only packaging, from the mainstream narratives on all the things that come through legacy people inside of media. You're looking at, you know, shows like I mean across
the ideological spectrum. If you are a young Republican today, are you watching Fox News or are you watching Ben Shapiro or the Tim Poole Show. Already know the answer, you know, And cause I talk to these people, you know they would care much more about what those two had to say, any of the Daily Wire crowd, the Tim Poole Show, Stephen Crowder, any of these folks. If you're a young Democrat today, let's say you're a young neo lib Democrat, you're not watching MSNBC. You're listening to
the crooked media folks, yes over pod Save America. And if you're a lefty birdie person, you know you're watching Kyle Kolinski or Jimmy Dore or any of these folks our show in some cases, and you know, on the Republican side, we see many young Republicans who watch the show as well. You are not consuming this type of packaged nonsense. And I think that that's really where they went wrong, both on a business level but on a
narrative level. They were just wrong. Young people did not want to consume the news that way.
I think there was there were a lot of failures.
Number one, there is an element of the like go woken, go broke thing, because they really twenty ten's you know, bustle, like they really leaned into that, like girl boss feminism, can they they leaned into that that moment. And I
think there was also a failure to evolve, right. I mean since the launch of Rising, which is much more recent than the launch of BuzzFeed, you know, we have always been trying to think about what's going to make the show relevant in the moment, right, And so when COVID hit and we're like, okay, you know what we're doing is about to totally change. When the Ukraine War happened,
like there was another big, big shift. You know, we've leaned more into hard news than we used to lean So we've tried to evolve for what the what our audience may need for the moment. And BuzzFeed had this initial inside but inside BuzzFeed news that you could put like real news and real journalism, which did happen at BuzzFeed. By the way, there were a lot of truly you know,
solid journalists who got their start at BuzzFeed News. We can package that alongside these like listicles and the Harry Potter quizes and whatever, and you know what, at the moment, that actually worked. It did drive a lot of traffic. It was successful in bringing in eyeballs. There was a
lot of viral content. Apparently, their biggest day in the entire cump history of BuzzFeed News was that day of like the dress, you know, when people were looking at that dress and like trying to arguing what color it was and remember those.
Yeah, I know, I'm just like.
That was the sort of but that was the sort of stuff they were like.
Prime to capitalize on, you know.
So there was a failure to shift in terms of the type of content and make it relevant for the current day and for what their their audience was looking for at that point in their lives, or bringing in new, younger audience or whatever.
So there was that.
There was also a failure of business model, which I think is really core to this.
You know, they took in so much money, Yeah, we have that actually yeah, put what is that E go to.
Go mean, Yeah, Look, they raised seven hundred.
Million dollars and that was true Mike too.
I mean, Mike was this new sex all millennial, et cetera, et cetera. They raised tons of There were a bunch of these startups at the time that basically off of the success of BuzzFeed were getting huge valuations, huge raises, all this money in and they were betting the farm in a lot of cases on social media distribution and monetization. The first big shoot to drop was when Facebook changed their algorithm, and that killed a lot of these I mean, that is what killed Mike, and it killed a whole
lot of other places. And I know BuzzFeed was a little more diversified in terms of their like social media distribution and monetization strategy, but I know it hammered them as well, and I don't think they were ever able to recover. Ben Smith, who you mentioned, was editor in chief and really responsible for a lot of building up
BuzzFeed to what it was at its peak. He put out a sort of analysis of what he went wrong, and that was one of the things that he really kind of pointed to here and at his new organization, which is Semaphore. It's funny because some of the organizations that are thriving now it's almost like a.
Throwback, like newsletters on substack.
Many of them are very successful, right, But the core piece now is you can't rely on YouTube, you can't rely on Facebook, you can't rely on any of these platforms because not only is the monetization all over the place, but they can nuke you like that in an instant and you will never recover. So you have to have some way of actually investing your audience in what you're doing and providing them something that they're actually will believe
in and are willing to pay for. And if you're not doing that, then I think in this current landscape, it it's going to.
Be game K.
You're dead. And actually that's the thing.
I'm very thankful for the exist since of BuzzFeed, Mike and all these other failures Bashable, I could go on Bustle all at Gawker, Jes, I keep going. It's not like I enjoy this or anything. The point was is that when you and I were building this business, what is the number? We're like, we have to mitigate all risk. If YouTube goes down tomorrow, we will be completely fine.
I'm not saying it wouldn't suck, but we completely Yeah.
If we get banned by Apple Podcasts and Spotify, as has happened to certain people, okay, we'll still be completely fine if you even if the payment processor or something, we have mitigation techniques all built into the very fabric of the business. At the end of the day, we have the direct payment relationship with you. We don't even need supercats who we love, you know, our processor, who are happy to be a partner with. But let's say that they decided to kick us off. Fine, we have
our direct customer relationship. We insisted on that from day one. We have email. Nobody can ban you them from that. Basically, all you really need is an email client. So outside of an ISP level ban on breaking points, we will exist. We can crawl our way through it, and financially we will survive. You know, even what would really be like a nuclear attack in terms of being completely banned off of that, and it was built into the fabric. That's also why at the top of our show what are
we ask for? We always talk about premium subscriptions because we know that that is the lifeblood of any business which is flirting in any way with something which is risky, which media is, and they decided not to do that. BuzzFeed died because of Facebook, but also it died because of the hubris and the foolishness of people like Jonah Peretti who believed that that you know, was going to sail at the end of the day. How many YouTube ebbs and flows have you and I been through in
just a couple of years. You'd be an idiot to build your business just off of the same in the podcast. You know right now we're booming on the podcast. I'm not stupid. I know one day it'll go down, and so are you. You know, we're like and then when you plan for it. You know, that's one of those things where these were what business owners have long dealt with. They raised money based on a false dream. And actually, what I think is more cruel is they hire a
lot of people. You know, they're paying out full Benny's and all this other stuff which they could not afford to pay. And that's wrong, you know, when you hire people on a false promise. And I just saw a tweet on my timeline some lady who's five months pregnant. She's just got fired, you know, because you were an idiot.
As a boss.
That's wrong, you know. And look, maybe she knew what she was getting into, although I doubt it. You know a lot of people just want to get a job, and so you know, once again, I can cheer for the death of the organization, but I'm not going to you know, some five month old lady or five month pregnant lady.
That's not right. No, absolutely, absolutely terrible.
Yes, And I think the overhead is another piece, like you just have to be so much more nimble, and our overhead, because we care a lot about the production value and abilities.
Very high, is a lot higher than.
A lot of other you know, similar sort of positioned products that are out there. But that's something that you know has always been core and really important to you all. But still compared to BuzzFeed, compared to all the amount of money, what was the name of that other video play that just went under that had raised.
Like Auzie, Well, Ozzy is another one.
But wasn't this like a Hilman or help rund was?
Oh the recount?
Yeah, the recount?
Yeah, they raised thirty million.
Yeah, And again I'm.
Like, yeah, thirty million, what are you doing with thirty million dollars? And basically all they were doing was like clipping newsreels and stuff. I'm like, how does this cause you so much fun? That level of overhead unjustifiable. And so there's basically two business models that work right now. Number One, people believe in what you're doing. They're willing
to pay some amount of month. Or number two, you're doing like an insider tip sheet that lobbyists and you know and people in DC are willing to pay big bucks for to get a little edge on like what's coming down from the Transportation Committee or whatever. Those are the two models that really work right now. And yeah, the newsletter it is sort of a throwback because email is something they can take away from you that you have control over. And that's the model that is really succeeding.
At the moment.
Absolutely, please take a look at on the eve.
Of Joe Biden's reelection announcement, one thing has become incredibly clear. The media does not want you to think you have any other options. In article after article they declare that Biden has no quote serious primary opponent, as if that
is up to them to decide. Their Democratic primary polls reflect laundry lists of candidates who have no intention of running, while leaving the actual declared candidates off of the list, and sometimes the media they just outright lie, all in service of making sure that as much as the Democratic primary base wants to move on from Biden, they are
not allowed to even evaluate the existing alternatives. The very same tactics they used against every anti establishment Democratic candidate, from Bernie to Yang to Tulsi.
They are all back with a vengeance.
The media and the Democratic Party have spent the last eight years waxing poetic about democracy, but at every turn they show their contempt towards voters and the actual democratic process. No one has been more smeared and erased in this process than Maryan Williamson. Has no accident that this effort has escalated, just as she's begun to show a bit of real momentum. In recent weeks, Marianne is pulled as high as fourteen percent in battleground states, ten percent nationally,
over twenty percent with young voters. This enthusiasm of young voters has become particularly visible on their platform of choice, That would be TikTok as Ryan Grimm documented Williamson has become an outright sensation there. Her videos and fan accounts, they rack up millions of views sharing her comments on politics, on life and her critique of Joe Biden and the
Democratic Party. The enthusiasm for Marianne by anyone on any platform, though, simply can't be tolerated by the Biden team and their allies who dare to call themselves journalists.
Take a look at this article that was flagged by Katie Halper.
Writers wrote an entire piece that was supposed to be just a completely neutral listing of the current and potential twenty twenty four contenders on both the Democratic and Republican sides. It's titled fact Box twenty twenty four US Presidential Election, Who was in, who is out, and who is still thinking about it? But this so called fact contains the
opposite of facts. They included everyone from Asa Hutchinson, who pulls at zero percent, to Chris Sinunu, who pulls at zero percent, to Mike Pompeo, who pulls at zero percent and has already said he is not running. To my surprise, they actually did include RFK Junior, although they.
Weirdly didn't bowld his name the way that they did.
All the other candidates, for some reason conspicuously left off this list altogether. However, was Marian Williamson, despite the fact that she is pulling higher than the vast majority of contenders that they did bother to name. I simply cannot believe that someone who calls themselves a political journalist doesn't know who Mariann Williamson is. She's been in public life for decades. She was a candidate last time around as well.
The only realistic explanation of this omission is that it was an intentional lie, motivated either by arrogant contempt towards Marian or to curry favor with the Biden regime. Now, Mary and herself replied to this so called journalist on Twitter, asking are you under the impression I do not exist or that I am not running? Under pressure, Reuters was forced to do a stealth edit of the article to acknowledge that Mary Williamson does in fact exist and is
in fact running for president. As if it isn't enough that they ignore Marian unless they're smearing her. Of course, the media's most damaging tactic is their acceptance and propagation of an anti democracy status quo, especially when it comes to the Democratic Party.
If the Republican Party.
Was planning to have no debates and just simply to annoint Donald Trump all of these supposed guardians of democracy, they would be rending their garments and melting down about authoritarianism and fascism. But when the DNC breaks the primary states for Biden plans zero debates, they just accept this as a matter of course.
Of course they would do this. The Washington Post turned in a perfect.
Example of this with their big article about Biden getting set to announce his reelect.
In it, they assert, with zero.
Judgment that quote, the National Democratic Party has said it will support Biden's reelection and it has no plans to sponsor primary debates. They go on to offer the standard line about how Biden faces no quote serious challenge. This total shutdown on public debate is even more detrimental to democracy. Since Biden has sat for far fewer interviews and held fewer press conferences than any president since Ronald Reagan, he remains in hiding from the American people and the press.
They just accept it. Democracy dies in darkness, right, guys. When Marianne does get coverage. It shows why the press and the Biden team are so desperate to hide her very existence. In a recent cable news appearance, one of the rare times she was actually invited on since launching her bid, she had a lot to say about elite democratic failures.
Take a listen.
I think that one of the things we've talked about here already is that things are not okay. We have thirty nine percent of Americans who now report, forty four percent of millennials that they have skipped meals in order to pay their rents. We have one in four Americans who live with medical debt. We have sixty four percent of Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck, sixty percent of Americans who could not absorb a four hundred dollars
unexpected expenditure. Look at those facets that I just talked to about, and you talked to me about mental health. We talk about the mental health crisis. We need to talk about what's at the root of that, and to talk about how much of that comes from chronic economic anxiety.
We have a political class.
We have a political class that is not planning any fundamental economic reform. And I'm running for president I'm running as a Democrat because incremental change is not enough when you have a lack of universal health care, although we have it in every other advanced democracy, every other danceing democracy has tuition free college, you know, which we had until the nineteen sixties.
You know, I'm old enough, Allison.
There was a time in this far away land called the nineteen seventies when the average American there was a thriving middle class. The average American worker had decent benefits, could afford a home, could afford a car, could afford a yearly vacation, could afford to send one parent to keep one parent could stay home if they wished, and they could afford to send their kids to college. So, no,
people are not okay. And I'm running for president because we need a fundamental economic return, not just incremental change. People need to have health care in this country, need to be able to go to college. People need the bandwidth to thrive. And if all a politician can say is I'll help you survive an unjeal system in the richest country in the world, something wrong. We need someone from outside that system to say the system should not
be unjust. We need an economic return and that's what I will do if I'm elected president.
Now that clip has already racked up hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok, so you won't be surprised to learn Biden team trying to silence her there as well. According to Mariyan campaign volunteer Tim Cox, TikTok moderators have banned at least two Maryan supporter accounts, Mary and Williamson for Pres and Lefty Takeover. These accounts had tens of thousands of followers, no terms of service violations, but they
were spammed by Biden supporters mass reporting them, according to Cox. Now, I spoke with the woman who runs the Mary and Williamson for Press account and she confirmed that this had indeed happened.
She told me that quote.
The account is still banned, and I have not heard a single peep back from TikTok on why they took my account down.
I broke no rules.
These heavy handed tactics reveal a Biden team much more nervous than their public bluster.
What have you believe?
Now?
Look, no one's going to deny it.
Is exceptionally difficult to oust any incumbent president. However, this one does have some real vulnerabilities. Don't take my word for it, just ask the voters. Seventy three percent of voters wish the current president would not run again. That includes a majority of Democrats. Only one third of voters believe Biden deserves to be re elected, and majorities disapprove of his handling on every major issue that was tested
in a recent CNN poll. Majorities say he is not honest, does not care about people like them, and cannot work effectively with Congress. But while Americans might be dissatisfied with Biden across a range of issues, the biggest questions are about his basic capacity to serve in the office at all. Sixty five percent say he doesn't inspire confidence, and sixty seven percent say he doesn't have the stamina and sharpness
to serve effectively as President of the United States. Who can blame them for wondering if the oldest US president in history is really up to the task.
So thank you all, God bless you all.
Let's go, let's go, let.
The world must get it done.
Representative Jackie, you here, I think to be here more than half the women in my cabinet, more than more than half to be with my cabin. More than half of the women on the in my administration are women. How either of you're Rowland Egger being the you know, the guy who's.
Pushing them out, and so Biden scronies don't want to contrast with anyone who can articulate a perspective and who is unafraid to expose the failures.
Of the elite political and media class.
I am reminded that Diane Feinstein was able to hold on for her last reelection by avoiding interviews, debates, town halls, anything that would expose her to constituents. Just how unable to do the job she really was. The Biden camp here is similarly desperate to hide their guy and persuade
everyone that there is no actual contest. Whatever you think any of these candidates Biden, rfk Junior and Marianne at the very least, we deserve actual debates, demand that the Democratic Party live up to the bare minimum of their pro democracy rhetoric, and Sager, it's just amazing to me that the feel so entitled to decide for themselves who's a serious candidate that they just leave around entirely and think that's totally fine.
Don't include her and.
If you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot Com.
All right, Sager, what you're looking at.
Something that I always try and do on the show is understand where people are coming from, even if I disagree, Actually even more so when I do disagree, because otherwise things just evolve into something unhelpful. And I will admit that's certainly harder when it comes to certain topics, but I do my best, and that's why I really want to delve into a topic that I have been spending a lot of time on recently, the rise of affirmative action America. Now, on its face, affirmative action America is
built on an idea I do agree with. Our institutions are unfair, corrupt, and they do penalize the poorest amongst us, who are made up of poor whites, poor blacks, poor Latinos, and many others. We should fix that right now. American society is probably more nepotistic and oligarchic than at any point in our history since the Gilded Age. But how we fix that is the big disagreement. It comes back
to the concepts that I brought up here earlier. Do you strive for equality of opportunity or equality of outcome? Equality of opportunity is the goal in which everyone starts off from the same place, and then when they end up in different ends of the income or societal spectrum, you can at least have relative faith they deserve quote unquote to be there, with the caveat that nobody ends
up destitute. Equality of outcome effectively means that a person's outcome is predetermined by quotas and other normalizing efforts to make sure that all races, all creeds come to the same place, regardless of disparities and effort. Now, unfortunately, the left establishment in this country has made their choice post twenty twenty. They're going for equality of outcome, otherwise known as equity, a key pillar of the so called diversity,
equity and inclusion religion founded in affirmative action. I've already discussed here the San Francisco Algebra for non experiment how it penalized black and Hispanic students while also penalizing high achieve in Asian and white students. It is likely the future of American higher education, and at the very least, though that was a local story. The one today, though, is worse because it actually affects the entire country, and it too is rooted in inequality of outcome mandate by
the Biden administration. This is a bombshell. News actually came in the form of a very small notice press release from the Federal Housing Finance Agency regulates Fanny May, Freddie Mack and the federal home loan banks. It's agency created after two thousand and eight to ensure another financial collapse doesn't happen. But like all institutions, now they've departed their original mission. I don't now focus on quote equity in housing.
The new rule actually does sound nice. The press release says it aims to increase housing ownership amongst minorities, But it takes a little bit of reading some complicated spreadsheets that they release to get to the truth. The way that they want to increase home ownership amongst minorities is by targeting lower credit score applicants for mortgages. The new rule, through something known is the loan level price adjusted matrix,
will lower fees to those with lower credit scores. Now, how does it lower those fees by increasing them on people with higher credit scores? Under the new rules set to go into effect on May first, for mortgage lenders across those entire countries, buyers with the score ranging from six to eighty to seven eighty will have an increase
in their overall mortgage cost than before. The most insane thing is that buyers who are responsible actually put down fifteen to twenty percent will have the largest increase in fees. Consider someone who has saved up for years. They have paid off their loans, they worked hard, they didn't go out to eat, they drive a crappy car. Let's say that person has a seven to forty credit score is
able to put down fifteen to twenty percent. That person will now face an overall one percent surcharge and fees as compared to the old fee of point twenty five percent. Now put that in perspective, it doesn't sound like a lot. But if you take out a four hundred thousand dollars loan with a six percent mortgage rate, the buyer would then expect their monthly payment to increase by forty dollars per month. Again, you can say that sounds small, forty
dollars over thirty or mortgage is fourteen thousand dollars. Now, say that you have a credit score of under six seventy and you're only putting down five for you, your fees actually get cut in half. Now, once again, this is backwards. A person who is putting down less cash with worse credit is getting basically a thank you from the government. Now even crazier is that this is a moderate proposal actually put forward by the Admin. They have an even worse one that is set to go into
effect in August. The new rule limits fees and considerations of brokers on those who have debt to income ratios of over forty percent. Think for one second, we're talking about making it easier for someone who has a debt to income ration of forty percent to increase the amount of mortgage death that they have. Does that make any sense at all? Or does it sound like a two thousand and eight type disaster where people can't afford homes, get into them anyways, and then we have an overall
collapse where they're later on destitute. I want people to understand this. I am not being callous. I believe it is a crime. Many poor people in this country don't have a fair shake and don't have access to homes, and it manifests in a lot of racial ugliness.
The way to.
Solve that is not to penalize responsible home buyers or simply lift the cap on debt to income ratio. The way is not through this affirmative action nonsense. It's universal policy. The price of a home in the US right now is higher than ever in all major metropolitan areas, over five hundred thousand dollars. That's a problem for the middle
class and the poor alike. By reducing the cost of building and more starting homes, voila, you made housing cheaper for everyone instead of pitting people against each other on a limited basis. Or maybe that's too ambitious. Let's just look why do poor people have such awful credit in the first place. Maybe it's because a man named Joe Biden, when he was a senator from Delaware, became the greatest
friend of the credit card industry in Congress. Loosen regulation, increased interests, not didn't restrain their marketing tactics, flooded the poor and middle class with junk consumer debt products, and then strip them the ability to file bankruptcy or not even get into it in the first place.
After they lost their job.
You want to fix this, we got to go way deeper than credit scores. We have to nuke the entire system, the profiteers, the barriers for everyone, instead of trying to make rearrange the deck tears on the Titanic and make more equitable. I mean, he said, Crystal, this has sparked a lot of outrage.
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