5/24/23: DeSantis Launches Tonight w/ Elon On Twitter, Debt Bomb Looms, Bankruptcies Spike, TikTok Montana Ban, Fox News Woke Debate, Workers Vs Amazon, Meta Record Fines, Kissinger Revealed

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Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints.

Happy Wednesday, Crystal, we apparently dressed for like a baptism.

Tends totally accidental, but we're we're just already like mind melding on the same waveleg.

Here we're in sync, although we'll probably disagree like nine times out of ten tonight.

Maybe that'ssibly See it's Wednesday.

Crystal feels a little out of sorts in the Counterpoints too, doesn't know what to do with herself.

I am a little confused.

It feels like Sager sort of feels like I'm doing like dream World Breaking Points. Like the set is like a little bit of it's like not quite the right name. The host is a little bit different. But no, I had my kids kindergarten graduation yesterday, so Ryan filled in for me yesterday.

I'm here today, so it all works. I'm happy to be here.

Well, it's a big day.

Lots going on.

We have Ron DeSantis making it official tonight. We've got all kinds of early previews of what the campaign is looking like, the pitch to voters, the pitch to donors, all that good stuff. We also have debt ceiling I don't know that I call them updates, maybe like non.

Updates, updates about the lack of updates.

That's pretty much where we're at.

Yeah.

We also have some new numbers about how much the American people are already not feeling great about the economy, and of course the whole dead ceiling showdown makes that even more precarious. We've got the first state to outrite ban downloads of TikTok, and TikTok is suing to try to push back on That's very interesting debate there.

And Fox News under fire.

This is this one I wanted to talk to you about because I don't have a sense of whether this is like real fallout for or whether this is like a blip on the radar.

But reporter Mary Margaret Olahan.

Revealed their sort of like behind the scenes woke policies with regard to gender identity in particular, and there's a bit of a backlash.

So we will go through all of that.

Lots to talk about.

Well, let's start with the big news of the day, which is that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is going to announce that he's running for president tonight at six pm on Twitter in a conversation with Elon Musk, and I believe David Sachs as well. He's going to be moderating the conversation. Pretty fascinating to DeSantis is going to follow that up with an interview on Fox News with Trey Goudi.

Crystal.

The Twitter move is fascinating. Yeah, just nobody saw that part coming. It had been rumored that DeSantis was going to launch on the twenty fourth on Wednesday, and then it comes out of left field yesterday. He's going to be announcing in a conversation with Elon Musk moderated by David Secks on Twitter. I think we can put the first element up on the screen here. This is this is a video. This is the launch video, part of a launch video that I think this was from yesterday.

Right, yeah, this was from yesterday.

This is shared by his wife as like a little bit of like a please teaser and getting people to text in, like, you know, to sign up for their list.

So let's take a look at what that is.

They call it faith because in the face of darkness, you can see that brighter future of faith that our best days lay ahead of us.

But is it worth the fight?

Do I have the courage?

Is it worth the sacrifice?

America has been worth it every single time.

So that's what we got so far.

Go and put the next piece up because this has some of the details about the Twitter thing. And then I want to get your thoughts and I'll tell you what I think. So they say DeSantis will watch his presential bid with Elon Musk. They're doing that like audio chat thing feature that Twitter has, which I've actually never really used but is popular among a lot of people. He is going to be in that conversation with Musk, moderated by David Sax, who has been very supportive of

Really interesting because he was retweeting Tim Scott's announcement stuff this week too, And I wonder if he partially sees us as a business opportunity.

Now, whether that's better or worse is an entirely fair question.

But is he saying I can use the Republican primary to create intrigue and drive people to Twitter by using it as a platform where.

Some of these debates happen.

So whether he becomes fully on board with the DeSantis team, that I think would be that that would be genuinely like, yes, you're using this platform in a way that's like.

Just your own butt.

But already when you're the one launching the campaign, whether he outright endorses him or not, yeah, of course that's going to raise a lot of questions about like, okay, well, how are you using this influential platform among elites at least in order to help the candidates that you like? And I think that's you know, like, that is a very reasonable question. And we don't have the insights into Twitter or it's not the transparent place that he argued

That piece of it.

The other piece of it, Emily, though, is I just wonder what you think is a political move of DeSantis launching on Twitter because Biden won the Democratic primary and ultimately the general election with a very famous mantra, which is that Twitter is not real life. One of the knocks on DeSantis is that he has trouble like relating to people and just sort of like interpersonal reaction interactions. The other knock on DeSantis is that he's way too online, and.

This is a very it is a very.

Way too online, very insular move, in my opinion, for him to start his campaign this way.

Yeah, I would think it was really like it actually kind of reminds me of something we see on the left a lot, which is just super super online behavior that drives candidates to make questionable decisions.

Right because you're trying to.

Playcate a very particular slice of the public that's actually fairly out of step and like culturally different than the broader public.

So I don't disagree with that at all.

I actually think it's interesting your point about free speech and neutrality and the conservative ambition for Twitter as being a neutral place is fascinating because free speech used to be our standard of what neutrality is. And now conservative see one institution, all the other institutions, YouTube, whatever, aligned against them, and so one institution comes along and flirts and says, I can do even better than just free speech.

And everyone's like, hell yeah.

And it's totally different than what you said, Like it's what you said is exactly right. It's totally different than just a neutral free speech platform, right, and people want that, Conservatives want that, and I think that is to an extent telling, but it also speaks to that like total death inspiration for just something one place that is going to be supportive and is going to let conservatives say what they want, et cetera, et cetera.

That is totally different than free speech.

Yeah, it is, I mean, and there were always like, obviously this was clear if you were looking for the science.

From the beginning.

I always talked about Mike Lindell launched his quote unquote free speech platform, and it was like, but no, taking the lord's name in vain, no cursing, but like it had a very specific set of rules for what he was defining us free speech, and so this has always been about art who's going to have control over the censorship, not really over free speech, because again, any idea that this is really truly a free speech platform, I think is out the window. Let's talk a little bit more

So his pitch to the base and.

Specifically to donors, is if you elect Trump, if he's able to get in there, Number one, I think he's less electable. So if he gets in there, though he's instantly alamed duck, you have to go back to having none of the advantages of incumbency and start from scratch the next time around. Whereas if I get elected, then you're much more likely to have eight years of a conservative in the presidency. So that's part of what he is leaning into in terms of the case he's making.

That's a really good point.

And again this gets into the question you asked about what kind of campaign Rnda Santis is going to run.

I actually think Trump.

Was very line and that's part of the problem in twenty twenty is that, like he gets so in the Twitter bubble, so in the social media bubble. One thing that's interesting is there is a Harris poll this week. It was conducted in mid May. It found that Elon Musk has like relatively high favorability, higher than Trump, higher than Biden.

He's at forty seven percent.

Ron De Santis is in third place at forty five percent in that pole, and then it's Bernie Sanders with forty two percent. So I think there is such like Elon Musk is probably more than just a super online figure.

In the rest of the country.

There are people who genuinely really admire him for reasons we may disagree with encounter, but he is a fairly popular figure nationwide. Obviously just a plurality, not a majority

He's obviously, like.

A lot of his legislation in Florida has made a lot of conservative Twitter very happy.

Right, He's pretty popular in his own state.

But whether or not that translates on a national level a very different question.

What do you think of his electability pitch? Because I see two issues with it. Number One, it's not clear to me. I think donors definitely care about it, no doubt about it, and he's gonna have plenty of money behind him.

That's not going to be an issue.

But it's not clear to be the Republican base that this is anywhere close to their number one priority. The other issue for him, I think with the electability pitch is in that same Harvard Harris poll that you were mentioning, Republican voters are very divided on which one they think between DeSantis and Trump is more likely to defeat Joe Biden. So it's one thing if it's really clear to people like, oh, this is the guy.

If you want to win, this is the guy.

And then you go to that secondary question of okay, but is that the top priority for the Republican base, But they don't see it the way that he sees it.

Right, No, that's a really good point. And here's another we can put a three up. This is another part of his pitch. It's actually kind of echoes of Trump here. Desanta's envisions shaping seven to conservative majority on Supreme Court. That's a Washington Post headline, and so remember how crucial Donald Trump's Supreme Court. His Supreme Court promises were in the twenty sixteen primary and then in the general when you had all of these like never Trump conservatives saying

Here you have DeSantis.

Saying We're going to shape the courts for seven two conservative majority. Obviously, that would be the goal of a Democrat president if they wanted to, if they were in a similar situation, be the goal of any Republican president cident for the most part, unless someone very moderate. But that he is specifically already prioritizing the court is very telling. But that's again you have this question of Donald Trump having about thirty percent of really solid support in the

Yeah, and I think, I mean, and it's not just that he has that solid thirty percent. There's like eighty percent or ninety percent of the Republican Party that's open to voting for him. So he's, you know, in a much stronger position than he was in twenty sixteen. And then you have all of these candidates dividing the field.

They've shown themselves to be really nimble.

You know, in terms of Iowa, that that visit he had recently where Trump pulled out and DeSantis then shows up and kind of it's kind of like a little jab at Trump, and ultimately, you know, the pace of this race could be set in those early states. There's reporting this morning about how they want to use their money to really flood the zone in terms of organizers into Iowa and New Hampshire and the other early state primaries and caucuses. So that's their theory of the case.

Going to be a long primary season and you never know what's going to happen. Emily, you never know what's going to happen.

In my quick final thought on this is that the guy is extremely popular in Florida. That has genuine like generally been a fairly organic He barely won his governor's race against Andrew Gillen.

It was just by a hair he won that race.

He then started, you know, governing in a way that was very alien to a lot.

Of people in the Republican Party.

Has been you know, in the sort of Republican establishment circles, very controversial. Those things that Ron DeSantis has done. But in his state, his popularity is high. He has passed a lot of legislation, and he has a good messaging strategy on that legislation that makes it popular. Where the media says, don't say gay, well, Florida is genuinely split

Yeah, for sure, and we'll be watching closely his announcement tonight. I think Saga and I might jump on into a little instant react, so so stay tuned for that.

Lea Sager worked today on a Wednesday.

Sager is he's NonStop man. He lives in that suit. He's just like throws on the casual clothes over so you can rip him off at any moment and be ready to jump in front of a camera. So he's unstoppable. All right, let's talk about whatever.

We know about the dead ceiling. At this point, as you guys know.

We are hurtling, barreling rapidly towards the supposed drop dead date, which is June first. I'll tell you a little bit more about There are some questions over whether they could push that out further, but we'll get to that in a minute.

For now, let's say June.

First is when you actually run out of money and have to start making choices about what you pay, when you actually go into default, when you have all of these potentially catastrophic consequences that we are all concerned about. So Jake Sherman had some reporting yesterday from an internal Republican House Caucus meeting. He's got some details here about what they are saying amongst themselves. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. Speaker McCarthy just told House Republicans.

Quote.

We are nowhere near a deal yet, very confidence inspiring. He goes on to say, put this next piece up, Colvin, I told the President three things. No clean debt limit, no raising taxes, spend less money. Remember where we were they refused to negotiate. We ow Garrett Graves and Patrick mckenry. They're the ones who've been negotiating a round of applause. They made a mistake. He's talking about the Democrats to

To Democrats.

So they have not only called for you know, in nominal terms, not just accounting for inflation, but in nominal terms, they want spending cuts that makes it, you know, very aggressive cuts. They also want to increase the budget for the military. They want to cut spending to the IRS, which actually puts a further hole in the budget because

Oh, I don't think any way.

But although Mitch McConnell did say yesterday, you know, everybody calmed down, they're gonna come to a deal, which was fairly interesting because the can has really been kicked over to McCarthy. McConnell has really taken a back seat.

Yeah, mccon's like, all right, dude, good luck.

And McConnell was that.

McConnell was out and injured through a lot of this, Yes, in the hospital. He was back in Kentucky because he had a fall. But Kevin McCarthy took the reins on this, and if he were a Democrat, the glowing profiles of how he has held his conference together despite having this insanely slim majority, where people have no incentive really to

Again, this could still blow up in everyone's face.

But I've been scratching my head and trying to figure out why on earth Joe Biden ever came to the table from a purely strategic standpoint, like the moral and ideological questions aside. It makes absolutely no sense that he started negotiating because there is an impasse, bottom line, there's no compromise.

His whole position has been the worst of all worlds in terms of just any sort of trying to get strategic leverage. If you were going to negotiate from the beginning.

Treasury bonds are.

Used to backstop like every big corporate transaction around the world. So this is really dangerous stuff that they're playing with here. And not only that, but Democrats could have lifted the debt sailing on their own back when they had control before they lost the House, and they just didn't do it.

That to me in terms of you.

Know, they can't see three inches in front of their faces, and they were so worried about giving the Republicans and some talking point about like, oh, Democrats love debt, that they've now risked the entire entire global financial economy. I mean, listen, Republicans are the hostage takers, so they're to blame in my view. But Democrats just never are able to strategize effectively and actually get out from under these problems. And I think part of it is not just that they

But you know, I think politicians on.

Both sides sort of like these kinds of crises because they think they can leverage them for their own political end, and it's really grotesque.

So great point, and particularly one thing I think is genuinely worth thinking about if you're sitting at the DNC right now, is how incredibly their advantage with the media has started to become a disadvantage in ways that they don't anticipate. Because if you go back to the Obama years, which are heavy on everyone's mind. You had Dan Fire for writing about it in the New York Times recently.

It did not work out that way, and in large part.

Because the media heavily, heavily, heavily sided with Democrats and on government shutdown stuff.

Average voters hate that.

If you're someone who maybe leans right, votes Republicans sometimes votes Democrats sometimes aren't paying super close attention to the news, what you're going to instinctively hate is the government not working, like things just not happening, people holding stuff hostage for ideological reasons.

You don't care.

You want things to work and you're disappointed when they don't. And so that's a built in disadvantage to being obstructionist, period. Even if there are ideological reasons that justify it. You have a huge, huge problem if you're Republicans. Democrats know that they know that the media is going to take their side at the end of the day.

They know instinctively there's independent voters.

People just really don't like when government stops, and that I think gave them a false sense of confidence that they could basically do whatever they wanted start negotiating. Say, listen,

Well, and here's the other thing.

By Biden caving, he has basically given credence to the Republican claim that the debt is a real issue right now that needs to be dealt with. And that's why you see a lot of pulling that people are like, yeah, we want a debt sealing increase, but with spending cuts. Well, when you have both political parties basically saying like, all right, got it, we should negotiate and we should have some

Chapstick that she won.

Apparently the flavor, according to some in depth reporting here is cherry.

So there you go. That also happened.

Let's put this next piece up on the screen. Manu Raju, this is what I was referring to earlier. Biden tried to add in a provision to the debt talks to expand Medicare's authority to negotiate drug prices. This is one of those things that everybody pretends to be in favor of, but then it never actually happens because of the power of big Pharma, and McCarthy said that seems like a place to try and disrupt the whole negotiations, like trying

Yeah, And you know, I like, actually am ideologically more concerned about Dutton deficit. I think, you know, the financial management of the United States is to find it genuinely problematic. But the things Republicans and Democrats to some extent are

It's none of that. That's not where any of.

This fight has gone. Like ridiculous Pentagon programs. Why aren't they fighting about that stuff?

No, they want to give the Pentagon more money.

Yeah, it's amazing.

Yeah, I mean, how about all of these things We're seeing all these offices like Ken Clippenstein reports on a new one every week that nobody knew existed at the Pentagon, and it just exists to surveil average Americans for the partisan purposes of the intelligence community. Why aren't they picking fights over that that's worth shutting down the government?

Basically, like, if anything is that's worth it, there are just other things that would make so much more sense.

And people who were doing like crunching some numbers RUSS vote as former own B director under Trump put together a budget of things that actually, really I thought were worth fighting over, and I just I'm not hearing much of that on the messaging side. And I think part of that is because when Biden started negotiating, it's just it's an impasse, and you can't if you're actually trying to find legitimate places for compromise.

It's not any of that.

Yeah, no, they took I mean I'm glad they did, but they took Social Security and Medicare off the table, maybe accidentally the Biden State of the Union. And they took the Pentagon off the table, and in fact want to increase funding at the Pentagon.

That doesn't leave a whole lot left.

And so it's like, Okay, you're risking the whole global economy for some blank additional work requirements on SNAP really really. My other question for you, Emily is I have also been surprised that they've been able to keep the Republican Caucus together as well as they have. I was frankly surprised they were able to as easily as they did pass their bill through the House. My question is what happens when the markets crash?

What happens when the.

Wall Street donors start actually freaking out and calling members of the Republican House Caucus. That's when, to me, the rubber sort of hits the road in terms of whether they have any defections and whether they have anyone who's open to say. For example, the discharge petition that Democrats are floating where you need five Republicans to sign on

So do you think that you could have cracks.

Emerged there in the unity of the Republican Caucus when if and I would say it's more likely to when you have a massive market crash in Wall Street starts to freak.

They're incredibly vulnerable.

I think they're in a better position than they would be under any other potential speaker with Kevin McCarthy, because

He's actually pretty.

Good at a political ran A story last year that was just is Kevin McCarthy dumb?

You remember that headline, Oh my.

Gosh, again, Like he actually is not. He's very good at this, and so if there's any hope of preventing that, it's because of Kevin McCarthy.

But at the same time, there's just not.

A lot of incentive on the Freedom Caucus part to play nice. When the rubber meets the road and Kevin McCarthy's getting calls from Wall Street donors, people are freaking out. That's where things, you're right, are going to get really tough because the Freedom Caucus is not.

Beholden to those people.

It's not beholden to the same sort of corporate donor set, especially not now.

Yeah, past, Well, you have the Freedom Caucus group, which benefits personally, you know, in terms of their like grassroots and online support. The more strident they are, yes, right, the more extreme, the.

More willing to blow things up they are.

Then you have this new crop of Republicans elected in districts that Joe Biden won in places like New York, and their incentives are very different, right, They want to get reelected, they want to show to their districts. I'm different than those crazy people on the type of like reasonable Republican who just wants some fiscal responsibility in this joint and so they you know, if you do have that kind of crash, those disparate incentives may come to

Put this up on the screen from Jeff.

He's got a scoop that Treasury has asked US agencies if any payments can be made at a later date.

As the deadline nears.

According to an internal memo that was obtained by the Washington Post, Biden aids are searching for new ways to prolong the X date beyond existing measure. Sources say, so the X date right now is June one, and the idea here, Emily is if they can actually push out till June fifteen, there's a bunch of quarterly tax payments that will flow into government coffers, then they would be able to stay alive for a while longer and push this off even further down the road. Now, it's the

Despite the attention to.

Legally novel arguments around minting the coin and the fourteenth Amendment, there's a key, separate set of options, also likely controversial, to simply delay the date rather than simply end the standoff.

As those ideas do.

And he puts in parentheses, don't you love the idea of doing this for longer? I think Jeff is also set to get married, so I'm sure he would love having to follow this while he's, like, you know, on his wedding day and on his honeymoon whatever. But anyway, there's a lot of technical questions whether they can actually do this because there's government regulations about like, hey, you got to like pay your bills on time federal government,

They're just going like full Jackson Pollock, like throwing things onto the canvas, seeing what it looks like. No, I mean, it's like, I actually think that's arguably the worst approach is saying we have this potential stop gap, we can keep kicking it down, because that's again what they did from last year.

They could have done this last year. It's easier.

You Actually, they have a recess coming up that might have to be abridged if they end up needing to come back to DC and vote on negotiations. As silly as that sounds, that is a motivation for members of Congress would be.

Shocked to learn they don't. You like to have that stuff interrupted.

So all of those things going on, I mean, the incentive to not figure this out and make a decision, whether it's saying we're at an impass, we can't compromise, we're going this way or that way, the incentive to do that sooner.

Rather than later is really important because.

Otherwise, I think that's where you get into a dangerous situation. If you can't figure it out now, you're not going to figure it out in two weeks. I mean, it's just going to continue to get worse, and whatever deal you come to is going to continue to get worse in the next two weeks. I think there's a little measure of truth to what Mitch McConnell says that, like something's going to get done, it's probably going to be

But you know, crazier things have happened.

I guess the host of Celebrity Apprentice was our president for.

I remember that.

I remember that things can things can spiral. But all that is to say, if you keep punting, you're going to further lose your ability to do something that actually makes sense, because if you can't do it now, you're.

Not going to do it.

I agree with you. You kind of need the force.

And nothing happens in DC until there's a hard deadline, and you kind of need the forcing mechanism and all. So, I mean, we're abots to talk about the economy. Like the longer that this hangs over everybody, I think, the worse it is all the way around. So let's go ahead and move on to that next part, because you know, we're talking about the potential catastrophic economic fallout if we do have a default, which I think is totally on

A good place to sit.

Let's put this next piece up on the screen, which is more specifically about the economy. You have again sixty two percent saying that they think the economy is weak today. And it's interesting because, of course you you have low unemployment numbers, you have a tight labor market, but because you have high inflation that's eating into a lot of people's wages and making very difficult for people just to get by month to month. You have people feeling, you know,

Now.

If you're an incumbent president, that is the last thing you want to see. Especially Biden actually plans on running hound how great the economy is. So when you have a majority people saying, actually, things are getting worse for me, and only I believe that's twenty five percent that say things are actually getting better. So one quarter of the country is like, yeah, things are going good for me, and everyone else is like, h this is really kind

So Emily, you know, in my mind, there's.

Two pieces here that I think are really important, as I pointed out in terms of Democrats and being able to hold onto the White House with Joe Biden, you know, as their standard bearer that they want to anoint once again, and he wants to run on how great a job he's done with the economy. These numbers do not seem to give him back up there. And then there's just the actual reality that people are struggling. They feel like

One of the things in the poll I think is really interesting when the question asked about the state of the economy being strong or weak. The changes over just the last several months are massive. It was like thirty percent at the beginning of the year if people said the economy was weak, and now it's at sixty two percent. As you pointed out, that's a very quick and very dramatic change.

And again here's we can put C two up.

Jamie Diamond has been talking about all kinds of things per usual, but here he says, this is a CNBC headline, Jamie Diamond warrens souring commercial real estate loans could threaten some banks. Actually, in the same article it quotes Diamond talking about how you should expect probably.

More rate hikes.

That's pretty interesting because if anybody's in a position to know whether or not we should be expecting more rate hikes, it'd be Jamie Diamond. And so when people's personal financial situations are worsening.

Oh boy, people are right.

Things are getting worse for them and they will continue to get worse for them likely.

Yes, And there are huge storm clouds hanging over and already we economy, not only with the debt sealing, but as Jamie Diamond, who's basically king now after all of these like bank bailouts and his bank just becoming larger and larger and larger National Bank. Yeah, that's why we have to pay attention to what he says, because all of these politicians we talk about, Jamie Diamond is actually more powerful than all of them put together at this point.

So he's pointing to something that's.

Very real here, though, that I really want to keep our eye on, in terms of the commercial real estate bubble. And this is something I did a monologue on a while back, because Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's longtime partner, is saying the same thing that there's huge problems in terms of the commercial real estate market.

Why because people after.

The pandemic, you know, you have hybrid work schedules that people are really enjoying, and so you just don't have office workers at the office the way that you did and you probably never will again. It's very difficult to convert office space to you know, residential space or anything else which we could really use because on the other hand, housing is wildly out affordable because you have very low stock of housing to work with.

But it's very difficult to convert that.

Oh and so in the meantime, there are projections you could see commercial real estate values dropping by forty percent, and you have a lot of the commercial real estate debt coming due in half of it is coming due in just the next two years. So this is a huge cloud overhanging the economy. It's like something has to give here, because when you have real estate values dropping

Not only do you have this looming.

Potential catastrophe of valuations plummeting because of what the FED is doing, and also because of you know, changing office work habits and routines. You also have some indications here that banks are routinely overstating the value of commercial real estate. And for those of you who remember how it all went down with the housing crisis, what happened is you had these inflated values for personal residential mortgages and then

And that article from Ryan and John Schwartz is from twenty twenty one, so obviously with the pandemic still in motion, and that was the if we should have started paying attention to this at any time.

It was all the way back then.

And now you have Jamie Dimond talking about it, obviously, but this is something that under Joe Biden, I mean, we were talking about the debt negotiations in the last segment, and how Republicans actually want to gut Biden's cornerstone achievement,

Yeah, I mean, it used to be this like fringe theory that corporations were using the excuse of inflation to hike prices, and now increasingly even mainstream sources are having to be like, yeah, y'all kind of had a.

Point about that.

I mean, they were exactly like, they're literally admitting it on their earnings call, and you're like, y'all are crazy, They're not doing that.

It's like, of course they are. Of course they are. That's what they do.

And to your point, Emily Biden has a lot of tools, even just rhetorical tools, to call out the behavior and call the carpet corporate price gougers, but he hasn't gone in that direction whatsoever. And so instead they've used the very blunt instrument of the FED hiking rates in hopes that that will, you know, crush the economy and crush ordinary workers, et cetera, when it really is not a tool effectively designed. It's not going to deal with corporate

Top of it. That's right.

Yeah, nobody needs us to tell them that, but they're not being served well by the political or corporate class. So some happy news to deliver on this Wednesday morning. Yes, all right, let's move on to news out of Montana, actually, where the first TikTok ban is being challenged.

By TikTok itself.

You'll be shocked to learn we can put the first element up on the screen here from the Wall Street Journal. They report that TikTok is suing Montana over their new ban of the social media platform. They're actually challenging it on a constitutional basis. Here's more from the Journal. The suit was filed Monday in the US District Court of Montana, and it alleges that the ban violates the First.

Amendment other laws. The case was brought.

Against the state's attorney General, who is the person that was tasked by the law with enforcing the band. Now that ban is not set to go into place until January first. This is a little sentence in the journal report quote it is unclear how it will be in force. That is true, it is unclear how it will be enforced the law. This is more from the journal. It's saying that it's banning byteedance from quote operating in the state and app stores such as Googles and Apples.

That is pretty interesting, and.

It says any entity violating the law will be fined ten thousand dollars a day, while individual TikTok users will not be punished. Now, a group of TikTokers actually sued the attorney general last week over the ban.

They have all kinds of followers.

They say that it's unconstitutional, violates the First Amendment and other laws. TikTok is also saying that it's not within Montana's purview to actually enact a ban based on national security concerns, because that's a exclusively the federal government's right with foreign entities. That's something that is not at the

So on two points there you.

Have a lot of professors saying the Montana ban is vulnerable. The first point being the First Amendment speech questions. The second point being if you're doing this on national security grounds as a state, it's constitutionally shaky ground as well. Now totally against TikTok for a number of reasons. Whether a state ban is the way to handle it is a separate question whether something needs to be done.

Yeah, I was wondering about that because it you know, for you, I was wondering what your thoughts were.

In my opinion.

You know, I have a lot of concerns about obviously privacy, not only when it comes to TikTok, but when it comes to all of these social media platforms. That's number one. There's a lot of civil liberties violations there. In my opinion, there's also increasing research, including dire warning from the Surge in general, about the impact of over use of social media on mental health, and especially mental health of young people. I have a fifteen year old. I see this like

I think that that.

You know, I don't know whether it's going to end up being legal.

I couldn't tell you.

I'm not a legal analyst, but in terms of whether I think it's the right to approach or not, I would say, now, what goes too far.

Doing it on the state level is really interesting too, because there are pretty clear national security reasons to target TikTok to say, like, obviously, we have a problem here because Americans data is being sucked up by a country that's posturing as a hostile foreign power, and it just doesn't make sense to be hoovering up all the data with really no concern, really no safeguard, because even TikTok says with Project Taxes, which is their delivery of American

That question is.

Not solved by Project Texas whatsoever, despite TikTok's repeated assurances that this is the answer to the problem. But that's again, it's a federal question. That's clearly a federal question, not a state based question. Utah actually just banned access to Pornhub. Did you follow that at all a little bit?

I saw UTAH was doing a lot in terms of also providing parents with like access to their kids, you know, social media accounts. They're they're doing a lot over there, which I also have like sort of complicated feelings about. And I don't think any of this breaks down along easy partisan lines because.

Although Democrats are allowing it.

To, there's a lot of there's a lot of tricky principles in conflict when you talk about these. I mean, the other thing that struck me about the Montana band that I was kind of surprised about is I didn't think that you could just directly target one company. So

And some of this is the normal, like using the state level as the laboratory of democracy. And maybe there's a novel legal theory that's going to be put to the test in court over this, where there's there's some provision in Montana state law, or there's some provision that's been tested, there's some Supreme Court ruling that could apply and protect Montana's ban, and that's all going to be tested and tried, and maybe we'll learn some interesting things through this legal back and forth.

Yeah, that's fair.

Yeah, I just this is a huge problem because it's not just going to be TikTok to your point, it's also American companies that are exporting and we're going to talk about this a little later in the show. Some heavy surveillance tools to other countries that other countries aren't cool with in the same way that Pontana's not cool with it, and that the United States. A lot of

All that stuff is not good.

So I think the instinct to take action against TikTok is understandably.

More urgent than the other companies. But if you're not starting to.

Target the other companies, I don't know if I can take it seriously.

Yeah, there are all sorts of products that we regulate because of our concern over their harm to kids, in particular whose brains are still forming This is a like brave new world we're in where not only is it social media, but the way that it's not accidental that these things are addictive. They are engineered to be addictive. They are engineered to keep you on their platforms as long as possible, even.

Though this is to keep you angry and to keep that's I was gonna mention that. I mean, that was one of.

The interesting revelations from the whole like Facebook file thing that came out was that they saw that people liked their product less but stayed on it longer. Yeah, why when they amped up the anger and the rage content, They're like, people find this to be a worse experience, but they stay longer, and that's all we care about. And you can bet it's not just Facebook that is

And that's why even like most libertarians are not in favor of legalizing heroin, you like the hardcore ones are, but like free markets don't work when a product is intentionally addictive because there's no market incentive for somebody who's addicted to the product to stop using the product. It's not a pure free market experiment if you're being becoming

It's so much worse than that your personal life.

It's like, Okay, yeah, you get addicted to go out for a smoking break. Well, guess what, now you're addicted because every time you get a call, it could be the worst call of your life, it could be the best call of your life. And so you have an INCENTI to keep this on you and to think about it mentally. There's research on just how having a phone in your vicinity change is the function.

Of your brain.

Interesting.

It's crazy stuff, and we're I think obviously too slow to come around on it.

We're just scratching the service.

And it gives an.

Excuse for Republicans and Democrats to put legislation like the restrict Act on the table that just gives them more surveillance powers. Whenever there's bipartisan agreement on something, there's danger for bipartisan corruption. So it's a complicated set of problems that we have shown like very little ability to deal with.

Yes, Indeed, speaking.

Of complicated problems, let's move on to the next segment. Crystal has twisted my arm and forced me to talk about there's an excellent report from Mary Margaret Olahan over at the Daily Signal that is a publication that is run by.

The Heritage Foundation.

Mary Margaret, we can put the first element up here, that would be E one reports that Fox News employees are allowed to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity rather than their biological sex, and permitted to dress in alignment with their preferred gender.

She also goes on to.

Quote a former producer for Tucker Carlson Tonight who says, Fox wants you to think it's a place that supports traditionally conservative values, but in reality, they're pushing this nonsense behind the scenes.

She also says that they were.

She mentions that they use preferred pronouns on the website. That's actually in accordance, by the way, with ap style. The Associated Press. In their style guide, which most newspapers and publications follow around the country. You know, if your Gannett certainly follows it, so your local Gannett paper, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Or wherever it is, they're going to follow ap style guide.

So every locality in the country was changed by this decision. I think it was back in twenty seventeen, like before, a lot of the country was on this issue to use preferred pronouns, and that applied basically around the country for publications and was I think part of where this clash came from.

Now. A source who still works at Fox News told.

Mary Margaret Olahan the Daily Signal that after Talker Carlson Show was canceled in April, producers for the APM Fox News Tonight program, we're told not to bash mulvaney. That directive came from high level executives, the source said, when we're referring to.

Mulvany, that would be Dylan mulvaney.

And all of this was unfolding as the bud Lights saga was unfolding as well. Regarding Dylan Mulvaney. There's more here from Fox's corporate handbook. They're citing the Human Rights Campaign and going into the whole like the full gender identity and sex are the same thing. And once you sort of accept that premise, you go to bathrooms, to locker rooms and all kinds of different places, which is

You know, someone made a really good point.

I think it was my colleague Edtty Scary made a really good point basically that if you do this in conservative media, this is giving up one of the biggest platforms that you if you if you criticize Fox especially with reporting like this, it is it is basic. You're signing a death warrant with Fox, which traditionally has been

So it's funny.

The week before Tucker Carlson got yanked off the air on Federalist Radio Hours having a conversation saying, like the litmus test for conservative media should be whether or not people are willing to criticize Fox News, like you know that you can trust a conservative publication if they're willing to be critical Fox News, because that takes a lot of guts on the right, because you have a hard

Indeed, that's a big deal.

So this report is a really big deal I think because conservatives.

It gave them, like Mott Walsh, an opportunity.

He's quoted in the report being like, listen, Fox is just like every major media corporation. I had heard revelings of all of this stuff for years, Like people had been privately griping about that for years, some of those for years. So that this suddenly is surfacing post Tucker, as we can put the next element up E two.

The ratings are cratering in that hour. This is from the rap. Since Tucker's surprise ouster from Fox News just over three.

Weeks ago, viewership on the cable news channel has cut in half, cut in half, and where are those people going?

Oddly enough, they're going over to Newsmax.

Newsmax ratings are up which, again a year ago, would be unthinkable that Newsmax is competing with CNN. That they're competing with these these giants is fairly remarkable. So this is basically a panic type situation for Fox at this point.

Yeah.

So I have also a lot of thoughts about this. I mean, obviously I have no issue what's itwever with the policy. I think it's appropriate. I think adults should be able to do what they want to do with their lives, and if they have a pronoun they want to use, it's different from the sex they wors at birth. I have no problem with that whatsoever. So my personal views, I think there's a few things here. Number one, this

So because he's trying to get out of his contract. Remember, in order to do his Twitter show, he needs to get out of the contract, right, So they're not letting him out, and he's saying, you let me out or I'm going to blow.

I'm going to embarrass you, I'm gonna blow the place up. Yeah, exactly, exactly right. So I think that's that's probably where this leak comes from, which is interesting in and of itself. Another piece here is that I do think there is something there in terms of, you know, Fox News anchors, they portray themselves as sharing the values of their mostly sort of like heartland conservative viewing base. Meanwhile, these are multimillionaires living in New York and DC.

They're Manhattan liberals.

Yeah, and so this is you know there there is like showmanship going into that on air caricature and the minute you pull the mask off. I do think that that is an issue for Fox if you have widespread realization within their viewing audience that like, oh, these people are just putting on a show for me, Like behind the scenes, the way they're actually acting is very different from the values they're pretending to support on air. That's

But in terms of these individual instances.

What they're betting on is basically, like in one of these reports, somebody out right said this, like our audience is really old and they don't know how to go anywhere else. Like they actually will struggle to like figure out where news Max is on the channel, let alone go on Twitter to see DeSantis in e laon Musk, or go over the Daily Wire, be able to figure out like this is their habit. They're old, they're set

No.

Yeah, they Fox had a bigger built in hedge than a lot of the other cable networks because they had a huge like their audience was basically double the size their permanent audience.

But obviously, sadly this is you know.

It's a blunt way to put it, but it has been slowly dying off and that, but that would have lasted them longer just because it was a bigger kind of part minute base than the other cable news networks CNN, MSNBC, who are also actively like infuriating some part of that permanent audience.

That was fleeing. But that said, you know, you live.

Outside DC, and it's to me, like there's times when things on Fox News just feel like what Nashville does to country music, which is like, do people actually behave the way that these ridiculous corporate written country songs.

Right about them?

No, you have a bunch of dumb ass rich Nashville country music executives who put people in a writer's room and make them come up with like redneck mad libs and wrote it into a song that they put a hip hop beat on and it sounds stupid and it's exactly what they're do time I do too, I.

Need to myself a conversation because they're really good.

They're really good at making like catchy music, but like the picture that it that it represents, Like sometimes it's like people who have actually no idea what happens in rural America and they're just like guessing. They're like, yep, Crown Royal in the bed of a Ford pickup and everybody's like half naked at the river And does that

I don't know, and it's sort of something that's always bothered me.

Well.

I think one of the things that came out to me in the Dominion discovery was a level of contempt from the host towards their own audience, where they felt like they thought a certain way about Sidney Powell about stop the steal about Donald Trump, you know, Tucker saying like he hated him and he's a demonic force and whatever, but they didn't feel like their audience could handle that. They felt like their audience were like a bunch of rubes that just needed to be like served whatever red

And I think it is.

I think there is a potential damage to them from having the mass pulled off and people really starting to look at them rather than seeing them as these like authentic voices of conservatism, as people who are getting rich off of them living in Manhattan, living in DC and not really sharing their values, lifestyle or culture. So to me, that's you know, do I think that this particular like blow up over the you know, pronoun policy within Fox is going to blow over.

Yes, But the more that.

You have these pieces add up where it's like, you know, you all are really not what you're representing to us, I think that is kind of an existential issue because in the current media landscape, authenticity is everything feeling like you're getting the real deal from people, feeling like even if you know, maybe you disagree with them on an issue, like they're really telling.

You what they think.

I think that's like the most valuable commodity and they are kind of squandering that.

So that's interesting because one of the things I picked up on from those text messages is.

Sort of the opposite.

I think I see what you're saying, like the Trump thing in particular, does bother me because you see that from a lot of people, especially a lot of like electric Republicans here in DC, saying one thing publicly about Trump and another thing privately. Yeah, actually does bother me because they think that their voters can't handle like nuance when it comes to Trump.

Right.

But Tucker and I think Laura to some extent Laura Ingram were frustrated by Fox News executives who they saw, you know, trying to manipulate voters and trying to, you know, do things that they were uncomfortable with they felt their audience would be uncomfortable with. Tucker was saying it's not fair to the audience, and a couple of text messages, and then he also was saying from a purely business perspective, it doesn't make sense.

Yeah, well that's the thing they were worried about, like the ratings and the business and like their the value of their stockholdings.

That's not concern for the audience.

That's like, you know, again, it's a level of inauthenticity, like this is my bottom line is my bottom line, and this is a problem for me.

Talker had a couple of times where he said that it wasn't it was he was actually saying like our audience thinks.

This is bs like blah blah blah, where he was.

Saying can actually but the motivations clearly their business motivations involved. I personally think that Tucker was like very very frustrating, just from things that I've heard, was very very frustrated with the Fox executive volile and some of that.

Like leaked out over it.

And the other thing that I thought was interesting about the story to your point about the adults versus kids thing before we wrap, is that this is in accordance. Basically, the Fox News is aligned with New York City's Human Rights law, which a lot of people probably remember was pasted sort of controversially a few years ago. But it actually requires employers, as mary market rights to use the names, pronouns, and titles with which a person identifies, regardless of their

Yeah.

I mean, Liz, honestly, I disagree with your views on these issues, but I do think conservatives have tried to, at least initially frame their concerns is just about protecting the kids, and oh it's very clear, yeah, very clear that that is not the case. That they also are worried about adults who are living their lives and want to transition. And we've already seen legislation and talking about you know, state compulsion. Are you've seen legislation coming in

Yeah.

No, I think that's a totally fair point.

So I've got some happy news for all of you, a few different pieces of this with regards to the labor movement. Let's start with the big corporate behemoth Amazon. Let's put this up on the screen from the New York Times. They have a new report about how, even in places where they don't have unions, Amazon workers have really found effective ways to garner concessions from this company.

So that was the main piece.

There are a couple of other stories that I just wanted to highlight. There was a successful effort to unionize bus makers down.

In Georgia and rural Georgia.

Put this next piece up on the screen. So this is a bluebird. They make a lot of school buses and they voted overwhelmingly this workforce s ninety seven to four to thirty five to organize with the United steel Workers.

Right, We're going to be talking about something very niche section seven oh two.

I'm excited, you know.

Section seven h.

Two is something that the American left is very familiar with and has been very familiar with for a long time because it's something that came out of the Snowden revelations.

And it's an interesting story.

Because just this week I saw a headline and we can put this up on the screen.

This is E one.

This is from the Associated Press Meta find record one point three billion dollars in order to stop sending European user data to the US.

What does that sound like.

It sounds a little bit like America's complaints about TikTok, doesn't it those questions about how user data is sent back to Beijing.

Now, of course, in this situation it's a little bit different because we're generally allied with the European Union.

But it raises a really interesting question about American exports. And obviously, I think to people who have concerns, you know Section seven oh two. As much as it's been an issue on the left because of Snowden, there are a lot of libertarians on the right that have followed Section seven oh two for years very closely as well.

So these concerns are very legitimate.

But you can understand why one, people in the United States are concerned about how their own data is being used by their own government, let alone how American companies that export that business model of surveillance capitalism that we pioneered here in the United States over to other countries

So that's yeah.

Section it's actually part of the Foreigner Intelligence Surveillance Act. It lets the NSA, this is from Fox News intercept communications of foreign terrorist or espionage suspects that pass through US telecom and internet companies. But the tool also vacuums up data about American citizens living in the US, for instance,

Part of this. When does it start hurting American businesses? Because you know, we can put E two.

This is the Fox News article that talks about the political concerns with Section seven oh two.

Again, that's from this week.

The timing here is so perfect because of the excess spying that Yeah, so this is the FBI that tracked a truly insane amount of abuse of the program two hundred and seventy eight thousand violations in twenty twenty and early twenty twenty one.

By the FBI.

They're supposed to follow particular procedures that were not followed when they start spying on people. Two hundred and seventy eight thousand violations. Two hundred and seventy eight thousand, I mean, just an astounding level of abuse.

So you have that, But also we put E three up.

This is the real thing that maybe this can entice Republicans. This is a graph that shows it might be listed as F three. But this is a graph that shows the tech industry in the US as the percentage of GDP. So it's about ten percent of our economy right now. It's a huge swath of our economy and only growing.

Get on the right side of the debate.

I'm never optimistic about any of this, but if anything could do at Crystal, I think maybe it's that one point three billion dollar fine.

Yeah, is that the best help. We're joined now by Nick Terurse.

He's a contributing writer over at The Intercept and also the author of the book Kill Anything That Moves The Real American War in Vietnam.

Nick, thank you for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me on.

Nick is the author of a stunning but not surprising new series of reports over in the intercept about Henry Kissinger and Vietnam. Again I say stunning but not surprising, is called Kissinger's Killing Fields. This is based on new information and that's one of the most I think interesting aspects of it. We think we basically know everything about what happened at that time, and we think that is

Thanks for having me on. I think the key takeaways here that Kissinger is responsible for more civilian deaths in Cambodia than was previously known. And this is according to an exclusive archive of US military documents that I assembled and also interviews with seventy five Cambodian witnesses and survivors

Pick up with that, just give people a little bit of a history lesson of what we were even doing in Cambodia.

In the first place.

And to your point about Henry Kissinger's involvement here, why is this still relevant today?

Basically, Richard Nixon was elected took office as president in nineteen sixty nine, promising to end the Vietnam War, to achieve peace with honor, as he put it. But really what Kissinger did and what Nixon did, and Kissinger was really the architect of the war policy there was to expand the Vietnam War into Laos further than it had been, but also notably to Cambodia. Kissinger came up with a plan, engineered a secret bombing of Cambodia. Ironically, the secret bombing

Yeah, and just to get to the title of the series, Kissinger's Killing Fields. You have transcripts of his calls as part of one of the series. As an article on some of his calls that you say reveal his calpability.

It's helpful to kind of, I think.

Nail down exactly why this is pinned to Kissinger himself. You just explained some of it, but could you get into a little bit about what we know when it comes to how Kissinger himself is the architect of this death and destruction.

Definitely, Kissinger had a really hands on role here. He was the national security advisor for Richard Nixon, and there hasn't been a national security advisor before or since that's had the type of sway that he had. He was really co president in a way for a policy war policy in Southeast Asia. Kissinger actually picked targets for bombings. The secret bombing that was carried out. There would be a kernel from the Pentagon who came to Kissinger office.

Nick, you talk about how when you went and interviewed people in Cambodia who lost relatives, loved ones, are still dealing with this trauma, that they were sort of shocked that there was an American that even knew about it, that cared about it, that cared enough to come and interview them and write a whole series on what you were able to uncover. What does it say about the US?

Yeah, I mean I was always umbled by the response of my Cambodian interviewees there and uh and that the trauma that they experience was it was palpable. And the interviews and the documents really demonstrate a consistent disregard for Cambodian lives, a failure to detect and protect civilians, UH, to conduct post strike assessments, UH, to investigate civilian harm allegations, to prevent such damage from reoccurring, and to punish or hold accountable US personnel from the field all the way

I'm really fascinated by how little we knew at the time of what was going on and how much we continue to learn about it, because i think it speaks to how that the sort of Pentagon has taken that as a permission slip to continue acting that way. As you say, Nick, that it extends into Afghanistan or wars in the Middle East. So that's my question here, is just the intentional or strategic targeting of villages as you're

Particularly in nik Long. This was an accidental bombing that occurred in nineteen seventy three through sheer carelessness and disregard a full bobbload from a B fifty two Strata Fortress thirty thirty tons of high explosives opt on this Cambodian town. It was reported that at the time, it was known that hundreds were killed or wounded, and the US actually

Yeah, I think that is really well said. I very much encourage people to read through the whole report exactly for the reason that you're stating. If there is no accountability for those past crimes, that are just going to continue. We see it in for example, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, just going to thrown strike and aid workers has pretended to pretend, you know, tried to pretend he was isis K, even after reporters uncovered that they blew up this man

Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it.

Yeah, it's our pleasure.

You can read nixt story in the intercept you can also go get his book kill anything.

That moves Crystal.

Kind of a somber note to end the show on, but a really important one for the reason you just said, this just happened. The strategy is, you know, don't ask permission, ask forgiveness, but then they just don't even do the ask forgiveness part because they cover it up and don't pay out when they're supposed to.

Yep, that's exactly right, Emily. Thank you for having me today.

Thank you for being here. Actually, Crystal, you're going to be back next week.

Yeah, you're stuck with me again next week. So Ryan and I being parents, both have all this like end of school year stuff going on, so I think he's got some of that to take care of next week. So I'll be doing breaking points and counterpoints next week, so full week for me.

I'm looking forward to it. We'll see everybody back here next Wednesday. And Crystal, we'll see you what tomorrow?

Yeah, there, you're.

Gonna get a lot of Crystal.

That line would rob my head around that. Yes, I will be back here tomorrow.

All right, We'll see you then,