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We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have prisol.
Indeed we do.
We have the very latest on that search for the missing Titan submersible, So we will break all of that down for you, the story that has truly captivated the nation, I think for a lot of reasons.
We also have some updates with.
Regards to our relationship with China, their plans to operate in Cuba, President Biden calling she dictator after what seemed to be a fairly successful visit between Tony Blincoln and his counterpart in China's will break all of that down for you. Also, pretty bombshell and weird situation with Justice Alito. So ProPublica published some information about him flying on private jet of a billionaire who ended up having business before the court. He preempted their report with his.
Own Wall Street journal.
I'll ed very odd situation, very troubling situation, a lot of ways, So we'll break that down for you. We also have another very troubling situation with test scores for teenagers falling off a cliff during the pandemic, still suffering from learning loss, still taking account of what exactly happened with all of that. Also new elon Musk fight now he's saying that people who use the terms CIS or CIS gender as a slur could be banned from the platform, mister free speech.
Interesting direction from him.
Also excited to talk to you, Matt Steller today about the FTC sewing Amazon over some deceptive technique that they use to try to get and keep customers in their prime service, which is sort of key to their whole.
Monopoly grip on power.
Before we get to any of that, though, we are getting mighty close to a million subs on YouTube. Do you have the official count sager for us as of this moment?
Stop the count for now?
Actually no, it's.
I got the live count up in front of me exactly nine to nine one two oh nine subscribers. That's where we're at. So we need to get to a million people.
As of eight oh five am on Thursday, June twenty second. And as you guys know, as we mentioned before, Sager is going out of the country very soon. He is doing a wedding ceremony in India for his relatives, my grandparents, and it would be a beautiful send off and wedding present for Sager if we could get to a million subs before he leaves, because it would be kind of awkward.
It would be weird if.
You were out of the country when we actually hit the milestones.
I think it would be sad.
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I've been admiring Kyle's I like the way that it looks.
I want to put my hands on it, the tactile feeling and all of that both.
Why don't we get to the show?
Yes, indeed, so we wanted to start with the very latest on the search for the titan submersible. As you guys, I'm sure no. At this point, five individuals who were basically tourists going down to view the Titanic wreckage, they lost contact with the mothership. We have no idea exactly what happened, and so the very latest we have this morning is search teams deployed remote controlled vehicles deep into
the North Atlantic. Experts are saying today is going to be a critical day in the search and rescue mission, as the subs life support supplies are starting to run low. And the reason today is so critical is because when the company lost contact with this submersible, they said they would have, you know, a limited supply of oxygen, and basically today is the day that that oxygen is expected
to run out. And when you consider, you know, assuming this thing is still intact, assuming that people are still alive, which I think is a big question.
Mark to start with.
Even if you located them now, of course, it would take time to bring them back up to the surface. So these are really critical moments. And producer Griffin just tells us that the Coastguard is now saying they expect everyone aboard to be deceased.
Well, they say they believe you have been run out of oxygen. Unfortunately that was just breaking this morning. So yeah, it's very sad. There's been a lot nation has truly been captured Crystal by this submersible, and you know, there's actually quite we were thinking, like we cover this, you know outside of just like the I guess tawdry details, I suppose, Yeah, but the truth is is that there's actually a lot to say around regulation, around the way
that these companies operate. It also applies to people like Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos, the Virgin Atlantic who you know, you know, to star Starlink or sorry, to a SpaceX's credit. Like they're focusing on NASA and the space program, like Blue Origin, Virgin Atlantic and many of these other services, their entire mission is just shooting rich people out into space. This is effectively the same thing except going deep underground.
And well, you know, whenever it comes to these international coveents around submersibles and the way that this technology, you know, that is governed, we've actually learned quite a bit and it's not great unfortunately.
I mean, apparently it's basically the wild wild Yes, I mean, the SpaceX thing is is an interesting point because they did just have kind of a catastrophe in terms of, you know, they used a launch pad that wasn't ready in time the way that Elon wanted.
It to be, but he went forward with it.
There was massive there was clouds of ash and soot and whatever. So I think there's a lot of questions there about some coziness between regulators and between the billionaires and company executives. But to be specific to this one, some of the details that have come out about the way that this submersible was constructed. Are really shocking, and there were a lot of warnings in advance that this was not remotely prepared to go as deep to the depths of the bottom of the ocean where the Titanic
is located. So there was a news report I think it was about a year ago where journalists for CBS actually went on one of these trips. And so you get a glimpse inside of this submersible and how it's really cobbled together with low budget, off the shelf components. Just take a look at a little bit of that report.
An experimental submersible vessel that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma, or death.
Where do I sign?
Oh, take your shoes off, that's customary.
Okay, Wow, Inside the sub has about as much room as a minivan.
So this is not your grandfather's submersible.
We only have one button.
That's it.
It should be like an elevator, you know, it shouldn't take a lot of skill.
The titan is the only five person sub in the world that can reach Titanic depths two point four miles below the scene. It's also the only one with a toilet sort of. And yet I couldn't help noticing how many pieces of this sub seemed improvised.
We can use these off the shelf components. I got these from Camper World. We run the whole thing with this game controller.
Come on.
So the individual that he is interviewing there, that the journalist is interviewing there is the CEO of the company that built the submersible. And I mean, and it's a classic story of human hubris. He thought he didn't need to get this thing classed, He didn't need to get evaluated and actually like certified to the depths that they.
Wanted to take.
People thought he could cut corners in all these ways and save on costs to make.
The trip quote unquote more affordable.
I suppose tickets were still two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Why would you want to cut corners on safety when this is such an incredibly dangerous activity, And you know, you get a sense of his thinking also in this same report, Let's take a listen to how he justified some of the decision making.
It seems like this submersible has some elements of mcgivory.
Jerry rignus.
I mean, you're putting construction pipes as ballasts.
I don't know if i'd use that description of it, but there's certain things that you want to be buttoned down. So the pressure vessel is not mcgivert at all, because that's where we work with Boeing in NASA and the University of Washington. Everything else can fail, your thrust can go, your lights can go, You're still going to be safe.
I'm the king of the surface vessile.
There's a limit, you know.
At some point safety just is pure waste.
I mean, if you just want to be safe, don't get out of bed, don't get in your car, don't do anything.
At some point you're going to take some risk.
And it really is a risk reward question.
I said, I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.
I think I could do this just as safely by breaking the rules. And basically the justification, and you know, it's expected that the CEO was also a board and has likely lost his life on this submersible as well, But basically the justification Zager was like, Oh, these regulators they're too slow, we're too innovative.
They can't keep up with what we're doing.
But it wasn't just the like bureaucratic suits who might have raised some questions here. There was at least one employee who was a whistleblower. There was a slew of experts who unanimously said this is dangerous, this is a terrible idea, but he pushed for it anyway.
Yeah, let' put that up there on the screen where you're referencing, which is that twenty eighteen, there was actually a lawsuit, a safety lawsuit, saying that there was a quote, a potential danger to passengers, and ocean Gate, you know, actually vociferously fought back against it because they fired an employee,
David Lockridge, after he expressed concern about the safety. They actually sued him saying he had breached his employment contract by disclosing confidential information with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration aka OSHA. What they said is that Lockridge said that he had been wrongfully terminated and his actions were aimed and ensuring the safety of passengers on the submersible
called the Titan, which is now currently missing. I mean, my major takeaway throughout this entire thing, Crystal, is that your use of the word Hubris is perfect. There's also a fundamental mismatch in terms of this guy's ideology because the problem is he's trying to drive down costs, and that is actually fine whenever we're talking about normal consumer products, which you are competing with a vast swat to people. The majority of the people who were on this and
were customers are extraordinarily wealthy. Bringing costs down from half a mil to two point fifty means nothing to them. They you know, they don't even think twice about spending one million dollars on tickets versus two million dollars versus
three million. For them, it's about the experience. If you know, we were talking with our producer, I ironically he could have made it a safer and a more luxurious experience, and he probably would have made the exact same amount of money because the current environment that they look if these people are still alive or were alive, you know, at any point for some time, it was hell on earth down there. I mean, we're talking about the size of what's it been described of the minivan.
Which from the pictures that I feel like.
That's a very generous minivan that's like a compact suv. I think, if you ask me, it's like one.
Of those European minivans.
Like this big European minivan. We are also talking about no toilet. We're talking about one guy who had actually written on this side marine had said previously that you have to be able to sit cross legged for ten hours and bear extreme discomfort and listen, I get it, you know. I'm I'm the type of person where if I had this type of money, I would absolutely do something like this. I think the Titanic's cool. I like exploration. I think the IEM. You know, I don't think the
idea necessarily is bad. I've seen some people like why would anyone want to do this? Listen, I think it's awesome. And one of the guys on there had done a lot of stuff. But at the same time, you know, as somebody who also has often you know, dreamed or thought about doing things like this, you have to do a tremendous amount of research for safety, and you also have to make sure that you're going with a reputable person.
And unfortunately, it really seems like Oceangate the company invested a hell of a lot more in marketing around the titan than it did around the actual safety on this. So it's a good metas story too to look at, you know, you know, sometimes things are too good to be true sometimes. Look, you know, I think a lot of regulation is dumb as annoying. We run a business here.
It can be an absolute massive pain. However, we're not taking people down to the bottom of the ocean, and when you are, I do actually think there's quite a few things.
Like checking out something to exist boxes.
There's a reason only nation states usually are the ones who are capable of doing something like this. And as we are all finding, you know, whenever the titan goes missing, there's what like two craft I believe on planet Earth that are even capable of going to go get them right, one of them is French and the other is part of the US Navy. But then getting them there in time is you know, is such a massive pain.
So that was the other they had.
Obviously they did not have proper safety and contingency around this around you know, should a massive event like this occur, which again that's what the US Navy actually has, Like they don't just send people down to the bottom of the sea without plans and redundancies that exist this was mcguyverd in the really the worst sense.
Yeah, well, and that was one of the red flags that that employee, who was a whistleblower who was fired ensued. That was one of the red flags that he raised. He expressed concern the company planned for the subtual life on an acoustic monitoring system to detect if the hull was breaking down or about to fail. That wouldn't provide much help in an emergency, he claimed, because the acoustic analysis would only alert people about imminent problems milliseconds before an implosion.
I mean, of the.
Various things that could have gone wrong, you know, they could have had an electrical failure, They could have had a fire on board. They could have gotten caught up in the Titanic wreckage itself and been able to unable to go back up to the surface.
They could have gotten caught up in a fishing net.
Any number of things could have happened, or the hull in the body of the submersible could have failed, and basically, you know, instant implosion. Frankly, for the sake of the people here, you know, to me, that would be the most the least cruel way to go because at least
it's over in an instant. I think part of why people have been so captivated by the story is thinking about being trapped in that thing, counting down the hours until your oxygen out is I mean, that's just like literal nightmare scenario.
So it's horrific.
You know.
The one sign that they had that was giving people some hope is there was some sounds that were detected, some banging sounds that were detected underwater that repeated. You know, a couple on Tuesday, they heard it. I heard it again on Wednesday. The theory was that these would be the kind of noises that maybe if they were banging the ship up against something underneath the water, to help rescuers be able to find them, perhaps that's what was
going on. And maybe that is the case, but at this point it's becoming clear they just ran out of time. One other story that came out in the New York Post that was from it's a first hand account from another adventurer who went on a different one of these missions, and he called it a suicide mission because of his experience. He said, this was a Bavarian entrepreneur. He said it was a suicide mission. Back then the first submarine did
not work. Then I've at sixteen hundred meters, which is nowhere close to how deep they were.
Going for the Titanic had to be abandoned.
He explained. They ended up launching five hours late due to electrical issues. He suspects that's he thinks that's what's to blame for the titan cruise issues here. Not only that, but right before the voyage, the bracket of the stabilization tube which balances the sub seems kind of important, tore and had to be reattached.
With zip ties.
That was the type of operation they were running here, cobbled together, you know, very little, just very little concern for safety. There was a slew of experts who who wrote a letter raising these concerns.
But because there was.
No regulation and he just decided, the CEO here Stockton Rush just decided to push forward anyway and not get the submersible evaluated, not get it classed. You know, it appears to have ended in complete catastrophe for these individuals who were on board.
And just to give everyone an idea of the hubor so, this guy listened to the way he talks about his high airing decisions let's take a listen.
When I started business, one of the things you'll find there are other suboperators out there, but they typically have a gentlemen who are ex military sub mariners, and they you'll see a whole bunch of fifty year old white guys.
I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspirational, and I'm not going to inspire a sixteen year old to go pursue marine technology, but a twenty five year old, you know, who's a sub pilot or a platform operator or one of our texts can be inspirational.
Yeah, Chris, well, why would you want to hire a bunch of people who are experienced on submarines to run your submarine company? I mean, you know who doesn't want somebody just straight out of school with no experience in a highly technical environment a board a vessel which imminent death is always a possibility, and people who have developed redundancies and systems to make sure over the last seventy five years that something like this doesn't ever happen.
And I think we know the real reason why he's don't know what he's because he didn't want to pay and because he knew they would cause problems for him, like the one guy who was a whistleblower who was like, what the hell are you thinking here? So he needed young, inexperienced, twenty five year olds who he get frames quote unquote inspirational. But the real reason was he wanted them cheap, and he wanted them easy to manipulate.
And you know, yeah, here we.
Are listen a sad story.
We can hold out hope.
You know, as the Coastguard says, you can never underestimate the will to live. I'm obsessed with survival stories. This would be one of the all time greats if they do walk out of there. That said, all the decks stacked against them. We've got the Coast Guard estimated they ran out of oxygen. One of the only ways to be able to extend their oxygen is if they were starting to breathe slower, they would actually have to regulate their breathing. Yeah. The other reason, you know, a lot
of people were thinking about Apollo thirteen for example. Well, here's the difference with people on or Apollo thirteen were highly trained astronauts who had trained for two years or so.
Actually more had flight to pilots.
Who had been through multiple failures were experienced aerospace engineers who are capable of you know, maintaining the thought needed at that time ex Military and then be able to listen and communicate with NASA to finally get themselves back. That's the other one that's ruling out of a titan's favor. They don't have the ability to communicate and to say
exactly what is wrong with them. So, like I said, the deck is really stacked against from the coast Guard currently on estimating that they've run out of oxygen, I'm assuming Search and Rescue will maintain operations for the next couple of days at the very least.
You don't want to necessarily just call it.
But look, there's a very human story here for us to all to learn from. Yeah, sometimes if it's too good to be true, or sometimes if it is regulated, is for a good reason.
And sometimes if it sounds too good to be true, it is.
If you're putting your life in the hands of an individual who you know, whose technical capacity is required, make sure they're like the nerdiest, most boring attention to detail person. Ever, this guy read like a sort of like charismatic salesperson. That's and clearly you know, did not have that attention to details.
So it is a sad and disastrous story.
Yeah, all right, let's get to the big geopolitical news breaking here in Washington. Let's put this up there on the screen. This one about Beijing planning a new training facility in Cuba, raising the prospect of Chinese troops on America's doorstep. Now, Crystal, it's not like foreign troops on Cuban soil has ever caused problems for the United States or a global crisis before. Currently, the Chinese and the
Cubans are negotiating a joint military training facility. What they would establish is a quote advanced stage in terms of their negotiations. This is according to leaked US intelligence reports that the Biden administration is effectively confirming. Now. The Biden administration says they have been contacting the Cubans to forestall the deal and are seeking to tap into what they think could be Cuban concerns about seating their own sovereignty.
Beijing is selling the training facility on top of a potential ties, you know, that they could deepen with the Cubans. It also highlights an interesting theoretical question around diplomacy that I've seen raised.
In terms of the experts around this issue.
It could be that the Cubans are actually more considering this Chinese overture as they did during the times of the Soviet Union, because they feel that the US political system is so intractable whenever it comes to a Cuban embargo and to trade, that this could be a way to extend leverage and actually get some better dealings with Washington. Personally, I think probably, I think it's probably very entrenched because
of the way that Florida roles in our politics. That said, it does show you though, a complex, possible geopolitical crisis that could be ignited over this troops itself is not going to cause you know, the same thing as the Cuban missile crisis of course that was around missiles.
That said, you know, it's something that.
We are probably right to be concerned about, and also just highlights like what ratcheting up tensions with China is going to look like in our hemisphere, and that this is really like the jump off point for something like that.
Well with regard to you know, potentially Cuba using this as leverage to gain better status or reduce sanctions or whatever. With regard to the Cubans using this as potential leverage. Ryan has been making a good point, which is that you know, Floria's not a swing state anymore.
Florida's a red state.
And so the reason why you know, we have all these corn subsidies is because Iowa and the role it plays in the primary process. The reason that we have the relations we do with che Cuba is because of trying to appease the large and significant Cuban vote in Florida. Democrats don't really have to care about that anymore because there's no sign that they're going to be winning the
state back anytime soon. I mean, that goes with regards to Cuba, goes with regard to Venezuela too, So in terms of the political calculations around this, that has really shifted. That's number one, number two, you know, I just think it's always important to keep in mind where these reports are coming from. This is clearly a leak by uh So.
There's kind of a divide within the Biden administration between people who are more hawkish towards China and people who want more engagement, more diplomacy of the type that was you know, on display with Tony Blincoln traveling to China recently, and this appears to be a leak from the more hawkish quarters to try to secure their policy ends and goals.
So keep that in mind with this as well. But the other thing Sagur I think is important to point out here is, you know, when it's US in our country and you have you know, the possibility of troops from China on nearby soil in Cuba, we understand very clearly how the empire is going to react and how the country is going to.
Feel about that, et cetera. There seems to.
Be a blind spot with regards to our own operations around the world and how, for example, that may have appeared to Russia and raised similar sensitivities. Now I will say for the million time Russia's invasion of Ukraine was illegal and.
Wrong and no one is justifying it.
But you know, when you have it close to home, suddenly it's like, oh, this is a problem. We see how this is an issue, but we have far more I mean, think of this. So this was actually from the Wall Street Journal piece. They said, listen, the way China views this is they look at Taiwan. We have the US deploying more than a hundred troops to Taiwan to train their defense forces.
We heavily arm and.
Train that self governing island sits right off of mainland China. Beijing sees it as its own. That's about the same distance that Cuba is from Florida. Also, they point out, China has no combat forces in Latin America. Meanwhile, the US has dozens of military bases throughout the Pacific, where its station's more than three hundred and fifty thousand troops. Chinese officials appointed this count when they push back on American efforts to counter their military expansion outside of the
Indo Pacific. So I just want to put out there, take yourself out of the American context, and think of how China views our actions, think of how Russia views our actions, and I feel like we can garner some more potential like understanding of the way they may view what we're doing from this particular propace.
Actually, it's an important point specifically with what you said visa v Russia will say. You know, sometimes I get very annoyed whenever they're like, well, you have troops in Japan. I'm like, yeah, the Japanese want us there. They literally are the ones who are asking us to stay. And you know, for all the people who are gonna try to Okinawa in my face, that's not the only one
that I'm talking about. Same with the South Korean. So it's not like these aren't deep and entrenched allied governments. So fort so the Cuban Cuban, but no, no, no, And I think that is why it is an important point. And actually this is very specifically, most likely in response to the special military advisors which were sent to Taiwan
after the Ukraine invasion. I also would say that one of the things that I have always tried to say here is with regard to a to Ukraine, whenever it comes to the way that we are sapping so much of our military strength and so much of our geopolitical attention. I just saw this morning, you sent it to me the Financial Times reporting Jake Sullivan is traveling to somewhat Denmark or some thing like that in order to try and pressure brazil, Indian and Brazilian officials who are also
traveling there. The full force of the US government now is focused almost entirely on Ukraine and on Russia, two countries which their GDP combined don't even make up a single Chinese province. So we have to focus all of our energy specifically on this issue, on navigating and going through this so that we don't end up in a catastrophic situation. And unfortunately we are obviously being stretched thin.
And this is just even more evidence that what was going on in Ukraine is distracting us from any potential even attention at the way that we should be paying, which we be paying towards China. Second, you can see here Secretary blink and seems a bit blindsided by the issue. Is specifically after he left Beijing for his visit.
Here's what he had to say.
Made very clear that.
We would have deep concerns about PRC intelligence or military activities.
Both countries see.
The importance of trying to bring more stability to the relationship.
So he says, both the countries see more stability to the relationship, I mean the Chinese and stupid they know exactly whether this will provoke here in the United States, and they are also trying to get their own policy concession. So we're stretched very thin all over the world, and it's a problem. The other problem, you know that we have Crystal is a doddering president who seems to just say whatever is at the top of his mind. Now, look, I'm not saying that what he said isn't true, which
is obvious. Put this up there on the screen. China is freaking out after Joe Biden called Chi Shingping quote a dictator. They say that the president's quote absurd comments threatened to undermine efforts to improve Sino US relations. It actually happened at a campaign fundraiser on Tuesday, at the very moment, so before a bunch of rich donors, at the very moment that his own secretary of State is in China says, quote, what a great embarrassment for dictators
when they didn't know what was happening. He was talking at a private home in California. After the comments were leaked, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that they were quote extremely absurd, irresponsible, seriously violate basic fact, diplomatic protocols, and China's political dignity. Now listen, obviously, Shishinping is a dictator, Okay, but this kind of gets back or Putin is a war criminal.
We've gotten this before.
The thing is that when you're the president of the United States. Your comments should be calibrated to actual policy. Just talking off the cuff, you know, without any plan specifically, when your Secretary of State is in the core, at least in the airspace of the country, you just look like a fool. And you know, it's like, what is your policy here? What are we actually talking about? This is the thing I can't stand with the Biden administration.
President Biden's like, yeah, we're going to defend Taiwan. I'm like, do you understand where you're saying? Like you do you actually understand what you're saying? Look at our the deployment of our military resource. So that was just reading two days ago. The CEO of Raytheon says, listen, we're never going to be able to get our supply chains out of China. So you're like, wait, hold on a sex, So if we go to war with China, then you're saying that you actually can't produce any weapons here in
the United States. Are we understanding this? So what is the policy? And then the President of Secretary State on Chinese soil says, we don't support Taiwan independence. That's not a policy change per se, but it's a rhetorical gift to the Chinese.
But then Biden is like, oh, but he's a dictator.
It's like, what are we doing completely yeah, yeah, It's like, look, if we want to take a hotk ash approach, that's fine. Let's let then let's debate that, let's actually plan for it. Let's have a whole of government approach towards it. That may be serious. But this like what seesaw come back and forth, like i want to appear tough on my own soil, but I'm also going to try and get climate concessions or whatever crap that the bid people like
John Carey want to get out of them. It's incoherent and actually it creates uncertainty such that the Chinese themselves. We've talked about this in our last show. There are many different factions in the Chinese government. One faction Mashishingping, mostly a part of them thinks that the US wants to destroy their entire country and they want they think it's existential and.
They want to fight back.
Accordingly, things like this only give them more fuel than the diplomatic side, which Blinken was just engaging with while he was over there. They're like, no, see we can work with them, we can avoid this. Let's just all you know, we're all making a lot of money. Let's
just keep it that way. And so we are sending so many mixed signals that they have no idea what the actual policy of government is, and each side can basically point to whatever else is going on as incoherence, and that causes a lot of uncertainty and damage potentially in the future.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And you know, if you are Chinese officials looking at the statements of Lincoln on the same day basically as these statements from Biden, you know, they don't know if this is just a gaff and a bumble and him like just having verbal diarrhea. They don't know if this is an intentional statement of provocation to directly undermine the comments that were made, you know, publicly by Blincoln.
They don't know.
Neither do we.
By the way, we don't know either. We don't know what the official policy is, what the official view is.
I continue to the reporting suggests there's a real tug of war within the administration, and you have Biden now multiple times undermining what seems to be the more carefully crafted strategic tactical direction of the State Department as headed by Tony Blincoln, and he'll just go off and you know, shoot off at the mouth whatever he feels like saying in this very you know, in this very improvement is very I was thinking.
The same thing.
And you know that was something that we said before Biden even came into office, that actually Trump and Biden on foreign policy they have some similarities because there's no.
Real overarching view.
It's all about how they feel and their personal relationship with this or that leader and their like narcissistic belief in their own ability to navigate and like cut a deal, et cetera. And so it is a very Trumpian feeling moment. And that is just like the grotesque nature of when he gives his most unvarnished views is behind closed doors with a bunch of like the super rich funding the Democratic Party. That is grotesque as well. But you see from this why it is that his aids keep him
under wrap. It's not only because they're worried about political damage and the country really being able to assess the nature and extent of his potential mental decline, but also because.
I'm worried about stuff like this.
With massive global implications for our nation and for foreign affairs.
It reminds me of President Biden when he said that the prospect of armageddon is the highest since Cuban missile crisis, which he said to whom rich Democratic donors in New York City outside, And I remember, I.
Think I tweeted this at the time.
I said, if the President of the United States believes that the risk of nuclear war is higher than the Quban missile crisis, we need an Oval Office address now, yesterday, immediately. You need to lay out your policy in Ukraine how you are going to get this away. But no, they're not doing that. They know behind closed doors. So I read an interview once with President Obama. I am I'm
no fan of Obama. A lot of people here know that, but I did respect that he understood the gravity of his words, and he said, every time I open my mouth, I have to understand that what I say has implications around the world, to the stock market, to you know, normal everyday people, to my opponents and to my supporters. And thus I always think before I open my mouth. That's not something that we got from Trump. Obviously, some people find that refreshing, and in a you know, political context.
I can understand that, but we still have to understand the gravity of the office that these people hold. So just like the war criminal comment with Putin, I'm like, what are you saying, man, Are you saying you will never have normal relations with Russia again? Because that's pretty crazy. You need to understand what we're saying Here's right, you know, same here with China. I'm like, well, okay, you can say that, you can piss them off, and we can
all get into a pissing contest. But what about like trade? What are we here?
Do we go from here?
What are our bilateral relations around economics? Because last I checked, we're actually importing more from China than at any time ever before. So is that the policy? Are we decoupling? Are we de risking? Like you know, all of these nonsense terms that just get thrown out and the lack of seriousness it will leave us tremendously vulnerable. It's not a joke because the incoherence opens up, you know, as I said, the danger that the Chinese can take any
action and think that it's justified. You know, we learned this also during the Pelosi Taiwan visit. The Chinese were like, we don't understand how she can just go and defy you. They're like, we don't believe you, right, like we think that you're sending her. He's like, He's like, we're separate, you know, And they're like, yeah, we just don't buy it.
I don't really buy it either, to be yeah, buy it.
But I'm saying like they have no understanding of separate but equal branches of government, like literally at all. So you always have to think, like, what about the eye of the beholder?
What does that look like?
What are the consequences because and are we willing to pay them?
These are all very very.
Important well, and lastly, adding to the goal of what is revealed to wealthy donors versus what is revealed to the American people, we also got at least his most extensive comments about the intelligence around the whole spy balloon situation. That was the context in which he was taught talking about,
where he described she is a dictator. He said that that's what's a great embarrassment for dictators when they didn't know what happened, claiming that she had no idea what was going on with this balloon, and so he said the balloon was blown.
Off course up through Alaska down through the US.
He didn't know about it when it got shot down. He was very embarrassed. He denied it was even there. So those are also the most extensive comments we've gotten about, at least his interpretation of the intelligence report. So again, you know, listen, I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but this is why you need to have debates.
This is why you need to have you.
Know, a president and other politicians who are willing to sit for real interviews with real journalists and field hard hitting questions and you know, do press conferences and all of those.
Things, because American people deserve to hear these.
Things from the president and not have to get a secondhand from a fundraiser. They deserve to see pushback on Okay, what is if saying this and you're saying that, like, what is the actual policy? And where do we go from here? And increasingly it's not just Biden, it's Trump too. It's basically you know a lot of modern politicians who feel like we don't have to do that anymore. We can just communicate through social media, we can just go
on friendly channels. Why would we want to subject ourselves to the rigors of a debate or the riggers of a difficult political interview, as Trump subjected himself to that this week with Threadbare, when I could just go on and get softballs from you know, some like twenty year old TikToker or whatever.
Pathetic.
Yeah, indeed, all right, let's break down what's going on with Supreme Court Justice Alito. So there was news from Pro Publica. Let's start with here about some potential, very questionable ethics decisions on the part of Aledo. This really rhymes with some of the reporting they did also about Justice Thomas accepting gifts and luxury travel from Harlan Crow billionaire who's also a major political donor. Put this up on the screen from Pro Publica to show their report.
The headline year is Justice Samuel Alito took a luxury fishing vacation with GOP billionaire who later had cases before the court.
Let me read you.
The opening here, which contains all of the most relevant facts. So in early July two thousand and eight, Samuel Ledo stood on a riverbank in a remote corner of Alaska. The Supreme Court justice was on vacation at a luxury fishing lodge that charged more than one thousand dollars a day, and after catching a king salmon nearly the size of his leg Alito pose for a picture that you can
see if you're watching this, guys. To his left, a man stood beaming Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high stakes business disputes. We're talking multi billion dollars at stake in these disputes as well, Guys, Singer was more than a fellow angler. He flew Aledo to Alaska on a private jet. If the Justice charted the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded one hundred thousand
dollars just one way. In the years that followed, Singer's hedge fund came before the Court at least ten times, in cases where his role was often covered by the legal press and mainstream media. They go on to say, Leonard Leo, the longtime leader of the Conservative Federalist Society, attended and helped organize.
That fishing vacation.
Leo invited Singer to join and ask Singer if he and Alito could fly on the billionaire's jet. Leo also recently played an important role in the justices confirmation to the court. Singer and the lodge owner were both major
donors to Leo's political groups. So you guys get the outlines here, Supreme Court justice invited on this luxury all expenses paid fishing trip organized by Leonard Leo, who himself is a real political power player and has a lot of interest in the justices themselves and also the rulings
that they make on the court. He strategically invites Paul Singer, who is this hedge fund billionaire who again had multiple cases in concluding a big one dispute with the nation state of Argentina where again there were billions of dollars at stake here. Yeah, Alito doesn't recuse himself from any of this, and Singer provides him with space on his private jet to fly there again that you know would
cost one hundred thousand dollars in one direction. None of this was disclosed, and as I just mentioned, Alito did not recuse himself from any of the cases involving Singer. There's another layer to this story, though, which is that pro publica as you know, to a typical journalist organization news organization would do reach out to Alito for comment.
He didn't respond to them.
Instead, he wrote up his response, which was published in the Wall Street Journal before the piece even dropped.
Now that raises a whole lot of.
Questions about the Wall Street Journal just willing to be like his pr allied, because how could you fact check what he was saying when the piece hasn't even come out yet from Pro Publica. But put this up on the screen. This was the justification from Aledo, and the headline here too is wild justice Samuel Alito. Pro Publica misleads its readers the public case levels false charges about Supreme Court recusal, financial disclosures, and a two thousand and eight fishing trip.
Again, Wall Street.
Churnama published this piece with that headline before the Pro public piece even dropped. Basically, if you read through this, what you see is a lot of cope about, like, well, the loatch wasn't really all that fancy, and you know, I interpreted lots of other people have interpreted that private jet flights don't technically meet the definition of needing disclosure.
Now they just adjusted the ethics rules to make it quite clear that private jet rides do require disclosure, and a lot of experts say that the plane face reading, you know, has always indicated that it needed to be disclosed. And he went on to say that he didn't think any reasonable person would think that these cozy relationships with Paul Singer would lead them to question his impartiality, and so that's why he didn't recuse. But there's there's a lot going on with this story here.
I've spoken with a lot of friends who are, you know, big defenders of justice Alito here and listen the question Thereone was like, well did it work? Like did Singer get his way? It doesn't matter. It's about the appearance
of corruption. And guess what. Why do we all understand that whenever it comes to congressional stock trades, But then it starts to get fuzzy whenever we're talking about our favorite presidential candidate or maybe the guy who authored a decision that we really really like before the Supreme Court, like Row versus Wade. And I just think that if any reasonable person could see this is outrageous as one of the most powerful people in the United States is
flying in a lavish luxury vacation. Personally, I want to know why we're not indulging in this, Crystal? Why why do we have better at you know, Krystal and I we've been invited on some weird stuff. You know, every once in a while, some are very powerful want to say whatever, hang out with you, interview view, like oh, all expenses paid, you know, and every time we're like, yeah,
I just think it'll look bad. You know. It's like one of those where you know, and we're not even government officials, We're just we're just doing people bringing the news. Like we're under no oub We get we're small business owners and you know, as private citizens, we could do it if we wanted to.
There's nothing stopping it.
But everyone understands there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Nope.
And and specifically here here's what I want to know.
What they were A served wine that was costing one thousand.
Dollars a bottle.
First of all, I like wine every once in a while, you know, on the rare occasions that I do drink. I have never had a bottle of wine more than like a hundred bucks or something like that. What is a one thousand dollars bottle of wine?
It must be nice you know.
To me, honestly, it doesn't even keep it.
I was gonna say, it's just like, I bet it's just the flex. I bet it's all about like, oh, this is nineteen sixty eight, you know, Chateau whatever. Drink it, you drink exactly, drink it because you can. It's it's the flex on the part of the guy who's able to serve it. Maybe not necessarily about the taste the question.
I typically drink eight dollar bottles of wine from Walmart, not my area of expertise.
On a broader level, I mean, this is so obvious, like in an era where we have bad institutional trusts and we see constant corruption and cavorting of the elite and the policymakers, if you want to appear unimpeachable, then you have no right to be going on vacations like this or what Clarence Thomas was doing as well. All of us understand that nobody gives you a private jet for free right, and that nobody has hanging out with
you getting invited on luxury vacations. And my response to them always is like, what do you expect them to just have no lives? No, you can leave, dude, resign. You can live a very comfortable, big private retirement, and none of those who care.
It's not like they're getting paid like paupers either, like they make a hefty salary. Go on your own damn vacation and don't fly around on some hedge fund billionaire's private jet secretly by the way, or you.
Don't even disclose it.
Who has business frequently like routinely before the court?
What do you think people are going to think about that?
What I may be my favorite justification he gave here Sager and his little Wall Street journal piece was he said, As for the flight, mister Singer and others had already made arrangements to fly to Alaska when I was invited shortly before the event, and I was asked whether I would like to fly there in a seat that, as far as I'm aware, would have otherwise been vacant. It was my understanding this would not impose any extra cost on mister Singer.
All right, let's put it this way.
I had somebody who used that excuse to me, and I go, hey, man, you know I'm flying to India in two weeks.
The jets going there anyway, they still charge you for it.
Yeah, set, who is it. That's not how business works. They still charge you for it, man, And you know I just looked it up justin justice. Alito has a net worth of two point nine million to seven point four million. So listen, man, you can afford it, like you could.
You You don't have to fly by private jet to Alestase.
I can get to Alaska. There's a direct flight here from Washington to San Francisco. You could be in Alaska in seven hours. When you're two point nine to seven point four million net worth, you can buy yourself a nice first class ticket. You could buy yourself a seat at this quote comfortable and rustic lodge. It's like, you know, it's so obvious that this is problematic, and you know a lot of court defenders are very upset, like, oh, Clarence Thomas did nothing wrong. I'm like he obviously did.
Like going on these crazy yacht vacations, having some dude buy his mom's house was right, right, You're this guy going on a luxury fishing vacation. I mean, if you like to fish, then pay for it yourself. Man.
That's what a lot of normal people do in this country.
You just can't be going out here saying that there was absolutely nothing that was exchanged. Nobody on Earth, no normal person on Earth, none gets to go on a trip like that.
Yeah, what do you think They're just doing this sound of the goodness of their heart because they really like you, because you're just.
A nice guy.
You think that's that's why they had they had to fly on the private jet to the luxury fishing vacation. I mean, I don't think there are a lot of people are getting that opportunity when there isn't some kind of a quid pro quo, and just the appearance is a problem. The last thing I'll say about this is, you know, it's insane and disgraceful that there is no Supreme Court standard of ethics. Yes, every other federal Court judge has to abide by a code of ethics.
Random low level government.
Employees have to abide by a code of ethics that prevents them from taking even small dollar gifts from anyone because they're worried about actual and the appearance of corruption. John Roberts has basically stonewalled on all of this, refused to go testify to Congress about some of the revelations with regard to Justice Thomas and the concerns more broadly about corruption on the court. They have shown certainly no
interest in having Congress get involved. In fact, Roberts has sort of insinuated he doesn't think that Congress even has the power to regulate them, which I think is I mean, it just shows like they're arrogance and the way that they really don't see themselves as a coequal branch, and to be honest with you, they're not treated.
Like a co equal branch.
They really are these sort of like unaccountable supremacist branch of the United States government. And if you pull the American people like should Supreme Court justices have to abide by a code of ethics, it's like ninety some percent
that are like, obviously they should. So it's at the very least complete insanity that there are not official guidelines for when you recuse and what your expectations are, what your moral and ethical expectations are if you are sitting on this court, which is one of the most powerful.
Forces in the entire world, actually not.
Just in the country.
So I agree with you completely. Let's move on.
Let's talk a little bit about test scores, about what's going on in this country. This is something which look, we've been trying to draw attention to now for years, specifically around school closures and what the impact of all it is. And unfortunately, it's becoming very very clear that school closures in the fallout from COVID have been a naw national catastrophes. So let's go and put this up
there on the screens. This is called chalk Beat. It is a education specifically trade publication which did a really good job of looking at the newest averages of national test scores. What you can see here before you is that effectively national test scores. And you know, there's a lot of questions even around whether the test scores themselves are good, but they're what we have basically peaked in
twenty ten. They were starting to decline in terms of overall standards up until the pandemic, but after the pandemic in twenty twenty, they just absolutely fell off a cliff, both on national math and on national reading tests. So, for example, eighty five percent of thirteen year olds in twenty twelve demonstrated skills and basic problem solving in math.
In twenty twenty, that number is now just seventy nine percent and now has fallen into seventy one percent, so we're getting even more of a precipitous drop in the last year. This is specifically the worst for students who are in the lowest income tront of students, and they actually show you that the gap between lowest and highest performing students also widened significantly.
And the reason why for that. Let's go to the next.
One here, please, guys, because what you can see here as I was referencing, is around all students, you can see that the average there is at two sixty four. However, whenever you drop it and you or sorry, it's at two fifty six. Whenever you look at white students, it's two sixty four. We look at Latino students, it's two forty seven. If you look at black students's actually two one hundred and thirty seven.
That's just in reading.
In math, it's very similar what the gap is, and the gap again has widened between.
Black and white.
I actually prefer to look at it aggregated in terms of wealth.
We don't have the exact data.
On it, but it's becoming clear that because of racial disparity when it becomes to wealth, is that students who are likely at the lower income spectrum, of which we've talked about here before. We're basically left at home to screw off. Like the parents were very busy, they had to work. Unlikely we work from home. What is a seven year old going to do? What is any seven year old going to do?
Nothing?
If unsupervised? Richer students where their parents do? They sat there? They were working from home, They're monitoring their homework, monitoring lessons and more importantly hiring private tutors, as what happened in San Francisco. And thus the gap has become so explosive now that by all metrics, we are living through one of the most unequal education times in modern history.
And the higher education is not grappling with this. The schools obviously they don't have the tools, governments and all that. Everybody's pointing their fingers, but at a raw level, this is a catastrophe.
This is a disaster.
It truly, truly is.
And you're absolutely right that the poorest kids, there's no doubt about it, got hit the hardest, and it's so obvious why because.
Their parents are working.
You know, a lot of them had to be left home with like an older brother or sister, or potentially you know, maybe a grandparent who's not particularly technologically savvy. I mean as a parent who was navigated all of this, by the way, in a household that had very spotty Internet access. Even for someone who has, you know, is blessed out the resource that I have, this was very, very difficult. And the other piece Soccer is that a
lot of private schools actually stayed in person. So my youngest was in preschool at that point at the school that actually my mom run ran until she just retired, and so thank god she was able to stay in person the whole time, because those years are so incredibly critical when she's learning, you know, the basic building blocks to.
Be able to read. Very difficult situation.
For my son, who was in second grade at that point, who's you know, typical little boy and has a lot of energy, and to just stay focused on like school work on a zoom call is very difficult. My daughter, who was in middle.
School at that time, it was it was really.
Really challenging, even when you had everything going for you. So no one should be surprised that, you know, the results have been this catastrophic.
One other thing that I noted.
Here is if you look at the charts, and maybe we can put this back up on the screen. Guys, the very first element that we showed, if you look at the charts, you see a sudden drop off effectively.
In the pandemic years.
But as you noted Soccer, the peak year was actually for these test scores was actually twenty twelve, and listen, correlation is not causation, So there's a lot of research that would need to be done. That's also the same year when you see some of the increases in depression, increases in suicide, increases in anxiety. And it's also the
same year when smartphones became incredibly prevalent. It's the same year when social media moved to be more algorithmically based, so it's triggering your emotions and manipulating you more and keeping you locked in for longer periods of time. Again, we would need research to show that there's actual causation here, but to me, it seems like not an accident that these things are all tied together, that actually the test
score decline predates the pandemic. Again, it was accelerated as so many trends in oursis society work by the pandemic but they were actually going in the wrong direction for quite a number of years before we even got to the pandemic.
Well data backs this up.
My friend Brad Wilcox over at the National Marriage Project at UVA tweeted this chout yesterday.
Wanted to bring into all of you.
What you can see here is the depressive symptoms in US eighth, tenth, and twelfth graders, and the increase precipitously after twenty twelve is right there.
You can literally see it in the data.
In terms of the numbers of eight, tenth and twelfth graders who say I can't do anything right. It has gone from thirty percent, you know, back in twenty ten now to almost fifty percent. In terms of my life is not useful forty four percent now. Was hovering somewhere around like twenty two percent at that time, and then I do not enjoy my life, same thing. It was bottomed out, it was near twenty percent and is now all the way up to forty eight point nine. We're
seeing an absolutely disaster in terms of depressive symptoms. So it's not a surprise that you see depressive symptoms on the rise. You see rise of social media, smartphone use. We know the test scores have been dropping now at a certain smaller rate up until the pandemic, and then everything just was lit on fire afterwards. And unfortunately, it's just going to exacerbate all of our existing problems in higher education.
I'll give everyone example.
I've been doing a lot of monologues here about how you know, higher education schools want to preserve affirmative action
after the court is likely to strike it down. Well, unfortunately, they're going to have to nuke all merit based scores in order to do that, because as I've said, of the gap in between poor and of rich students, well, the issue is is that the gap is going to get even wider crystal, and it actually validates the whole idea that a lot of this is unfair, because then you're putting someone in a situation where they're not even academically or rigorously prepared for.
The curriculum n't fix the problem by the time people are at college life, exactly.
It's got to be.
It's got to start.
From, you know, with realations like kindergarten, the Universal pre k, honestly even before that, because kids who have those foundational years in preschool are much more paired for school, they're much more likely to succeed academically throughout their careers. But you know, I was thinking about when we interview Jack Dorsey, of course was ahead of Twitter, and I asked him about how he thinks about the social media part of this and the balance between being in the real world
and being locked into your screen. And he doesn't have kids, but he said, for a lot of his friends who are high up in the tech space, they don't let their kids on the stuff.
I know a lot of really rich people who work in tech and they don't let their And.
It's another it's actually another class divide because the technology now is more readily available if you're busy. You know, I speak as a parent lots of experience, I am certainly guilty of this. The easiest thing you can do is give the phone, give the device, give the tablet, give the gaming said whatever to your kid, and they leave you alone so you can accomplish what you need
to do. It takes time, effort, and often resources to provide your kids alternatives to these devices, and so it opens up another classify where the wealthy have the time and ability. And also, you know, are some of them got wealthy in the tech sector and are deeply aware of the manipulative techniques and just how bad this is for kids' brains. They're able to keep the devices away and limit the exposure, and working class people it's much
much more difficult. So it opens up yet another class difede. But you know, I was sort of I wouldn't say it was skeptical, but I was kind of ambivalent about whether it was really smartphones and social media that was driving a lot of the depression and other issues that we're seeing among teenagers. But I'm becoming increasingly convinced by the research that this is a real problem and it's a hard one to put back.
In the bag.
Yeah, exactly, because guess what, you know, you can't get three years back, Like nobody's going to go back and give children some of the most formative years of their lives. And who the hell is going to take away the phone? If anything, they get my phones the younger and younger
and younger ages. See nine year olds out there with smartphones, and yeah, look, I don't know, especially as it remains probably the easiest way for a lot of parents basically to sedate their children of which who can't sympathize with that? You know, you see mom flying with three kids on a plane, They're all screaming, they whip out the iPads.
What happens, Everything goes quiet.
It's nice. It's nice for me, right, But there's a cost. There's a cost, I think to all of that. So I've got a sixteen hour flight coming up, and uh, it's gonna be tough, Right, It's gonna be tough. Like, see the kids out there and they're gonna be screaming. You're like, just give them the damn I.
Yeah, just give them the freaking tablet.
Okay, all right, let's get to this one consternation, Crystal. Let's put this up there on the screen. I guess there's a lot to say about it. So, uh, James Esis, who is uh?
What is he?
I would call him like somebody who tweets a lot about trans issues.
Let's put it kind all right.
I don't know who this individual is.
All right, Well, okay, gotcha, he says quote. Yesterday, after posting a tweet saying that I reject the word CYS and don't wish to be called it, I receive a slew of messages from transactivists who called me a sissy with the c telling me I am, whether I like it or not. Just imagine if the roles were reversed. Elon replied and said, quote repeated and targeted harassment against any account will cause the harassing accounts to receive at
a minimum of temporary suspensions. The words CIS or cis gender are now considered slurs on the platform.
So I guess there's actually a lot to say about this. At the very least.
Number one is this is bad because the previous policy that existed over at Twitter, of which I opposed I thought was very stupid, was that you were liable to be banned if you were to quote unquote dead name somebody aka used their previous name pre transition. You know, I think it's mean, but I also don't think it should be who you should be banned for doing so. Same in terms of using the wrong gender pronoun like currently, the Daily Wires having a big host of problems.
A lot of their.
Videos have been taken off YouTube because they've been using different pronouns and the preferred pronouns of some of the people that they're talking about. Again, you know, you can think it's unkind, I wouldn't do that in a personal situation that said, you know, they're taking a broader strands whatever. I think that's right free as an American citizen. But then you shouldn't be turning around and applying the same policy because the problem that he can we throw that
up there back, please up on the screen. I want to read again the exact quote that he said. He specifically said repeated targeted harassment. And you know why am I The hair on the back of my neck goes from that. That is the same exact policy that was used from some of the transactivists to get their opponents banned. And it comes down to the question like what does that mean? You tweets this three times? Is that enough to get banned?
Like?
What is it?
In my Yeah? I mean the trans people who are calling the guy ASSISSI I mean again, I think.
It's probably mean.
I don't really know why anybody would do that, but a lot of people are mean, it's the Internet, you know, deal with it.
I don't know, I mean, and.
It's really not that mean, like every going to be that hurt by it?
No, I don't think so. I also don't think that somebody who's been quote unquote dead named, is like the worst thing that's ever happened to them in their life. I'm like, yeah, shut up, you know, deal with it. You're the one putting yourself out there for attention on the internet, and then you're upset that somebody is responding and being unkind. We get a lot of unkind comments about here, about my beard, about the hair, about.
The list of people to be big.
Yeah, exactly, I have a whole list. Listen, come to me, elon I can give you. But I would never do it, even even the worst critics. I'd be like, you know what, man, it's a free contrast. Say what you want we put. We put our words out there, other people can put there.
So I think it's very much the wrong policy, and unfortunately it just really is the ad hoc nature of which he is going about it at his own whims, which is just look, you can think it's funny, I certainly do, but that does not mean that it is the right thing. And in fact, whenever you do kind of you know, smile anything, ah, they're getting a taste
of their own medicine. That's exactly what you want to be able to prevent because that is the same way that the previous people who used to ran Twitter used to act whenever they got their ideological opponents band So, no matter who it is, I will speak out for them.
Yeah, if you are truly this free speech warrior, which we already have one hundred examples where it's falling short of that stated goal, But that's really your thing. It matters the most when it's like politically inconvenient for whatever your views are. So even if this is just mostly a troll, the fact that he just erradically makes these decisions and they go very much contrary to that stated free speech commitment, it's just very revealing and everybody needs
to stop being so freaking fragile. Listen, if your feelings are really going to be so hurt by you know, whatever name you're called online.
Don't read it.
Or don't go on Twitter, don't tweet that much waish reasoner. Right.
I mean, there's a reason I don't read my replies and I'm barely on Twitter because I don't like, I don't enjoy it. Right, people are made to each other and it's not really nice place to hang out and live. And as we just discussed with the previous segment. I think there's a lot of clear evidence that none of this is really good for any of our mental health. So if your feelings are getting hurt online, you owe it to yourself to take a step back, go touch some grass.
And let it be. If you don't see it, it's not a hard feeling.
And I agree, And unfortunately that's you know, people seem to live their entire lives and they make so many This is really a boat sides thing, and I actually find it the most in the trans issue. The amount of people I know who live their entire lives about what's happening online with respect to this discourse is insane to me. I don't understand, and I've even said this, I said in my previous monologue it transgender ideology drives me nuts.
I find it abhorrent.
I personally see it as a threat to a lot of children. I do not, though, live my entire life or spend all of my public platform time talking drawing attention to it and acting as if the most important thing in the country for a couple of reasons.
A Because I don't think so.
B Also, we have a responsibility to our audience to meet them where they are, and what we have found, predominantly crystal, is that there is a massive proliferation how many YouTube videos and creators and people out there have built entire brands and spent hours, you know, analyzing the term cisgender, transgender, whatever, queer, whatever drag show is happening, and then didn't talk about what we just did with
the test scores. We just spent some time on that, or Samuel Alito and corruption, or China and the Cuba base. We have found and understood that for the vast majority of people, they want to hear more about much more important issues. Sure they will talk. We could talk about trans of which we're doing some stuff here, but that's.
Not all they want to hear about.
Yeah, that's that's.
Where I object to a lot of the discourse looks.
I have felt it important in the current climate where there's a lot of legislation being passed. Arkansas law just got struck down by a court there to stand up for trans people's rights to just live and make their own decisions. And I think that that is really critical. But I also think like you're not really doing a lot of that when you're just engaging in this very insular, you know, discourse on Twitter that's just about getting retweets
and being me into each other. And there's no like, there's no attempt at a good faith debate that's going on here with any of this. But you know, going back to Elon, it's just another example of the whole free speech idea and let's take Elon out of it. Any billionaire is not going to solve your free speech issues. Like they're just not going to, even if they're well intentioned,
even if they have the right commitments. That was another thing Dorsy really pointed out, is like the level of pressure that you're under from advertisers, in particular when the overwhelming bulk of your revenue is still driven by ad dollars. When you have countries that are coming to you and pressuring you and like we're going to shut your whole thing down if you don't do what we want you
to do. You can't just leave it to the whims of any one person, whether you like them or hate them, or think they're good or bad or indifferent.
It is not going to work out.
I'm with you. I'm with you one hundred percent, Crystal. What do you take a look at.
Well, devoid of much tangible political progress and stripped of hope that anything could really change. Our politics has mostly
collapsed into a competition of vibes. Crafty politicians, recognizing the angry populist moment, they've seized on the anti establishment esthetic, offering appealing contrarian vibes that substitute for an actual platform that really challenges economic elites, where if you can mutter a few magic mantras and get the right people to hate you, then you too can have your moment in the political sun. These fraudulists are seizing on a market opening.
A large group of voters are disgusted rightly so with the two major parties and angry with an economy that has failed them for their whole lives. But actually delivering for those voters and standing up to the economic royalists
that is so hard. Embracing catchphrases is so easy. So, after having absorbed the political lessons of Trump and burning the itch that both of them scratched, this election season has seen an explosion of candidates who know how to talk the populist talk without actually really walking the walk. I got three examples for you today of politicians left right and center.
That this description fits.
First, let's start with the least successful and most clownish fraudulalist effort comes courtesy of the folks at No Labels.
Now.
This is a billionaire back group that is planning a third party run and seeking ballot access in all fifty states. Their website uses all the language of anti establishment third party efforts. They talk about the duopoly, They speak in vague terms about the common sense majority. As we found out though in an interview earlier this week, they're very skittish when you actually ask them about their specific policy views.
Just take a listen.
Can you get specific about what your complaints, specifically what Joe Biden are, and how your theoretical candidate would reflect a different policy valance than with the Biden administration, which I view is very centrist and very moderate, which is you guys's brand what they've put forward.
So this is something that we've been very clear about since the beginning, which is we are not doing this because of subjective judgment about how good or bad Biden is or a judgment about Trump. What we're doing is something that nobody else in the political system seems to be doing, which is actually just responding to what the public clearly wants.
Now.
They have obviously different reasons for not liking Trump right now or not liking Biden, but the one thing we can anchor in is that they want a better choice and in our view, having the ballot and in July we're actually going to be putting out some ideas. What that's going to finally do for the first time in a long time is there's this huge common sense majority in this country that gets ignored that both parties don't feel like they have to be accountable to.
It's no accident that No Labels actively avoid specific critiques of Biden or of Trump, preferring to live in the mushy language of common sense and unity because the billionaire backed agenda that they actually support is wildly unpopular. We know that because we can see from their allies and from their track record where their commitments truly lie. No Label's favorite centerra kureson Cinema. She went to the mat
to protect the private equity Bonanza carried interest loophole. Another No Labels darling, Joe Manchin, he blocked tax hikes on the rich. Josh gottheimer of the No Labels allied problem Solver's caucus. He was ready to blow everything up to reinstate the salt tax deduction for the rich. Their allies have been among the most slavishly devoted to protecting corporate
interests and low taxes for the wealthy. Telling Lee No Labels complains about Repotublicans and Democrats being behold into special interests, but then they refuse to disclose their own donors, And to be honest with you, I'm kind of confused about their twenty twenty four tactics, but their goals are really clear. They want to use majoritarian rhetoric to Trojan Horse in an agenda that is even more pro corporate than what Biden or Trump would actually enact, the polar opposite of
what the American people truly want. Next up, we've got the right wing mode of fraudulism, which has been embraced by quite a few prominent figures, but is articulated in its most pristine form by the vech Framaswami of a veck in DeSantis, among others. They've used the cloak of wokeness to posture as anti corporate while boosting what is truly a thoroughly corporate friendly ideology.
Just take a listen.
So, in a nutshell, here's how it worked. Wall Street got in bed with a bunch of woke millennials. Together they birth woke capitalism, and of course they put Occupy Wall Street up for adoption. You don't even know what that is anymore.
That's the Wall Street edition.
As it turns out, there's a really similar backroom deal playing out in the other coast, in Silicon Valley as well.
And here's the way it works over there.
Woke activists demand that big Tech censors political views that they don't like, and in return, the left degrees to leave big Tech's monopoly power in tact. And again it is working masterfully for both sides. That is how this new arranged marriage works. This is not a marriage of love. This is more like mutual prostitution. And it is working. And the net result is the rise of America's newest leviathan, the woke industrial complex. It is no longer just Wall Street,
it is no longer just Silicon Valley. It is the entirety of corporate America as we know it.
This is actually pretty clever trick, which I talked about a greater length than an earlier monologue breaking down Vivek's interview with Jordan Peterson. Basically, embrace anti corporate language, but instead of looking to address their power group on the nation through antitrust, getting money out of politics, boosting unions and the like, you hit them on nothing more than
their fake diversity and environmental virtue signaling. You can see this playing out right now with outrage over targets, meaningless pride displays or bud lights use of a trans influencer.
Do you think these companies actually care.
One bit about LGBTQ allyship, of course they don't. They just stopped marketing to the queer community was a good money making strategy. You're not putting even a tiny dent in their social and political power by fixating on their meaningless gestures, but it is a brilliant way to keep
your big donors and still maintain your populist aesthetic. Now Viveck has actually made a whole career on a opposing so called ESG, even launched his own fund pressure companies into strictly pursuing short term profit maximization without the fake
liberal values. But if it needs to be spelled out, forcing companies to only maximize profit is not exactly the revolutionary stance they might want us to think it is, But Vecan has held posture like their opposing capital, when in reality they're just demanding capital be as psychopathically committed
to the bottom line as possible. Now, if your biggest beef with Corporate America is a Pride Month display, your biggest problem with Wall Street is some diversity hires, and your biggest complaint about the military industrial complex is some inclusion training, you have completely missed the point, and your phony critique challenges absolutely nothing. And that brings me to the weird world of the online left mode of faux populism as represented by RFK Junior.
Now listen, on a personal.
Level, I actually really like Bobby, and for what it's worth, he strikes me as truly sincere. But it has become increasingly clear we share very little in terms of a commitment to checking corporate power and restoring power to the working class. His approach, though, has been the most successful by far in finding appeal. I think because of his sincerity and because it contains a few truly anti establishment positions, namely his stated desire to end military aid to Ukraine, to
combat online censorship and to challenge big pharma. But if you ask him any questions on economics, he will probably tell you he is a quote radical free marketeer, and that is music to the ears of every Wall.
Street goual and corporate profiteer.
He is not sure what the minimum wage should be, won't fight for Medicare for all, doesn't know what he thinks about UBI and a federal jobs guarantee, and he will signal verbal support for unions, but hasn't laid out an actual plan to reverse decades of union density decline. No wonder his it is received backing from a number
of prominent billionaires. When Brianna Joy Gray recently asked about his support from those billionaires and whether he would accept corporate pack money, r F. K. Junior ended up sounding exactly like Nancy Pelosi, declaring that he's got to raise as much as possible, no matter the potential corruption.
I'm going to tell you this.
I'm not allowed to coordinate with our superbacks, but it's I think, you know, and Bernie was able to do, as you said, raise a lot of money, and I think Obama raised a lot of money. And that's what I'm going to focus on from small donors about you know, if you're a superback, I you know, the law is just wrong in our country, but it's hard to you know, We're at some point you have to say, Okay, I'm going to play by the rules as they are given
to us. I'm not going to you know, I'm not going to bring a knife to a gunfight.
Even on RFK Junior's supposedly core anti establishment positions, Bobby's opposition to the Ukraine War is not matched by similar critique of US Empire. He's made some pretty eyebrow raising comments about China and notably upholds the pro Israel line of every American present from both parties.
And if he thinks that.
Cutting the defense budget in any meaningful way will be any easier than say, passing Medicare for all, is really got another thing coming on r of K Junior's life's work, which is raging against big pharma, correctly pointing out their corruption but incorrectly pushing fat free claims that vaccines cause autism.
Even on this.
Core issue, he would keep the current discussing system intact. When I asked about checking pharma through nationalizing the industry
at least creating a public pharma option. He immediately rejected those solutions as contrary to his free market commitment on censorship, Bobby seems to embrace the right wing concept of fighting censorship by finding the correct billionaires to control platforms, and that strategy has utterly failed under Elon, rather than advocating for a more fundamental solution that would devolve content moderation
to the people. So to sum up, based on what we've heard so far, under RFK Junior, billionaires keep their social media playthings, big Pharma continues to pillage and at least some of the most damaging and hypocritical aspects of the American war regime march on.
Like Trump.
However, the right people hate RFK, and so that's enough for many to love them without troubling themselves too much with the details. Although to be honest, a lot of his online support is from the libertarian and nationalists right, so RFK Junior's comfort with billionaires and corporate power won't
necessarily be a problem for them. As for the normy Democrats who are disgusted with Biden and enthused by the Kennedy name, too early to say how they're going to respond once they actually tune in to his pitch.
So there you have it.
Lots of billionaire backed anti estabtion vibes the cycle. And my advice for you for what it's worth is to know what you believe in, make sure you demand specifics, don't get distracted by surface level critiques, and as always, follow the money. Any candidate or cause billionaires are lining up to support should be a pretty large red flag. Don't fall for the cheap and easy mental shortcut of just looking for who most triggers the Libs and I guess in the way it's like a vict And if.
You want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premum subscriber today at breakingpoints dot.
Com, all right, Sager were looking at it well.
As everyone knows. I absolutely love all the emerging data on mobility of workers during the pandemic. There's something very inspiring to me about picking up and trying something else. It's basically the essence of the American story. Before COVID,
things were getting very stagnant. For my taste, the ability to vote with your feet and with your dollars as to where you call home is and remains a luxury not available to everyone, but it does also tell us a lot about what the future of America looks like and the impacts on our elections. The work from home revolution for the white collar sector has fundamentally transformed geographic distribution across the United States. Has also changed the reason
for why people even move in the first place. Look at this chart before twenty twenty, in person workers far outpaced remote workers in moving in prior year. In other words, the primary reason for relocation pre COVID was proximity to a job, not necessarily somewhere you wanted to live. But during COVID and after that it has changed completely. Remote workers are now far more likely to move. But that's not the only story. It is that not just are
likely to move, it's from where and where to. It's a meme at this point to talk about Austin and Nashville. But some of the cities that people have left and have chosen to move to may surprise you. Let's dive in as you can see here as a familiar story. San Francisco, San Jose, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago. They got destroyed by work from home, rising crime, cost of living, loss of amenities cause a lot of people to say,
screw it, not worth it. Of course, Austin is high up on the list, so is Nashville, But it may surprise you to see Denver, Colorado is actually much higher up than Nashville. Other cities Raleigh, Portland, Richmond, Dallas, Sacramento, Boston, Minneapolis all had positive population.
Growth from remote workers.
Now let me insert the caveat to this I always give right now, it is not available to most people. In fact, remote work data shows that those who can work remotely have much higher incomes than average, and thus what looks like a deal to them would also price much higher than normal in a non major metro area, and prices out residents who have lived there for a long time up rents dramatically. Thus remote work is not just a white collar phenomenon. It's really the highest earners even.
Of white collar jobs.
Now though, the next analysis where things get equally interesting. When people pick up and move, do they move states or do they just move slightly away from where they already do? This entirely depends on job condition. Fully, remote workers, of course, are able to pick up and to move wherever they felt the cost of living. Most aligned with their ideal space. In other words, more like true freedom. Other workers, though more akin to hybrid workers, are very different.
They are more likely to accept now a longer commute than before because they are now required to only go into the office, possibly a few times a month. Similarly, remote work has really changed space needs. When I was younger and I was living in DC, at one point I lived in a house with nine other guys. We all had our own bedrooms and a single common area. Here's the thing, though, it wasn't that bad. We all worked like crazy at any given time, only when four
people were actually there. It was mostly a crash pad for career driven young professionals. That model, though, is increasingly dying, because if I was twenty five and in a job today, the odds are i'd probably be working from home at least a little bit. And if I was, I can't just have a tiny bedroom which leaks when it rains. You need a little bit of space, and what new
housing demand is showing us is exactly that. While two people may have lived together previously as roommates, increasingly remote workers are spending more on rent and on mortgages because they need more space. This poses a couple of challenges, but conceivably you could have had a married couple previously which only has a two bedroom house now though may need four simply because they need two workspaces. This further increases the premium on land and development and on existing
housing stock, pushing prices further up. It actually would explain precisely why, despite astronomical increases and mortgage rates, housing prices have not fallen and are in fact still continuing to rise. The demand for housing so far outstrips supply, especially at the higher end of the price sector. It is still a good buy right now. It is something that you really need. So what do we do with all this
few things? We could have just let it continue it is, But as I said before, I think it's a bad idea.
It's not really fair to.
People in desirable remote work cities like Boise, Idaho, or Nashville or Tampa. The real estate costs are going so sky high with a little planned I really do anything about it. Furthermore, it's not fair to people who work in the trades who would probably love to move they could but can't because there of course tethered to the land. It's also not fair to everyone in between, those who will now be competing for the same housing stock and
likely pushed down in price. Overall, I think we need a major federal program to make things less las a fair and more targeted right now. For example, the sun Belt is blown up, which is great, It's where I grew up after all. But the industrial Midwest it's still hemorrhaging. With the right ideas investment, maybe we could make those cities just as desirable. We could spread the population around
areas that were once thriving. The original promise of the American West was anyone could pick up and take a chance out there. We need to get back to that spirit if we wish to recapture the feeling of possibility that pervaded this country at that time, and to reclaim any real chance that we have at a revival. I think it's really interesting looking at all this, and.
If you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com. So the FTC is upping the anti against Amazon. Let's put this up on the screen from the New York Times. Their headline here is FTC sues Amazon for tricking users into subscribing to Prime. The lawsuit is the first time that the Federal Trade Commission, under its chair Lena Khan, has taken Amazon to court. We have the perfect person
to break down what exactly this action means. We've got Matt Stoller's the director of research at the American Economic Liwerties Project and also author of The Big Substack. So just give us a sense of what this is all about in some of the details that we're contained in this lawsuit.
Basically, this is a lawsuit about how it's almost impossible to cancel your Prime subscription because Amazon has all sorts of tricks and traps to keep you keep you subscribed. And it was when you read the complaint, it's kind of it's kind of amazing that Amazon has an internal name for the process of canceling Prime called Project Iliad, which is the long it's a stort, the Greek story about the.
Long you know, the Trojan War and how long and difficult it was.
And so it's it's a consumer deception claim about Amazon trying to you know, they also trick people into signing up in certain ways, but it's it's essentially it's like the user interface deceptive claim, but behind it is this recognition that Prime is a really core part of how Amazon runs its business and also controls pricing almost throughout the entire economy. And that is what I find really interesting about the problem.
Yeah, so that's You've done a very popular segment here for us before on Prime. Can you explain some of the issues with Prime from an anti competitive perspective?
From so much more just telling get into it with us?
Right?
So Prime is about one hundred and fifty two hundred million members and Amazon gets about twenty five billion dollars a year in subscription revenue from Prime. But that's not really that money is not what Prime is about. Prime is a market allocation mechanism. So Amazon, when you sign up for Prime, you start ordering a lot more stuff through Amazon, and then that gives Amazon power over entities
that want to sell you stuff. So if you have one hundred and fifty million Prime members, Amazon can then go to every consumer package good company, every sneaker company, every third party seller and say, hey, if you want access to these Prime members, what are If you want your product to be what's called Prime eligible, then you have to pay these fees. You have to use our
logistics business. You have to advertise on Amazon advertising, and that raises prices on Amazon and is like a one hundred one hundred and one hundred and fifty billion dollars of free cash flow that's coming to Amazon. Then Amazon forces those producers, those package good producers, those third party sellers, to sign a deal called the price parenting agreement, a price parity agreement where they agree not to sell for
lower prices off of Amazon. So even if I could sell save my Sneakers for cheaper through my own website because I don't have to pay the forty percent fee that I would ordinarily have to pay through Amazon, I'm not allowed to or Amazon will strip my ability to sell from an Amazon. And since to reach those one hundred and fifty two hundred million people I have to sell through Amazon, I can't afford to lower my price elsewhere. So that is the dynamic, and that actually pushes prices up.
Everywhere in the economy.
Will think when they go onto Amazon, I'm getting the lowest prices, and they are, but that's only because Amazon forces everywhere. They have so much power that they force everyone to raise prices off of them.
Matt obviously I'm very sympathetic to your views here. In fact, I completely agree with you. But let me play a devil's advocate and say, hey, a lot of people like Prime, a lot of people like Amazon. A lot of people think it's great that they can push a button on their phone and you know, their socks or whatever they just ordered shows up at their house like literally a day later, and for a reasonable price.
What do you say to them?
Because when you do look at surveys, Amazon has very highs or like favorability rating among the American public who do appreciate the ease of the service.
Amazon's great. I mean, I use Amazon, and there's there's no reason. I mean, there are a lot of problems that I could nitpick, but like, yeah, the basic premise is it's you know, people use it because it's convenient. And the point is is that, like, even though they're it's convenient and they're powerful, they shouldn't be able to keep prices for goods and services higher than they otherwise would be. Like, why is it okay for Amazon to force sneakers to be forty percent more expensive than they
should like just by using these techniques and tactics. There's nothing inherent to the service that forces that. So if you just got rid of their ability to say, keep prices higher than they otherwise would be, Amazon would still exist. People would still be able to, you know, get the convenience from Amazon. It's just that then they would have to compete with companies that could then sell stuff for a better pricing.
So I guess that's how I respond.
It's like, there's nothing inherent to It's like a baggage fee on an airline, Like you don't necessarily need a baggage Like there's nothing inherent to the technology of flight that requires a baggage fee.
There's just some business practices we can change.
Yes, I think that's really well said. And what does a happy medium look like? For what like e commerce and all that should should be And what is Lena Khan trying to get to?
The happy medium is where you know, Amazon is this wonderful infrastructure and people and firms can use it to transact in as a marketplace, but without being manipulated, right, and so they use it in a kind of a neutral way, a little bit like the post office.
You know, Amazon will make its money. They'll charge there.
You know, they'll charge their fees for using their service, but they won't actually be able to pick and choose winners. They will have to compete on better service and better pricing like everybody else. And then you know, you'll have other, you know, marketplaces that come on that are that are differentiated, that maybe offer different service levels or different pricing terms,
and right now we don't have that. We don't have like you know, companies coming in saying like buy through me instead of buying through Amazon, and you get like thirty percent off, like you've never seen that kind of offer, and you should see that kind of offer because that is economically possible. It's just that that extra money is now going to Amazon and you shouldn't.
Yeah, smart Matt, One last question for you, and I know you've got to run. You have been tracking closely how the Wall Street Journal has had a real vendetta against Lena Khan. Can you talk about that and why they in particular have taken such great interest in what she's up to?
Well, so I guess I should say one other thing. You will be able to cancel your Prime subscription if you don't want it, and you won't be tricked into like signing up for things you don't mean, you don't mean to sign up for not just an Amazon, but kind of across the board, because lots of companies are watching this case. So there's there's also the basic like dynamic here of like we shouldn't be tricked into things and we shouldn't make it impossible to cancel stuff, and
right now it is. So that's another big, big part of this case. So the yeah, the Wall Street Journal, we set up a website called Wall Street Grumble. They've they've editorialized against Lena Kon sixty eight times sixty at times.
Right, they are like just obsessed.
And the reason is because, like you know, I deal with anti trust, and people think it's like the nerdy type of like nerdy type of thing. It's like kind of niche that actually it's not. It's about how we interact with each other through the marketplace, how we buy and sell from one another, our good services, ideas, labor, whatnot.
It's like a really core part of the human experience.
And for a long time people have said, Okay, that's that's not something that we can talk about politically. That's what economists and scientists that like they have to hand, and it's like debated on places like the Wall Street Journal editorial page and what Lena Khan and Jonathan Canter and some of the other officials in the Biden administrations. Not everyone, but it's one faction the Bide administration are saying is no, we should debate these things publicly, and
monopoly shouldn't be controlling everything. We should be having free and fair commerce among one another. And that is a real threat to the people at the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the antatress bar and the bank who believe in a society based on rank and order and deference and hierarchy. And that's really what this is about. That's why they're very very angry at Lenicon. She's a
kind of a symbol of this. She's also like taking on consolidated corporate power and areas from defense contracting to pharmaceuticals to you know, to to you know, retailing, to the cloud computing. But like, on a gut level, what's really going on is the Wall Street Journal editorial guys are like, we should run things, not the like, not the rabble.
Right, Yeah, that's fundamentally elitist argument, an anti populist argument. Matt, great to have you Thank you so much for taking the time to break this down for us.
We really appreciate it.
Thanks Matt, thanks for having me.
Yeah, absolutely, Thank you guys so much for watching.
We appreciate it. Help us get to a million subs, it would really mean a lot for Tuesday. Don't forget about the deadline here before I get on that plane to India. Not a real deadline, We're just kidding. We appreciate the million no matter when it comes. Otherwise, Thank you all to our premium subscribers and others breaking points dot com. If you can help us out, we'll see you all next week.
See y'all on Monday.