Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Good morning.
I was told to channel soccer's energy, so here I am.
I'm freaking out shouting four more love. Thank you dating Emily. Great to have you this morning.
Glad to be here.
We have a fantastic show planned. Of course, big speech from Joe Biden yesterday, uh laying out his view of Biden really making his pitch, his election pitch to the American people about what he has done for the economy and making his case that we should keep it all in his hands. We also have some interesting stuff happening on the Republican side, especially this poll from NBC News about the way that the Republican issue set polls with
Republicans versus how it polls with the general electorate. Which of their issue Planks is actually strongest with the country at large. Kind of interesting stuff. There lots going on in Russia. Very hard to sort through exactly what is happening right now. Is putin cracking down? Is he not cracking down? Has he detained some of the people who may have been in koots with progosion. Will sort through
that as best we can. Some new really interesting data about Airbnb and how there's a huge sort of airbnb crash going on right now. Is that going to have implications for the broader housing market? Big question marks there, and some interesting comments from our commander in chief getting a little confused about what war we are currently involved with.
I have a look at AI sex spots.
Emily is taking a look at shean influencers and very excited to have a panel in studio this morning to debate the merits of affirmative action. This comes, of course, as we are expecting the Supreme Court to rule, probably today, to get that ruling about whether affirmative action is going to state or go. The expectation is this going to go, but listen, you never know. So that's what the plan is.
Yeah, this sounds great, and we should start with President Joe Biden. We've got two Biden blacks today because he's been on a roll really. But he gave a huge speech yesterday, long speech. He was in Chicago, and we want to start with just this SoundBite from it so you can get a little flavor of what he talked about.
There's a fundamental break. I'm the economic theory that is failed America's middle class for decades now. It's called trickle down economics. Fundamental economics, trickle down the idea was believes that we should cut taxes for the wealthy and big corporations. And I know something about big corporations. There's more corporations and Delaware Incorporated than every other state and the Union combined. I want them to do well, but I'm tired of
waiting for the trickle down. It doesn't come very quickly. Not much trickle down in my dad's kitchen table growing up. When I took office, the pandemic was raging and our economy was reeling. Supply chains are broken, millions of people unemployed, hundreds of thousands of small business on the verge of clothing after so many had already closed, Literally hundreds of thousands on the verge of closing.
Today, the US.
Has the highest economic growth rate, leading the world economies since the pandemic, the highest in the world. As Dick said, with his help, we've created thirteen point four million new jobs, more jobs in two years than any president has ever made in four and two. And folks, a small accident. That's Bidenomics and action. Bidenomics is about economy from the middle out to the bottom.
Up, not the top down.
So this was all about, you know, laying out his economic case what he's calling Bidenomics, and you know, pointing to the low unemployment rate, the number of jobs created, et cetera, to say, hey, I've done a great job with the economy.
That's why you should re elect me.
I have a lot of thoughts on this, but first let me go through some of the data, because listen, in fairness, the economic data, I think it's fair to say it's premixed. It's like a very strange time in terms of the economy. On the one hand, unemployment is extremely low. Put this up on the screen. You know, there was a sort of natural recovery of course after the pandemic, when things open back up, so that makes sense. There were also overt recovery efforts, many of which appear
to have been quite successful. And so we have a quite low historic unemployment rate, which obviously is an important metric and one that the White.
House likes to tout. You also have, and this is.
Maybe the most interesting one to me. Put this next one up on the screen. You actually have inequality for the first time in my life, lessening because you've had the rich taking a bit of a haircut post COVID. I mean, they amassed incredible wealth during the pandemic, they've
taken a bit of a haircut post COVID. And you have the lowest wage workers who, because of the tight labor market, because of the very low unemployment rate, they have actually had wage gains at the bottom end of the spectrum that have been in excess at times even of inflation. So you have workers at the lowest end of the wage spectrum actually doing the best in this economy right now. Not that it's nearly enough. And let's
get to the other side of this. So the next piece of information that makes things complicated, to say the least.
Is that inflation has been quite high.
Put this up on the screen, and obviously, for most workers that has meant that they have been getting a paycheck cut every single month. You know, they go to the grocery store, they see the price of goods going up and up, the amount that they were making their paycheck not going nearly as far more and more difficulty trying to you know, make rent or make a housing payment at the end of the month. You have housing costs that have been going up for years and years,
and even now they haven't come down. But meanwhile you've got you know, fed interest rate hikes that have made housing more affordable literally than ever before. So a lot to also weigh on American families and American workers, and that is perhaps why put this up on the screen.
In spite of all of.
The happy talk from the Biden administration about how great the economy is, this is probably the most important metric.
Only one in three approve of.
Biden's handling of the economy amid Bidenomics push. They say, this is according to the latest pulling, you even have some softness among Democrats in terms of how they view Biden's handling of the economy. Overall, seventy two percent of Democrats approve of Biden's job performance, but only sixty percent approve of his handling of the economy. So you know, he wants to sell that, hey, things are great, I've done a great job. That's why you should put me
back in office. But Emily, the American people by and large to not agree.
Yeah, and it just doesn't work when you have inflation still at the level because everyone's earnings increasing whatever, it's all getting eaten away at And that's one of the biggest problems for Biden.
He passed a bill signature piece of legislation.
Called the Inflation Reduction Act that was always as a title somewhat laughable and almost like the Apex of Washington branding.
Yeah, well, in fairness, that was like Mansion who wanted that branding flapped on it.
Yeah, it's always good to remember that that was Joe Manngen special. But that said, they did accept it and actually really touted it and leaned into the Inflation Reduction Act branding. And that's a in people's memories, that's in.
The voter, the voter's memories.
And so when you see people are experiencing this economy very unevenly, so where inflation in the basket of goods is hitting if you're at the lower end of the income spectrum. That's hitting you pretty hard in ways, it's not hitting people at the upper end of it. And so that's a big, big, big problem for Joe Biden that I just I mean.
It is going down.
So maybe you know, inflation is going down, but not evenly. Not everything in inflation is going hos and causes us to show no sign of stopping car prices.
I mean, there's been some slowing.
News cars, but like it's just it's really uneven. And Biden is not in a position to say in the next however months until the election, like a year and a half for the election, we're just.
Going to be in a great place again.
Well, Democrats have this constant instinct that if the American people, you know, aren't giving him high marks on the economy, it's not because there's anything the administration did wrong. It's because we just haven't gotten our message out yet. But they just don't really get how great we actually are and how great their lives are actually because of the
policies that we've implemented. Whereas you know, I think normal people in their everyday lives, looking at their paychecks, looking at how farge it's getting them looking at their costs, probably in a better position to understand their economic reality than you know, the president sitting in the White House.
So I do think that.
This pitch it just falls flat at this point because it's not what people are experiencing in their day to day lives. And I think if he is going to lean into this direction, I think it's a very different, difficult political case.
To make, especially when it's not like last time. When he was running.
You know, there wasn't a lot of content. There weren't a lot of policy promises, but there was a little bit of something on the economic side, and there was an expectation that you would get another round of checks. That became obviously really critical in terms of the Georgia elections. That is very likely why Democrats were able to win a majority in the Senate, because they had this really clear promise of hey, if you vote for us, you are going to get a check in the mail that
is going to help you out a lot. By the way, those checks did help a lot, and some of the other pieces that were in that legislation, that first recovery legislation, including the child tax Crew, it is probably one of the most successful policies in recent history.
Yet I think part of why people feel.
The way they do about the economy is not just that inflation has been high, eating into their paychecks, etc. But also because you had all of those programs that were originally instituted that genuinely help people, that bolstered their savings account, that gave him a little bit a wiggle room, et cetera. All of those have now been stripped away. You've got student loan payments restarting, You've got any pandemic.
Aid program has been rolled back, and so things that people used to have access to you like child tax credit, those are gone, and they're really starting to feel the pain. I do want to say something that will be perhaps controversial, which is that I actually do think that Joe Biden has been the best economic policy president of my lifetime.
Now let me say, oh.
That's a really low bar, but he is the first in my lifetime who has broken at all with the neoliberal consensus that starts in the Reagan era, that is picked up and affirmed by the Clinton era that Obama sort of pretended like he might break from that, he ends up being just doubling down on it. Biden has at least tinkered around the edges of industrial policy. For one of you know, even the student loan debt cancelations.
The Supreme Court is probably going to say because partly because the Biden administration didn't do a great job legally justifying it, but they're probably going to strike it down.
But that is a real break with the neoliberal era.
Saying hey, we're going to do overt debt cancelation like that would be unheard of, unthought of in the Obama administration, in the Clinton administration, et cetera. Some of the programs, as I mentioned, like child tax credit. Truly, if you look at the numbers on child programming, this was a wildly effective program. The problem with it is that they
didn't actually codify it permanently. They assumed that they would be able to put political pressure to keep it going, or perhaps they just didn't really care, and so that goes by the wayside. So there are a few things here that you can point to to say, yeah, I do actually think his economic policy, especially at the beginning
of his administration, was better than Obama. But again, it's so wildly inadequate for after you've had forty years of wage at least stagnation, probably decline after you've had decades and debat decades of neoliberalism, which is really pushed up the cost of health care, the cost of education, the cost of housing, made having a basic middle class life
basically unobtainable. That even if you're doing these little, like tiny improvements around the edges, it's just woefully insufficient for where people are right now.
There's this really interesting thing in Axios this morning from economist Darren Grant, who has studied why in this era people's sentiments about the economy are not attached to the unemployment level, whereas historically that's been the case. He says, if your wages are this is access paraphrasing, if your wages are outpacing inflation, things look rosy. If not, well
that's quite dispiriting. Yes, no kidding. But he found this time around that it's the real wages that are tethered to people's sentiments about the economy, which is super super interesting in that it's not always been the.
Case that that's what it used to be.
Like if you have a job, yeah, and your spirits are going to be more tied to whether or not you're pleased with the state of the economy with the president, et cetera, et cetera. That's a really interesting finding, and I think it does get to like big changes in the economy post Obama, post Obama, post Trump, post pandemic, where we are right now.
Why is that different?
I think probably because it's just been a dramatic change in the way that our economy is organized.
Well, when the minimum wage has been stuck at seven dollars and freaking twenty five cents for you know, multiple decades now, it's the longest time we've ever gone without hiking the minimum wage.
Yeah, it's no longer enough to have a job.
There's a lot of you know, do I have a job that is going to enable me to afford anything, to even come close to being able to afford like just basic shelter and food. I mean, we talk about homelessness and you know the rise in that and a lot of cities across the country that comes right down to just housing costs. There is no city in America where you can afford a one bedroom apartment. We're not talking about living largeyear a one bedroom apartment on a
full time minimum wage job. So yeah, it's not enough to look and say, oh, the unemployment rate is low. You have to say not just do I have a job? Is it a good job? Is it a job where I have healthcare? Is it a job where I have some sort of stability, where I have some sort of predictability in terms of my schedule. And this is why, Emily, that you've seen such a rise in interest and support, by the way, historic support for the labor movement, because
there is this awareness. I think Chris Mall's who's the president of Amazon labor Union, he said it, well, he's like, we're not quitting our job, saying we are going to organize at.
Our jobs and make these good jobs.
Yeah.
You see this with the Starbucks baristas who are saying, like, listen, it's not enough that you're going to like virtue signal to me, which they're like barely not even doing anymore apparently with this whole pride flat. But it's not enough
you're going to virtue signal to me. I actually want this to be a good job, and I'm willing to take some risk to do it because since the labor market is tight, like your low wage job is not that important to me, I can go somewhere else and get another low wage job, but fighting to get a job that will actually allow me to sustain any kind of life, Yeah, that's something that is worth taking the risk for.
You know.
That's the Starbucks unionization is one of the more interesting ones period, because Starbucks actually had pretty good benefits. You know, you got healthcare at Starbucks, they would pay for some of your college, and it still wasn't enough because in so many cases, it was scheduling, it was the bathroom policy, it was all of these different things that contributed to a lifestyle that wasn't what people expected from their employer.
And I think that's exactly what we're talking about, like why are these things changing, Because now it's not the same.
You're not able to have a good paying job.
And affordable health care and all of these other things in so many different parts of the economy.
It's just not normal.
It's not healthy for society, and it's it's a huge difference from the past. And so it's expectations versus reality, and when reality isn't delivering, then yeah, you're probably going to have a different outlook. Even if you have a job, even if unemployment is fairly low, historically, it's just going to be different, and I'm glad people are picking up on them.
Yeah, So I think the Bidenomics pitch is going to fall flat because it is dissonant with what people are experiencing in their real lives. That doesn't mean that I think Joe Biden is going to lose the election. And that's so sad about our current political state. Put us up on the screen. So in a new NBC News poll, Biden's national approve rating is about forty three percent. That's about where it's been more or less. Another ten percent
of voters somewhat disapprove of him. And what Sahil Kapor here says is how did those ten percent feel about a Biden versus Trump race? Will have say they would vote for Biden and thirty nine percent say that they would vote for Trump.
That group, the lesser.
Of two evils voters, was really important in twenty twenty
was really important in twenty twenty two. They're basically the group that prohibited the red wave from appearing, and will be really important again in twenty twenty four because you're very likely to have this Trump versus Biden matchup that overwhelmingly majority of Americans do not want, would like to have other choices, but because our democracy is so like frail and broken, they're not going to get another choice, really, and so they're stuck with these these two dudes that
they would really rather would move on and leave us all alone. So who the people who don't like either one of them vote for are going to be a critical factor. And this is always emily what the Biden people have thought. They have thought ron Klain after Emmanuel Macrome, Yeah won Yes, while he had like thirty some percent
approval rating. Ron Klain, Joe Biden's former chief of staff, tweeted out like, oh interesting, interesting that he was able to pull that off not because people loved him, but because they hated his opponent.
That has always been the play here. So to me, it's just such a.
Sign of decay and so pathetic and so outrageous and enraging two that you think, as Joe Biden and also as Donald Trump, that you can run without really promising anything to the American people on a material front, that you can run without you know, just trying to trying to bolster what you've done already in office, but without offering any sort of affirmative agenda for the future.
I think that's a really sad state of affairs.
Frankly, you know, it's also how Donald Trump won because people so detested Hill Clinton and so wanted her away from the quarridors of power. And so I actually think the signs of decay are abundantly obvious.
It's not just with Joe Biden, it's also with Donald Trump.
And when you're pitting in all likelihood, Donald Trump against Joe Biden, just like we saw in twenty twenty, it's an extremely pathetic state of affairs.
But it's the matchup that we deserve.
At this point, we've basically earned this, but you know it's it's I shouldn't say we deserve it. It is the one that we're getting, but people do deserve it exactly better than that. Although to some extent, we have all created this situation because we're all here.
But it's pretty bad.
It's prettymplicity.
Yeah, yeah, but no, I mean, in all honestly, I think that's exactly right. And that's where enter Podsay, Bros, You've got to see this clip because it's so First of all, I think this is going to be a huge narrative in the next year and a half before the election, more than it was with the Jill Stein Susan Sarandon line of argumentation from the sort of establishment left. But also he just puts it in a way that is so perfectly awful. Here.
You got to watch.
If the people who voted for Jill Stein, just Jill Stein in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania had voted for Hillary instead, Donald Trump would have never become president. That's it, right, And so you know, I'm sure there's a lot of Cornell West fans out there. You live in a swing state, you vote for Cornell West, You're helping Trump become president.
That's it.
And you can say, oh, well, it's Joe Biden's fault he did this or that. No, no, no, it's it's your decision. You get to decide whether you want to help Donald Trump become president or you don't. And if you want to help him, then you should vote for Cornell West, or you should vote for Joe Manchin and his No Labels ticket, or you can vote for you know, RFK Junior if he decides to run third party. But if you don't want to help Trump become president, you gotta
vote for Joe Biden. That's it, very simple. Now, I think messaging two voters who might actually make this decision is probably a little different, I would say, because I.
Know chastising works.
Chastizing works probably different, does it, because I would say history would show it does not work. And I mean, I just got I'm having such twenty sixteen reducs right now because it is the same thing all over again. I mean, here you have the specter of Joe Biden going out making this speech, and in fairness these comments from the pod Saved Dudes was before this Biden speech, but promising literally nothing right, not running on any sort
of affirmative agenda. It really is just like I'm not Trump, and you got to keep me in here because you
got no other option. And they could spend their time criticizing that, saying, listen, guys, if you want to win people over, like you need to get out there and you need to make the case to them, and you need to you know, you got a lot of young people who were excited about the Biden ministry, who actually gave the high marks at the beginning of the administration, who are so disenchanted and so disgusted with especially the
recent direction of the Biden administration. You know, you're going to have to appeal to them if you want to be able to win. Instead, it's nope, if you don't vote for Joe, you're a vote for Trump, and we're just going to shame and cajole you and hope that that works out, because the Democratic Party can never fail.
It can only ever be failed.
Emily, it's amazing that put that people have put microphones in front of their faces because they're constantly just saying the quiet part out loud, and like they slip into it sometimes and you notice, like when he was when he sort of took a step back and he was like, no, messaging to those people might be a little bit different, as though he's not talking to the public on his podcast in ways that are going to get clipped and disseminated.
He's a speechwriter for Obama, That's what Jon Favreau was like, He's actually supposed to be persuasive, persuasive and argument arguing to a swath of the public that he understands. You know, in order to persuade people, in order to stir their emotions, you should understand them and clearly, they still do not understand that there are plenty of people in this country that say there is no significant difference between Joe Biden
and Donald Trump. If Joe Biden, if Donald Trump is tweeting crazy stuff, find it's not going to have me up in arms, you know, drinking my Starbucks, watching Morning Joe and freaking out with Mika and the gang.
It's just the same old stuff. I'm still going to be.
In this stupid job with student loan debt with you know, it's like it doesn't change that much from one party to the other. And that's fundamentally what they don't understand. Because he's trying to say, if you don't want Donald Trump to be president, don't vote for Cornell West. Well, you know what, there are a whole lot of Cornell West voters or RFK junior voters or voters from Mary On Williamson who said this is the same on both sides. It doesn't matter to me if I get an establishment
Democrat or an establishment Republican or Trump or Biden. I'm still going to be screwed by the system. Yeah, so it doesn't matter. I don't care if Donald Trump is president. In the same way that I if it's a vote for Biden or Donald Trump, it's just a horse a piece.
Yeah, I mean, listen, to be fair, I don't agree with that.
I don't either.
Yeah, I think there are a lot of people who view it that way, and I can't really blame him for that, but I don't actually agree with that. The reason that I ended up voting for Biden last time around was not because I was excited, not because I didn't have a million issues with his past record and expectations of what he would do in office. It was a very simple one, which is that my core, you know,
core my politics is the labor movement. And Trump would put a bunch of union busting goons in the National Relations Board.
Biden would put some people who at least.
Wouldn't like totally rig the scales against workers, and that is, in fact what happened. It's part of what did enable the Starbucks union. So on that metric alone, I was sort of persuaded, like, all right, that you have to at least lay the groundwork to enable a labor movement, even as I have low expectations for Joe Biden. But as you said, like I can't really blame people for
holding that view. And with Democrats, they always think people just don't understand how great we are, you know, if they just really got it, like if we just.
Came up with a new slogan like build back.
Better, and then they're really gonna they're really going to understand we're gonna win on a landslide if we just like come up with a new slogan and like come up with a great TV ad and pay our consultants more to be able to win people over. And so all of the shaming, all of the criticism goes instead of to the people who are in power, who literally hold the presidency and the Senate right now and damn
close to the House as well. Instead of holding them to account, it's always just like, oh, what's wrong with the voters?
What you know, are the why or the voter?
Are they two sexists? Are they two racists? Are they too like dumb? They don't understand what we've done for them. They're so ungrateful. It's sure it's.
At these pawns that are seeing dumb memes and it's changing everybody's opinion.
Yeah, perhaps you have Favreau, as you say, it was an Obama speech writer, like Obama was great for Obama in terms of politicians, but he was a disaster for the Democratic Party. I mean, the party has never recovered from the thousand plus state legislative sies that they.
Lost under Obama.
They've never recovered from all the governor's mansions that they gave up. You know, ultimately, they gave up the House and the Senate and then the presidency to Donald Trump. Which it's amazing to me that there's never any self reflection about, like, what did you do wrong that you go from Barack Obama to Donald Trump? Here, There's never
any self reflection about that. There's never any self there's memory, man, any criticism of Hillary Clinton, who is the most proximate cause of why we ended up with Donald Trump in the White House instead, it's just like, oh, it's the Jill Stein voters.
They're the real problem.
Yeah, they're the real problem.
And continuously we hear that Democrats, like I don't know a lot of like Hollywood folks whatever, are trying to field Michelle Obama, which I think is really interesting because it's exactly what you're saying. They think she can win and that's literally all they care about Michelle.
Obama has never showed any interest in running for office. And listen, I think you know, especially they're stuck with Joe. There's no other And so let's actually transition to there was a new poll out of New Hampshire that was kind of interesting, and you know, listen, anyone poll, you should take it with a lot of grains assault.
But put this up on the screen.
Now, New Hampshire is really interesting because the Democrats, led by Joe Biden and the DANC really screwed the state over. Joe Biden did really poorly here last time around. I don't know, he had like fourth fifth, it was. It was abysmal, right, It was losing a like Amy Klobashar in New Hampshire, and so they wanted to put the
state later in the order. They wanted to push up South Carolina, where he did really well, and so they did that, but they didn't really think it all through because New Hampshire actually has a law on the books that they have to go first in terms of their primary and the state is held by Republicans. So even if the Democratic Party wanted to play ball and move things, which they actually don't, but even if they did. They
can't because the state has a Republican governor. So Joe Biden is not even going to be in the ballot in New Hampshire. So anyway, here's this latest New Hampshire poll. It's got Biden at sixty eight percent, RFK Junior at nine percent, which is lower than where he's been in
other recent polls, and Marian Williamson at eight percent. And you know, a lot has been made of this poll, and I think people should maybe like cool their jets on reading too much into one particular poll and the fact that in particular RFK has dropped, you know, about ten points versus where we've seen him be in national polls, because these things are all over the place.
But it did raise a.
Question Emily that we were talking about, is he has really leaned into like I'm going to be the podcast candidate. Yeah, I'm going to go on breaking points, which we really appreciate a couple of times. You know, that's great. We appreciated having that time with him. He went on with Joe Rogan. Obviously, he's done a ton of podcasts across the political spectrum, and the theory of the case is
that this is the new mainstream. This is where you actually find people, This is where you actually reach people. This is where I can get my ideas out since the mainstream media is shutting me out.
And I think in particular because.
The views that RFK holds and leans into, especially in these podcast appearances, are really out of step. Frankly, just by polling, whether you agree with him or not, with where the Democratic Party base is. I don't think that having so much this attention in the podcast tour doesn't appear to have aided him at the very least, even if we want to take this poll with a lot of grains assault.
And you know, I just pulled up what real clear politics had here, and they have polls recently. We're actually going to talk in the next block about a new Wisconsin pole, but the Dems in the Wisconsin Pole it has Biden forty nine, Kennedy nine, Williamson three. Pennsylvania a Quinnipiac pole, Biden seventy one, Kennedy seventeen, Williamson five, So Kennedy at seventeen in Pennsylvania, Kennedy at nine in Wisconsin.
There were some flash polls right after he announced his candidacy where he did really have a sugar high that seems to be coming down pretty clearly. We'll get more of the next couple of weeks, but these poles are an indication I think that it's not where it was after his initial announcement.
And I think you're right.
The podcast candidacy is very different than a ground operation, and I'm sure he knows that. I mean, his people know that, but what people are seeing and that's a really interesting thing too, that if you're running, for instance, a podcast candidacy, immedia candidacy like Donald Trump brand, I mean he at first had like no ground operation anywhere.
In twenty sixteen or twenty fifteen, he comes in and he's on media constantly, is on MSNBC, CNN, he's on Fox right, and what people in New Hampshire are seeing.
Is Donald Trump. It actually didn't matter that he didn't have a ground operation.
So in some ways there's this interesting interplane now that like, actually, if you do blanket national media, maybe you can get away with having a different ground operation, but that probably won't be the case for.
Anyone not named Donald Trump.
Yeah.
So I mean with RFK Junior, obviously, you know, I have disagreements with him, on a number of policies, vaccines, but even really probably more importantly you might have heard that even more importantly actually economics. I have very you know, different view of what needs to be done in terms
of the economy, in very different philosophy. But actually would like it to be the case that you could run this sort of podcast candidacy, that you can bypass the mainstream process, that they're weakened enough that this would work out for you. But I unfortunately just don't think that we're there, especially on the Democratic side. And he has
an additional challenge in that. As I just said, I mean, you know, I wrote a whole book that I think had a lot of legitimacy to it criticizing Anthony Fauci, But you have to acknowledge, like my views on Anthony Fauci and RFK Junior's views on Anthony Fauci are wildly different than the Democratic base.
You know, his views on Ukraine.
We're actually talking about a poll today where not just Democrats, but actually overwhelmingly I don't think we should be providing additional military aid to Ukraine. I think we should be using that as leverage to get them to the negotiating table. My views and RFK Junior's views are not in line with the Democratic base, and it's something that you know,
that's a key position that he really leans into. So we also has this added challenge of actually, the more that attention that he gets, the more that people know him outside of being a Kennedy and a protest vote against the president that they're really not excited about.
They're worried about his age, et cetera.
The more they get to know his actual views, the more of an issue it.
May be for him.
So he may have the ironic situation Emily that actually the more tension that he gets, the more of a challenge that he has in the polls. I think there are other candidates out there, the person on the Republic Cancide that is doing sort of a similar strategy as vivek Rumswamy.
Yeah, although he also has I mean.
He is on Fox News regularly as well, so he does have mainstream media too. But he has really leaned into this sort of like super online persona. His issue set is the like super online, like podcasty issue set, and it's been enough for him to get a lot of attention. You know, we certainly got a base and followers who are very excited about him and the issues that.
He talks about. But you know, is he gonna be the Republican nominique?
No?
Is it going to work out for him in terms of a national media profile and whatever he wants to leverage that forward next to you know or potentially electrum cabinet position. Yes, But unfortunately, I think there's still a real limit to how far you can go if you're just leaning into like the podcast route versus having any sort of you know, ability to garner mainstream media attention.
I think the problem also is that it's very easy to fall into this impenetrable bubble in the same way that Hillary Clinton's team was clearly an impenetrable bubble and sort of isolated and insulated from criticism and from the
outside world. If you're running a podcast cannondacy that might actually, apart from just having a more tailored message to one particular crowd, you may also be insulating yourself from different voters, touchgarters you need to, and the very you know our via Jinior's Californian The very obvious example is somebody that I really like, he'd tell you the same thing, probably Michael Schellenberger, who ran a natorial campaign not that long
ago and had so much conversation online around his candidacy, was able to get some donors because of the media attention he got, and it just didn't translate into votes on the ground. And so I think that's an indication if Bobby Kennedy has a name, obviously like that name is hugely, hugely helpful in ways that are not necessarily precedented in politics, just because of the place that his uncle holds in the sort of public imagination and that his father holds in the public imagination.
That said, all of this.
It may end up being, you know, not much more than a splash. I will say, though, Marie Harp, just as we're wrapping up here, she said recently, I promise you that Kennedy is not going to get above twenty percent any primary. I think it's way too early to make a determination on that, because while he may come down from a sugar high here, he may also adapt and say, yeah, our message has been a little bit narrow.
It has been sort of.
To this you know crowd of people that's you know, read substack and watches podcasts, which are important voters but not all voters, and you know, not necessarily having common everything with all voters, so he can adjust. And I think saying that there's no way he's going to get twenty percent in any primary way too early.
Yeah, especially when again Biden's time are going to be on the ballot in Iowa or in New Hampshire. Right, So I think that's honestly a really foolish thing to say. All right, Emily, why don't you set up for us this really interesting pulling from NBC News about some Republican priority.
This stuff is fascinating.
I'm so glad that we're we can actually put this up on the screen. The first element in the B block, so be one here look at that. I know that the font is kind of small there, so I'm going to break it out for everyone. This is an NBC News poll that tested eleven different proposals and issues that
the GOP candidates are campaigning on. And basically they say that I'm reading from the report, the recent push on using the military at the border is resonating with general election voters, though they Republicans are down on several other high profile policy planks. So if you're looking at the screen, you're going to want to look at the upper left. There, so support for deploying the US military to the Mexican
border to stop illegal drugs from entering the country. That said so, fifty five percent of people say that would make.
Them more likely to vote for a presidential candidate.
Then take your eyes all the way down to the bottom right. Wants to address the federal budget deficit by reducing Social Security and Medicare benefits for those who are not already enrolled in these programs. Only twelve percent of people so that would make the more likely to vote for a candidate. Seventy seven percent of people say that would make them less likely to vote for a candidate.
The most popular position that they tested among all registered voters and Republican primary voters was deploying the military to the Mexican border. And notice it wasn't just deploying the military. They asked in the question specifically about stopping illegal drugs.
From entering the country.
And that's actually a pretty key distinction because we talked yesterday about the Stephen Miller drone the migrant vote. Yea allegation which both of us, I think are finding a little bit dubious but the distinction there is we're just going to stop people from entering the country, not drugs. Now, when you're asking specifically about drugs, that should be a huge red flag for Republicans to test out that messaging.
If they want this like deploy.
The military to the border thing to work electorally, you probably want to ask specifically about stopping the flow of drugs. That's what's polling well, and that is a very different thing than people drugs.
People very different.
You think that sounds pretty obvious, but to politicians it's not.
Yeah, And they actually tested also, so they tested supports deploying troops to the border to stop illegal drugs, and that was the best. This is, you know, a whole list of basically Republican priorities, a bunch of stuff about you know, transgender kids, there's stuff about.
Abortion, there's stuff about stop this deal.
So they tested all of these sort of like Republican talking points and priorities. And so they tested deploy the troops for illegal drugs, and they tested deploy the troops for immigration, and that did pull significantly less well. It still was among the better polling of the GOP priorities, but it was less effective than stopping illegal drugs with troops, And I think it's a sign of I mean, we're
still in it just keeps getting worse and worse. We had a fair amount of attention during the twenty sixteen campaign about how bad the addiction crisis had gotten, how bad the opioid addiction crisis had gotten, how many overdose deaths, and just what a scrore.
Of America this was.
And some of that attention has fallen off even as the numbers have continued to grow and have really gotten worse and worse. So I think it reflects what continues to be a horrific, humantal and pain point with the American public. Even as we discussed yesterday, I think this solution is.
Not the right one.
I mean, really, I think the only solution is to legalize, tax and regulate, but and the war on drugs since we've been doing this forever and our addiction rates just keep on getting worse and worse. But I do think it just reflects that human pain that people are still going through. You know, it's interesting if you go down the list here some of the places where there's a real divergence between how the public feels about the issue and how just the Republican base feels about the issue.
Abortion is one of the top ones in terms of that sort of like disconnect. So overall you only have twenty nine percent who say that banning abortion after the first six weeks of pregnancy, which is the Rond de Santis, that's a Ronda Santists physician. Only twenty nine percent say that makes them more likely to vote for a candidate overall, whereas fifty seven percent say it's more than a majority say it makes them less likely to vote for that candidate.
With the Republicans, there is a clear majority fifty two percent in favor of and say that it's more likely to make them vote for a candidate who supports banning abortion after the first six week six weeks, and only thirty percent of post Now, I mean fifty two percent is not like eighty percent. But you can see how the politics of this within the Republican base, because especially because the pro life part of the Republican base is
very organized and very effective and very powerful. You can see why you have Canadates like Mike Pence, Rondo Santis and others who are getting really on a step with where the American people are on this issue. But you know, obviously within the context of Republican primary, it makes some sense.
But I have to say, overall, Emily, I wish that politics worked more like this, where you like go through you like have your personal issue priorities, and you like go through a list and how do these candidates match up to that list?
But this, it's kind of precious to think that's how politics actually works.
And you see it with I mean you honestly see it with Ronda Santis and Donald Trump. I mean, Ronda Santis's whole play was like, I am going to on issues. I'm going to do all these like issue based things, policy things in Florida. I'm going to get to the right of Trump on issues like abortion and wokeness and transgender issue. Like I'm going to get to the right of Trump on all these different issues.
It's where the base is.
If I just look at the ideological charts and I look at the polling, this is where the base is. And if you ask voters in the Republican primary, they have seen that. They actually do say Ronda Santis is more conservative than Donald Trump.
They just still like Donald Trump.
Yeah, because it's more about like the vibes and the energy and who's going to own the Libs and who pisses people off?
And it's my there's more about this, like.
Sort of wholesome view of the situation versus let me go through an issue by issue checklist.
Yeah.
No, it's always vibes.
And I actually really like what Benji Starlin I've seen before said when he tweeted this, he said, always love this NBC newspopt where they test generic candidate qualities and positions.
Actual voting is much more complicated, but it's a great acid test for relative priorities and which issues are fully polarized on partisan lines or more niche And you really do see that with the border one, whereas you see for instance, with like just to stop immigration or to deal with immigration sending the military to the border, it's forty six to forty With allowing kindergarten teachers through eighth grade teachers to discuss sexual orientation or gender identity forty
six to forty six, bans on trans adolescents taking puberty blocking medication forty one to forty four, aid to Ukraine thirty seven to forty. You see polarization down the line on. Actually, most of these issues, even ones that I think the online right capital o capital are things are just like populist cram the board outright winners. Yeah, absolutely, that is not what this shows at all. Granted that is more complicated.
These are different questions than whether you support that, but this is asking whether it makes you more or less likely to vote for someone in that The way that makes sense is is it a priority for you?
Yes?
And what do you think of the people who tend to talk like this? I feel like that's actually a huge part of the formula when people are asked a question.
Yeah, I mean I'm always skeptical of these polls because I think people are bad, not because people are dumb, but because people are complex at assessing what their own motivations will be in terms of choosing a candidate. I wanted to ask you, Emily, what do you think of
this one? So they asked this question. You know, would you be more likely or less likely to support someone who a candidate who quote threatens to penalize or financially harm businesses that make statements on LGBTQ and other issues that they.
Do not agree with. This was a big loser.
This was almost as bad as the Social Security and Medicare question. So the overall public, only twelve percent said that would make them more likely to support a candidate. And this is basically like asking about the Ron de Santa's Disney situation. Yeah right, Yeah, and seventy percent said it would make them less likely to support that candidate. Even with Republicans, this was a dog. This was the
second to the worst polled question. Sixteen percent said it would make them more likely and fifty eight percent said it would make them less likely.
What do you think about that?
Yeah, so I think to apply that to destantas, which they're You're right, I think they're clearly trying to do, is not super helpful because that's such a specific situation. Disney occupies such a unique and distinct place in the like a public's idea, So there's something more emotional and specific about the Disney example. But I do think this gets to what we're talking about, and that it's about
the vibe. So when you're asked this question as a member of the public, you're thinking, Yeah, what the candidates I can think of that are talking like this are the ones that like just don't like these are like the hardcore Republicans, and most of the country is not a hardcore Republican, right, So if you're associating, if you're coming to associate these types of policy positions with hardcore Republicans, especially in the middle of a primary, and as Republicans
have been gearing up for primary for the last couple of years, that's an interesting sign to the GOP to say, like, hey, the marketing on these issues when maybe if you ask them in a different way, with more specific examples, you'd get different results.
But that just means the marketing, the sort of.
Thirty thousand foot level association that the public has with this piece of our agenda not great.
I also think, in fairness, I think this wording is very loaded threatens to penalize or financially harmed business. I just I think the language is a little bit loaded, agree and is part of what is driving this result. But it is interesting to me that you know, this is something that Trump has jumped all over de Santis for.
He has really kind of taken to Santa's.
I mean, Disney's side in this dispute and said that you know, they're making their humiliating DeSantis and making him look foolish something like that along those lines. And you know, I do think that there is something there in terms of Trump. Feels like there's an angle that he can work.
And you know, I think Trump is a much better politician, much savvier politician, and much he has more of just a populous sensibility, not that he's like a genuine but he has that normy vibe sometimes that comes through, and in this instance it seems to be backed up some by the polls.
Well, and let's move on to this.
You can see there was a new one of the most hotly anticipated polls in politics, the Marquette University poll of Wisconsin voters. One came out yesterday on the GOP presidential primary. We can go ahead and pop this element up on the screen. It is B two. Yeah, there
it is. So this is my back of the Milwaukee Journal Centinel new polling in Wisconsin's presidential primary for Republicans from Marquette University law Trump is at thirty one percent, DeSantis is at thirty percent, Pence at six percent, Tim Scott at five percent. That undecided number is around twenty percent. That's a that's a pretty big deal. But I think
it's also that twenty percent is a really big deal. Now, the margin of error here for all voters is plus or minus about four points, margin of ara for Republicans about six and a half points, so that Trump versus DeSantis could vary pretty wildly within that margin of error. And actually that means Pens and Scott are both in the margin of air polling at six and five percent.
That said, it's going to be We talked about this yesterday that when you look at these big national polls of Trump versus desantus of Republican voters, Trump is way ahead. But the way our primary process works, if you catch momentum in an early state, and Wisconsin isn't one of those.
But if you could replicate these polling results at any point as we approach the actual primary caucus in Iowa or in New Hampshire, because someone has a really good ground gain in a state or is particularly popular in a given state. Wisconsin somewhere that Ted Cruz actually won, I believe in twenty sixteen that was generally, you know, not a huge Trump state until he really started to catch on with folks in rural Wisconsin and is extremely popular up there.
That is what can make the difference.
If you start winning particular states, then you just get momentum in a way that totally changes the national polls.
Again, I still think Donald Trump.
Is clearly the front runner, but it's pretty I think useful to zoom in and particular states where the race is much closer, because that's an indication that DeSantis can compete in individual states, and individual states are going to be instrumental in shifting funds, in shifting momentum, and shifting media coverage as the primary season gears up.
So that's a pretty useful metro.
So that's definitely the Desanti's case, right, that's their case, that's their plan. Iowa has I think he's got a decent shot there because there is a strong religious right evangelical base that has rewarded candidates that do hold their issue set. DeSantis has positioned himself to the right of Trump, particularly on the issue of abortion, so I think that probably.
Is his best shot.
You know, I spent a lot of time sort of downplaying I wouldn't say downplaying, but just my honest assessment is I think Trump is going.
To be the Republican nominee.
But if I was to look at this poll and make the best case I can for DeSantis. I think it's very interesting that you have such a high number of undecided, and I think that's perhaps why this poll is such an outlier as opposed to all the other polls that come out that I'm looking at, you know, Trump plus thirty four, Trump plus twenty four, et, Trump
plus twenty eight, et cetera, et cetera. I think it may be because they allowed people to say they're undecided, whereas a lot of other poles the way they're contructed, you.
Got to pick one.
And so the best case I can make for DeSantis is that while Trump's base may look really rock solid, only maybe thirty percent of it is really rock solid. Maybe the other twenty percent that he typically gets that gets them over fifty percent in these.
Polls, maybe they are open.
Maybe there is a pitch that you can make to them that would persuade them to move off of Donald Trump and so, and the solidity of his support may be more of an illusion then it sometimes appears. I think that's probably the best case you can make for DeSantis based on this pole, which is admittedly an outlier, Based on the other things we've been seeing it coming.
Out like yeah, and this is a poll that has been wrong in some pretty i would say, egregious ways, and they all.
Have in fairness, but this was one that was like really agregious in twenty twenty in a.
Couple different cycles.
Really, I've had some misses and so and with a six plus nine US six point five margin of error for Republican voters, that's pretty significant. Now, if it's between Trump and DeSantis, this is molly reading the poll here, fifty seven percent of Republicans say DeSantis, forty one percent say Trump. So DeSantis in Wisconsin, if this poll is to believe to be believed, comes out ahead with Republicans pretty easily, like well above the margin of error if
it's DeSantis versus Trump in Wisconsin. If it's Biden and DeSantis, forty nine percent go with Biden, forty seven pick Dysantis. Between Biden and Trump fifty two forty three. Biden wins over Trump by a larger margin than he ultimately did on election day, but that that number Trump versus desantus in Wisconsin. And again, if this is genuinely an outlier and actually is picking up on something interesting that's outside of what we've seen so far, and in a way
that really reflects voter sentiment. That's quite interesting.
Let's go ahead and move on, guys, to be four, which is potentially also a momentous situation, not just for Republicans but for all of us in American politics. Put this up on the screen from Mediaite. So apparently Trump is considering getting back on Twitter, basically planning on getting back on Twitter.
I like the way Mediaite frames this.
He's saving his return to Twitter for a special occasion, like another indictment.
Yay.
The Axios had the original report here Emily, and they basically said he had actually considered getting back on after the original indictment, but then decided to wait. I mean, this is complicated for him financially because obviously he has a piece of truth social He also I think has some agreements exclusivity agreements with them that he has to does it have to, but is potentially advantaged by letting
those exclusivity agreements run out. But it looks like at some point in this election cycle, we are going to get Donald Trump's tweets back in all of our lives.
And you know, it's funny, but it is also kind of a game changer, I think, and his team seems to be noticing this according to the Acxios report. In that I think this goes to the argument that Twitter truly is a monopoly and has a wildly unfair market share and needs to be regulated differently, because, as they're noticing, you really need to be on Twitter to specifically have the influence that you might think you could get from true Social. But true Social is an echo chamber, and
that's not why anybody uses these social media platforms. They end up getting used that way and in a way that creates this like dopamine addiction in some cases. But honestly, you can't get your message out if everyone isn't on the same platform, and that's exactly what's happened to Trump
with True Social. He like even being the former president, basically posts into the void, and every once in a while something breaks through and it will get covered in the media as based an official statement of the former president. Funny as that is, but it doesn't really get the pickup that it used to in the press. And I think everything you need to know about Twitter essentially having an unfair market share.
Is in this report.
Yeah, about whether Donald Trump is coming back.
I mean, I think social media platforms are basically natural monopoly, yes, you know, and I think we need to think of them in that regard. But yeah, with Trump, elite journalists are not on true Social, so it's just not in your face every day the way it was when he was on Twitter, and a key source of the Donald Trump power is making the media respond to that exact, making them freak out about whatever he's saying, being able to drive the narrative, drive the conversation, push the set
of issues that he wants. I mean, he is the master. I've never seen anyone better at doing that. And by putting himself in what is effectively like a social media ghetto over on true Social, he has intentionally undercut his ability to do that. He's still obviously a very powerful force, especially as he's getting, you know, in dieted and probably going to face more indictments. He's going to be central to news coverage whether he's on Twitter or not, but it has sort of eaten away at his power to
drive the narrative. One thing I will say, though, Emily, is I think Twitter was so much better when they really did have the character limits and I think Trump is such a better poster when he's forced to constrain himself to brevity on Twitter, because what he is posting on true social is just like it's so long and.
Tedious and repetitive.
I mean, I think that is also a small part of why it's not getting picked up as much is because he just like the format of the short tweet back when that was still enforced, is actually a better format for him.
He's a better poster in that genre.
I would read like a new Republican essay from you on this.
That's all I got.
There's a great book by Rob Long called Bigley where he analyzes Trump tweets as essentially as poetry and like, actually, it's really funny, but he should do he should update that actually now that Trump has been doing these really long true Social posts, because I think it's a great I have a creative writing minor. This is like real time.
It's ever going to be useful. That's interesting that the analysis of like contemporary poetry where there's no boundaries, but if you have restrictions and constraints on your art, you're going to.
Produce something better.
This is wildly unuseful in the context of our conversation right now, But I thought I would, Mom.
This is for you.
I'm using my degree and getting some money.
You got their quintessential like lib horrible degree, that's amazing.
What was your major political science? Even worse? Put those two things together?
No, I mean actually though, like you do write a writer, yeah, and having so like I think Taygebe has this very like literary sensibility when he writes. Even when I like disagree with him, I always love reading his writing because it's so beautiful.
So it has a use.
He's dying art for Crystal.
There's so much happening y Yeah, sure, right now, that's hard to really understand exactly what's going on.
Yes, this is very difficult to sort through. So I'll just we're just going to go through what is being reported in the press right now, and you know, always take these reports with a grain of salt, because I think it is very much an open question. Even you know, I've been talking to our friend Diegor who's in Moscow. Even for people that are there on the ground, very uncertain what exactly is going on. So first put this up on the screen. We got some this is from
Western intelligence officials. No, keep that in mind. They are saying that Progosion actually his plan was to capture Russian military leaders as part of last weekend's mutiny. He accelerated his plans after the country's domestic intelligence agency became aware of the plot, and they say that the plot's premature launch was among the factors that could explain why it failed so quickly after thirty six hours when Progosion struck that deal with Lukashenko called off the armed march on
Moscow that had initially faced little resistance. So the original idea, according to Western intelligence officials, is that he was going to capture Sergei Shoigu and Valerie Gerasmov, a chief of Russia's General staff during a visit to a southern region that borders Ukraine.
That the two were planning.
But because the FSB found out about that plan two days before it was to be executed.
He pushed up the plans and launched this.
Less poorly executed, less less well thought out situation because it was sort of rushed into being. They thought that this this kind of bothers my family. So according to this report, Western officials believe the original plot had a good chance of success. But failed after the conspiracy was leaked.
And the reason that I took note of that is because the Biden administration pointedly did not say anything about the fact that they apparently had knowledge of this plot, did not, you know, alert the Russians, didn't alert the world,
et cetera. And if you thought this had a good chance of success, like that's kind of insane because you're talking about just like standing back while this mercenary madman takes control of a nuclear armed superpower and just like crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.
I think that's I think that's pretty reckless.
Yeah, No, I mean I completely agree.
I actually think that's similar to what we've seen with the Bridge over and over again with and actually with the Bridge, we've seen this with North Stream too, is that you see Western intelligence officials basically leaking to the press to cover themselves in a way that actually doesn't make themselves look great.
It makes them look like they're either.
Wrongfully assessing situations or not acting in ways that are actually productive. And this is just another part of that pattern as far as I'm reading it right now.
Yeah, let's put the New York Times reporting that we have up on the screen as well, which is, you know, additional context. And I think they were the first to report some of these details. They say that a Russian general actually knew about the Mercenary chief's rebellion plans. Again, according to US officials, you getting progotion. The head of Wagner may have believed that he had support in Russia's military. Now let me tell you why this is really significant.
They're alleging here that a General Sergei Serovakan, I'm sure I'm screwing that up. My apologies, former top Russian commander in Ukraine, helped to plan Progosian's actions last weekend, which posed the most dramatic threat to President Vladimir Putin in his twenty three years of power. American officials, they point out, have an interest in pushing out information that undermines the standing of General Seroviakan, whom they view as more competent
and more ruthless than other members of the command. His removal, they say, would undoubtedly benefit Ukraine, whose western back troops are pushing a new counter offensive that is meant to try to win back territory seized by Moscow. So the insinuation here is that US officials might be pushing this narrative because listen, Progosion was one of the more effective leaders in terms on the Russian side, with his band of merca andaries, one of the more effective leaders.
They now have.
Taken him out of play, not taken him out of play. Russians have taken him out of play. Now if Serovakin is also taken out of play, well, these two things are quite significant to Ukraine's odds and Ukraine's chances within their counter offensive, because you're talking about two of what Western officials at least view as the most effective and most competent military leaders that Russia had on their side.
And this there is fairly credible reporting this morning that Serovakan has been detained by you know, by the Kremlin, that he you know, is expected to have collaborated or at least known about progosions plans, and so he is, you know, being being held right now. That's the reporting, you know, nobody can really fully confirm it, but it is an interesting turn abouts.
I'll just say that, yes it is.
And we're told over and over again that the end goal here is nothing short for the West and for the United States of regime change, and that's why there's Western intelligence official leaks or comments to the press right now are really strange to me because they're I mean, not strange. Actually they're perfectly logical, but they're really trying to emphasize discord within the ranks. And whether or not
that's true, I think is an open question. Given the fact that our only acceptable end game, as American lawmakers and officials in the West have said over and over again, the only acceptable end is regime change, then it makes
complete sense. You're starting to leak from Western intelligence officials to the New York Times, to the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal that Putin is weak and that you know, there's discord in the ranks, And that's exactly what we're seeing after this coup is continued Western intelligence officials saying that there's just too much discord, that Putin is really in trouble this time, et cetera, et cetera, and that given our the only indication we have of what could
end this war in an acceptable way to the Anne Apple Bombs of the world and the politicians who read her essays in the Atlantic, if that's regime change, then the motivation here makes me doubt the verac.
I already have seen the Ukraine hawks seizing on what happened here to say, look how weak Putin is. Look at how you know they were able to march so close to Moscow and he barely did anything. And you know, let this guy just get off the hook and go to Belarust. And that means that his red lines don't mean anything. Ergo, we should continue to push the bounds of what you know may corner him. Maybe he is a red line that he's drawn. This is justification why
we should do even more. I'm already seeing them make that case. In terms of the public perception, you know, I think these things are a little bit hard to gauge in immediate real time.
But put this up on the screen. I did find this interesting.
We did have a trend of decreasing US public support for continuing military aid. That has been the trend for some months now. We now have a new pole that goes in the opposite direction. And it is not lost. I mean that this poll was taken, you know, people responded to it just shortly after this whole Russian attempted coup situation.
Unfuld to put this up on the screen.
Guys, you've got eighty one percent of Democrats, fifty six percent of Republicans, so even a majority of Republicans and fifty seven percent of Independence favor supplying US weapons to Ukraine. As I said, it was concluded on Tuesday, charted a sharp rise in backing for arming Ukraine, with sixty five percent overall of respondents approving of the shipments. That's compared with forty six percent in this same poll last month. So you know, for me, with polls, the absolute numbers
are less accurate than the directional change. So the fact that in this one poll you have almost a twenty percent movement towards in favor of arming Ukraine in one month shows me that probably there was a real response to this Russian coup attempt and refocused attention on the Ukrainian cause made people feel like, oh, we got them on the ropes, like we just do a little more, we're going to be able to have an outcome that
we want here. So I think it's interesting to see that public movement it is.
And whether or not the intelligence is accurate and the read on the situation that is being pushed in Western media by Western intelligence is accurate. That is exactly from I mean, I think it's pretty clear that's exactly what the Pentagon and the sort of NATO sect wants American voters to think. And as those numbers dipped, there was clearly a lot of nervousness about it.
As Kevin McCarthy started.
Saying, well, I don't know, there was clearly a lot of nervousness about it. And so again I'm not actually disputing that any of this may have happened. Actually I don't know. And I think that's the best thing people in the media can say right now is clearly to your point.
You can talk to people on.
The ground in Russia who don't know. Yeah, So for people sitting in their air conditioned studios to say that they know exactly what's happening in Russian and Putin's on his last leg is just nonsense. But whether or not
it's true, the intelligence narrative is taking hold. And one of the things I found very interesting about this pole is that when you tied it to China in particular, you get seventy six percent of Americans saying that providing you to Ukraine demonstrates to China and other rivals that the US has quote the will and capability to protect
our interests, our allies, and ourselves. That is, that's higher than I think what you would get if you didn't ask that question specifically tied to China for sure, And that's another probably that is going in the binder over on the hill for the press people and the policy people.
Yeah, the people that our finger in the wind are going to pay attention to this pole.
The last piece of this.
Well, there's a lot of questions still open, but this was an important coda as well. So what is going to happen to the Wagner group that Progotion was head of, this group of mercenaries that were not only operating in Ukraine, I mean they were involved in Syria, they are involved in Africa.
They really have a pretty wide footprint.
Until recently Putin denied that they were even linked to the Russian state, which everyone could clearly see through. But now that is being openly acknowledged, and so put this up on the screen. This is also reporting from the Wall Street Journal. They say that the Kremlin is setting out to seize full control of Wagner's global empire. You've got some details here, Russia's deputy Foreign Minister flew to Damascus to personally deliver a message to Syrian President Basher
al Asad. You have senior Russian Foreign Ministry officials phoning the president of the Central African Republic, whose personal bodyguards include Wagner mercenaries. You have government jets from Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations interesting shuttled from Syria to Mali. Another
of Wagner's key for an outposts. The rush of diplomatic activity, reflected Putin's attempt to play down the chaos at home to assure Russia's partners in Africa the Middle East that Wagner operations there could continue without interruption, and that those operations would just now be under new management. There has even on this question of like it would seem obvious to me that Wagner is going to be certainly banned from Russian soil, right, but probably you know, completely subsumed
under the Ministry of Defense, et cetera, et cetera. There's also competing reporting from on the ground in Moscow that from you know, from inside of Russia that the Wagner recruitment centers are up and operational even within Russia acting as if nothing happened, which seems insane to me. So even with this, there's also competing reporting about where Progotion
actually is. There was some reporting that he is still in Russia in Saint Petersburg, whereas others are saying no, no, he's already you know, he's in Belarus where he is supposed to be based.
On the agreement that was struck.
So still a lot that is shaking out, a lot of questions about how this all plays out. There's a lot of questions over whether this ends up being just like a historical blip that doesn't really change the course of anything, or whether it ends up being a key lynchpin either for the future of you know, leadership in Russia or the future of the Ukraine War. There's just a lot we don't know, so trying to sort through every piece of information we've got here.
Yeah, no, absolutely, And Wagner has been a.
Pretty es central part of Russia as we know it, like to there as he's put a global empire into the way that they function as a country and as a huge player in the geopolitical stage. So this is a big change, But that would explain why some reports say that Wagner offices recruitment offices are still up and running in Russia, because obviously there has to be a way to deal with this in a sense that's not a total divorce.
Yeah, let's take a look at some interesting Airbnb data.
Emily, what do you got for us?
I was gonna say, Crystal, this is your hobby horse, and actually this data shows exactly why it's a good hobby horse I have right now, because it's extremely consequential and the ripple effect of what's happening in real estate is going to start to play a huge role in our economy.
I mean it already is.
But ye, what we're going to see sort of downstream of the bigger picture questions. We can go ahead and put the first element up on the screen. This is new data about Airbnb. Be look, this is from Nick Gurley. He says, the Airbnb collapse is real and if you look at this chart on the screen, that could not be more true. Revenues are down nearly fifty percent in
cities like Phoenix and Austin. Nick continues, watch out for a wave of forced selling forced selling from airbnb owners later this year and the area's hit hardest by the revenue collapse in those areas Tennessee, Phoenix, Austin, Myrtle Beach, San Antonio, Ashville, Salisbury, Maryland. That one I found a little random, but I guess it's the Eastern Shore, Nashville, Denver, Breckenridge, Neal. One is a lot of vacation destinations Lakeland, Florida, Seattle, Washington,
Panama City, Florida, and Orlando, Florida. We can go ahead and put the next element up on the screen as well. Nick continues to parse the data and he says, here, what's scary for the US housing market is just how many Airbnbs there are.
Data from all the rooms shows.
One million, one million airbnb slash vrbo rentals compared to only five hundred and seventy thousand homes for sale. A million rental properties compared to you know, roughly half of that homes for sale. Creates huge home prices downside if struggling airbnb owners elect to sell, huge home price downside of struggling Airbnb owners elect to sell. I mean, just think about what that looks like if you start to have these these huge crashes in particular markets, and it
will be a little bit uneven. I mean, I think there were a lot of places that weren't up on that first chart we were talking about where you're seeing, particularly the South seems to be getting hit. Really just just smacked by this where you're not seeing similar things for other huge airbnb markets New York, Washington, d C.
Actually weren't on that list, And Crystal.
I want to ask you what that means in terms of how the country experiences these sort of downstream effects of a crash in particular markets.
I mean, it's complicated, honestly, because there are a lot of people hoping that housing prices crash. That we're sort of hoping that we might have a downsward in the housing market because between the fact that housing prices have come down a tiny bit, but you have mortgage interest rates so much higher, it has made it so that it is the most I mean, this is the most unaffordable time in history to try to actually purchase a home.
So there are a lot of people who are not on the housing ladder, you know, haven't been able to purchase a home, who will be out there going yes, baby, come down, please, because for God's sake, you know, they just seem to go up and up and up and become wildly unobtainable for anyone with just like, you know, a normal middle class income.
So there's that aspect of it.
You know, there's the Airbnb a specific part of this, which I think is pretty interesting. Airbnb really skyrocketed, like a lot of companies during the pandemic because you have people working from home, you know, white collar professionals who had some money to burn. They're like, you know what if I'm just working from home, that could be anywhere, So why don't I, you know, go somewhere beautiful and runt an Airbnb for a month or a week.
Or right never at least my own place or rent my own place.
Yeah, I could do that too. And you had in certain especially certain vacation towns. There was a place in upstate New York. Actually I was talking to like a cab driver there that they had seen this huge influx of Airbnb people and all of the properties were being
bought up to be rented out as Airbnb's. You've also seen I don't know the specific numbers on this, This is kind of anecdotal, but I'm pretty confident that this is the case you've seen a real shift from Originally Airbnb was like, you know, just one random person and they had a vacation property that when they're not using it, they want to rent it out, etc.
And they use Airbnb.
Okay, Now it seems to have become very corporatized, where more likely than not, if you're renting an Airbnb, it's part of some property group and they manage a bunch of properties, and that has made the experience more transactional and I think in a lot of cases less pleasant in my personal anecdotal experience, because a lot of times, if we're going to go on a town because I have a family, we'll rent Airbnb because you have more
space I like to have kitchen. It has lowered the quality of the experience because you have all these like crazy rules that they put into place. They're more likely to try to rig the system with like photos that are wildly unrepresentative of what the property actually looks like. So I think there's been a degrading quality as Airbnb
has become this mainstream juggernaut. And then you know, obviously post pandemic, there's a real lessening of demand because not everyone went back to the office that was a white collar worker, but you did have a lot of a high percentage go back to the office or working remote, you know, only like once or twice a week, which means that you can't just take off for wherever whenever you want to. So that has obviously led to this downturn.
And I think the ones that will be offloaded are probably the ones that are run by these larger property companies. Because if you're a person who just has like a vacation home and this is just a way to make some side cash on it, you know, you were probably able to sustain before you were getting all the airbnb income, and so you may be more likely to try to
hang on to it. But I think for people who got in because they saw a quick cash opportunity, you probably see a lot getting dumped on the market.
You know, and also a property investment. This has basically been a small business and a huge nest tag for a lot of families. It's not and I agree it has been corporatized.
That's been bought up.
You tend to see like big chains owning tons of properties. Now there is a portion, as you mentioned, of the airbnb population where people were really sustaining themselves by renting you know, their English basement in a city like Washington, d C. And it was a huge part of how they're paying their mortgage. And when this sort of foot traffic stops, it's easy to like Monday morning quarterback this. But I really have always thought that Airbnb is a
bad investment because unlike Uber. Although Uber you saw the same thing, I mean with cab drivers who are super powerful lobby and the unions are very powerful. Uber really ended up getting off the ground, although it did have like fits and starts in places like New York or places like California, and the still facing regulation in those places. It was just very obvious to me that I think there was like twenty seventeen, I was in Lisbon and there was anti Airbnb graffiti on the walls of like
different buildings because it's so disruptive. Yeah, it's so disruptive, and not in a way that is sort of universally good. Like there are just so many upsides to Uber. With Airbnb, there are really different. I mean, it's a very hard
thing for Airbnb even to manage itself. And you know, I think it's been great for a lot of families and people who were able to use it, but regulatory on the regulatory level, I just knew that it was going to end up becoming way more complicated because you know a lot of places people just can't resist regulating things to regulating things to death.
But maybe we disagree on them.
Yeah, well we definitely disagree on that part with regard to Uber, because I mean, you know, Uber's whole business model relies on basically like labor exploitation. So if you're truly if your business model depends on like breaking labor law, then I think you got a problem with your business model with.
Regard to Airbnb's.
Yeah, I mean this is kind of like it's a classic almost like Yimby debate or Nimby debate, because it's one thing if you're in a high tourist area where all the houses are basically rental houses anyway, that's one thing.
It's another thing when you've got like you know, a local community or used to every body being rooted and now you've got this cycle of young partiers or whoever coming in and out of some of the houses on your street, there's going to be a different level of attention paid to that I suppose I saw this article about how apparently there are these apps or you can rent out.
Your pool if you have your own pool in your backyard. Are you aware of this.
I've heard of that.
People also do it with cars. Now there's apps for just your Oh really, people could just come into your driveway and rent your car and go bring it back.
That's interesting.
I don't mind. I don't hate that one. But yeah, people were I guess in these like you know, nice neighborhoods, they were upset by the fact that you had all this traffic now coming in to frequent these pools.
And there's a big debate going.
On in Montgomery County, Maryland about whether or not they should be regulated and where are the boundaries between like maintaining the peace in these neighborhoods and.
Letting people do what they want with their private property.
So anyway, I mean.
Legitimate question, and that's the things that really dogs Airbnb in that, like you do have communities that are uprooted by people who don't give a damn about the neighborhood because they're staying there for a couple of days and you know, they move on after a couple of days.
So if they're really allowed for a couple of days.
Care about the property, I don't care about the neighborhood.
Yeah, it doesn't matter that they're embarrassed in front of the neighbors or that their neighbors are upset, because they'll never see those people again in their lives. Yeah, and so it's just it is very disruptive. But on that note, yeah, so that like, it was clear that there was a real sugar high during the pandemic with Airbnb and even a little bit before the pandemic.
So, and some of the.
Coming down is going to be good because it means there will be what we could agree on as reasonable regulations, even with Uber. But on the other hand, I think, you know, some of it might be a little heavy handed. That said, it really is going to suck for people who build small businesses on the back of this company that was offering something really cool.
I agree with that. I do agree with that.
Very happy to be joined in studio this morning with Carson Rocanna. He just recently took what was I think a very courageous vote, the lone no vote on a defense budget nearing one trillion dollars.
Great to see her, Great to be on the new set.
Yeah meanky, welcome one of our first guests on here. So glad, very glad to have you. So tell us about, you know, this defense vote and how you end up being the only loan vote against it when you know you have a lot of Democrats to talk about we got to cut the defense budget. You've got a lot of Republicans now who at least mouthed the words like we got to cut the defense budget.
So how does it come down to just you?
It was shocking to me.
I mean, you have sixty minutes doing a whole expose about how taxpayers are getting fleeced. Defence contractors are jacking up prices thousand percent, five thousand percent, ten thousand percent, four hundred billion dollars of procurement that is unaccountable, where the money is going not to our troops, but in the pockets of these defense lobbyists. We're approaching a trillion dollar defense budget that is fifty six percent of all of our federal budget. You can't talk about deficits and
not talk about defense. So I saw the board, everyone is voting yes, and I was the one loan no vote. I'm hoping more people on the Armed Services Committee, will join me. But what I've said is sixty minutes does a better job of oversight than Congress.
Yeah.
Well, and there are a lot of Democrats who were elected before Putin decided to invade Ukraine. And I want to ask, let's say, hypothetically, in a world where where Putin doesn't invade Ukraine, do you think this vote goes any differently or do you think this is basically the state of affairs in American politics, not just in the Democratic Party, in the Republican Party, where you're going to have one loan no vote on cutting the budget here.
Well, I don't think it would have made any difference on the Armed Services Committee because the thing we're doing in Ukraine actually is we need to produce more of a defense industrial base for some of the javelins and the stingers.
And that's another thing.
I had an amendment in the bill to say, do we actually make any if this in America or how much do we make overseas? The Pentagon literally does not know great of the trillion dollars, how much if it's being spent in manufacturing in the United States, and how much we're getting from overseas. And so what we should be doing is building our defense industrial base or industrial base, but what we are doing instead is lining the pockets of defense contractors on things like the F thirty five,
which have had cost overruns. We've got a B twenty one Air Force plane that is far more sophisticated, yet we're still funding the B one, which isn't as good as the B twenty one. I mean, you can just go line by line and you can point to things that are duplicative, things that are not necessary. We've got over eight almost eight hundred bases overseas that were designed at the time of the Cold War, and we have new threats now, new challenges, and it's never been updated.
Yeah, so, I mean, I think everybody can see the logic of that. However, you know, this is not the first time where you've had these lopsided votes, or where you've had politicians who say, in theory, yes we should cut the defense budget, or we should audit the Pentagon or things like that, but in reality they never actually vote in that direction or put any pressure in that direction. Is it because of the money involved in terms of
the campaign contributions. Is it because there are so many jobs from these programs that are spread out across the country.
Like, why is this such a difficult nut to crack?
Well, three reasons. One of the defense contractor campaign contributions. I mean, we can't underestimate the role of their lobbyists and the financing that they provide campaigns.
Two, just look at my Twitter feed.
You get attacked as a week on national security. Do you not want to stand up to China and Russia? Of course I'm strong in national security. I actually want to be investing in the things that are going to make us safe in AI and naval superiority, in the modern technology, and having a defense industrial base as opposed to the legacy industry that isn't a modern national security strategy.
And Third, there is.
This concern with jobs, But you know what, if you really wanted to have job, there are many better ways of creating these jobs. I mean, build a defense industrial base in these communities instead of the overseas bases. Put a steel plan. I was just in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Let's build modern steel, which is going to be necessary. Let's have all defense production and key components being done in the United States.
I think people will honestly be shocked to find out that that's not already the case.
Yeah, it is. It's not the case.
I mean, it's not only not the case that we aren't making or defense equipment in the United States. We don't know the Pentagon can't tell you which country they're getting what from.
In my amendment just says let's at least track it.
But you want to create jobs, just do that as a baseline, say make the things in the United States.
Well, And that's what's incredibly frustrating, because the argument actually that cutting and having a more precise and targeted budget would make us much more powerful, I think is clearly superior to the argument that we should just be throwing money in every direct direction and seeing what happens. But
it never seems so to win out. And I want to throw that to you as a question with the context that you know better than anyone else of particularly the politics and the dynamics of being on a committee like Armed Services and what that means for what your colleagues different motivations are when it comes to taking these votes.
Well, again, I think the biggest fear is this week on national security that you're going to be attacked in that way and you talk to the actual generals and they'll say, it's not how much you spend, it's how you spend it. And have a more precise and more modern national security strategy, have a stronger defense industrial base, think about what the actual challenges with China and Rush you are and how you prepare for that. But people
are afraid to have these votes. Now, when we go to the floor, you're going to probably have sixty Progressives vote no, and you're going to have some people on the Republican side vote no. But until you get those folks on the committee and you start to do the oversight on the committee, things aren't going to change.
And there's some obvious cases.
I mean, I had held the TRANSD I'm hearing where trans I'm admitted to basically fleecing the American public. They had to pay sixteen million million dollars back to the taxpayers because of that hearing. I mean, this is case after case after case. We're not doing the work.
But leadership doesn't want to put those people on the committee.
Well, it's both.
Some of those folks don't want to be on the connet because they don't want to be part of it, and sometimes so we need more of them to actually be on the committee. And sometimes it's leadership that doesn't want to have these things be contentious. But here's the point that in the country, the vast majority of people know that we've got to bloate a defense budget. This is not an unpopular position. They know we're spending way too much on overseas bases that should be spent here.
They know that we should be making these things in the United States and not. We have a supply chain that is offshoring jobs. So this could be a populist popular position.
Yeah, and you do see, as I mentioned, some Republicans who have rhetorically embraced the theoretical idea of cutting the defense budget. Now usually they're like, we got to take out the wokeness or whatever.
That's kind of the direction that they go with it.
But you saw during the debt ceiling fight originally when McCarthy became speaker, there were some Republicans who were like, part of the deal is going to be we're going to cut the defense budget. And then when it actually comes down to it, not only have they not cut, they actually increase funding. So what do you make of some of the new Republican rhetoric on this. I think you're someone who, to your credit, has worked with Republicans where you can, where there's good faith agreement.
I think you've been very effective at that.
So do you think that there are some partners on the Republican side to get serious about tracking the funding, auditing the Pentagon, and ultimately bringing down the numbers.
I do.
I think there are Republicans who are concerned of the last twenty years of endless wars, and who think that the money would have been better spent on building our manufacturing base, our infrastructure, and our working class, and who are willing to take a look at the top line of the defense number and see if what could be cut, and what are the overseas bases that aren't serving our anymore and investing that in our communities instead. Why are defense contractors fleecing the American public?
Why are we offshoring some of these jobs.
You can have that conversation with some of the Republicans, and my hope is over the next few years it shows up and in the committee votes.
You know, it's interesting because the point you're making about manufacturing parts of the United States obviously is a huge part of the Chips Act, and as threats seem to be increasing towards Taiwan, a reason that that's so such a top level priority for the United States is because we weren't making chips here and because we won't have the ability to do that for a long time. So how large is the spectrum of China looming over your colleagues?
And to what extent is it also just sort of a cope or an excuse to say, well, we can't cut the funding now.
There's never a.
Good time to cut Pentagon funding. When it comes down to it, it seems like China is the reason right now.
Well, look, China is a rail threat in the Taiwan Straits. I mean, I'm not saying dismiss it, but what do we need to do. We need to provide Taiwan with some of the weapons to have deterrens.
To do that.
We don't have enough of a defense industrial base because those weapons are being sent to Ukraine. So fine, if there was a provision to increase the defense industrial base, I'd support it. Does that mean we need the next B one bomber when we already have the B twenty one bomber? No? Does that mean we need more F thirty fives. No, Does it mean we may need more naval superiority naval submarines. Yes, So let's have the full context.
Now here's why we don't have one hundred percent production in the United States or even attempt to do that, because the defense contractors say, oh, well, if we do it all in the United States, then the Europeans and others won't buy our weapons.
I don't believe that.
I believe that they're still going to buy the most innovative, the best military if we're making it here and it's going But in these talking points, you get these talking points by defense contractors and they defeat Donald Norcross in New Jersey had an amendment, let's move to one hundred percent production here, and they didn't pass the Senate. So these defense contractors have a huge sway on this politics, and I don't think the American people know exactly what's going on.
I see it as a true failure of democracy because I think if you pulled something like that, like our defense production should be made in America, No, it'd.
Be like ninety percent.
Now, it would only be defense contractors basically that would say no, we.
Should keep it overseas. We like it the way it is.
Conners, and I wanted to ask you about another issue that you've been vocal on, which is the restarting of student loan payments, and also you know, the issue of student loan debt in general. We're expecting, possibly today, probably today, just ruling from the Supreme Court on President Biden's executive
order to cancel ten thousand dollars in student debt. Could you just talk big picture about the issue of student debt, why this is something you have focused on, and what an impact it has on the US economy.
Well, I had to take out about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars of student debt when I was finishing my education. And I've done well in life and have been fortunate, but there were times in my twenties where I had to be on a forbearance where I couldn't make the monthly payment, and you just saw the debt keep piling up. And anyone who's that student debt knows that there's the debt you take and then there's the amount you end up repaying with interest. And as far more,
this is crushing young people. They can't start families. They can't buy a house, they can't start a business, and no other country in the world makes you go into this kind of debt just to get an education, just to get whether it's vocational education, whether it's community college, whether it's an advanced degree. And so in my view, we have to have public college be free. But at the very least we should be forgiving this debt for working class and middle class families. Here's the point. The
President promised that and people relied on that. He said, Okay, twenty thousand dollars of your debt is going to be forgiven. Now people said, okay, I'm going to plan for that. I'm going to rely on the president's commitment. We have to live up to that commitment. And so if this is struck down, at the very least, need to pause any repayments until we make good on the debt, and we need to look at other authority that the president can use to forgive the debt.
And I was just going to ask a follow up on that last part of the question. How likely do you think it is that the Biden administration starts to explore some of these creative Maybe I would say legally creative solutions to forgiving student debt on a mediate basis where it's not so staggered and uncertain for so many
people who have these loans out. If the Supreme Court makes a decision that people expected to make here, how likely do you think it is that the administration sort of starts to take a serious look at those other avenues.
I think they're going to look at the Higher Education Act as one avenue forgiving the loans, for stopping the repayment. There's going to be too much expectation anger demand from young people around this country, not just in their twenties, thirties, forties who've had this debt, to say, we relied on this promise.
We need to do something.
And by the way, is if the economy, if you believe the economists, and there's a danger if it's slowing, the last thing you want to do is to take money away from people which they're spending on restaurants or on houses and further slowcown consumer spending. It could actually help trigger a recession.
Do you see this as a political issue for the president's re election because young people were very important to him defeating Donald Trump, and what was you know, really a kind of too close for comfort election last time around in the few key states. Now you've had his approval rating with young people has really deteriorated. They had a majority favorable among young people when he started his administration. Now it is definitely underwater, and it's one of his
lowest performing demographic groups. So do you see this as a real political risk for him too going into probably another matchup against Donald Trump.
I do you know.
I just keynoted the Young Democrats of America convention of five hundred and seven hundred folks there, and I said, it's hard to be young in America in twenty twenty three. Folks have stood a debt and before I could even say anything, people stood up and say, cancel it, cancel it. I mean, this is top of mind for young people. This is something that this is one of the reasons they voted for the president to help address this issue. And we need to do everything possible to make good
on that promise. And young people, they're not unrealistic. They'll be able to tell if we're doing everything and if we put up the fight then it's not working.
But we've done everything. They'll understand.
But what we can't do is just throw up our hands if the Supreme Court comes out with a wrong decision and not use all the authorities we have. I believe the authority is there to at the very least pause the payments until the debt is forgiven.
So one last for you, President Biden. There are a lot of voters who have concerns about his age, about his fitness for office. Even within the Democratic base, you have a majority who say, hey, we'd like to have other options here, we might like to go in a different direction. He has two challenges right now, Mary Williamson and RFK Junior. The DNC is not planning on holding any primary debates. Democratic Party has talked a big game
about democracy. Should the president debate his primary challengers?
Well, look in the past, the presidents have not debated their challenges. I don't think Barack Obama did or Bill Clinton did. But if the polling continues to be very competitive, then they have to look at it.
But let's see where we are.
What does competitive mean to you?
I think that is a judgment call.
If it looks like someone is going to be competitive in a state, or if they're actually polling high come the fall and I think you have to look at it. But but I think you have to have that threshold crossed when you're having incumbent president.
So do you think that you know something like the polling criteria that we had in previous debates or that the Republicans have for their debates. I think what do they have it at? Like three percent or five percent
or something like that. Anyway, do you think like a polling threshold like that, because listen, just because previous incumbent presidents didn't debate isn't really an excuse if we're leaning into the democracy is an important thing and let's have the people have a choice and hear everybody out.
No, the president has been this age at the time of reelection either.
You know, if you just had a three percent or so cut off, everyone is going to want to get on stage with an incumbent president. So I do think if there's someone who has a serious challenge and in a given state come the fall, then you can make a legitimate case. But in the past, none of the incumbent presidents have debated in a primary unless it's serious.
I mean, I don't have Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter debated what I will say is that the President should campaign in all of the states, in New Hampshire, in South Carolina, in Nevada, in Michigan, in the Early States, and that we need to be we can't just have a rose garden strategy. We've got to be out there campaigning.
Do you think he's making the right decision with regard to New Hampshire and Iowa staying off the ballot. It appears to be the direction he's going in.
I think he should be on the ballot in New Hampshire. I understand why you want to move South Carolina up, but sometimes that may take a couple of cycles. And New Hampshire doesn't have a choice right now under their law,
and they have got a Republican governor. What I fear is if for one year you just had the Republicans up there campaigning and Robert Kennedy up their campaigning and Marion Williamson up their campaigning and the President is not in that conversation, that hurts, not just in New Hampshire, that hurts in the national narrative. I believe the President puts his name on the ballot in New Hampshire, he will win. He would have the support of the Senators,
the members of Congress. He'd have Bernie Sanders' support, and that's something I've said both publicly and privately. He should be campaigning there.
Corrson, so grateful for your time.
Thank you so much.
Always great to see you.
Thank you, Crystal.
The show is sort of upended by breaking news, but your monologue is so spicy, we simply needed to get to it.
So what are you looking at to the well.
The future of AI and its potential civilizational impact continues to be debated. The Internet has used the newly available tech in the most predictable of.
All ways, for porn.
Washington Post reports Meta's new AI lets people make chatbots.
They're using it for sex. Here is their paragraph.
Ali is an eighteen year old with long brown hair who boasts tons of sexual experience. Because she quote lives for attention, she'll share details of her escapades with anyone for free. But Ali is fake, an artificial intelligence chatbot created for sexual play, which sometimes carry outs graphic rape and abuse fantasies. Ali's creator, who chose to remain anonymous for fear of professional ramifications, took advantage of Meta's open source technology to make exactly the chatbot that he wanted.
As he told the post quote, it's rare to have the opportunity to experiment with state of the art in any field. I think it's good to have a safe outlet to explore. Can't really think of anything safer than a text based role play against a computer with no human beings actually involved.
Fair enough.
Now, Ali is the result of a new open source playground that has been created by Mark Zuckerberg's Meta. The two big boys in the AI scene right now are Google and open Ai, which is partnered with Microsoft. Their large language models have been grabbing all the headlines for their sophistication and for the times off the walls conversation that their chatbots have been having with tech journalists.
But Metta has taken a really different approach. Rather than keep tight controls and.
Secrecy around their own proprietary model, Metta has decided to take the guardrails off, launching an open source model called Lama, which was instantly available to any AI researcher on request.
Now.
Of course, since Meta was not exactly keeping the model under lock and key, all of the details quickly leaked online, leading to a heyday among online tankers thrilled to create their own custom AI without the restrictions put in place by Google and open AI. Now it's not like any old Joe Schmo can play with this new technology. You need some technical expertise to be able to use it at all, let alone customize it to your whims. The Verge described the model thusly, It's perhaps helpful to think
of Lama as an unfurnished apartment block. A lot of the heavy lifting has been done, the frame's been built, and there's power and plumbing in place, but there are no doors.
Floors, or furniture. You can't just move in and call it home.
From business perspective, this is probably pretty savvy play from Meta. They were hopelessly behind the big players on their own AI development, so Rold try to come heat directly. They just gave away their own ground jewels, allowing the whole of the Internet to play and develop it. Meta will then be able to benefit from all of that tinkering
being done on their own platform. So the business case here it makes a lot of sense, but it has nonetheless prompted some pretty justified concerns about where all of this is going. Sentats Holly and Blumenthal penned a scathing letter to MEDICEO Mark Zuckerberg. In it, they slammed him for conducting no risk assessment and demanded to know what steps were being taken to protect the public from this
AI unleashed. A leaked internal memo from Google showed that at least some of their employees see metas open source approach as an existential threat to Google's own AI business model the memo. This memo was published by the substack semi analysis. Shout out to them for getting a hold of it, authenticating it, and posting the info In it, the anonymous researcher writes, quote, We've done a lot of looking over our shoulders at OpenAI. Who across the next milestone?
What will the next move me? But the uncomfortable truth is we are not positioned to win this arms race, and neither is open AI. While we've been squabbling, a third faction has been quietly eating our lunch. I'm talking of course about open source. Plainly put, they are lapping us. Things we consider major open problems are solved and in
people's hands today. Now we can hardly weep over the damaged business prospects for Google or Microsoft, and in a sense, this Mommo actually makes kind of a compelling case for the wild wild West approach that Meta has leaned into. Those like Zuckerberg and Dorsey who argue for an open source approach believe that releasing these AI creatures into the world is the best way to troubleshoot them, figure out their impact, and understand where the real dangers might lie.
As Meta themselves argued in their press release announcing this tech release, restricted access has limited researcher's ability to understand how and why these large language models work, hindering progress on efforts to improve their robustness and mitigate known issues such as bias, toxicity, and the potential for generating misinformation or as metas chief AI scientists told The New York Times, do you want every AI system to be under the
control of a couple of powerful American companies? But they're clearly massive risks involved in this approach as well. What might malevolent actors do with this type of unfettered technical power? After all, any number of top engineers and thinkers in the field have worn off nothing short of civilizational catastrophe and collapse thanks to this tech. Many sign their name to a letter calling for a complete shutdown on further research and development until society can actually wrap their arms
around the potential dangers. Now after tinkering with a Lama model, one Standford researcher told his colleagues distributing the technology to the public would be like quote, a grenade available to everyone in a grocery store. Personal Personally, I think both sides the debate have a point. It is a catastrophe for this tech to be confined to the whims and private motives of two tech giants, Google and Microsoft, already monopolies.
It's also potential catastphe to open the floodgates to all commerce, some of whom will have more nefarious ends in mind than creating the perfect sex spot. Personally, I think this should have been owned by the people and controlled by the government from the beginning, But that ship has already sailed, and to be honest, pretty pessimistic that this debate even matters. Cats out of the bag, toothpaste down on the tube, et cetera.
Et cetera.
Best case scenario custom sex spots for all worst case scenario end times should be a fun few years. Emily, I think this debate. All right, Emily, what are you looking at?
All? Right?
Well, the Shean Influencer Tour truly has to be seen to be believed. After some tough headlines and even congressional skepticism, the fast fashion giant brought American TikTok influencers to China this month for a transparently cynical whitewashing campaign. Except the influencers fell for it, you may be shocked to learn, and they fell hard. The results were so propagandistic they would make Pravda editors blush. And these people didn't even
realize what they were promoting. Check it out A three.
We just pulled up my mouth.
I'm still picking it up off the ground. It's so big.
Today we are at the sheen where where the products come directly from this facility to your home.
Most fascinating thing is that I've seen the exact process of she and clothing. I've seen how it's designed, I've seen how it's made. Now I'm going to see how it's packaged and chipped off. And I feel like that's such a unique perspective to be able to see as not only a gread but a consumer of she and.
Rust assured, the influencers have investigated the situation and everything is under control in all seriousness. Obviously, if a massive corporation pays you to tour their factory in an authoritarian country, it's pretty silly to take them up on the offer and then credulously vouch for them to your followers as though you actually experienced anything resembling reality and not propaganda.
If you're not familiar with Shean, which.
Was founded in China but is not but is now based in Singapore, here's just a quick overview from CNN Business quote. Shean has enjoyed particular popularity with gen Z and Crystal because it holy advertises on apps like TikTok, cultivates close relationships with influencers, and keeps prices low during a period of historically high inflation. Investigations in twenty twenty two alleged that Sheen failed to declare that it had sourced cotton from Hinjong for its products, a violation of
the Weiger Forced Labor Prevention Act. Sheen and several other Chinese fast fashion firms have also faced a high volume of copyright infringement accusations and lawsuits for intellectual property rights violation. Critics now also take issue with the company's environmental impact. There's some research on that as well. The details of
allegation regarding Shein's labor record just don't look great. A Bloomberg analysis last November reportedly found cotton and Shean close could be sourced to Shinjong, which the company failed to disclose in compliance with legislation that sought to crack down on products made via forced labor from Wiger Muslims. Whether or not you like that bill, she And sourcing cotton from Shinjong and then also choosing not to disclose it is a pretty glaring sign they were probably using forced
labor knowingly to make clothes. Here's how one government summarize Here's one government report summarized media findings on Sheen quote. Outside of concerns about forced lafe. A twenty twenty two investigation by Channel four found a pattern of labor practice violations at Shean affiliated factories in Guangzhou. In one factory, workers were paid the equivalent of five hundred and fifty six dollars.
A month to make five hundred garments a day.
Workers had their first month's pay withheld in order to ensure worker retention, and another factory workers had no base pay and they were instead paid four sons of garment. These workers were fined heavily for mistakes in stitching or sewing.
The report further found.
Workers and she In factories working eighteen hour work days with one day off a month, clear violations of both Chinese labor laws and she In's owned supplier code of conduct. Reuters reported in twenty twenty one that she And made false statements and lacked disclosures regarding its labor conditions in violation of the UK's Modern Slavery Act. Okay, so here's where the influencer tour gets even more ridiculous. She And organized this trip literally weeks after announcing plans to prep an IPO.
By the end of the year.
So enter Congress, where bipartisan reps Jennifer Wexton and John Rose penned a letter to sec Chairman Gary Gensler asking him to quote set forth regulations and mandate Shean to certify via independent verification that the company does not use wiger force labor as a condition of being registered to
issue securities in the United States. Now, none of this is too cheerlead for over zeals hawks who may be cherry picking too because they're China hawks, or to pick on the easiest targets in all of pop culture at the moment, but to call attention to one particular aspect of the grift. Sheen used videos of the influencers thanking them and saying things like quote, it is so nice to look around the table and see women that look
like me. One of the influencers who actually apologized after getting backlash said, part of the reason actually came down to identity, explaining quote, especially plus sized content creators, we're just happy to be included.
Nashvill ran a.
Headline, interestingly that read quote she and exploited marginalized women for their influencer trip.
It worked. So here's the real takeaway.
It's not that fashion bloggers aren't geopolitical geniuses or that China's labor record is highly suspect. We know all that vulnerable we are to Chinese propaganda intended to exploit our divisions and weaknesses.
She And, by the way, is.
A top TikTok advertiser. How can they trick big American social media accounts into whitewashing and economic powerhouses? Labor record well, they can pray on identity politics. It's just a reminder that not only are some of these identitarian fixations used to divide and distract in the US, they're being used to propagate exploitation abroad, and they're continuing to weaken us then globally. Chrystal Sheen is a really interesting company.
So we are very excited because we have a panel in house who's going to join us in just a minute to talk about affirmative action on the merits.
Let's get to it.
So, guys, as we've mentioned a couple of times, we're expecting some big Supreme Court rulings, in particular on what has always been a contentious issue of affirmative action being used in college admissions. So we thought we would set up a little panel so we could debate the topic on the merits, not necessarily the legal rationale, with actual merits of the policy. So very happy to be joined
this morning by Michael Starr Hopkins. He is an op ed writer for The Daily Beaston, longtime friend of the show and also Delano Squire's. He is a research fellow for Heritage Foundation and new front of the show. Great to have you, Delana, so let's just start by making the case. Michael, I'll start with you, what do you think is the case in favor of the policy of affirmative.
Action Across this country, We've had systemic racism, and so when you look at things like redlining income inequality.
I mean, you can look at DC as a perfect example.
When you cross in Anacostia, the schools are failing, but when you go to Chevy Chase, Maryland, ten miles away, they have marble floors, They've got teachers with master's degrees. Those things matter because at the end of the day, income inequality shows up in very different ways. So Black Americans, our income is forty five thousand dollars for the average median and African American, but for White Americans it's seventy five thousand. And when you start to have those kind
of disparities, it affects you all the way up. And so I think in terms of affirmative action, what they're really looking at is trying to level the playing field. It's not perfect, but I think it's been something that's been important not just for African Americans and Hispanics, but for white Americans as well, because it teaches the differences in what's going on in society. Black Americans can give perspective and white Americans can learn from those perspectives.
And we'll get to the pulling on this in a little bit, but what we've actually seen, interestingly enough, Michael, you have a chance to respond to this, Delano, is that in terms of leveling the playing field, this has changed the levels of the playing field, particularly for Asian Americans,
so white Americans one demographic. I think that has probably been hurt in some cases, but very obviously, especially when you're looking at the ivs or California public schools, Asian Americans have really been filling the brunt of this as it an effort to sort of level the playing field.
How much do you think that sort of conspicuously over the last couple of decades in particular, has exhibited or made the case that I'm sure you've probably been on board with for a while against affirmative action.
My views on affirmative action have sort of morphed over time. I think, yeah, I think part of it is one I'm big on defining terms, and I think a lot of people confuse affirmative action with racial preferences, with diversity sort of writ large. I understand, you know, Michael's point, but the honest you know, we're being honest about it, Harvard. The students, the black students that are going to Harvard are not coming from East of the River in Anacostia
generally speaking, or West Baltimore or East Flatbush, Brooklyn. We're not talking about the lowest income students. It's typically you know, middle class, you know, black students who are you know.
Going to ivy leagues and other selective universities.
And to your point, I do think because of the complexity of race and it's evolving nature over decades, what ends up happening is that Asian students feel like they are paying for what the society says white people did to black people some number of years ago.
And I don't.
I think ultimately, you can't have equality in any sense when you are subjecting different people to different standards of assessment based on skin color, ethnicity, or any other immutable characteristic. And that's that's what's actually happening at Harvard. To a few a few data points, Harvard has you know, the applicants ranked in deciles, so you know, first to tenth, tenth being the highest, you know, number one being the lowest.
A Black student in the fourth decile has a higher chance of being admitted into Harvard than an Asian student in the tenth decile. Now, mind you, if you're in the fourth decile at Harvard, you're not some slub. You'll probably be in the eighth deacile at the University of Massachusetts.
But that student's being given an artificial bump over a student who has a more competitive academic background because of this notion that this is going to, I guess, redress some of the issues that have gone on with race in our country's past.
And I don't think that's sustainable.
And I think the biggest reason why, and I think Michael knows this, what the what acknowledgis is that racial preferences are unsus because it's something that its proponents demand but will never claim, because we'll say, oh, we need racial preferences to keep the IVY leagues diverse. But then any particular black student who's there, so, oh, you only got in because racial preferences, and so, oh no, that's
not true. I earn my way here. So those two things are irreconcilable, and none of us want to feel as if we're being tokenized.
So I hear a few arguments there, Michael, to get you to respond to. So number one is that the policy is discriminatory towards Asian Americans. I do think that there's some evidence that backs that up. Number two is that, okay, if your goal is to uplift poor black folks, this policy really benefits more middle class to upper middle class black folks. And number three that you if you are a Black American. This is something that Justice Thomas, for example,
has spoken to. If you are a Black American who perceived who is perceived as having benefited from affirmative action, then you're always going to be sort of taken down a notche that you're always going to be as lesser than because you are even perceived to have benefited from this policy.
Let me address the lesser.
Then, affirmative action isn't going to like cure that, whether you're at Harvard or elsewhere, there's insidious bias in this country. And I think you know, affirmative action is never going to readdress that, but what it can do. And I actually disagree with the idea that black people aren't going to Harvard from poor schools, because when you look at the numbers, most African Americans who are going to elite
universities are first generation college students. And so I think the idea that somehow it's going to make African Americans feel like they didn't get there on their own or they didn't deserve to be there, I think that's no offense, like intellectually lazy, because at the end of the day, African Americans are starting on first base, and you're seeing a lot of White Americans just based on things like redlining neighborhoods funding starting on second or third base.
And then what about the point on Asian Americans, Because I mean that's been one of the more compelling points is that this is the group that has really, you know, quote unquote suffered from affirmative action. You see, you know, in systems that do have an a firmative action, the number of percentage of Asian Americans has been diminished. You've seen efforts even at like elite high schools here in Northern Virginia to try to deal with the fact that they feel like, oh my.
God, we got too much, too many Asian students.
We've seen some horrific things that I mean, are just, in my opinion, overtly racist where they'll take an Asian candidate who has really high grades, really high SAT scores, but they'll mark them down on these like really squishy sort of like racial tropes of personality to try to make the school a little bit less Asian. So what do you think of that critique of the policy.
Well, i'd say, Baki, the case from I think thirty forty years ago made it illegal to have race be the deciding factor or the deciding decision. It's a factor, but it's not the deciding reason that someone's accepted. They still have to be qualified, they still have to be meeting the threshold to be accepted. But once again, I think it's the idea that if you're starting here and the other person is starting here, then we've got to
balance that out. And so Asian Americans aren't underrepresented at universities, and we actually look at the numbers, they're represented equal to population. But when you look at the numbers for African Americans, it's overwhelmingly underrepresented. And its states that have gotten rid of affirmative action, it's almost twenty percent drops in diversity. And so you know whether it's in schools or the workplace. You know, Gap had the issue where
they had the monkey shirt. If they had black people in senior positions, things like that wouldn't happen. I had roommates in college who had never been around African Americans, and so they had certain beliefs just based on things they had seen on TV and culture, and so having the opportunity to be able to give them that experience made them better.
So I want to let me push you a little bit.
First of all, do you think that diversity is like a goal that we should even be, that you think is valuable, it's important for society as a goal that you generally support.
I think diversity is a good thing generally speaking, right, But I like ideological diversity, on the ethnic diversity, on regional diversity, class diversity. But that's typically not what you get on a lot of college campuses. You have people who think the same would look different, and to me, that's not particularly diverse.
So you have Michael acknowledge, like, listen, the policy is not perfect. Almost no policy is exactly perfect, but it has increased and you can see this in California where they rolled back affirmative action in the UC system some like you know back in the nineties. I think you have seen the percentage of African Americans decline. You have seen a decrease in diversity, even though they're trying to sort of work around the fact that they can't overtly do affirmative action anymore.
You've seen a decline in diversity.
So what do you say to the case that listen, You might say, the policy is not perfect, but at least it's something. At least it is allowing more black folks to ascend, to achieve that middle class dream, upper middle class dream, and make it into elite society in America.
So I think a couple of things.
One, I think what you see in what you've seen in California is that there may be a decrease in number of students, let's say, go into Berkeley, but some of the students who may have been getting an artificial bump to go into Berkeley maybe at UC Davis, right, So it's not it's not that fewer students are going. I think it's just a better match between academic profile and institutional But how better.
I just saw some research though that did show that because I've heard this argument before too, that it's actually better for them that they're not ending up at Berkeley because they're going to be better able to handle the workload
at UC Davis, et cetera. There is research though that shows that that's not really accurate, that they will still suffer, you know, an income drop from not being in Berkeley and being in UC Davis or what you know, one of the other Fresno or whatever the other state schools are. So there is backing to the idea that you know, it is not actually beneficial for them to be in a lower college system, that they would have been better off if they.
Were at Bertual.
So a couple of things.
One, I'm not a subscriber to the sort of ivy league or bust mentality, right. The other thing is it's better to get it, to actually get a degree, than to start at a more prestigious school and not finish. And I think it's interesting that so many of the universities point to the diversity of the freshman class. They rarely say this is the diversity of the graduating class.
And I can tell you exactly how it's better if the average Harvard student comes in at a with a fourteen fifty SAT, and I have a thirteen sixty SAT, which is still above the national average. It's a very good SAT score and hireding what I actually scored, by the way. But and I'm in computational physics, and that's being taught taught at a fourteen forty speed. I'm at a thirteen sixty speed. I'm going to be behind my classmates.
And what some of the research has shown them, particularly at I want to say this is Duke Black students are more likely to come in majoring in STEM fields, but also more likely to switch out to liberal arts and you know, sociology and other fields. And part of that, I do think is because of the mismatch. So it's not just let's just get everybody in. It's hot. How
are the students faring while they're there? And I will say this, and Justice Thomas said this in the Gurler case, and he actually is my favorite justice.
We agree and disagree on.
And you guys are a bad team.
One of the things that Harvard, one of the things that he noted is that these policies benefit the universities most because they get to say we're maintaining our elite you know, selective status, and look how diverse we are. But again they're concerned about the freshman class and and what these universities do. Because I do think it attaches a stigma because no one wants to be referred to as a diversity hire or an affirmative action candidate. And
that's why I said it's a benefit. People won't but they won't claim. If Michael served in the military and he went to Harvard on the GI billing, he said, yeah, I got the g I if I if I had a disability and I said, yes, I'm benefiting from you know, you know, a disability program.
Sure, no problem.
But the minute do you suggest a student at a selective university, a black student, is there because of affirmative action, people bristle. So I think we need to we need to be honest intellectually about the effects that this that this policy has had. And last thing I'll say is this, it's interesting to me that when the left wants to criticize Justice Thomas, one of the first things that they do is say he's an affirmative action candidate.
Well, you only got the job because.
I said so before we get to the polling, I do want to toss to Michael A pretty important question I think in all of this debate, Santre de O'Connor, I think came around and her decision basically saying that it's a temporary measure and a stop gut measured and I think it's predicated on that idea that it's trying to solve a problem like affirmative action wants to put itself out of business and eventually, to your point, level the playing field. So at what threshold and if there
is a threshold, why are we not there yet? And that's hypothetical or not hypothetical, but that's that's not a rhetorical question, that's actually sincere. What is the threshold at which affirmative action would no longer be necessary?
When schools in Anacostia is good as school in Chevy Chase or in Northern Virginia. That I think is a threshold when earning opportunities are the same, whether black or white.
I think that's a threshold.
But right now, your zip code determines your future, where you grow up, determines how much money you're going to make, what your lifestyle is going to be like. And I think that in and of itself is the problem. So when you talk about basically throwing the baby out with the bathwater, it's problematic. Like we're going to be called affirmative action, hires, affirmative action, you know, admittance, whether we're there or not.
Like there are heavily white schools in Appalaysia that are nowhere near Chevy Chase and are probably much more similar to Anacostia. So I guess why is Ray still the best proxy when it's a class.
Conversation Because there's a historical factor.
Great, great, And you know when I get pulled over, they don't see me as lawyer, Michael Hopkins, they see me as a threat. And I think you've got to look at the historical aspects to all of this.
Michael.
Let me ask you this is kind of a critique from the left, which is, you know, the policies that throughout American history have been most effective at actually reducing the racial wealth gap, and you know, reducing the racial wage gap have been universal policies. They've been lifting the minimum wage and making it apply to everyone, not having these car bounce for professions that are historically disproportionately African American.
Things like the.
Child tax credit, that programs that are universal are number one more politically popular than affirmative action, which I think we all agree. We can go ahead and throw the pulling up on the screen, which depends on how you ask the words, the language or whatever. But it is
a divisive issue. I think everybody can acknowledge that. So why not focus the political capital on something like increasing union density, or lifting the minimum wage, or achieving universal healthcare which may actually be more effective at the goals.
That you and I both share honestly, because Republicans won't agree to it.
Like we live in our democracy, Republicans aren't agreeing to this either.
Yeah, built it.
When LBJ put this system in, he said, it's not enough to open the doors, but we've got to level the playing field so that people can walk through those doors. You know, I would wonder do you have a problem with legacy admission, because that's affirmative action for white people, like necessarily, it's not how.
It's George George George W.
Bush would not have gotten in Yale but for the fact that his father was Herbert Walker Bush and his grandfather was Prescott Busch.
So do we really think he.
Earned Obama so you can use one of I'm just asking you that generation Harvard, that.
Is a red herring.
So you take the first black president, this black president, and use his daughter as the one example of how affirmative action work.
I'm an equal weight to the measures guy.
Right.
So if it's like when the left talks about class and billionaires, right eat the rich.
They love to talk about Bill Gates. But Oprah Whiffrey is a billionaire? Is she included? So so if you say you're against legacies, how many how many.
Black billionaires are there?
I have no idea exactly, But because it's not that's irrelevant to the point at hand. I like to focus racial preferences at selective universities don't have to do with how the police see you or all these other issues, because at the end of the day, that does not correct the issues in K through twelve education. And one of the things that the left does not result of redlining.
We can get that's a that's a different segment. One of the things that the left does not speak about as it relates to education is family home environment, the ethnic breakdown Asian white, Hispanic black that you see and administrate to Harvard tracks sat scores. It tracks the number of hours as students focus spend on homework, both a number of hours and the percentage of students that spend
five days a week doing homework. But then with the lessays, no, we have to correct these issues at Harvard and Duke and North Carolina.
But Delana, I don't think that's actually fair as someone who has had some critiques of affirmative action policy, because the left does talk about things like child tax credit, things like paid sick leave, things like paid family leave, which may not be the way that you talk about families, correct, but it's certainly a policy that helps support families, helps enable people to have families, helps enable people to have healthy families and maintain a marriage which could be under
a lot of financial stress. So I don't think it's fair to say that this is the only policy that they focus on when there are a broad range of policies that have been discussed and some of them implemented even under the Biden administration, that are targeted directly at families.
I think it's interesting that you say that, let's go back to Harvard alum President Barack Obama to his credit, and I will give him credit for this is the last president I can think of, particularly the last Democrat National Democrat, who regularly spoke about the importance of marriage, fatherhood, and family as are related to social outcomes. In twenty sixteen to twenty twenty, the Democrat and National Party took
those references out of their party platform. And now, if you want to talk about family, it's child tax credit, it's maternal health care. And I'm not against any of those things. I'm not against you know, pay family leave. But that's a different conversation than saying the ideal situation for every every child in this country is to be raised by two married biological parents and a low confidence.
Loving job.
Well hold on.
The job of the federal government, though, is to set the policy landscape right. It's not to get into people's lives and tell them you should be married or you shouldn't be married. You can, you know, by having a policy of for example, the child tax credit or lifting wages so people can afford to support a family. That's the job of the federal government. So that's why it makes sense that that is the conversation that is happening
at that level. And by the way, I do find it, you're talking about what the left does, et.
Cetera, et cetera.
I find it very selective that the right loves to claim they care about families and might even say, like, oh, in theory, I support child tax credit, but when brass tax came, I am s any Republicans supporting the extension of a child tax credit.
And I'll just very quickly because I think you're going to say some similar.
As the welfare state has expanded, so has fatherlessness among not just black kids, but kids in general.
Welfare state's been expanding, I mean since Bill Clinton, since the ended welfare as we know it. So the idea that the welfare state is expanding, I think is belied by the evidence.
It's a pretty start contrast pre LBJ and post LBJ, and the trajectory of the black family has been one direction since then, and we may disagree.
About correlation there, but it is clear that since.
America created a bigger welfare state, fatherlessness has expanded.
But you have to look at crime for that.
I mean, when you look at the fact that you've put black people in neighborhoods because of redlining, because of historical inadequacies, put them in neighborhoods where they have failing schools, lack of job opportunities. Anacostia doesn't even have grocery stores until like five years ago. And so you set people up for failure and then basically say, but it's your fault.
Let me.
I want to shift the conversation a little bit because I.
Want to respond to respond the point.
I agreed the job the federal government's set policy, right, but politicians include a president, they have a purse, they have a pen, and they have a pulpit, and politicians have no problem using their bully pulpit to say you should think this the last.
Particularly three years.
Do you really think that if Joe Biden got up there and said you should stay married or you like, there's so many other factors that go into that, and that would solve the problem, is your question.
Yeah.
I take the position that in city after city across this country, if every sign that said black lives matter said marriage before carriage, and every politician was as resolute in talking about the importance of the natural family as they are about telling white folks how they should feel about black people, I do think that would make it.
Have you met Donald Trump, like you can't talk about family in the left is not my standard.
But continue, I mean.
You talked about you know, specific people. Donald Trump isn't about the family. I mean, He's had multiple marriages.
Joe Biden's family is under you know attack right now, some of it justified. But he certainly talks about his family and you know, uses that as a model of clearly fatherhood and his.
Family is important him. But I think we just have a.
Very philosophical difference here, which is that you put it on more on the individual, and I put it more on the systems and the structures that are in place that make it very difficult for people to be able to forward a family, stay married, get a house, get that you know, middle class sort of bourgeois stability that is the core of the American dream. So we'll put
that philosophical ideological difference to the side. Because one piece that I'm very curious about is I mentioned before California Firmative Action has been dead for a while in terms of the UC system, and they've used some proxy workarounds that are basically like looking at class instead of looking
at race. In Texas, they have a program where the top ten percent of high school grads at all, you know high schools within Texas that they are admitted to the UT system, and that has also had an impact of It's basically a workaround because you have, you know, schools that are really disparate and unequal, as I think Michael is aptly pointing out here, And so that also allows a disproportionate number I shouldn't say disproportioned, but more
equivalent number of black and brown students to end up in the college system. So do you support those sorts of workarounds that are basically trying to achieve the same result but not allowed to go at it quite so directly? And also we should just say, did this just come down?
Actually we actually just got talking.
The Supreme Court ruled the Harvard and U and C race base I'm reading from a tweet here the affirmative action on a race basis on Constitutional six ' three. John Roberts has wrote the majority of.
So probably a partisan down the line decision there is what was expected. But so then this is actually appropriate because the next fight will be are those workarounds that are trying to get it the same result but using proxies like class or geography or whatever. Are those acceptable to you or do you don't know?
Problem about Texas's you know, top ten percent, Because again, the problem, the issue to me is not is not diversity as a concept. It's the use of race to impose a higher standard on some some groups of people and to judge other groups of people by a lower standard.
And all of us know if we were talking about this in twenty forty three and black and Hispanic students were the ones who are knocking it out of the park, who had the highest SAT scores in the country, who spent the most amount of time doing homework and all those other things, and their numbers were basically capped at selected selective universities, we would have.
A problem with it.
Yeah, because quotas are illegal.
But I'm but it's not. It's not.
It's not just a quoter, because the Asian students will say, look, we've been at twenty three percent admittance to Harvard for the last however many years, even though we constitute by far the largest number of students with the top sort
of academic dossiers that that applied to the school. So my point is, if if we were talking about the same thing with black still students where if you look at those top two deciles, you know you're talking about a significantly larger percentage of students in those death stiles than students from other groups.
We would have a problem with it.
And I can see Ben Crump right into tweet right now, right. You don't mind when we dribble a ball and dance for you, but when it comes to breaking into elite universities, now you want to cap our numbers.
So I'm just holding to the same person.
If we ever get to the day where that happens, then yeah, let's redress this. But at this moment, that's not what's going on. And I think the idea that Harvard and Yale are the only schools where affirmative action helps students is false. I mean, all over the country, affirmative action helps students get into University of Michigan and UVA State.
Schools selective selective schools. As the school becomes less selective, the use of racial purposes tends to decrease.
So, Michael, similar question to you, which is, as I said, it's not like in places where affirmative action has gone away, like they've just completely gotten rid of considering any of these characteristics and class has been a key workaround. I mean, how do you feel about that as a workaround, because on the one hand, it does acknowledge that Listen, people in West Virginia, they I mean, they weren't enslaved. I
don't want to put it on the same level. They have been screwed over by company downs and all that stuff, and historically disadvantage.
In their own special ways as well.
So is class a better proxy at this point? Do you see it as a huge loss in terms of the goals that you're trying to achieve.
I think incoming class should absolutely be another factor that's considered. I have no problem with that, you know, using Appalasia as an example, you know, the way they've been wrecked by the sacklers, the way that the coal industry has absolutely just destroyed towns and families.
That's absolutely something we should consider.
And just like considering race, I think considering how people economically have lived is something.
That helps all of this.
But the idea that we should just you know, carte blanche get rid of of, you know, race and history as factors, I think it belies a failure for us.
So I could give a perfect example of of good diversity and bad diversity. And for the bad diversity, I won't even talk about. Right now, here's a good diversity, right And this one does does deal with race. I think of the Tuskegee Airmen, right, who were barred from being combat pilots for a period of time until you know, Congress that we want to make this available to every you know, to African Americans, so on and so forth. Those men went through the same, if not higher standards
than their white counterparts. So when you say, well, you know, if you're black, you're going to be looked on as as less than I actually think that's not the case, because no one puts an asterisk next to anything that the Tuskegee Airmen did. And actually, when the Air Force did their first top gun competition, it was it was too It was a Tuski airman who won the first one. So to me, that's wider net diversity. But tell the whole story. When they came home, they then had to sit in the.
Back of the bus.
Correct, But that's but that's not the point. This is but that's none of You're gonna tell the whole story. This is this is I'm making a point about diversity specifically, not redlining on any of this other stuff. Right, And I don't even dispute your history. I'm just saying that's not the point. Here's here's bad diversity, because we all know this doesn't just stop at race, it's all different
types of characteristics. When the Biden administration celebrates the appointment of Sam Brenton, right, they said, it's not just oh he deals with nuclear rods and all this other stuff. It's oh, we're so happy he is a non binary, so.
On so on individual. Okay, what does that have to do with his qualifications?
Representation matters, right.
So so, and it does. I'm not saying representation does not matter. I'm just saying skill and merit matter more so. I prefer the type of diversity, right, that finds people who fly planes, not the type of diversity that gets people who steal from the airport.
Right.
And that's that's why he's no longer in the administration, because because they were they were looking for the wrong thing. They put their emphastest on the wrong salable. It wasn't about Sam Britton's qualifications, it was about his identity. And to me, that is the lower bar type of diversity. And I'm full wider net not lower bar.
Well, history was made while we were talking to you guys, and while we were actually having this debate, and so I will read a pretty big quote here from Chief Justice John Roberts and his conclusion and the decision. He says, a benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example,
must be tied to that student's courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student's unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences
and an individual, not on the basis of race. Many universities have for too long done just the opposite, and in doing so, they have concluded wrongly that the touchstone of an individual's identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice. So that's where Chief Justice John Roberts came down.
Yeah, Michael, let me just I'll give you the last word. Since we'll let you respond to Chief Justice John Roberts here and then super grateful though for this debate from both of you and the contributions that you both made.
Thank you, go ahead respond.
I would just say John Roberts is the same person who said that since we have a black we had a black president, that race should no longer be considered in terms of like voting protections and things like that when you strip rate the voting rates. We obviously know that's not true because we've watched Republicans attack the right to vote for African Americans all over the country.
We have a history.
I think we've got to tell the whole story about that history and not just try to cherry pick things. And you do the holistic approach. I think that's when you actually achieve the goals that we want.
It's one of the best debates that I can remember.
Really enjoyed hearing both of your perspectives. Thank you, telling you, thanks for taking the time. So that's the show for today.
You know, it got a little bit like mixed up because we had huge, historic breaking news with the Supreme Court. Literally while we're recording the panel that ruling coming down, So wanted to make sure that we sort of let that all air out. Super excited to have Congressman Conna in studio with us as well, and I think breaking some news there on a number of fronts. So thank you guys for watching, Thank you Emily for sitting in
for Sager. We are actually going to be off a couple days early in the week next week, celebrating the Fourth of July holiday. I hope you guys all enjoy your Fourth of July holiday as well, and we will be back here a week from today on Thursday, and it will once again let's do it again, Emily, why not.
I'm so sorry to break it to everyone, but I will be back for Sonder because he's off getting married.
Yes indeed, so we want him to enjoy that, and many congratulations to him, and we'll see you guys soon