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Let's go ahead and get to Zoron, and let's start off with a clip of Pete Buddhagic talking about why he thinks that Zoron won. And Pete says, you know, his policy, like that, really that really wasn't the thing. I think people are reading too much into this whole like free bust thing. Let's take a listen to to Pete explaining his version of why Zoron was so successful.
I think a lot of people are focused on the leftism, the ideological leftism that I think we shouldn't be so surprised that prevailed in a New York Democratic Party primary. But I think if my party wants to learn lessons from Mamdani's success that are portable to a place like Michigan, where I live, it's less about the ideology and more about the message discipline of focusing on what people care about, and the tactical wisdom of getting out there and talking to everybody.
Nailed and I love.
I've seen several different versions of this where it's like the assessment is, oh, well, he's young, he's charismatic, he was talking about costs of living, you know, they say in this very amorphous way, like the specifics of his proposals didn't matter, and or it's oh, he understood social media and he knew how to make videos. Anything to keep from grappling with the fact that a central part of his appeal are his specific policies, including, by the way,
his support for Palestinian rights. The data is just totally clear at this point that he didn't win in spite of his willingness to, you know, stand on business of being an anti Zionist. He won in part because that was such an appealing position to take in the context especially of a Democratic primary.
I mean, he's the millennial Like, he's who a lot of establishment Democrats see as like the ambassador the party's like next best ambassador to millennials and to millennial men because he's young and a man. But he's not. It's actually kind of interesting. This made me think about this when it comes to Buddha Judge for the first time in the sense that like, he doesn't capture any of the mood of millennials for sure, or of like people again under the age of forty roughly in the country.
And you'd think that Democrats would understand that about him. He's so you know, he's he's able to talk like a normal Midwestern dude when he's on with Andrew Schultz or a different podcast hosts, but he definitely like doesn't at all reflect like Mam Donnie. Is also a cheerful candidate, right like he I think Soccer has pointed this out, like a guy's always smiling wherever he goes, even though he's speaking to the miseries of younger Americans millennial generation ze.
But Buddha Judge is not somebody who comes across this like really understanding that and really like, do you know what I'm saying, Like, that's not what he speaks to he he sort of like seems to gloss over a lot of that. And I think this is this clip is a pretty good example of him saying, well, New York City is deep blue.
It was a vibes election.
You know, It's true Cuomo was a bad candidate and all of that, but Mam Donnie is powerful for Democrats precisely because he kind of understands the precariousness of the situation that the twenty four year old man finds himself in in very particular ways that you don't really hear Buddha Judge talking about at all.
Well, Democrats took this lesson from the Trump election. I'm basically like, we need to go on podcasts.
Yeah, right, right, right, right, right right.
But they didn't realize that it's not just you need to go on podcasts. It's like, you need to be able to say something when you're on those podcasts that is going to have appeal.
You need to.
Exclame the dem establishment, because that is what Trump did with a Republican establishment. That's what Jadie Vance does with Republican establishment.
Whether or not. You think they believe it. That's why Joe Rogan likes them.
Yeah, And I mean again, Israel is really central here. And I'm sorry to keep picking on center Slacken, because I actually really appreciate her coming on our show. But you know, I think I asked her like, what did you want? Why did you want to talk to us, and she basically said, like, well, my staff pitches and
pitched me on it. And you know, we all have this sense of basically we need to get out into independent media, but if you don't understand the audience is there and what they need to hear from a politician in order for them to trust you and for you to have any credibility with them at all, Like you can go on every podcast in the world and it's not going to help you one bit whatsoever.
And like if Yabla Harris had gone on Rogan, Yeah.
Right, And you know, I really do think, like I've become quite convinced that the sort of price of entry into credibility in those spaces on the democratic side is being like having any sort of soul and conscience around Palestinian life. And you know, if we look at here, we've got a bunch of interesting poll numbers with regard to Zorn.
We can put C two up on the screen.
This one reflects what the top contributors to his success in the race ultimately were. And Number one his plans to lower costs.
That's great.
Eighty nine percent said that was really important to me. Number two his plans to tax the wealthy and stand up to corporations. Now that's part of why Pete wants to say, oh, no, no, no, it didn't have anything to do with his policy positions, because you know, he's interested in like a maintenance of the status quo. But number three on that list is his support for Palestinian rights.
Sixty two percent of people said that was important to me, and only twelve percent said it wasn't that it wasn't important to them at all in terms of how they voted. So Zoran didn't didn't try to make, you know, Palestinian rights central to his campaign, but his opponents decided to
make that a central question in the campaign. And there's just no doubt that they did him a tremendous favor by you know, trying to smear him as an anti Semite and constantly talking about, you know what do you go to Israel and where does he stand on this? That was a huge boon to him in this primary. I think the numbers are quite clear at this point, and we've also got pulling emily about where he stands
for the general election. If this polling is to believe, be believed, and I don't see any reason why it shouldn't, given that, you know, the heavily democratic makeup of the city of New York, Zorin looks set to coast to victory whether or not all of his current opponents stay in the race or not. Let's put C three up on the screen. You can see all of the different demographic groups that he is strongest with. This isn't a five way vote. I mean, just look at this list.
So young Asians, he's winning eighty nine percent of them. Men eighteen to thirty four, a key demographic group that Democrats did not do so hot with in the general election. He's winning eighty five percent of them, young women seventy nine percent, overall ages twenty five to seventy nine percent. You can just go down this list. A couple more that I just want to highlight here Jews age eighteen to forty four, he is winning sixty seven percent of
young Jewish voters. Overall Jewish voters, okay, forty three percent, which is much larger by you know, by double digits.
That's a lot of anti Semitic Jews.
Yeah, exactly, but that he wins the plurality of Jews, and it's not close, it's by double digits. So you know, we really need to put to bed this idea that he constantly is getting HARANGI, Oh, you have work to do with the Jewish community and you need to talk to them, and you're going to make Jews unsafe, blah
blah blah. Well, if somebody needs to ask Andrew Cuomo why Jewish voters apparently don't trust him and why he's got so much work to do apparently with the Jewish community, since he is losing now to Zoron among those groups, and according to Cuomo's numbers, lost Jewish voters in the primary. Majority of them, according to Cuomo, voted for Zoron in
the primary as well. So you know, frankly, it's anti semitic to project onto Jewish voters that they all have this one monolichlithic view that they are all on board with Israel committing a genocide in the Gaza strip and that this is a top priority and top issue for them is like how many times you're going to visit Israel and how much you love Benjamin Ntt Yahoo. This is just thoroughly debunked and honestly a disgusting view of the electorate.
Can we just put the graphic up on the screen one more time? Sorry, There's there's one that caught my eye that I wanted to point out.
The last one.
Check a check out Curtis leiwa there, Crystal forty percent of Staten Island.
Yeah, white Catholics, Staten Island, white union household is interesting and white non college that's his strength.
Absolutely crushing it on Staten Island. Sorry, I had to point that one out.
I saw.
Yeah.
Well, I also, I think this chart is so important because it just completely exposes the lie of the idea that oh Zorn's just winning like affluent white socialists in Brooklyn. That's a good point, Like, look at this list. You know, it's it's overwhelming. I he's winning black women fifty one percent of the all of the you know, the caricature of where his appeal is is very much debunked by this chart showing where he's strongest, which is like basically everywhere.
Yeah, forty three percent of non college Yeah, I think one hundred and one hundred ninety nine household income. That's fifty three percent, fifty to ninety nine. He's at fifty three percent of household income. So I think that is a really good point as well, Crystal. Sample sizes, I will say, in that pool are pretty small, it even says down there on the screen. Results should be treated as directional.
But we'll see.
More in the days to come, and certainly some of this matches up with what we saw from results after the primary. Let's go ahead and put C four on the screen. This is I think it's actually even from the same poll, isn't it, Crystal the data for Progress. This is New York City Democratic primary voters believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, all likely voters, that is at seventy eight percent, and only thirteen percent say no,
nine percent say don't know. So if you are interested in why Cuomo's approach during the primary failed dramatically, this pole makes that pretty clear.
Yeah, and we've got another one in the same vein about Netanya Who. So it's Zorn's position, which I fully support, that if Netanna Who comes to New York City, he should be arrested because there's an outstanding international criminal court arrest for it against him for being an alleged war criminal. I don't think it's alleged, but whatever. Yeah, New York
voters are on board with that too. Sixty three percent of Democratic peorrimory voters were like, yes, actually you should arrest Benjamin Natna who in only twenty percent say no. The other sixteen percent say they are not sure. Just to give you a sense of on what sala solid ground he was on with all of his positions, which
again his opponents really made central to the race. He made cost of living central to the campaign he was running, but his opponents were bound and determined to put these issues at the center of the race, and only I think aided him in securing a crushing primary victory. But don't worry, Emily, his adversaries not given up. We can put C five up on the screen. We have a new you know, billionaire to multimillionaire effort to try to
defeat Zoron in the general election. You've got a new anti mom Donnie super Pac forming a Hedge funder and Trump voter, pledged five hundred thousand of his own cash. If you want to join his zoom call on how to stop Zoron, you will need to pay at least twenty five thousand dollars is the price of admission to this must be the greatest zoom call of all time.
But in this you know, in this polling that just came out, even if all the even if everybody drops out except Cuomo, who appears to be his strongest head to head opponent in the general election, you still have in this poll Zoron winning by twelve points, which coincidentally is exactly what you want the primary buy as well.
So you know, it's just utterly absurd at this point, and really discussing that Chuck Schumer Keem Jeffries can't bother to endorse the Democratic nominee who has much higher favorability ratings that either one of them do in New York. Actually, the only candidate, the only politician has higher approval rating in New York than Zoron is AOC. And they think that, yeah, I mean, they just because they're worried about their donors, and they don't like his position on Israel. They refuse
to endorse the Democratic nominee. And you know, I think it is only hastening the decline and exposing the hypocrisy and the distance between democratic leadership and where the democratic base is at this point.
So I believe on Dami this is the last thing I'll say is on his way back from Uganda, and there has been some talk in Maga circles that the administration should detain him on his way back. That's something we have seen happen in a couple of cases of the first six months the Trump administration to people who have been critical of US foreign policy, particularly when it comes to Israel. So that's just something to watch today, Crystal, I don't know if that was on your radar, but
I'm pretty sure that's been discussed. So we'll keep everybody updated with any news we hear on that.
Well, it would both be obviously outrageous and go to ask if they did that, and also just a massive boost too Zorn and his campaign.
It would be a lot closely.
It would be so like politically foolish of them to do so.
Anyway, we will see.
Let's move on to Crypto Crystal Republicans making a big push to just boost the crypto industry before heading on in August Recess. Nothing more important to do, So we will be joined by Peter Ryan shortly. Well, we're happy to be joined now by Peter Ryan. He's the CEO and founder of Ryan Research, and he has been on a bit of a journey when it comes to crypto.
Peter has been in the space.
He's going to tell us all about this for a long time. Came to sour on crypto, wrote an excellent essay. This is the first element we can go ahead and put up on the screen for Compact magazine recently that I cannot recommend to people enough, especially if you're sort of crypto curious. There's a lot of great explainer details in this piece, and it's just it's a really really helpful kind of glimpse inside of the industry that goes into granular details.
So Peter, thank you so much for being here. We appreciate it.
Also has a fantastic headline there, money by vile means.
Yes, thanks for having me for the Shakespeare buffs out there.
That's where that line is from.
Yes, yes, of course, so tell us a little bit and people can read more about this in the essay. But you have such an interesting background in the crypto space, and right now, Republicans, this is the so called news hook that we want to talk about, made a big push with the Genius Act before they headed out for August research at Recess, and people right now are kind of trying to figure out what it means for the industry. The industry was pretty supportive of the Genius Act, although
there were some controversy about it, but it regulates stable coins. So, Peter, we'll get in all of that. Let's start with your background as somebody who was initially in the thrall of crypto's promise to decentralize the monetary system and came to sour on it.
What was that process like for you?
Yeah, so I got into bitcoin in twenty thirteen. It was some of the early crazy days. It really attracted me because I was sort of part of this generation of the Ron Paul movement and its response to the financial crisis that occurred in two thousand and eight, and bitcoin seemed like this great way to marry the private sector with all these Austrian economic beliefs and so that's how it was sold in Many of the early bitcoiners
were these idealists. But as time went on and I started to work in depth inside the industry, I met a lot of the big players. I saw a different historical events transpire that would reveal some of the inner workings of how this market operated. From there, after being employed as a research analyst with Coindesk, I started to doubt some of these idealistic tenets. And then in about twenty nineteen, I really came full circle and saw a lot of what was sold in twenty thirteen to me,
just did not cut the mustard. It wasn't true. History proved it was not true. And so ever since then, I've been an independent consultant talking about my skepticism on Bitcoin, on crypto in general, and more recently the very specific and unique role of stable coins in the government's policy.
I want to get more to stable coins because that's a very important piece and ties into the quote unquote Genius Act that just passed. But you wrote in your piece, when bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, was invented, it was promoted as a financial technology that would empower individuals and wrest power away from the state and centralized elites. Just a decade and a half later, those same elites, including the Trump administration and bipart of some majorities in Congress, have
embraced cryptocurrencies. But this is because rather than lifting up ordinary citizens, crypto has become a new means of expanding elite power and wealth. Can you elaborate some on that for us, Peter, sure.
So what you have to understand is that the reason the government is attracted to crypto and bitcoin right now is because it helps government. Yep, that's sort of a pretty obvious point, but a lot of people aren't so.
Clear on that, Peter, can you speak to as well?
It helps government and helps big business right exactly.
So a way to sum this up is that the cryptocurrency system, with all these coins with stable coins at the heart of it, they are a shadow central bank system conducting shadow money printing to do shadow debt monetization and shadow quantitative easing. So that's the shortest way I
can describe it. What that means is essentially, there is all this paper value being generated in the crypto markets, and as that paper value keeps going up, as that asset inflation keeps going up, that allows the froth to spill over and very specifically start buying US debt as the rest of the world enters its multipolar phase and stops buying US debt. So this is why stable coins, where they need to be backed by US debt in order to operate, are now a bigger holder of US
debt than countries like Germany. And then as we get into the private sector, all of this frauth that's coming out is actually starting to enter the private sector, enter equities, and that's going to create a knock on effect that's going to start pushing that up. So basically, the crypto sector wins, the government wins, and the traditional incumbent corporate elites win through this big triangular system.
So this, obviously this leads us to the question of how you have still so many true believers in the crypto space, people who haven't been on the journey but started from the point a that you started on and are still there who continue. I did see some criticism of Genius and some of the other legislation that's been considered by Republicans in particular from that kind of true believer crowd who are worried about central bank digital currency
and all of that. But you have people, I think of the Winklevoss guys who are like libertarian ish, and maybe they're not the best example because they aren't like from the libertarian kind of crunchy world that came out of the Ron Paul twenty twelve, of the movement in particular.
But there are true believers still in the.
Space who continue to believe that crypto is a benefit when it comes to decentralization and when it comes to undermining globalism and all of that. So can you tell us more about why people you think, you know, people you've spent time around, are still kind of clinging to that in the face of which just seems so obvious to be a centralization effort. And maybe even also if you're aware of some fissures in the movement as well, that you could fill us in on.
Sure, So this is where the technology, the sense of mechanics, innovation, anything like that is really not what's causing those true believers to stay in the bitcoin camp. I think it's more exactly that it's belief. I think Jannis Veri Faccus, the Greek economists, put it best when he talked about how class caliberalism and neoliberals in centered the market as
this divinity. And then, as he's written more recently in his new Conception of that, which is like techno lordism, he says, that's transition from the market to the algorithm to the code, and that's the new divinity.
And I think that's what's.
Going on here, that people are trying to externalize what is ultimately a democratic process to shape society in the way that the majority of voters would like it to be. But instead of doing that the hard and very direct way, it's this sense of externalizing the problem into these things, Well, the market will fix it or the algorithm will fix it. So I think that is that is really inherently baked into the bitcoin thesis, and that's why people can't really break out of that.
I'd like for you to talk a little bit more about that, because I'm sort of fascinated by I mean, it is almost like a religious devotion. You know, there's like a cult like aspect to people who are those like Dinamal true believers, and you were one of those people, so I'm curious. You know, it's very hard when someone has sort of like this, you know, this ideal, this ideology they've committed themselves to, They've you know, like committed
to it personally. There may be financial aspects, assets at stake, et cetera. What was like the first piece of information that for you was like wait a second. That started you on the trajectory away from thinking that this was, you know, some sort of solution and that it would actually empower people and is serving in exactly the opposite capacity.
Sure.
So one way that this divinity of the code starts to come into play is how people always talk about big coins a hard asset. It has a fixed supply, it's twenty one million coins, it's capped, it's like gold. So people always talk about that, but no one really asked the follow up question. And so I started to ask some of these follow up questions, which in the end seem very simple, but it's like, why is that
the case? Please demonstrate how that maintains the case. Because gold is something you have to dig out of the ground. But bitcoin is a software and as anybody could tell you, humans, right software, Humans also have to update software.
Yeah, and so.
Yeah, yeah, And so once you start thinking that, then you immediately start to go, well, who are these humans, Like, does anyone care, like who these people operating this huge asset in our economy now that's becoming so interdependent, and no one seems to really want to broadcast that examination.
But like, if I were to just show you a little stat here, like would it be surprising that only forty two software developers have written ninety percent of Bitcoin's code, And there's about five software developers give or take on the year that have sort of administrative privileges on top of bitcoins.
And we can monitor these.
People, we can identify them, we can see what they're chatting about, but no one wants to sort of comment on this. But if we start to look into it, then we can see, oh, well, this property of fixed supply is only a subjective whim of this something that looks to me like almost a central bank committee of software developers deciding what their monetary policy is on bitcoin.
So you could say, maybe they choose the fixed supply and that's good monetary policy, that that does not change the fact that there is centralization going.
On there, and also globalization, which lends itself to centralization in a high tech age. And this is Peter one of the questions I always have for people in the crypto space because I'm not, you know, somebody who's like super super deep in the details. I'm not like major investor. I'm not doing code, I'm not doing any of that stuff.
But I have never understood how structurally crypto can exist with any regulation in a way that is utopian or I don't mean that in a pejorative sense, in a way that's true to the spirit that I'm totally sympathetic
too and supportive of decentralization. So when I see someone like Cynthia Alumus, Republican Senator, has been very, very supportive of crypto over the years, going to these conferences and being met and lauded and praised by people in that space, I just am curious, structurally, if we steal man this, is there actually a way, in a fantasy, hypothetical scenario where crypto could exist in the year of Our Lord twenty twenty five, in the twenty first century in a
way that is not with any regulation, in a way that maintains the spirit of decentralization, Because that to me just seems impossible on its face. But I don't know, like, is it possible to regulate crypto and also have crypto be decentralizing force just I don't get it.
So there's a theoretical argument that academics can have on the core concept of peer to peer technology. Now, when you look at the academic literature and the case studies involved, usually small scale peer to peer technology works. But the challenge is when you scale it. This is where the problems of centralization come in. Now, when you combine that with money and saturating people's financial transactions, incorporating into state institutions like the Treasury and so forth, that's even a
harder problem to try to figure out. So and even in the structural ways that bitcoin's designed, a lot of people say that, oh, well, it's it's censorship resistant, it's decentralized. You can just transact and send money anywhere you want. But there are middleman in bitcoin, the miners in bitcoin, those really power hungry server farms out there. Those are the middlemum of bitcoin, and they're the ones that get your transactions and decide if they're going to process them
on the blockchain or not. And we've already have documented examples of these miners complying with the Treasury's O fact standards. To sanction and blacklist certain bitcoin addresses, and there's even more advanced ways to do that that are too long to get into.
But this is.
Where we've already been through the looking glass year. A company like Mahra has championed this idea of being compliant with the OPAC standards in the mining industry and goes on to say their CEO, I believe that the way for the US to increase its share of bitcoin miners is that the US spased bitcoin point miners need to be more compliant to OFAC. So it really gets into this catch Trowny two that as the US grows it's bitcoin industry in wider crypto industry, it keeps diminishing those
ideals of decentralization. So I would say it's a very hard nut to crack. But where we get into now with this legislation coming forward and how we've accepted that crypto is now a normal part of our economy. Where I look at that, it's not innovation, it's not a new product or surf that's really adding value. What's going on is we have two financial systems to financial infrastructures. One is the traditional one with all the regulations and that would have been a real fight to try to
deregulate that. But why go through the pain of doing that when you can just open up a parallel system with all the deregulation, and then when you combine them and aggregate, the net is that you have a more deregulated financial system. So that's really the trick going on here.
Well, and that leads to my final question, which is, you know, are we looking at some sort of a crypto crypto bubble bursting and taxpayers being on the hook for a big crypto bailout given that there's no longer this no longer separate ecosystem. This is completely mainstreamed within our financial institutions. In President of the United States obviously like you know himself benefiting to the tune of millions,
if not billions of dollars from the crypto industry. So, I mean, does that seem to you like where we're headed?
It is very likely.
I have suggested that this strategy of pumping up the crypto markets has a short term logic to it, But like all bubbles, all bubbles have a short term logic. They go up, that's the nature of bubbles. Yeah, so it's no one can ever predict the exact time when a bubble will pop. But it seems like once we get outside of you know, the five to ten year horizon, that's where the wheels come off. And let's compare this to the housing bubble, there was at least an argument there was a physical house.
You know, there was a rationale to.
Why the value could keep going up and why there was fundamental value underlying it. With this, we almost have a parody where these are completely digital, fictitious casino tokens practically, and they're making up more and more nominal value. And when these things pop, you know, there's nothing underlying it. And so what ends up happening is we just start piling more and more risk into this type of asset class and making it, you know, collateralized to traditional transactions
that we do in the economy. If you start looking into how mortgages are starting to accept these as collateral and so forth another way, and so once that keeps getting saturated, now this asset class, which is you know, no one would think it's crazy for this thing to like go down fifty percent in a day, even with the stable coins that are supposed to be the safest thing there. Traditionally, we've seen a lot of allegations that they don't actually back their coins with one to one reserves,
which is what they say they are doing. The New York AG actually said this in twenty nineteen about one of the major stable coins. She said they lied, She said that they did not have the reserves. They said their lawyers had to admit it, and they ultimately settled with the New York AG. And so like this has
all been documented. We have cases where the market has found this out, has broken the peg on the stable coins, we have legal sources that have proven this the case, like the New York AG, and we just have our sort of other historical examples of cryptogaling pop. So the fact that it's going to be bigger than all past bubbles of crypto in the past doesn't really negate the fact that there is no underlying value.
This stuff is very risky.
There are multiple vectors where this thing could have a problem. Whether it's on the technical side, there could just be a bug that sends everything down, so very very unsavory prospects.
Yeah, I mean the value to the extent that there is values of it being peer to peer and decentralized and that goes away. And so I guess my last question for you, Peter, as we're wrapping this up.
Is do you think there will be more people?
Because you know people in the space, and I know many people in this space and people that I really like and totally sympathetic to, like Ron Paul type people. Do you think there will be people in the space
that come away with your perspective soon? Do you think maybe we're in like a heightened the contradiction phase postgenious Act and regulation that might be coming from this Republican administration where others start to get really worried, or do you think everything is so attractive and appealing right now that it's just kind of going to be pedaled to the medal for the next year or so.
Yeah, I think it's hard to distract people from the gloss of a bubble. They're certainly going to be momentum piling in now with this legislation. There's a lot of business institutions that want to incorporate this, get old people to put their retirement and get young people that are
busy sports gambling to do more crypto gambling. So there's momentum here, But I think in terms of the early bitcoiners, a lot of them would actually be sympathetic to my point of view, even though they might not go all the way that I have. I'll reference one individual. He's the editor in chief of Bitcoin magazine, Mark Goodwin. He wrote the book The Bitcoin Dollar. We generally agree about eighty to ninety percent on all of these problems and criticisms.
So I would say, right there, if.
The editor in chief of Bitcoin magazine, who's like a real hardcore bitcoiner, has these very similar opinions and sympathetic to the way I see it, you know, that's probably
saying something. As another little citation here, when I released this compact article, the founder of the Peer to Peer Foundation, which included a forum which actually was the place Satoshi Nakamato first announced his white paper introducing bitcoins to the world, the founder of that actually endorsed my compact article saying
this was actually very legitimate and valid criticisms. So I would say, when with those two sympathizers from the early days, it's hard to make a claim that this is that outside the norm. But there's a lot of people, newer faces and maybe people with you know, more dollar signs in their eyes, not so much Bitcoin signs that are looking forward to this current bubble momentum.
Fascinating.
Peter Ryan and Ryan Research, thank you for taking the time to talk to us about this piece. Thank you for writing the piece. We hope to have you back, appreciate it.
Great to be here. Thank you.
So emily much anticipated section of our show here. Sidney Sweeney is the new face of American Eagle, the you know, sort of iconic mall brand, and her ad campaign has sparked quite a bit of discussion and controversy on the Internet that we wanted to dig into.
So first let's take.
A look at the ad that was the most controversial. Jans are passed on from parents to offspring, often determining traits like her color, personality, and you have an eye color.
My jeans are blue.
Sidney Sweeney hasburg keens.
So you see what they did there with the like hereditary gens blue jeans.
At the ad.
The end of the ad ends with her saying, see what I did there?
Yeah exactly, yeah, as if we didn't if we didn't get it. So a lot of people are looking at this myself, including and going this feels a little like eugenics adjacent, and you know, the whole like the gene talk, the blue eyes in particular, it's got a real sort of master race vibe. And of course many people, i'm sure yourself included, be like, you're ridiculous and you have derangement syndrome, et cetera. But my case to you, Emily
would be, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that American Eagle is like a bunch of secret or open fascist and Nazis. They are capitalists though, and they're looking at the culture. They realize that paid advertisements really don't do a whole hell of a lot of good at this point if they don't come with eyeballs and attention and controversy. So this is the thing to touch on, to play with, and the moment to get a reaction,
which they got. And so that's my I mean, it's not even I think this is just like correct and accurate that they knew this would spark this sort of discussion and controversy. They gave just enough of a nod to like sort of eugenics racy Q kind of type of content to have plausible deniability, and then they delighted in the fervor and the attention around the ad campaign based on sort of touching on that, you know, like correctly taboo subject.
So it's hard to it's very hard to ignore when they're panning the camera and saying that Sidney Sweeney in the script is saying that her genes are blue and
they have it on her blue eyes. I think Crystal, my case would be that you were overestimating the competence of people in the advertising industry and an American eagle who might have, let's say, cynically said it would be a real boost to our Sidney Sweeney ad campaign to do a little wink and nod to white supremacy in the gene marketing campaign that you know, we'll generate all kinds of media height by doing like a wink wink
white supremacy like undertone to the Sydney Sweeney ad. So I think what this speaks to is, well, first of all, I don't think Sidney Sweeney's people if they saw this
as being anywhere in the vein of white supremacy. Although she's sort of become this interesting flashpoint and it's sort of like people are polarizing politically around the question of Sidney Sweeney, whereas like people on the left are saying, she's like a clear canary in the coal mine for the rise of fascism, and people on the right are saying, some people on the far far front saying, yes, exactly, this is why we love Sydney. People on the right
are saying, what the hell are you talking about. She's just super good looking and wearing an all American brand, which is where I think I fall into. But I don't think if this was if this was intentional Sydney's, Sweeney's people got taken for a ride. I have a hard time believing that somebody like Sidney Sweeney would intentionally be part of a covert white supremacy campaign to generate clicks.
And I just, I genuinely don't think there's any like I get what you're saying about the buzz that you can generate by doing a sort of like intentional Kendall Jenner Pepsi's situation, But I also don't think that it would be to any brand they would say the cost benefit analysis of being linked in with literal eugenesis.
Well premise.
I mean, I think the the flaw in your analysis is that it ignores how sort of mainstreamed this stuff has become. I mean you've literally got you have a you know, a town, an all white town being founded in Arkansas as we speak, where they explicitly say it's whites only, and we believe we have freedom of association and so we can keep black and brown people out.
We have s Miller fringe.
Steven Miller's not the French Miller.
Stevin Miller is not the fringe. Who is you know, running vast portfolio in the government, including you know, very like eugenics inspired immigration policy.
Who and who but who?
Trump himself says like, this guy is basically a white nationalist. I mean he's you know, that's that's who he is. I think it's pretty hard to deny that's who he is. And then you've got you know, this isn't emblematic of like every young Republican, but you have this very increasingly like empowered and influential fringe that you know, are in like the Raper movement and are the type of people who went on Jubilee and probably like declared himself a
fascist and whatever. You have the New York Times getting scoops from this race. IQ you know online race IQ dude.
So this is.
Quite mainstreamed in the culture.
And you know, it like for me, harkens back a little bit to the obviously neither of us were alive at this time, but the way that Madison Avenue glommed onto the like sixties counterculture movement and appropriated that to sell coke and mainstream brands, et cetera. And so you know, I don't think it takes a rocket scientist for a cynical ad ezac who's just out there looking, Okay, how can we get attention to our brand and sell some blue jeens to go, well, this is the thing that's
out there in the culture right now. This is the thing that's like the you know, transgressive hot button to push to stoke controversy. And I just don't know why else you're talking about genetics in a blue gene ad if you're not intentionally trying to push that button. And to the point about Sydney herself, like I don't know, I mean, I don't have any like particular grudge about
against Sydney Sweeney. I know there was like a lot of discussion about her boobs on SNL or something that I never really totally understood, but we can put you know, one of the people who was involved in this ad campaign posted delighted in the success of the campaign. She says, specifically, during a Zoom call with Sidney, we asked the question, how far do you want to push it? With that hesitation, she smirked and said, let's push it.
I'm game.
Our response challenge accepted. So in any case, you know, I don't think it's like crazy to imagine that. She also was like, yeah, sure, let's play into this controversy and create a lot of attention for ourselves. And you know, it'll be great for me, it'll be great for the company. The stock price is up, et cetera. So that's to me,
like pretty clearly what's going on here. And I don't, you know, as someone who is very opposed to eugenics and very disturbed by its mainstreaming and how increasingly like openly accepted and disgusted is et cetera, Like, I'm not sure what the right way is to react to something like this that does, in my view, intentionally try to like play with those themes, because what they wanted is the attention of the controversy. But then are you just
supposed to like not say anything. When these sorts of things and themes are being mainstreamed in the culture, it's to me, it's like a catch twenty two.
So I interpreted the Sidney Sweeney has great genes LinkedIn posts we're really going deep on this that we just had up on the screen, this would be my counterpoint. I interpreted that as Sidney Sweeney's sort of controversy for a long time has been whether or not she's mid, which is just a ridiculous controversy. She's beautiful, but the like that's been the thing about Sidney Sweeney that everybody's like, oh, she's mid. People like her because she has you know,
fill in the blank. And that's where you know, the entire appeal of Sidney Sweeney is wrapped up in And so I think what they're talking about when they say they're kind of going down the hammers panning down Sidney Sweeney's full body, is her saying like, that's why they're talking about genes in a j E.
A ns ad is like, Sidney Sweeney is actually.
Pretty pretty hot, and Sidney Sweeney is willing to take you up on this conversation about whether or not, she's mid and she's willing to just like kind of bear it all even if she's clad in gene So that's my interpretation of what they say they're like being quote unquote cheeky about in the ad, is that I still think that a mainstream brand wanting to be affiliated with
white supremacy or eugenicism. As much as I do share your concerns about seeing people like Nick Quentas go massively viral and have whatever pole he has with gen Z, as much as I genuinely share those concerns and also share the concerns about eugenicism when you look at what's happened and this is probably something that we disagree on, but if you look at what's happened in places like Iceland, for example, where they use new you know, testing technology
on unborn kids and basically get rid of down syndrome, Like, I actually think that eugenics is a serious question that confronts US as a society right now. But yeah, I mean, yeah, like I don't disagree with that, I share that, I still just think it's far fetched that a mainstream American brand would want to eagerly affiliate itself, even if it's just to create buzz with white supremacy or eugenics or neo Nazism, as some people have said.
They have the eagle in the brand.
And to you know, be talking intentionally about Aran Jenes in an ad goes right along with the quote American eagle in their title and logo.
I just think it's all very far.
I take it that far, okay, just to be clear, that didn't even occur to me, But now I'm going to think about it now. I mean, look at I mean, paid advertising campaigns don't really get you very far these days because people can click off, you can fast forward through your watching things. I mean, it's just like very hard to get people to pay attention to your brand. So what better to get you attention than a beautiful woman plus a little race?
I Q.
Controversy with plausible deniability, like they're never gonna come, oh yeah, we were like flirting with you, Jeda, They're never going to say that. But their stock price went up because of that controversy.
I think, because.
Why is anyone talking about Sidney Sweeney's ad. It's only because I mean, you know, yes, she's had star power, et cetera. But the reason it got so much attention is because of exactly this controversy, which these are not stupid people, like I don't know, they you know, they knew what they were doing with this, Come on, they knew.
I don't know.
I mean, I still just think you need even.
Your explanation too.
By the way, that this is like a rebuttal to the idea that she's mid the way she's if that's really, which I think that's a stretch, but if that's really her argument is like, no, I'm not mid because I'm of good genetic stock.
Like even that is disturbing.
It's weird.
Yeah, like that's what I just think. It's so weird, and.
I'm yeah, I mean, it's not weird if you realize that what they're doing is intentionally touching on something that is again justifiably like Foreboden, I mean, and you know, has been for a long time pushed out the mainstream and is now like back being mainstream.
If you look at public polling, like across the board, the American people are very anti racist, maybe not in the candy sense, but like race relations in the United States have come remarkably far, and it's not as though the American public. While there are some people on the fringes that may be energized by Flints and whomever else, it doesn't behoove a major brand, like you don't have to even be a smart marketing executive.
But it is behooving them. They are behooved.
And I don't think people are watching the ad. But your point is that they're being behooved by the controversy created by the ad. And it's not that American Eagle supports eugenics and white supremacy.
Oh, that they got attention.
That no, no publicity is bad publicity. I mean, this is the secret of Donald Trump's success and his realization that like I mean he even said this about like Doug Bergram when he picked him for Secretary of the Interiors, Like yeah, he just doesn't you know, he's not controversial enough so he can't get attention.
This is the attention economy.
The way to get attention isn't to just like, you know, have another ad with the beautiful women women. There are a million other ads that have other similar like beautiful stars. The way to get attention is to spark a conversation. We're not covering the Beyonce Levi's ad. Are we No, we're covering this one because they played with race science and eugenics, and that's why we're talking about it.
I think they played with it. I think intentionally they played with This is where we disagree. I think they played with The entire pun was about Sidney Sweeney being hot or not, and that's when they say they're going she said she wants to go far. It's that and I think it was like obviously a very strange ad, but their stock is going up because people like the ad, like Sidney Sweeney and the jeans. They look great and American Eagle is a sendate because they have a young
star like Sydney Sweeney repping them. It used to be by the way Dawson's Creek. I think they outfitted everybody on on Dawson's Creek. Yeah, I'm pretty sure a while they did. But anyways, well, they have a history of sort of partnering with I mean, for a young brand like that, we're not going to agree in this, Crystal.
Well.
I'm just my last piece is I will say even your explanation to be is very eugenicsy, that you would be like, I am hot because I come from the right, genetic stock is.
But that is I mean, like people are hot because of their like that either like people. But to be fair, like it's like the science of whether or not people are attractive to other people comes down to facial symmetry, which is genetic.
I mean, I don't like any like.
I hope we don't start tinkering with genetics.
I like, it's a weird thing to say. That's a weird thing to say. Is like, no, I can, I can prove genetically, but I'm.
I'm not mid you because that.
Is but that makes sense, but.
I know I do.
I actually think that helps my argument because on social media there have been deep, deep analyzes done on Sidney Sweetey's like facial symmetry over the years. So yeah, I mean, I like people have literally been debating this, which is completely insane. Maybe that's our next debate is Sydney Sidney Sweeney mid but maybe we agree on that we don't even have that beata.
I don't think.
I don't think she's not mid. Like, I'm actually disgusted by this. It's like such a common thing, not just with Sidney Sweeney, of taking some like absolutely flawlessly gorgeous woman and then picking one photo of her where like she's not at her best and being like she I don't even forget it. She's so mid it's like, you know, fuck off. Like she's a beautiful woman, like just stop,
just stop. And it's always like some guy who looks terrible, you know, and is like overweight and could never have a prayer of being with this woman who's posting this sort of so yeah, that that particular conversation, whether it's Sidney Sweeney or many other beautiful women, is kind of disgusting to me.
This is what happens when Ryan goes on vacation for a week to take over the show with debate of right, you know who would have been really excited for this debate when Sager would have loved this well.
I did debate with Sager off off air on this. Of course he thinks my view is ridiculous. But there you go.
Many in many cases.
Many such cases. We can continue this conversation on Friday. Of course, Sager will be back in with Crystal tomorrow.
Thanks everyone for tuning in.
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