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.
We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, Let's get to the showing.
Good morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday.
We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal, Indeed we do.
It is a big week because Wednesday, that would be tomorrow first GOP primary debate sans Trump, but still will be interesting. And there was a memo it came out for Rhonda Santis that is just a fascinating look at like consultant brain and how all of these people are approaching this event.
So we'll dig into that.
We also have some updates from President Biden's trip to Hawaii, perhaps not getting the welcome that he expected there. We've also got some news out of China in terms of both their continuing economic struggles and also their plans to team up with the other Brick Nichans and some other nations around the world to serve as a counter to the G seven.
So we'll get into all of that.
Some new research on the impact of screen time on babies and on childhood development. This is when you definitely want to pay attention to. And finally, and very importantly, mister Beast has either started World War three or perhaps created world peace.
So we will.
We will dig into it. Just sort of accidentally he did that. Also excited to talk to Soa Amari this morning about his new book Tyranny, which is a hard look at corporate power and what we can do to check it, something we are obviously very interested in here, so that should be a good discussion as well.
That's right, we're really excas. Today's a big day, guys. We are not gonna have mologs in the show. We were filming a bunch of extra content, an entire debate special that's actually going to drop for our premium subscribers to everything you need to know about the debate, prepare, how to think about it, what to look for, includes some predictions from Crystal and I but what's going to go down? So that drops today for everybody else it'll
air tomorrow. We're not going to have a counterpoints show for everybody. Instead, we're gonna have the great Emily Jushinski here in the studio on Thursday. We're all going to break down everything as early as humanly possible on Thursday, as fast as we can. So I think we've got a lot of great content. Become a premiumsbscriber Breakingpoints dot Com if you're able.
Of course, it costs money to shoot.
These extras and do all these other things, and you guys are the ones who enable all that. So we appreciate you and we love you breaking Points dot Com if you are able.
Yep.
So if you want to get that debate special that we're recording today right after the main show early, make sure you subscribe and you will be the first to see that.
There you go. All right, let's start with Hawaii.
President Biden a touchdown late last night our time, earlier in the day over there, Hawaii time to not exactly the most welcome reception. This is actually from Hawaiian local News and shouts out some of the signs and the slogans that greeted President Biden on the street.
Let's take a listen over to my right.
There are a bunch of people out here.
They've been here for hours. A bunch of them are protesting. They have their makeshift signs, cardboard signs, a lot of them saying, as we've been talking about, that he's too late. Some of them feel that he should have been here much earlier. Other signs that see actions speak louder than words. So hearing a lot from the people here as well as Hawaiian flags.
People standing out for hours on end is to make their thoughts felt to the president. And it's one of those where look, I can think back to Hurricane Maria to Trump, he always had like smattering a protest, specifically with Maria, especially with Puerto Rico, where his response was scrutinized. But Glenn Greenweal put this out yesterday and I just think it's so true. This is both a media story
and it is a story of the response. I think the response itself has been horrific, But on a media level, crystal this type of thing. In Hurricane Katrina, they would have blared this from the rooftops, that would have shown it to everybody. As Glenn correctly pointed out, and I also referenced President Bush was destroyed for that fly by over Katrina as people were literally drowning. Yeah, and he did that sympathetic look out of the window. I mean
President Trump also was scrutinized for Maria. Biden takes days, i mean almost two weeks in order to visit the site of this disaster, after barely opening his mouth about this. You have protesters and people on the ground. Let's keep this in mind, this is a democratic state that voted two to one for President Biden. These aren't just you know, like Republican trolls that are coming out and saying this. I think they're rightfully outraged, and we're basically hearing.
This from local media.
We're really not even seeing any pickup by the actual mainstream press. Very little bit of a criticism on the in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, a few of those other places, but you know, the talking heads, like they're basically giving him a pass on what is objectively a total disaster of a respet.
I mean, to be clear, the media was right to take a very harsh lens to Bush's response to Katrina, which was I mean, not only callous and horrific, but also just the response itself was completely catastrophic. They were correct to take a harsh lens to President Trump's response to Hurricane Maria. That was, you know, that was the right thing to do, because there were true failures there. And also on the level of, you know, the optics of seeming like you actually care about these Americans who
are suffering. You know, he fell far short of the mark. But there has not been a similar level.
Of scrutiny of Biden.
And certainly in terms of online I mean the amount of backlash to even you know, a little bit of criticism of the president for let's not forget his first the first questions he got about this, he was sitting on the beach and he said appeared to say no comment. Then he plans a vacation a Tahoe, which he you know, was shamed into leaving briefly to go down and make
this visit. And more critically, what we are hearing from the ground from the people who are there living this nightmare is that the response and recovery effort and the relief effort has been woefully inadequate.
That deserves great scrutiny.
And so the fact that you have some wines there making their thoughts known. Listen, this is why it's important that you go visit, because human beings being what they are, to see that devastation firsthand, to actually see those signs and understand that people in a state that voted overwhelmingly for you are not impressed with what's going on. Hopefully those things going to make an impact. Just take a look at some of the images that he would have been seeing with his own eyes. Got and put this
up on the screen. Guys, this is what his motorcade was driving by there on the island. I mean, I can't I just can't imagine this being my talent. That devastation, I mean, those burnout cars, the buildings, just everything absolutely decimated. And keep in mind, guys, we still don't have a full body count. Still don't even know how many lives were lost here. The last number I saw is one hundred and eleven. They haven't finished going through this area
to recover all of the human remains. There are still hundreds of people who are missing. Residents fear that the death toll is going to be much higher than where it is now. So you just can't understate the massive, horrific impact of this tragedy.
Christal, there are eight hundred and fifty missing people still as we air this second. Let's all be honest here about you know, unless I hope they turn up, but I hope everything works out. But it's been a long time since those fires, and if they haven't at this point, I know they found some children and all that that was about, you know what, several days ago. But this
is a devastating disaster. I mean, the toll on the ground they are saying the local death toll estimate is somewhere in the four hundreds and likely going even higher. So this is one of the biggest tragedies, worst wildfires as you've always what over a century, for a century, over a century, with all the techno we've had. We've done multiple segments here scrutinizing the disaster response, the legal monopoly of the actual power utilities, the lack of scrutiny there.
President Biden, you know, offering these people some seven hundred dollars one time payment which I'll never get over, on the exact same day requesting twenty five billion dollars in extra assistance of military assistance to the country of Ukraine, including humanitarian assistants, probably even more so than what's been requested for Hawaii so far. It's just outrageous. And you know, look, as you said, it's not just about why shouldn't he have It's not just the visit, It's that where is
the whole of government approach? Where is the cabinet secretaries? Where is the energy and the action from the government here in the actual response, the residents on the ground are saying FEMA's not here, we don't know where they are. The day afterwards, we're talking about here on the show, multiple people in Hawaii saying we're being blocked by the local government from delivering the supplies that are needed to Maui. So at every level, I think it's been a failure.
And fortunately, you know, only independent sources of the Internet and all that will scrutinize what should be entire news cycle about what a disaster this has been from the very beginning, and a major failure of President Biden.
Yeah, I mean, listen, I want to say, I saw a Washington Post article that spoke to wyans on the ground, and you know, heard out their criticism.
That's pretty much all I've seen.
That's insane, that's about it.
Yeah, Compare that again to you know, coverage of past tragedies under other presidents, and you see if the media has applied the critical lens to this president, that deserves to be based on what we've seen.
On the ground.
All right, let's move on to the big political story of the week, which is the Republican debate primary debate happening tomorrow night. As we mentioned before, we're gonna have special coverage for you premium subscribers that will drop today for everybody else that will drop tomorrow warnings, so look forward to that.
We did get news of exactly who the.
Eight candidates are because there was some dispute over who was in and who was out. My condolences to all of the Perry Johnson and Francis Suarez fans. Your guys did not make it onto the debate stage. But we wanted to take a look at this memo. This is fascinating on a whole host of levels. So Ron DeSantis, most of his money is not actually in his campaign, it's in a super pac, and so he's very dependent on a super pac for polling and research and strategy
and all of the mechanics of the campaign. But they can't directly cord me. So instead, what the super Pac has been doing is they will post these strategy memos online in places where they think only DeSantis and his team will really find them. But lo and behold, news Media picked up on their debate strategy memo that they had posted online, and some of the details here are pretty amusing.
So put this up on the screen.
The overall plan here for DeSantis going to the debate, according to this super Pac strategy memo, is to defend Trump and quote hammer Ramswami vivike Ramaswami, Desanta's allies revealed debate strategy. Hundreds of pages of blunt advice memos and internal polling were posted online by the Means super Pac back in the Florida governor, offering an extraordinary glimpse into his operations. Thinking they have since taken this memo down off of the internet, but presumably Ron got the message
before they before they pulled it. So let me give you some of the specifics from this memo. It's just a fascinating look into like consultant rain and the type of advice that they would be. This isn't unique to Ronda Santis. He's just the one who happened to have his memo, you know, caught by the news media. But this is the way that they approach this. They said, Number one, attack Joe Biden and the media three to five times, okay. Number two State Governor Randa Santis's positive
vision two to three times. Number three hammer the vike Ramaswamy and her response. And they provide all sorts of you know, oppo research on vivek and especially they focus on some positions that he seems to have changed, some sort of more liberal sounding positions that he used to hold. Number four defend Donald Trump in absentia in response to
a Chris Christie attack. So they seem to think that quote taking a sledgehammer to vivike Ramswami, calling him fake vi vike or vivic the fake will be a good moment for and we'll see if he actually tries out these lines now that they've been made public. They also think that it could benefit him to really go on the offense against Chris Christy, who will be likely vociferously going against Trump, because that's part of what he has staked his campaign on as being one of the main
anti Trump voices. Also fascinating, Sagar I thought was the kind of like kid Glove's way they want to go about talking about the former President Trump. They suggest saying that Trump's time has passed, that mister DeSantis should be seen as quote carrying the torch for the movement he inspired. They provided him with an elaborate script with which to
position himself in relation to Trump. He could say that Trump was a breath of fresh air, the first president to tell the elite where to shove it, then add that the form whre president was attacked all the time, provoked attacks all the time, and it was NonStop. He could then argue that Trump was now, of course, have been indicted, faces so many distractions that it's almost impossible for him to focus on moving the country forward, and that this election is too important. We need someone that
can fight for you instead of fighting for himself. And then the final detail here that I found rather entertaining is, of course, you know, they're aware that DeSantis has this like likability awkwardness issue, and so their suggestion here is I'm reading directly that he quote invoke a personal anecdote story about family kids, Casey showing emotion. Oh yeah, thanks, consultants.
Thank you very much. Consultants that that definitely should do it.
That gives you a good view into how brain did all these people are and how they try to manufacture personality and made.
The King yes for about it so true.
It's basically, you know, it's like the down the human suit zip up all the way we pretend to be.
Emotional, show emotions. I got it. I will do that. You know, it's like you can't.
He can't put authenticity in a memo, And that's really what it comes through. I took away from this much more like, aside from the consultant one, it's clear who DeSantis Seze is his main rival, and that's Vake Yep. He is going guns blazing, I think against Vike Ramaswami. If I'm Ramaswami, I'm gonna be doing the exact same thing. I'm going to hit back as hard as possibly can.
These two are basically locked in a match for number two spot, and in terms of favorability ratings in Ohio and elsewhere, we're going to get into just in a little bit about how they're actually technically is a very very narrow lane for a single personal rival to Trump and they both want to be that person. I think Chris Christy is going to be coming in guns blazing against DeSantis because he is the person who he really
needs to knock off. Christy Actually, interestingly enough, from the polling that I've seen so far, he's actually locked up the majority of the anti Trump votes so far in New Hampshire and in Iowa, so he needs to prove more of his bona fides there, and anybody who is actually going for DeSantis as an anti Trump move, Christy wants to move them in that category. So I think the DeSantis is going to be the main focal point on the stage in terms of Desanti is gonna try and blow off Christy.
I'm already gonna predict.
I think Christy is going to be coming after him on Ukraine and a few weather of these issues, also on Disney. Ramaswami's gonna be coming in probably serve as the main Trump attack dog in terms of going after Christie, but also on DeSantis for being weak and for not stepping up enough on behalf of Trump. So look, I'll save all my main predictions here and more look at it as I think this is a major two way. This is a two way fight with a like complete wild.
Card a surrounding melee Asa Hotchinson.
He's a nice guy. We interviewed him here.
I don't think he's gonna have a big moment. Nikki Haley's gonna try and have her moment.
She's gonna have a Kamala moment if if.
He did kicking sideways against Viveik, not against Trump though, it isn't that funny. She'll kick, She'll kick to the left, but she'll never kick to the right. She'll kick DeSantis Tim Scott, he's.
A nice guy. I'm sure I'll have a couple of moments. But he's not an attack guy.
That's now No, that's not his personality. It's not a political brand. I don't think it would.
I don't think it would go well with like what his political brand exactly.
So in general I think that this is, you know, to boil it down for just this segment.
It is Desanta's Ramaswami. They're going for the number two.
We also had an interesting ABC News pieces go and put this up there on the screen where they did kind of a deep dive into evac They say, quote how Aviake Ramaswami saw podcast start on prior to the White House run.
They quoted someone who said he's wanted to be famous.
They revealed that he apparently was in a development deal with The Daily Wire actually for a podcasts before he decided to run for president.
Yeah, and Daily Wire confirmed that part of it.
They did confirm that one of the interesting things that actually came out to me is that whenever you looked at the Ramaswami rebuttal here, it is just like he was like, Oh, is your source a person who lives in a publicly funded mansion in Tallahassee as in the DeSantis team. I can only say anecdotally online just from watching kind of the sparring of all the camps. The Disanti folks have really stepped up their fire against Ramaswami
in recent days. They particularly focused in on a line here in this ABC piece about how Ramaswami had told associates in the past that his candidacy could potentially nudge out Ron DeSantis. They're like, oh, Vivek is trying to sabotage Rond de Santas.
No.
I just think he thinks he's better at the job than Desanta's. I think he's in more of a viable candidate, and to be honest, given his polling position right now, and especially given where DeSantis started, I don't know if he's necessarily wrong about that in terms of performance so far.
I mean, I think in terms of political talent, vivec is a more politically talented I agree person.
And you have to.
Look, obviously, you guys know, I have all kinds of policy disagreements with vivike Ramaswami, though I'm very grateful that he is willing to come here and mix it up with us and mix it up with the host of people, and I hope we can do that again. But you know, this is a guy who basically came out of nowhere and is now verging on being the leading alternative to Trump.
Now. I mean, given that Trump is.
Winning by like a landslide, maybe that's a low bar, but you know, he is certainly giving DeSantis right now a run for is my and DeSantis had the whole Fox News room for Urndock Empire pulling for him at the beginning of this. He's had endless free media coverage.
He has much higher name recognition, and that's a thing that DeSantis has to be really nervous about with Viveke is even though he has relatively still low name mighty like there are a lot of Republicans who are just going to be getting introduced to him tonight at the debate. That means that Vivike has a lot of room where he could potentially grow, whereas Rond de Santis is known by the Republican base at.
This point and you know, broadly liked.
It's not that they hate him, although his favorability rating has come down significantly since this campaign started. So it seems like Viveke potentially has a much higher ceiling and much more room to grow than Rond de Santis does at this point. I'll just read you the piece of this article where they talk about how they were the
is vivecan here just to torpedo Ronda Santis part. They say he pitched himself as a cannon who can serious waves in the Republican primary when he was talking to some of his initial backers when Mett was some skepticism, Ramaswami argued his candidacy could also dissuade Florida Governor Rond de Santis from entering the race. That didn't happen. According
to a source who was on the call. In the lead up to his announcement, Ramswami would tell several other conservative activists that he believed that if he ran, it could stop DeSantis from running or impact his viability as a candidate if he did enter.
The race, sources said.
And look, I mean, in terms of his public posture, it's no secret he's been very defensive of Trump. You know, go to the matt to defend Trump. He says he'll pardon him if he becomes president of the United States. And he's not at all reticent about attacking Ronda Santis. When we interviewed him, he called DeSantis, or seemed to call Ronda Santis a super pac puppet, which tends to be the language that he uses around him. So he
hasn't pulled any punches there. I don't think anyone should be shocked that Vivik Ramaswami or any of these individuals who.
Are running for president want to be famous.
Like obviously all of them have sizeable egos. Obviously all of them comfortable or searching out some national spotlight. And so I don't think you know, the fact that he was looking at a podcast or whatever, to me none of that is particularly surprising.
Who runs for office and who doesn't want to be famous. Let's off, of course, come.
And then I already been doing all kinds of because our remedia appearances.
He wrote a book, you know, to get himself into that.
Late hours ago, way before you know, whenever his first book came out. So it's one of those where that attack I really annoyed because I'm like, what, Desantas doesn't want to be famous? Come on, you know, it's like, let's all be honest, let's put the next one up there on the screen. Veke has been taking it on the chin recently because he gave an interview to the Atlantic and he said, quote, I think it's legitimate to say how many police, how many federal agents were on
planes that hit the twin towers. Maybe the answer is zero. It probably is zero for all I know. He was interviewed actually last night on CNN Caitlyn Collins Show, and they had a pretty vigorous debate about it. I really, oh, yeah, yeah, it's actually it's worth watching at least some of it. The reason why I just find this entire thing, everyone's like, I can't believe the vig said that he distrusts the
nine to eleven Commission. By the way, that was his first comment on the Ax Alex Steins show over on Blaze TV, and it's like, this is so outrageous, and I'm like, well, hold on a.
Second, do you believe the entire nine to eleven commission?
Because I'm pretty sure we had done multiple segments here on this show about how the nine to eleven Commission at the very least dropped the ball and one hundred percent did cover up the Saudi connections inside of the file. So yes, I don't know who out there is standing for the nine You know, the nine to eleven Commission as the gold standard for everything that happens.
Well, then most people are nuts and they should do a little bit of research.
Now in terms of the specifics over what he said, in terms of the fact I have not seen I will just say, kindly outside of very small areas of the Internet, of the actual allegation that there were quote, federal.
Agents on the plane.
Now, if he changed that language to Saudi agents on the plane.
Yes, yeah, now we're in business.
Let's let's have.
A conversation a little bit about this and whether the US government was aware of said Saudi agents and whether there was an entire I mean, I recommend the book always to Lawrence Wright's book about nine to eleven and the lead up to all of that in terms of the drop ball at the very least bureaucratic incompetence about knowledge of these people inside of the country, and the fact that these guys making approaches to these hijackers were
almost one hundred percent connected to the Saudi government. So I've been very annoyed by the discourse on this as of late, as if it's like some scandalized thing to question the actual, like the actual nine to eleven commissioner word on what happened, especially considering we just had an interview here on the show about Al Bayoumi, the guy who made that contact with those hijackers, and specifically his now revealed almost direct connection to the Saudi government at that time.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, the funny thing to me about his comments are it sort of feels like he knows they're okay, like sort of conspiracy thinking. And I don't mean that in derogatory, but it's kind of hot right now. You know, he knows that the nine to eleven thing, he got some pushback before this got him some media juice whatever, but he hasn't really like dug into the details of what the actual, you know, questions are about what might have been wrong in the nine to eleven commission.
So he's sort of like mixed up some of.
The January sixth allegations with like just general nine to eleven conspiracy and comes out with this thing. It sort of feels like he feels like he should question nine to eleven, but he doesn't really know the details, so he's kind of throwing this against the wall.
That's my vibe from all of this. But Vivek has.
Really having a moment right now. I mean there's just no denying that. I think there's a lot of interest in him. I think he has room to grow. I suspect based on our interactions and what I've seen of him in the media. I suspect he'll be well equipped to, you know, spar with whoever comes at him on the stage,
whether it's Ronda Santister, Chris Christi, or anyone else. I expect there are going to be a lot of people who are googling his name after the primary debate tonight who really hadn't dug into him as a candidate and didn't know that he was an option that existed. Now,
is that enough to supplant Trump as the number one? No, especially when you're not really willing to go at Trump whatsoever, and you still have to have some sort of argument to move on from the guy that the Republican base overwhelmingly likes.
Could I see him.
Really, you know, supplanting Ron DeSantis as the number two and really positioning himself as the primary Trump alternative in case something happens that right now is unforeseen. Yeah, I could see that. I don't think that that is crazy at all. So anyway, that's some of what we'll be looking for at the debate. At the same time, you know, this is another interesting story with regards to him, and I appreciate him coming.
Out with this too. For the record, okay, we'll.
Get into the details. So put this up on the screen.
Vivek is accusing Newsmax of basically telling him he needs to pay in order to get coverage on the network. Now, this is pretty wild because listen, candidates aren't stupid. They probably all suspect that maybe they'll get more favor favorable coverage on any of these news networks or conservative outlets or whatever, if they pay for advertising on those networks. But according to Vivek, Chris Ruddy, who runs the network, just outright, like bluntly told him, if he wants better coverage,
then he can pay for advertising. And part of why this is so believable is because you all may not even know. There's this Republican businessman named Perry Johnson who is running for president and apparently he pays for a lot of ads on Newsmax, and Newsmax has gone all in for this guy in terms of his coverage. He's on their airwaves all the time. They're doing some like documentary series about his campaign.
They have all of these.
Like Perry Johnson puff pieces, oh and lo and behold. It just so happens that he's spending a lot of advertising dollars on the network. So that context, I think makes the Ramaswami claim here very believable.
Oh one hundred and fifty percent.
And in fact, as Ben Smith, who's outlet four actually originally reported this, almost immediately after the allegation came out, there was a hit piece against Ramaswami actually on the network where they were like, oh, interesting, and they specifically were doing segments about Vivic Ramaswami and when she said that he would cut aid to Israel. So I'll read directly what they say quote Vivic's comments put him in the same ballpark as those radical progressives who do not
think that the state of Israel should exist. Those, by the way, are comments based on him saying that we shouldn't treat Israel special like everybody else, and by cutting aid he means just normalizing it to everybody else.
Apparently a radical idea who is out.
There, And I will say, look on that one in particular, I think that takes a hell of a lot of courage in a Republican debate. That's actual America first principle, if you were thinking about it ideologically consistently, something that I would support. I think it also is a direct signal to a lot of the donor class who was obsessed with Israel that he's like, no, I'm not going to be taking orders from you. That this is one
of those benefits of being independently welchaired. And it's a direct contrast with Ron DeSantis because his constant attack against Ron is you are a donor controlled actual machine and you. I mean, look, let's think about the main thing that DeSantis walked back in the entire all of his controversy. He didn't necessarily he kind of walked away from Disney because he said, quote, I've moved on from that after he took a lot of heat for it. I think that was both ideological but a lot of it was
Donor driven. But Ukraine to me was the big debarger point. He said something marginally towards the restrictionist side of foreign policy whenever it came to his Ukraine comments, and then got flayed by the billionaires of the world, and he walked it back.
I mean, that was a real weak moment for him.
Vivek, to his credit, has always been pretty consistent whenever it came to a to Ukraine and about how this isn't in America's national interest and pretty ideologically consistent on this issue. So if you look at that within that realm of the Israel comments now being the vector of attack on Newsmax, I just think it's ridiculous. Also not a surprise. Who is the only other candidate who criticized Vague for this? Nikki Haley another shocker, just an absolute shocker.
Another person donor creation.
Donor creation and probably backed by more Neokon billionaires than any other person in the race right now. So I think that it is almost one hundred percent true. The Perry Johnson critique is so obvious considering how many you know,
how many ads here man is thought. The funniest thing is he claimed he'd qualify for the debate, and we've now learned he actually hasn't qualified for the debate, So it didn't even spend this money correctly, I guess, yeah, maybe he's got to keep doing it if he wants to rack it up. But and to be clear, you know, for the lawyers, Newsmax denies it. Chris Ruddy and them say it's absolutely not true. Everybody claims there's like a
Chinese firewall and all that. But listen, it's business, you know, when people are when your revenue is based on advertising dollars, well, who pays you and who doesn't At the very least, it's probably going to impact you, and specifically News Max their entire thing. They're not in the same level of cable carriage fees that Fox News and all those other
media organizations are. They're probably even a hell of a lot more reliant on advertising dollars than any of their oh yeah, competitors, or it makes it even more believable.
Usation Well and Ben Smith had previously profiled Chris Ruddy and said basically like, this is the most shameless operator I have ever encountered media, which is saying something because Ben has encountered a lot of shameless operators during his time. So you know, again, that's part of what makes it believable.
And I just want to say about Newsmax, I mean they've positioned themselves for a right leaning or right wing audience as like the real truth tellers you know, who are going to give it to you straight, et cetera. And I think you can just see in this all of these allegations how sort of shameless they are, and how all of their positioning, all of their so called truth telling is really just about trying to make money off of, you know, a particular audience and serving them
what they want to hear. To me, that that's part of what really comes out here. And then the other pieces, Again, it's not that the other networks probably don't do some of the same in a slightly more you know, nuanced and deniable way. But the fact that it's just so blatant and brazen is really something like going all in for Perry Johnson when he is buying so many ads on your network, just makes it all pretty blatant and amazing.
The last thing I want to say about the debates, and again, we'll be doing a whole special on this, so we'll save some of our thoughts for there. But it's going to be interesting to me, Sager, how much wokeness comes up because DeSantis really launched his campaign like
Florida is where goes to die and vivage. What was the name of woke Inc. Was the name of his book that really catapulted him into like you know, conservative media, etc. What started to get him the Daily Wire deal potentially And a whole rash of polling has come out showing that, yeah, Republicans are like concerned about but this is far from their top issue. It does not seem to have really landed even with the Republican base in terms of being
an issue that falls people to the front. Vivik seems to be using that language less, Desanta seems to be using that language less. So I'm interested to see how much that comes up on the debate stage and how much they've sort of internalized like this might not really be the thing in the Republican primary.
I'm curious to see.
Yeah, like I said, we'll save our thoughts with a special again, you can sign up if you want to take a look at that. It's going to be fun. It's going to be all over our public channels tomorrow. Let's go to real estate. This is a really interesting look, one that we've course been trying to keep an eye on. We referenced yesterday a whole segment about the economy and how potential crash could come. But also you can't underestimate the greedy heathens on Wall Street. Let's go ahead and
put this up there on the screen. Currently, Wall Street, while simultaneously facing a debt bomb in terms of commercial real estate, is now raising billions of dollars in funds to target quote assets with slumping values. So really what they're doing is that entire new hedge funds are popping up to try and acquire quote office buildings, apartments, and other troubled commercial real estate asset on the cheap at a fraction of the price that the investors paid.
Just a few years ago.
Why this is noteworthy is that many people who are on the bad side of the trade, even banks like Goldman sacks we're holding a lot of commercial real estate debt, are now trying to capitalize on the fact that the debt might go bust to try and buy it and squeeze as much value out of this as possible. What they're saying is they quote several investment bankers and managers in the real estate funds, and what they're talking about is that they're trying to target the most troubled real
estate market that they've seen in decades. The thing is that the original bad real estate crash happened in the housing sector, in the personal realm, this one being entirely commercial.
They're now looking at it for vultures.
One of the reasons why everyone should care about this is note I didn't just talk about office buildings.
You know, boohoo in some cases.
For office buildings, although you know there's some relative like mom and pop ish type people who do run those, it's really apartment buildings. If a lot of these apartment buildings continue to get scooped up by these big hedge funds, they're going to try and squeeze even more of the
value out of that as possible. It means they're going to lower services, they're going to jack up rents, they're going to continue to make sure they use how zoning regulation and all that to make sure that their premium remains high. So we should not be cheering, you know, distress assets being purchased by a bunch of Wall Street funds and billionaires just because some people on Wall Street will lose some money on one side of the trade.
Other people are looking at this as a major, major opportunity to come in and buy.
Yeah.
No, that's a really good point, and it's something we've covered on this show. When permanent Capital ends up being your landlord, oftentimes the results are completely disastrous. Many of these companies use algorithms to jack up rents the absolute maximum amount that they possibly can, So they're running software programs, and what they've found is that it's worth it to actually price people out of some of their apartments in order to extract most rent out of the tenants that
they do have that are able to afford it. So that's one piece of it, is, you know, jacking up rents to astronomical rates, and when you have you know, the same permanent capital institutions owning many of the apartment buildings in one town, then they basically get control over the market and they have market power to set what the going rate of rent is to start with.
So that's number one.
Number two, there's all kinds of reporting also about how you know they they look to cut costs, of course, in every single way possible. So if you've got a problem, if you've got mold growing, if you've got a plumbing issue, if you've got peeling pain, whatever, it is very unlikely that they're going to like hop to and take care of the issue or do it in any sort of
a really you know, effective and sustainable way. So that's another piece of this, and then bigger picture in terms of the economy, we've been covering this commercial real estate potential debt bomb for a few months now, and the trend up to this point has been that the people who own these buildings have been holding out in terms of selling, hoping that things turn, hoping maybe interest rates come down and they can you know, refinance, hoping that
something will change so that they don't have to sell at what are rock bottom prices, and the early indications from this report is that that phase seems to be ending, and now the phase of people being forced to sell at you know, extremely low valuations is here. So that marks a real turning point in the market. They give an example, an owner of a downtown San Francisco office tower unloaded the property for forty one million dollars to
a large developer, Presidio Bay. The seller, Clarion Partners, had purchased the property for one hundred and seven million dollars in twenty fourteen.
So back in twenty fourteen.
This thing at market value is one hundred and seven million dollars. They just sold it for forty one I mean that just getting grand. And San Francisco's one of the hardest hit markets in the entire country in terms of vacancy rates, et cetera. But when you look at those kind of valuation crashes, it's a scary scenario in terms of what some of the downstream effects of that could potentially be.
Yeah, I agree, and you know, if you put it together with some other things, there could be a potential benefit here as long as some of this gets converted to housing. I did want to give us a rare shout out, I think to Mayor Eric Adams, but a new program which I am definitely supportive of. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. In New York City, Adams has now unveiled a proposal to convert vacant offices to housing through a city action in
called the City of Yes Plans. So basically, the plan that Adams has laid out is that they're going to take multiple neighborhoods, mostly in the Midtown area, that are
the most empty. They're going to fast track regulatory approval and keep out some of the housing problems that have plagued New York City, rent control, all these other things that have kept the housing stock particularly low and not growing over the last couple of years, and immediately convert issue permits for construction, reorganization in and turn these places into housing. Twenty four billion dollars currently being appropriated for
affordable housing as part of the program. But I do think that there are a couple of things that we have to at least shout out. From what I have read, one of the biggest issues in converting office space into housing comes down to like window space, lighting and the inner areas of these buildings would basically have to be commun have to be converted to more communal type areas where you wouldn't actually be able to use the of majority of some of this real estate as housing. It's
really the outer rings. So the construction cost of conversion is a lot higher than people think. It's not just you can't just PLoP a, you know, an office building and PLoP a bunch of apartment building inside, like, yeah, go live in a box with no.
Light in it.
I mean, I'm sure New York City would love to sell that to you, but I think legally they're not.
I have to think plumbing is an issue too, because a building you might have like one or two bathrooms on the whole floor whatever.
There's a lot that goes into it.
Yeah.
That said, it's an innovative plan and I'd like it. I like at least the thinking of, like, hey, let's do it. You know, we've got one of the most expensive housing markets in the entire country. And one of the reasons why I think it's important is Manhattan has two paths. They can either go down this and actually make it a place to live. And I know a lot of people were young and live. They love it
there even now continue My own sister lives there. The issue, though, is it's exorbitantly expensive and continues to be so.
Rent increase there's like thirty forty percent.
And the only other avenue that they had in order to raise the tax revenue was to basically make it even more of a playground for the rich and just make it the ultimate party destination for people who want to stay out until four am or whatever.
Was the Bloomberg model that was to like intentionally make it a make Manhattan a luxury good.
And it worked and they made a lot of money, but then a lot of those people with money moved to Florida during the pandemic.
So now what you know.
It's like it turns out that these people are very fickle getting roots and actually turning into more of a place that you can live.
That's one of the original conceptions of New York.
It's like the original like thing that people who grew up there really feel attached to. So I did want to shout out this plan because I think it's I think it's a good idea.
Yeah, I mean I lived there for a number of years and I loved it.
I mean, once it.
Took me a lot of get used to the just because I'm from the country, and it was like a whole overwhelming experience. But once I did, I really did love the energy of living in Manhattan. So you know, to have to have any sort of attempt to keep the vitality, restore some of the vitality, make it a place that young people or families potentially could live.
I think that's really good.
I do want to say, I think there's a lot of limitations here because all they're doing is they're changing some of the zoning regulations. I'll redo the specifics they say they're going to make it so that buildings that were built as recently as nineteen ninety could be converted to housing right now, I don't know why. Only buildings built between before nineteen seventy seven or nineteen sixty one are eligible, depending on where they are in the city.
So you can see there's like a tangle of zoning regulations that make this difficult. The city would also allow buildings to convert to housing anywhere in the city if the zoning regulations already allow for residential So they're making some zoning changes here, But I think it's a very difficult thing for any city to really accomplish on their own without state or federal assistance.
There were a number of efforts.
Also, I want to be clear, this still has to be approved by the city council, so this isn't even a done deal yet, and housing issues are always incredibly sticky, so we'll see whether it actually even passes. There were several plans put forward at the New York state level, pushed by Governor Kathy Hochel, that failed that would have provided some financial incentives for developers to make these sort of expensive, costly conversions from office space to residentials.
So those failed.
So there's no money involved here, and as you're pointing out, Soccer, the conversions are very expensive. So we'll see if the math ends up working out for this to actually shift the balance here whatsoever. When you don't have state or federal money backing up an attempted transition, my guesses, is probably not really going to be anywhere close to sufficient to induce developers to do what you want them to do. But it's an experiment. I appreciate that they're trying, and we'll keep an eye and.
Safe it works.
So let's try it. If it fails, so be it. But you know, right now it's a crisis and it's not working. So let's continue down there and I'll continue to try it. At least give credit to people who are trying something innovative and interesting. Let's go to the next one here on China. This is something that I know a lot of you were interested in, and the ongoing is to lead up to the Bricks Summit in
South Africa is actually an area of great interest. Bricks for people who don't recall, was a phrase that was coined on Wall Street in two thousand and seven. It referred to Brazil, India, China, and South Africa as the bricks nations that we're going to continue to grow. Now there's a lot going on, sorry, Russia as well in that.
One of the ones. There's a lot going on in terms of those countries.
It hasn't necessarily worked out in the same way, but one thing that does kind of unite all of those powers is that they are relatively independent of the West. They have pretty good economic growth outside of Russia. I guess, well, it depends, I guess in terms of this quarter, and those nations are embracing the label as an alternative to the Western economic system, while some of them want to maintain.
Ties to the West. Anyway, let's go and put this up there on the screen.
China is currently urging the Bricks to become an explicit geopolitical rival to the G seven. And the reason why this is interesting is it actually has opened up all sorts of tensions even within the Bricks system themselves. One of the current debates is whether the Bricks Summit should
invite multiple other nations into Bricks. They want to invite places like Argentina, other countries that are developing, and what China wants to do is use the Bricks as an alternative to the G seven, as an explicit counterweight and saying no, these are the emerging nations of the world. We're kind of uniting together in a non Western aligned system. We reject your economic sanctions, we reject or dominance of the global economic system.
We're building something alternatively.
The reason why it's interesting is that the split inside of Bricks is South Africa and India both have very different postures. South Africa is like, no, we're not anti Western at all. Makes sense because they actually have a lot of trade with the West. Also India, they don't want to be a Chinese vassal. They don't necessarily even want an alternative to the G seven. They're one of the largest economies on Earth. They continue to have budding in good relations with the West.
Their main goal.
Is to pursue an independent foreign policy in economics, both of China and of the Western system. China explicitly is anti Western. Russia, of course is also anti Western. So it's really like China and Russia. But then you have South Africa and India. There's a lot of beef in there about India doesn't necessarily want this to be a new G seven. So the reason why I think it's just interesting is we always have to keep our eye on the emerging.
Alternative systems to what's happening here.
We can all agree that declining influence of the West is happening to what the extent and degree, who knows. I mean, the one you could look at the sanctions on Russia's a failure, I personally do, because they haven't actually achieved their main goal, which is stopping Russia from attacking Ukraine.
But you could also.
See it as look, you still had the anvil you could come down, you could cut off this country virtually overnight.
That is a lot of power.
You know, you hobbled their ability to conduct trade, but of course they've still been able to.
Trade with countries like China and Russia.
And how the bricks decides to conceive of itself and move forward, especially in the context of a no longer exploding economic growth China is going to be one of the defining issues of like what multipolarity looks like in the future and is it going to be a block is it going to be individual states. I come down on the individual states given the level of strife that's happening inside.
But I'm curious what you thought of this.
That's interesting.
Yeah, and a question mark two about whether Brazil wants to be more in that antagonistic side. Are more on that, like we just want to have building some more resilience basically and have options other than the West. So they're planning on potentially invit other countries to join this emerging group, and there's also a lot of tension and a lot of discussions about Okay, well, what would that criteria be, who would we include, what would the pathway to membership be?
So are a lot of big questions here. One of the pieces that I found really interesting as well is there's a lot of talk globally about de dollarization, right trying to move away from the US currency as the world's reserve currency. They say that a common currency not on the agenda here, but they're going to have a broader push towards de dollarization. They could focus on seeking an agreement that BRICKS members should increasingly settle trade between each
other in their local currencies. Officials familiar with discussions said, right now, basically dollars and TA bills are used to settle trade differences between countries all around the world. So what they're trying to move towards is we're not going to rely on that. Instead, we're going to use our own local currencies. And even without moving towards some sort of common currency, that in and of itself is really quite significant.
So look, to me, this is just the budding.
Realization of a multipolar world that in many ways is already here. Even if China, even if China continues to struggle economically, their growth significantly reduced, even if they continue to struggle with this, you know, these debt loads that they have in terms of their real estate and in terms of infrastructure. Even if it really does continue down this path, when you combine this block together, this is
a lot of economic might. This is a massive amount of GDP, and it is somewhat of a counterweight to the US and somewhat of an alternative for people who don't want to have to effectively koutou or whatever the US wants.
Yeah, and let's put this up there on the screen.
This is a fantastic feature piece over at the Wall Street Journal. I encourage everybody's interest to go read it. It's called China's forty or boom is over what comes next? It's basically a lot of speculation as to forty years of booming economic growth is now definitively come to an end. The current IMF trajectory puts China's growth at below four percent in the coming years, quote than half of its
tally for most of the past four decades. Current feature of current trends show that growth has slowed down from three percent from five percent just in twenty nineteen and will fall to just two percent and twenty thirty, making it a fully developed economy.
What does that actually look like? And what is what are people going to do?
The thing is, I've said this before, one of the explicit deals the CCP made was, Yeah, you're gonna be surveiled wherever you go, and we're going to make you rich. We're going to make you from poor to middle class and in many cases upper middle class. And for the rich, you're going to go from like marginal rich to some of the world's greatest billionaires and richest people on planet Earth.
That was a great deal for a lot of people. What does it look like now?
And with the middle class in particular in China really chafing at some of the housing crisis going on, at the real estate booms and busts and kind of the wild economic stuff that's been wrought post COVID, it's an open question of what does the new social contract look like inside of China? Right? And that social contract also comes down to what does their foreign policy look like? Much of China's foreign policy over the last forty years
has been one entirely of economics. They basically economically took over the US and destroyed the industrial middle class by buying off our politicians and by being smart by subsidizing their own industry. The trick only works once they used it in Africa and elsewhere they've got the debt. But really, what I think it points to is the thesis that as economic growth and all that starts to slow down, and as the economic power that you've been able to wield just goes down, well what do you turn to.
You turn towards your herd assets, and you turn towards your military. So this is the thing about multipolarity is that you can actually see more conflict in all that in the system whenever states begin to decline in overall influence and whenever they're increasing with relative peace over the last twenty five years or so. So the question though is, you know, look, they could go the other way and they'd be like, we're all making a lot of money.
Everyone here is becoming rich. We could become like Japan will slow down. But Japan is a first world nation. Yeah, they've got demographic problem, They've got all this, But last time I checked, is one of the cleanest and nicest places literally on earth, according to everybody I know who's ever been there. They have a lot of different choices about which way that they want to go.
Yeah, the problem is that Japan reached a level of per capita income right before their big slow down that China is nowhere close to achieving. I mean, if you look per capita, China still hasn't even reached like middle income status, even though you know, they've done a tremendous amount to lift their own people out of poverty. Much of the world growth and improvement and living standards is located just in the nation of China. But they aren't at that level that Japan was at when their slow
down began. So that's part of what makes this very difficult. I mean, I said this before, but just as a reminder, the way that this worked out with Chinese growth is, you know, first they really build out their industrial manufacturing capacity, basically took that as far as they could. Then they built out all of this infrastructure. And there are some anecdotes in here in the Wall Street Journal piece that
are pretty wild. They just built a COVID nineteen quarantine facility and one province that's nearly the site is the size of three football fields, despite China having already ended its zero COVID policy months ago, long after the world has moved on from the pandemic and other localities are doing the same about one fifth of apartments. So after infrastructure was like overbuilt, then they moved on to all right,
we'll build out housing like crazy. About a fifth of apartments in urban China one hundred and thirty million units or so are unoccupied. So, you know, massively built out real estate created this huge debt bubble that she has really been trying to deflate, allowing Evergrand to effectively go bust. Country Garden also having issues, you know, these shadow banks having issues now as well, so that has sort of reached its end. And this is, like I said, it's
very intentional. God put the Bloomberg piece up on the screen, because what they point to here is that she, unlike Biden, is trying to run the economy here very hot, you know, with the infrastructure, with the Inflation Reduction Act, trying to inject money, continuing to inject money into the economy, having some sort of butting industrial policy. Jijinping is letting China's
economy flail. And the bet is here that they can engineer some sort of a somewhat soft landing in terms of the apartment real estate residential bubble, and they are investing a lot in effectively renewable energy. I mean making a big bet on electric vehicles, big bet on solar and wind power, big bet on the batteries that are critical to all of this. I mean, they are really pushing forward to make that the new sector.
But the question is, isn't enough?
Is that enough to really provide jobs and middle class for all of the people who are getting college degrees and who are aspiring to be part of that middle class in a country with such a large population. The answer is probably, know what a lot of Western economists have been sort of urging the Chinese government the direction to go in is to, you know, create a more
consumer driven economy like we have here. So basically Chinese citizens tend to save a lot more than we do here, So it's like, find ways to induce them to buy a bunch of consumer goods and crap and go into debt the way that we have here, and they're resistant to that idea, I think for a lot of good reasons.
But it creates a bit of.
A conundrum in terms of how they'll be able to continue to build on a middle class, how they'll be able to maintain any sort of the social contract that they've had and whether or not they're going to be able to continue even you know, modest growth, let alone the really rapid growth that they have gotten used to over the past number of years.
Yeah, there's a lot.
I mean, anyway, it's going to be one of the most defining questions of like how this plays out, what Shei Shehingping decides to do. On the one hand, we have this we put this up there on the screen from Bloomberg. What Bloomberg really showed is that she sing as you were talking about, they've decided to run it cold.
They want to stop some of.
The apartment buildings from basically running their economy. Real estate is too overly penetrated whenever it comes to their overall GDP growth, and they're making a conscious decision and trying to do a full blown, almost planned model of slowing things down and moving things into the future.
So they're not freaking out as of yet.
But as Peter's Ion has talked about, they have a lot of structural problems behind them. Their demographic problem is worse than Japan right now in terms of the mismatch. Now they're decelerating dramatically in terms of growth. Can they keep a hold on the population, and then what do they do abroad? You know, how do they unite keep the population united. These are big, big questions historically, of which you know is going to have massive consequence for all of us.
Absolutely, this is another one that could have massive consequences for all of us. New research into the impact of screen time on really young children, really on babies.
Let's put this up on the screen.
So new study just came out the headline here screen time at age one year and communication, problem solving, developmental delay at two and four years. So they found that the more screen time that young babies one years old have, the more developmental delays that they experience from ages two to four years in communication and problem solving. So this is really significant. It backs up a number of other studies that have shown similar results in terms of longer
screen time leading to some developmental delays. But one thing that I thought was interesting here sober is that they actually try to separate out not all screen time is the same, and they found that if you put your kids in front of things that are more educational, it really reduces the negative impact and in fact can actually improve some communication and problem solving and particular language skills
in that critical age of two to four years. So I appreciate it that they put that part in there because they sort of acknowledge like, in the modern world, you are fighting a losing battle if you're trying to keep your kids away from screens, Like as a parent, I can tell you it is damn near impossible.
So if you can.
Focus on what's the quality of the content that my kids are engaging with, that my very young children in particular are engaging with, at least you have a fighting chance and can be armed with some knowledge that's actually useful instead of just being like, I don't know what to do. I give up, this is impossible.
That was my question. You know what coounts as educational.
I know that they're like games and different iPad things and stuff that you can do, but also it seems very difficult just anecdotally watching my friends who do have kids kids have you know, their grubby little hands are always over your phone. Oh yeah, and they're always it's like if you don't watch them like a hawk, next thing you know, they're on TikTok like it's like every single time. And then the level of just being around young kids trying to circumvent the parents be like hey,
can I have your phone? I'm like why, and it's like, oh, they want to go on Instagram and you know, I'm like okay, sure whatever, just give them the phone. Next thing you know, they've been on Instagram for the last like thirty five minutes, or on YouTube without parental locks. It does seem like this option takes a tremendous amount of just watching. You're like you have to watch and be like are you what are you doing? How can
you curate this? And they're smart. They always are like working around the system and their controls and what they're allowed to do and what they're not allowed to do. I know somebody who actually I think they have a four year old and their kid has never used a phone or an iPad. What's interesting, and they are very concerted. So they have a lot of books and toys. It's always a big thing if you have a babysitter because they're like, no phone, no iPad. It's like, this is
how we do our things. But even though the kid has never used the phone, when they see their parents on phones, they always reach for even though they've never experienced it.
Well, that's it.
That is crazy to.
Me because I'm like, wow, they don't even know what's on the phone. They just know it's interesting and they could see that the way the parents use their phones right there, and they know it's an object of interest. And that kind of freaked me out because I'm like, wow, like they have a deep intuition that this is like the greatest entertainment device ever made.
Well, i mean, what kids are. They're a little sponges, and they're trying to figure out how to be in the world and what to do and how to operate. And so when they see us really engaged in this or really engage in this or whatever, that's what they do. They mimic their parents, and they mimic what's around them to try to figure out, you know, how to be in the world. And so yeah, of course, when and even if you and your household are like I'm not going to.
Be on my phone when I'm around my children, which good luck.
You know, when you're out in the world, guess what they're going to see every other adult and teenager and whatever out on their phone. So that's why I feel like it is fighting a losing battle, and there's also a part of me that you know, there's a balance between limiting the screen time, trying to improve the quality of the screen time that they are inevitably going to get,
and you know, doing the best that you can. But there's also this is the world that we live in, and they are going to need to navigate these devices. They are going to need to be digital natives in order to effectively operate in the world that we live in too, So that is a part of.
It as well. But you know, I uh had three kids.
One of them, my son is the one who is I mean, he is a junkie, like I really have to He's the one. The two girls, I don't actually have an issue with Ida, the youngest, she will want to watch she really loves these like Ninja kids videos because she's very into gymnastics. So she'll watch them for a while and then she's done, and then she wants to actually go out in the world and do her own like cartwheels and flips and whatever. My son, though, he will stay on there endlessly, and he has always
been this way. Now, I will say when he was young, he was actually obsessed with these.
Like letter and word apps.
That was what he spent the bulk of his time on and I do think because of that, he was like an early reader, and you know, he was early to some of those skills that have really helped him in terms of his academics. So it wasn't all bad and all downside. But to your point, Sager, you know, he likes chess, so will watch these chess videos, which I'm fine with. But then the next thing, I know, it's like, you know, the bottom of the barrel type
so YouTube content, it just evolves very quickly. And even if you're watching chess videos was relatively educational, like okay, watch him for an hour, maybe that's fine, but he would watch them endlessly. So it's just a contant battle. I appreciate that there's more research being done because I do think this is one of the central issues and central struggles of our time is like what is this
doing in kids' brains? What are some reasonable, like sustainable interventions that parents can deploy, tools parents can use, What sort of regulation needs to be put in place, because as you get older, we also see more and more research that you know, anxiety and teenagers and suicide and teenagers and all of these horrible mental health outcomes really spiked around the time that smartphones became widespread and social media became so such a central part of our lives,
and it started to be really gamified with algorithms and like really pitched at keeping you sort of emotionally engaged and emotionally overwrought all the time. So to me, this is one of the central issues that no one has great answers for and everybody's still struggling with.
Yeah, and I think, you know, for people who are asking questions, it's a high quality study. It's several thousand children that they tracked, you know, in terms of the developmental the actual like benchmarks and all the things. It seemed quite reasonable what they were measuring. I think we probably do need a hell of a lot more research. It's also it's one of those difficult as you said, keeping it completely off is hard also, but you know,
you have to have sustainable intervention. The people I feel for are like people who are in a situation where clearly, you know, their children are actoring out and they're in public, So playing is the most classical.
Yeah, what's the easiest thing to do.
You shove an iPad in the kids, you know, hand, it's like five six hours. Like, well, it's not necessarily the best thing. Now we're breaking routines, and there's a lot of stuff going on. You're at dinner or you're in a restaurant, and I feel for a lot of these parents, I think it's probably one of it's incredibly difficult to navigate this. So yeah, I mean thinking and looking at it anecdotally, this is one of the big questions for young parents. They all they don't know what
to do. Yeah, and they're dealing with infants here, you know, they just they really have no idea. How should the phone, should we check the phones in front of our kids? How do we handle even in the car, even even the car has screens. I've had some kids in my car. They're always playing around with these screens. Immediately they're like they know exactly what to do and they're going towards it.
It's it's kind of stunning actually to watch just how quickly they can pick up on it and how they've watched videos on YouTube about how to navigate.
Yeah.
Screen, well, I've noticed with my kids if they have too much screen time, So like we have rules in the house about no screen time in the morning, because if they have to screen time like to start their day, they are like little junkies. Like the reward system in the brain that they're getting from these videos or gains or whatever they're doing.
It really is.
Like the same biological response as if they were having some sort of mild drug. The more and it makes them the behavior deteriorates if they have too much screen time. I notice really really clearly, so you know, even anecdotally, just day to day, you can tell it is having
an impact on them. So, you know, we just try to put some reasonable limits in and do the best we can because I do think in a lot of ways it is like a losing uphill battle, and it just helps to be armed with as much information as we possibly can can be as we navigate this landscape.
Absolutely well said all right, mister Beast, this is the funniest thing. Our producers brought it to our attention.
Mister Beast, as he does, he produces, you know videos, often ostentatious, big, you know, entertaining videos. He recently dropped a video where every country on Earth is competing for the gold in a mister Beast Olympics.
Here's a little bit of a tease that he put out.
I flew down one person from every country on Earth and they.
Have to compete in the most extreme.
Version of the Olympics. If you've ever created last Country standing with this two hundred and fifty thousand dollars golden method, Oh go, go, go.
Go, whatis country takes on the goal?
Now?
The funny thing is is that I doubt mister Beast and this team realized the geopolitical controversy they were weighing into whenever they decided to not only hold the Olympics but also produce some maps. So one user actually did a great job of digging into this. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. This video has chosen has waded into every geopolitical conflict all at once. So this is the definitive take. I think here mister Beast,
the most watched YouTuber. I think he's finally settled several disputes for us. Who's the country and who's began to go through? Let's put this up there on the screen. He does recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea, but does not recognize the four separatist republics that putin recently adopted into Russia.
Let's go to the next one. So that's one.
He does recognize Palestine, but only in the West Bank.
As its country. Okay, compromising, he's already brought us world peace.
Let's go to the next one. He does not recognize Taiwan. Now you would think, oh, my gosh, is mister Beach kowtowing to China?
What exactly is going on here?
It's pretty clear here he's not just sucking up, you know, to one particular ideology, as we can see from the next one. Let's put this up there. He does recognize the Taliban government. Okay, let's move on now to my personal favorite. Mister Beach does recognize the State of Georgia, the sovereign state of Georgia. However, he uses the flag of the US State of Georgia by said un three of Georgia. Interesting, and that pretty much brings us to an ed. So Christal, what's your what's you take here?
I think mister Beast has just brought us world peace. He's solved every major geopolical unwittingly and most likely due to one of his researchers.
He probably didn't even think about this.
Yeah, so I love. I mean the the accepts Hong Kong, but not Taiwan.
Except Hong Kong not Taiwan. You know what I was saying, He use a British supremacist.
You know what I'm hanging on in a since it was genius because it's clearly non ideal. It's just it's just completely random, and if it was anything other than random, it would have actually been controversy.
Yes, that's right.
But since it's just.
Like Hong Kong, sure, Taiwan, no, Palestine, Okay, but only in the West, bed Prime sure, you know Luhansk. No, just because it's like totally non ideological and random, it actually is the perfect plan. Yes, because if you did it in some sort of like a concerted fashion, actually weighing these individual claims and having some sort of a like coherent foreign policy view worldview that was applied to this, then it would be controversial. But since he didn't do that, it ends up just being funny.
That's right.
I also I was looking for some controversy around the line of control on Pakistan and on India.
Oh, that's a hot one. Could you tell? Could you discern the maps are a little.
Hard, The maps aren't the screenshots and all those that we gathered weren't the best.
I'm trying to think if there were any other shout outs.
Oh yeah, here's one recognizing Western Sahara up but also recognizes Morocco's claims on a de facto border, which is one that cuts against what both of those two want.
So geography nerds got a lot they could say out of this, but I actually thought it was It was almost like sweet in terms of its naivete and yeah interest, where you know it's the biggest stuff, the biggest YouTuber in the world, but also clearly you know he's doing this for fun, He's doing it for a lark, and I actually appreciate that no major controversy is coming with this. Like remember when Vietnam bought banned the Barbie movie over its map because they were like, oh, the Barbie.
Movies map didn't show show.
The line of whatever, the nine dash line or for the South chrying to see. I'm like, it's a freaking cartoon map. Yeah, and it's one of those where, look, I'm the first guy. If they actually did kowtow to China and all that, I would call it out one hundred percent I've done a lot of stuff here, but it is so clear to me. It's like from Greta Gerwig and all this. They didn't think about it for a single second if.
You were seeing this map.
It was hilarious to me that because this actually was a little bit of a controversy on the right, Oh what do they do?
I was reading.
If you look at the map, it's totally like a kid draw. You can't even tell there's things that don't exist in new things that do. I mean, it's just like completely absurd to imagine that this reflected anything approaching reality or was taking some sort of geopolitical stand that
was ridiculous. So yeah, I think part of why this didn't end up being any sort of like a controversy thing is because it is so random, because it is so just like scattershot, and in a lot of ways, because it's so sloppy, like taking the country of Georgia and giving it the state of Georgia's flat.
It's probably just some producer it was like.
Tasked work entire Wikipedia or whatever and trying to come up with.
This Georgia plan. I know exactly what happened.
I feel that probably didn't even realize Georgia was real country, because it would.
Be impossible, it would actually be impossible to go through this exercise and make everyone happen like to you know, really intentionally try to draw out what you think is right and just and.
Accurate and what like.
There is no way you can make everybody happy. So just making it random was the best part.
It's funny because I think about the real Olympics.
Remember they have all those like unflagged countries where people do play and people march in the parade.
Yeah, Arge is the real country. It's like, it's always a massive kind of Taiwan is always a big one. Palestine is always a big one, you know, in the past, like Swazland and places like that.
So anyway, yeah, I think it's hilarious and I'm actually glad there was no deranged cycle of discourse around this. Let mister beast be mister beast, let them just play around.
Did you watch the actual video?
I watched the full thing. I watched it.
It's fun I mean, it's all the movies are great.
Like my personal favorite was the one on So I'm a traveld Junkie. I loved the playing video, the one where He's like, here's what a thousand, one thousand dollars flight up to like.
One hundred thousand dollars.
Oh oh, that is kind of That was.
One of my favorite videos that he's ever done.
Yeah, well this, I mean, this goes well with the block we just did on screen time.
Kids love, they love.
I mean, so, my son is not a huge Mister Beast fan. He's not like watch the conto. He's not like obsessed with it. But some of his friends are like the biggest Mister Beast stands.
On the planet.
Every kid, if I said a word.
Against mister Beast, they would become inform me.
Every kid I've ever met under twelve, it's like, I love mister Beast. There always like do you have feastables?
Am I? How do you even know about it?
Yeah?
This is crazy? Yeah true.
Anyway, good job, mister Beast, thank you for solving all the world's problems.
That's right, we got a great guests standing by sorabamar Let's get to it.
Excited to be joined this morning by Sorabamari. He is founder and editor of Compact Magazine. He's also a contributing editor to the American Conservative and Most importantly for this morning, author of a new book called Tyranny, Inc. It's all about corporate power. The subhad here is how private power crushed American liberty and what to do about it.
Great to have you, Sora, Welcome, good.
To see you, exc you both, Thanks for having me.
Yeah, of course, So just tell us a little bit of why you decided to write this book at this moment and what the central thesis is.
Sure this book was actually conceived on election night twenty twenty. It wasn't clear what the outcome was, but one thing was clear, and that was the present sident. Trump and the Trumpy and GOP had not only consolidated the working class gains that I had made among white working class people, but had begun to make inroads among working class people of color. And so what I proposed to do at that time was to write a kind of manifesto for
a new working class Conservatism. But when I actually got down to writing the book, I realized that that would be putting the cart before the horse, because a lot of the issues that stand in the way of working class flourishing in this country have to do with what happens in the private economy. Whereas a lot of the kind of populous energy of the since twenty sixteen had gone toward not entirely, but a lot of it toward
kind of cultural populism. And so we did not have a working class agenda for the Republican Party, even though it did claim a republic working class base.
So what this.
Book does is to is to show those obstacles, and many of them, I have to say, have been put up by Republicans, by center right lawmakers, Supreme Court justices, including ones appointed by President Trump sadly despite his appeal to organize labor in twenty fifteen and sixteen.
So the core thesis of.
The book is that, contrary to what many American conservatives have come to believe since the past, over the past two generations, since the Reagan era, government is not the only source of coercion in our lives, and in fact, we are surrounded by coercion needed out by the private sector in our lives as workers and consumers. And most of the book is just the kind of repertorial tour of what that looks like from the point of view
of different ordinary Americans and different walks of life. So I won't go into all of them, but typically, for example, the way in which scheduling and wage precarity sort of tightly constrain the lives of people in the lower ends of the labor market, especially retail and restaurant workers, so that they can't do elder care, they can't do childcare, there's no sense of certainty regularity about their schedules.
All the way to.
The abuse of commercial arbitration, you know, these privatized corporate courts in the workplace where they were this practice was never meant by Congress to enter the realm of the workplace, where there's vast disparities and bargaining power between workers and employers.
And then finally, the ravages mainly of private equity and hedge funds, the way in which they erode the real economy where we produce stuff, useful stuff, and basically sap companies out of all their energy and capital and into the asset ledgers of a relatively few financiers.
I think it's really courageous, Harp.
There's a lot of people who are affiliated with the RIDE or whatever who don't want to be honest about some of the major barriers to that. Why do you think that things got to this place where Trump was both a vehicle for a lot of working class energy in twenty sixteen, but also effectively allowed himself to be
co opted by a lot of people around him. But then also what we've seen since has been a willingness to engage in like cultural wars that definitely align with some working class people and with voters, but never really giving an inch on the economic front. How do we get here? I guess that's part of what you get into the book.
Well, I have to introduce one caveat on the question of free trade Trump's actually delivered. You know, decoupling from China has now become a bipartisan conventional wisdom, which wasn't the case when he ran. Of course, you know, the typical organs of the right and the left even attacked him for that. That said, on every other front, you're right, you know, his Department of Labor was basically stuffed with union busters.
So why is that?
One is just inertia of a part Parties don't easily shift their agenda, even as their voting base might shift. Second one is the lack of Republican personnel who are willing to or even know the language of dealing with corporate power. You know, all of that, all of that reform energy and expertise on this front is actually on the center left. It's with people like Senator Warren and Senator Sanders, shared Brown.
Chris Murphy.
You know, like the Republican doesn't have the personnel, but the biggest influence is not even like the sociopathic few billionaires. And this is the hardest one to talk about, honestly, is the fact that the power base of the Republican Party, which is not the same as its voting base, but the power base of the country of the party, is what you would call small and regional capital. It's like the higher distributor the chain of car dealerships in a
particular region. And that figure is the most kind of resistant to the to reform. He might be himself in some ways a victim of the vicissitudes of the market system. He's resentful at larger capital, which is able to muster corporate governmental power and so forth. But his only answer is always turning down the few constraints that remain to try to control the market system and make it a little fair.
It's like, just leave me alone.
The self made man at the Rubber Chicken Dinner is a powerful figure in the Republican Party. Just a quick point that what might fix that is if the Republicans make enough good faith gestures toward organized labor so that the workers who are now voting for the Republican Party find an organized voice within the Republican coalition rather than being basically people who vote one way but a different gettative set of results.
Yeah, for the reasons that you laid out, I'm just very skeptical that that's even possible. And you know, I'll tell you I was. I was saying to you before we started the segment, like I was expecting to hate at least some portion of this book, but I really didn't. I mean, the book is basically like social democracy. I'm a social democrat. This could have been a lot of this could have been written by like a Bernie Sanders, and the typical, in my opinion, trick that people on
the right do. I'm think of like vi veg Ramaswami, I'm thinking of Ron de Santis is they'll use a lot of the language of.
A critique of corporate power.
But then what it comes down to is like and that's why we need to fire this one DEI consultant or that's why we need to fight back against wokeness. I mean, I think the whole anti woke discourse in a lot of ways has been very cleverly used to sort of posture like you have an anti corporate critique, but not actually go after corporations in any sort of
way that would like meaningfully curb their power. The classic example that we've talked about here a number of times is Marco Rubio pendusap ed that was like, I'm in support of the Amazon workers trying and unionize in bessemer in justice one limited example, not because I have a critique of corporate power, but because I don't like the diversity initiatives of Amazon hr so as one example of this,
So how do you get out of that? And also, you know, do you have a critique of that sort of use of anti corporate power language but in ways that you know, don't actually threaten any of the system as it exists now.
So one quick point about Senator Ruvio, I think he's actually one of the better ones. You know, he's exploring what it means to be pro labor on the right, and so the rhetoric isn't always the way the labor left wants to hear it.
But no, sorry, just to push back.
I don't really care about whether the rhetoric is the way I want to hear it. But like I don't see him supporting the proact. You know, I don't see him walking the walk in terms of actually backing labor either.
I would push all three of the sort of most committed economic politics economic populace on the right in the Senate, Rubio, Hally, Jdvans, all of whom I admired. I would push them and have pushed them to support the proact. I would say again, Rubio, for example, has done serious work, with the help of figures around orncast about the erosion of the real economy by finance. But setting that aside, I do I totally agree.
I agree with you about the critique at large. You know that you said you didn't find much to agree with you didn't find much to disagree with my book. Likewise, I don't find much to disagree with you in what
you just said. I've come to really despise this kind of fake populism, this weird class analysis in which like precarious adjunct professors are the elite, and you know, Elon Musk is actually the subaltern proletarian hero, you know, or just the sort of hostility frankly for the proverbial purple herd barista who may not share cultural views, but insofar as she's wants like a decent wage and more workplace
security and health security. You know, if you're pro worker, you have to hear that out and listen to that and not just sort of image the typical worker as only like a self employed roofer or at best a kind of burly teamster that's part of the working class. But the reality is the working class in the United States also includes you know, Filipina ladies, work in hospitality, it includes it's like precarious adjuncts and so on. So I hear you totally on that. And you know, my
favorite example is the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is a symptom. Is this ongoing issue in American banking? I would argue going back to the Jacksonian era, where most developed countries have like a few large banks that are almost regulated utilities, whereas the United States since the Jacksonians has had these small and regional banks which can actually their own weird way, can wreak havoc.
So that's a complex and serious issue.
What was the response of the right to that as a kind of populism? Oh, it was because it was a woke bank. Well, sorry, but the board of Silicon Valley Bank was dominated by white guys.
What are you talking about?
There was like one gay guy on there, and they're like, oh, we found the wokeness.
There was a kind of parallel version of this on what I call the lifestyle left. Not to make much of it, because there's plenty, like I said, plenty of good reforms on the left and center left, but there is that kind of Corporations have also learned that if they sort of do the song and dance of a wokeness. So, for example, at RII, the outdoor gear chain, there's been an ongo communization drive and infamously, their chief diversity officer did a podcast which she began by saying, hello, I'm
so and so. My pronouns are she and her and oh, by the way, I want to acknowledge that I'm coming to you from the traditional lands of people, lonely people. Please don't join a labor union, was it right?
Yeah, oh yeah, We cover that extensively here.
So I am curious, though, in an uncomfortable question, some one that I think about all the time. What if a lot of the voters don't actually want this? What if the voters what if the politicians are responding to the correct incentive, which is the voters want culture work.
They actually like it, they really enjoy watching their politicians stick it to the left, and in fact, specifically in a primary system, that's the thing that the people who really vote, they care about that number one, and they care about it the most. I think there's a lot of polling that could argue otherwise, but voting results. You know, politicians, they're cynical people. They respond to incentives. Do you think I have it wrong? Do you think it's nuanced?
What do you think it is?
I mean, I think cultural issues have their own inner integrity, and they're not everything. Not everything that's a cultural phenomenon can be reduced to class relations. You know, I'm certainly kind of vulgar, vulgar Marxist. That said, the the the recent trends in Republican electoral politics, maybe maybe Crystal can speak better about this when it comes to the Democrats.
But on the Republican side, noticed that the candidate who won in twenty fifteen and sixteen and sort of barreled his way past all these conventional Republicans was the one who said I will protect your entitlements. He even contemplated a public option in healthcare in that debate with Ted Cruz where he said I'm not going to let people die on the streets and questioned the party's free trade orthodoxies.
So to me, I mean, culturally, all those candidates up there were more or less just Republicans, even Trump pretending to be a cultural conservative in twenty fifteen sixteen, whether
he was sincere or not. So that all else being equal, the one that the base went for was the one who kind of harkened back to the New Deal order and who tried some in his own way to revive what I call the Eisenhower Nixon tradition in the Republican Party, which made its peace with the New Deal with entitlements and even expanded the logic of the New Deal in different directions. Again, more recently, I have to say, I mean, if voters wanted anti vote, anti woke, Rhonda Santis should
be doing a lot better in the Republican primaries. I mean, he ran on pure I'm going to turn your populist grievances into cultural grievances and it and it's disastrously bad as a gambit.
That's I think that's really well put.
How do you think about the relationship between economics and culture? I mean a lot of times, you know, it's it's kind of hard to draw a hard line of like this is where the economic issue ends and this is where the cultural issue begins. But do you prioritize one over the other? Do you think culture is downstream by and large of you know, class interests and material needs?
How do you think about those things?
So, okay, that's a that's a complex question about which I've written a lot, and it's it's hard to summarize. But what I will say, you don't need to be a Marxist to recognize that how we structure our economy and our class structure has a bearing on how people feel they belong in the world and their sense and they're all the sort of cultural sensibilities and so forth.
So you can you can turn back to Aristotle who says that law is and politics are architectonic with respect to everything else we do.
They create everything else we do. They structure what we do.
And when they I mean obviously in the classical tradition, and when you say law and politics, that meant economy as well. So I think there is a kind of dynamic relationship between the two. And what I've found frustrating is a brand of social conservative lament that says, oh, people aren't getting married, Oh, family formation is collapsing, Oh, church attendance is down, but never connects the sort of
link between these phenomena, which I decry as well. I have my conservative sensibilities and I think there's an ideal of human flourishing that I draw from the Christian faith I have and so on, But they never then connect that to.
Our material conditions.
Like, oh, if you're constantly harried because your firm does human resources scheduling using an algorithm to minimize the costs their labor costs, but for you, life is a complete chaos as a result of that, you may not have time to spend with your kids. And your kids in fact, studies show a University of California studies show that workers who are subjected to this kind of precarious scheduling, which is about a third of at least a third of
workers in the service industry. Their children. I mean, it doesn't take a rocket science to scientists flend this. Their children have feelings of guilt, are more likely to act out in school. Why because mom and dad or however the family formation may be, don't get to spend regular systematic time. So there is this nexus, There is this sort of interplay of culture and material reality. And I think the conservative movement goes too far in the direction
of everything is a matter of ideals. If we just tell people to get married and have children, that just will listen. If we just say it the right way, well, that hasn't worked. And I think I'd like to tip the direction of conservative thought a little bit more, or maybe a lot more, in the direction of recognizing the centrality of economic imperatives.
So, Sarah, if you feel like a lot of the cultural outcomes that you would like to see in terms of family formations and human flourishing, if you feel like a lot of those would be achieved by what is basically like Bernie Sanders style social democracy, why are you on the right.
Well, two reasons.
One is, I think a lot of people on the left diagnose the material causes of our cultural crises, but then they end up ratifying the effects. So they say, oh, it's good that people are hyper individualistic now, and the gold in life is ever greater self kind of maximization and realization in the realm of.
Family and so on.
So I think for me, I get my picture of what the world should look like from my Catholic faith, from my kind of reading in the classical and Christian tradition, in ways that are I think alien to people on the left. Yeah, I mean, that's that's the main reason.
And I will say there are there are issues of fundamental conscience for me that make it very hard, and that has mainly with you know, abortion and the liberty of the church or religious liberty, where I feel like, if if the left were willing to moderate just even a teeny bit, you can maybe begin to take steps in its direction, because that as it is, I don't see that, and I think a lot of Americans don't see it either, which supplies an opening to you know, frankly,
that kind of Ronda scientis culturalist, right.
So then you would have to say then that that is your number one priority over the economics. It's more important to you to align This is fine, I'm just trying to understand what your worldview is. It's more important to you to align with a party that agrees with you more on abortion than it is to align with, you know, an ideology that agrees with you more on social democracy, labor unions, and corporate power.
I think the task is for people on both sides of the divide to recognize that we will continue to have cultural disagreements in this country about fundamental issues, but that those issues, insofar as they have common material roots, should be the subject of the kind of coalition building that FDR did, right, I mean, you know, large coalition politics between urban Catholics, you know, WASP kind of downstall evangelical farmers unions and so on. Likewise, actually the neoliberals
built a coalition as well. It wasn't just a phenomenon of the left. In fact, famously, Margaret Thatcher when she was asked who was your greatest or what was your greatest achievement, she said Tony Blair. So if something is going to replace the neoliberal consensus, it has to be built in the middle, and what I'm trying to do is try to get my own side to see that. And I will say, like, there are lots of policy
issues where I'm out there cheering the left. I'm almost doing like the clap emoji on Twitter, you know, like the Stop Wall Street Looting Act. You know, I think there's been honestly left or right there which is a I should say, it's a war and bill. There's been no greater louder champion of that bill on either side of the isle than myself. The pro Act, you know, and more generally, just like a reversing the way that American law has been used to depress union density in
the private economy. I guess so on all this stuff, we used to be able to do coalitional politics where we disagree on certain things, but we have a common ground on other things, and I think those other things are quite fundamental and important, so let's work together.
I think it's I think it's a really you're one of the most interesting people out there who's thinking about these things right now. I think the book is very important. We encourage everybody going buy it. We're going to a link down in the description, and we really think if your time.
STARp, Thank you, yeah, great chatting with you.
Thank you both.
Go to see them in our pleasure. See you guys later.