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All right, Welcome back to Counterpoints. Glad to be back in the studio. We were not here last week.
Because of the Republican debates, which I hear was a lot of fun.
Was a blast. You didn't watch in France.
I did not watch that.
Ryan has been doing a home swap in France, and I think Kedo really relaxing, fun time with this family.
I think it was like four am and I was like, you know what, I'm not going to watch this undercard. No, I'll catch the Trump Tucker calls some clips later.
Yeah, there you go, sleep through this. Well, it's good to have you back in studio.
Good to be here.
All right, Well, we're tracking the hurricane that actually became a Category four storm off the coast of Florida overnight and Wednesday early and early this morning, briefly intensified, as CNN says, into an extremely dangerous Category four hurricane with winds of one hundred and thirty miles per hour before it weakened slightly. We have some video coming in from Florida just as we're taping this right now.
Take a look.
Incredible storm sers here this morning at about seven o'clock.
I'm sitting there.
Look at one of the marine markers coming through.
That's a marine marker right there. So that's a big water, big wave action.
It's a protein houses.
Here on the Fresh Free and pick this.
Lost power live on air now.
The National Hurricane Center is predicting there could be a surge of upteen up to sixteen feet, which would be around once in a lifetime levels again according to CNN.
Yeah, and this is hitting kind of the hinge.
What do you call that area at Florida where the Panhandle meets the rest of it, something like the hen let's go with that. And it's smashing right through there. It's going to come up the eastern seaboard. We have Ronda Santis here if we want to play his response Governor of Florida.
So we are going to have the full landfall impacts very very shortly, within the next couple hours, most likely probably by zero eight hundred. It's going to make landfall on Florida's Big Bend. So please hunker down wherever you are. I don't mess with this storm. Don't do anything that's going to put yourself in jeopardy. And there'll be a lot of help coming on the back end of the storm, and we're ready to go. We as soon as it's
safe to do. So you're going to see all these different assets deployed.
I knew there was something the Big Bend, the Big Bend, the Big Bend, and there was some reporting last night that a lot of sheriffs and others from the rural counties in the Big Bend urging people to get out. A lot of people did not get out because even though this is a once in a lifetime storm, Florida's seen plenty of storms before.
So people think, you know, we're.
Going to hunker down, as Desanta said, and we're gonna and we're gonna make it through this.
And the sheriff was saying.
That there were way too many spots open in the shelters that you know, in an elementary school at handles seven hundred, they might have one hundred. And so there's a lot of fear that a lot of people stayed, not understanding just how bad it could be. Because if you are judging you know, present and future climate events by the past, you might miss out on some you know, stream ones that are going to hit you.
And you know, it's also expensive to leave. It's inconvenient to leave if you have a shift that you.
Need to getet towards to go to an elementary school spend the night. Yeah that's true.
Yeah, absolutely, Why would you leave the comfort of your home? Why would you want to if you don't have to, and if you feel like you don't have to because these warnings sometimes you know, are moved down, they're bumped down, they start really severe and things change as the day goes on, and so people take their chances. But hope everybody who did that the same is staying safe.
And there was a storm chaser on Fox News who was telling people like, no, no, no, seriously, get out, get out. So if we have to, we have that Fox News clip here we can roll for that.
Center is going to approach this area within the next hour to hour and a half, and we're going to see those winds switch around and we're going to have to watch for a major water push that's going to come inland. Luckily, we have not seen much in the way of people out here in this area, which is a great thing. We were here yesterday afternoon talking to residents, talking to the Taylor County Deputy.
There was a curfew in effect.
There's a pretty much a mandatory evacuation in effect. So this is a very rare scenario with a system coming out of the eastern Gulf of Mexico that has made major hurricane status, because that just does not happen in this region.
Yea, And later in the show, we're going to talk about several climate protests, kind of one that was out at burning Man, another in Washington, d C. All of them went terribly, you know, you know, furious reactions from the public, and I think part of it comes from
and we can talk about this more later. Nobody needs awareness raised anymore about climate Like if there's basically nobody left in the country who doesn't think the climate is changing in dangerous ways and also that it's happening because.
Man made carbon emissions.
Like almost nobody left now the big fight is over what to do about it. Even Vivek in that debate when he said the climate agenda, So he's being very smarmy and clever there and like because some people are going to hear that as climate stuff as a hoax, But what he's saying is the agenda as a hoax.
So he's saying, like, Okay, I agree the climate is changing.
What I don't agree with is how the left wants to use it to kind of re engineer society. But about I'm ten years ago or so, I remember thinking, all right, it's clear that we're not going to do enough about climate change in my lifetime and that we're going to see utterly catastrophic results. As in the end, it's like, at least I'll be around for that comforting
feeling if I told you so. Nothing better in the world than being able to say I told you so to people who fought against the opportunity when it was
around to do something about it. Watching it happen now, I don't get an ounce of satisfaction, Like I'm even deprived of the satisfaction of being able to say I told you so, Like seeing what happened in Vermont, seeing what's happened happened in Canada, of seeing what's happening down in Florida right now, none of that even brings me an ounce of like I told you so, Joy, I.
Would I would be worried if it did. Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think it's abstract, you know, ten years ago it's abstract. What what's what's this? What's this climate apocalypse going to look like? But when you see some of those images where the inland areas have been just been turned into ocean, and what is what's that going to leave behind? I was driving through the Panhandle a year or two ago, and you could still see all the devastation. I forget which hurricane it was, but you could it was.
It was not a couple of weeks prior. It was like years prior, and you could still see debris and you could still see destruction. I talked to someoney from Montpelier last night. They are they've barely recovered from that flood up in Vermont. And so as these continue once in a lifetime events continue to accumulate, and we become increasingly unable to recover.
From them, like what kind of world does that leave behind us?
And you know, I think you and I have disagreements on this, but well, and we can flush some of those out in the climate blox. But it's another big question for media because one thing I wanted to mention here actually is that there's still hundreds of people unaccounted for in Maui, and the media coverage of that has slowed.
To a trickle at best.
And again, we're looking at years of rebuilding in Maui, we're looking at a devastated local economy, and we're looking at potentially somewhere around a thousand, if not more deaths. We have one hundred and fifteen confirmed deaths as of right now, which is a staggering number right now already that's a staggering number. It could climb by some tenfold by the time all of the.
Dust, so to speak, settles.
Yeah.
Yeah, And as I was riding in this morning, I was thinking of one. I was going over all the twenty years of climate arguments that we've been having over the years, one of them that used to hear a lot was this one.
Do you remember maybe you still hear it?
Like hey, in the sixteenth century, we had a little ice age. Now things get colder, things get hotter. That's all there is to it. What are you gonna do about it? You know, it happens. What I've learned since then is that have you heard the theory on why we had that little.
Ice age in the sixteenth Saturday.
So in fourteen hundred and fifteen hundreds Columbus and the Europeans come over to the New World, and they bring disease with them. You have a ninety percent population die off as a result of that disease coming in. Humanity is always at war with nature, or humanity is always
war with vegetation at least. And so with ninety percent of people gone, vegetation just took over North America, which is why you have all these descriptions of this kind of untouched wilderness one hundred years later that people came through.
It wasn't that way two hundred years ago.
It became that way over the course of like fifty years from all of this just kind of wilderness taking back over where humans had been. And what does vegetation do sucks carbon out of the air. So even the silly kind of pedantic point that people made about the little ice age actually turned out to be also anthropogenic in the beginning. Or you could blame a virus, or you can blame disease if you want, but it was
humans that carried the disease over there. And so it just shows that, as Elon Musk said on Twitter just the other day that at the carbon not Twitter refuse, I absolutely refuse that carbon concentration in the atmosphere matters. Like it's like it doesn't care about your feelings or your politics.
Like carbon doesn't care about your feelings.
Yeah, it doesn't.
You take carbon out, gets colder, you put more carbon in, it gets warmer. Like this is basic stuff and there's just no way around it.
All right.
So moving on from this one thing that didn't get a lot of play in the media this week is a little thing that Marjorie Taylor Green of all people, said on I think it was like a real America's voice hit something like that, but actually has pretty big implication for implications for our politics going forward. Lots of Republicans kicking around the idea of impeachment, and I think that's about to get really serious. Let's listen to what Marjorie Taylor Green has to say, let's.
Talk about what an impeachment inquiry is. Marina, thank you for bringing that up. And impeachment inquiry is just asking the question. We're just asking members of Congress do you think we should inquire about impeachment? It's not saying do you want to impeach? Right?
Should we just ask the question? And at this point, right.
Now, I'm like, what the hell is wrong with Republicans that we can't just hey, guys, maybe ask the question.
Maybe we should just ask.
And think about it and look at it and investigate in a much broader way and with more subpoena power.
Just ask the question, just real quick. That leaves the decision to Kevin McCarthy ultimately.
Are you confident he's going to go with the impeachment inquiry this fall in September?
I am confident. And the reason why I'm confident is we had a House GOP call yesterday and that was his big push on the call. So I think if we were to have the vote today right now, Kevin McCarthy would be one of the first ones to vote yes.
So the Speaker of the House is about ready to vote to start an impeachment inquiry. Ryan, let's play this clip of Hakeem Jefferies as well, because he's already i think, anticipating an impeachment inquiry and has a I think you get a little taste of the Democrat messaging strategy ahead when you listen to how he responded to questions about that on CNN.
Potentially as soon as the end of next month.
Is what our colleague, melaniees Andoda I know you know quite well, has been reporting.
Your response to Republicans inching towards launching an impeachment and qureer into the president.
Well throughout this year, the American people have been forced to deal with a do nothing, extreme Republican Congress that has done nothing to make a difference in the economy, nothing to make a difference with respect the job creation, nothing as it relates to healthcare affordability, nothing as it relates to inflation, nothing as it relates to public safety.
They have nothing to show for their majority throughout the year, and so as a natural consequence of that, they just continue to take orders from Donald Trump, their puppet master in chief, who has directed them to persecute and to go after Joe Biden, which may take the form of an illegitimate impeachment inquiry.
So finally, I would just point out that Kevin McCarthy actually addressed some of these comments on Sunday, So before both of those conversations happen, we can put the last element up on the screen here. He said, So if you look at all the information on Fox News we have been able to gather so far, it is a natural step forward that you would have to go to an impeachment inquiry. And McCarthy then said, it provides Congress the quote apex of legal power to get all the
information they need. So Ryan, this is the just asking questions impeachment and.
It's a perfect metaphor for our politics. That Florida would be underwater right now, and that the thing that Washington would be talking about is and that Congress would be considering. It's not like what are we going to do about that? Like how are we going to build a sustainable country going forward in this new climate environment? But it's like, let's move forward with this theatrical impeachment that we know
is going to fail. And Democrats did the same thing, and did it twice, maybe the second time they had actually some modest hope that it might succeed, even though the guy was out of office by the time the impeachment inquiry was done, so there was you couldn't do anything other than ha ha, we got you. But on the first one, everybody knew there was no way there were going to be two thirds to convict in the Senate. We know right now there's ninety two thirds in the
Senate to convict Joe Biden. So Marjorie Taylor Green just wants the kind of theater in order to kind of show and to show the base that they're delivering. And my take on all of this is that it's similar to a government shutdown and that neither party is able to kind of deliver what its base wants because of the way that none of them have enough.
Votes at this point.
And so there are like basically two release valves at this point for that energy. One is you shut the government down, and you're like, look, see we tried, and so that Republic they're probably gonna do that in a.
Few months, yep. And the other is, well, we impeached the president, so aren't you happy.
Well, so that released actually might come sooner than a few months. It might actually come within the next month. And so again when you so when we're organizing the show, we have like this is our A block, and so you try to put the most important news in the A block because that's the big thing to go through. And actually, I think why this belongs at the top of the show is because September, as we're heading into Labor Day weekend here, September could feature a government shutdown
and the opening of an impeachment inquiry. And I'm really glad you said, Ryan that Democrats with the Ukraine impeachment hearing, especially the Ukraine impeachment hearing, and actually Kevin McCarthy himself will cite that as a moment that like really made the Republican conference as they call it on the House side coalesce and people who were in the House and went through the Ukraine impeachment inquiry, which, by the way, I mean we can talk about, you know what Joe
Biden did with Victor Shoken, who's been out in the media this week talking. He's the prosecutor who Joe Biden used for an aid to get rid of in the case of he was ostensibly corrupt, as many government officials in Ukraine are, and we're but that's Joe Biden sort of tethering foreign aid to a decision that the country makes and a decision that a foreign country makes. And
that's essentially what Donald Trump was impeached over. So whether that was at the level of an impeachment inquiry is a serious question, and so too is what Republicans are now going to the questions that they're just going to be asking going forward to your point, Ryan, it's become a release valve, not what it used to be. And so Marjorie Taylor Green trotting at this thing. We're just
asking questions, We're just asking questions. It's very much because if you're looking at an establishment Republican member like Kevin McCarthy, I can't emphasize that enough. This is not a guy from the Freedom Caucus. This is establishment Republican Kevin McCarthy, who says he told me in an interview exactly a year ago that that first impeachment completely changed the way Republicans saw the game in the House of Representatives. It's now fire with fire, and that's how they know that's what.
Their constituents want, all voters.
They know that's what the Republican base expects as a bare minimum, and so they feel like they can't not do it.
And what put Trump's behavior outside the norm of the typical American president was that not that he was using American foreign policy as leverage over another country, because that's.
What we do. We're going to talk about that later in the show That's an Empire.
We talked about Pakistan recently, And so what made it difference?
It was for pure political gain.
No, it was like I need you to say that you don't even need to do the investigation of Hunter and Joe Biden, just like go on CNN and say you're doing it.
That'll satisfy me.
And in Trumpan fashion, it was more transparent and naked.
Just completely naked.
It's self interested.
Yeah, And because it cut against Ukraine, which was at the time and remains kind of an ally slash client in our kind of adversarial relationship with Russia, that's what flipped it so that the rest of Washington was like, Okay, impeach him over this, because the Left had been trying to impeach Trump over.
Anything.
Muslim band, the massive amounts of like corruption running through either you know, Saudi or the Trump Hotel or you name it. But all of that stuff was too even though he was doing it in a more flagrant way, it was to cut too close to the bone of Washington, too similar in kind to what a lot of other politicians do, except they just do it in a more sophisticated and and okay way, and so you weren't going
to have the Centrists along with you there. Then he does the Ukraine thing, and if you remember, it was the kind of former intelligence community people like Spanberger and others who came out publicly and said, okay, now, now he's crossed the line.
Now we're gonna Now we're gonna do this.
And at that point the left was like, well, we've wanted to impeach him for all these other things.
We'll take this.
We're not gonna we're not gonna vote no on impeaching Donald Trump. But of course you're not gonna get Republicans to go along, even though a lot of Republicans hated the idea that you would use our kind of client in a way, in any way other than being adversarial in our foreign policy towards like Russia or something like that.
And we could keep pulling at this thread and go back to you know, whether Republicans and Newt Gingrich started this in the nineties. We could keep talking, we could talk about Whitewater, we could talk about we could just keep going.
There's no question about it.
But the bottom line is Republicans have a very very short time to fund the government in September. Not just Republicans, actually all of Congress has a very small amount of time to fund the fund the government in September. The Freedom Caucus thinks a shutdown is and if you talk to folks, that's the line they're they're pushing for a shutdown. Kevin McCarthy wants what's called the Continuing Resolution to punt that into December.
He's the Freedom Caucus is in.
All likelihood not going to let him get that continuing resolution, meaning that you're trying to start an impeachment inquiry and fund the government in September. People are in dire financial straits around the country. We're seeing some really frightening indicators that we've covered this month, certain things like credit card delinquency spiking, and Congress is going to be tangled up and likely in another impeachment fight and shutdown fight.
My guess is that they'll do as I'm curious for your taking on this, that they'll do a short term extension at the end of toward the end of September.
That'll push it into early December, and that around then is when you'll get your shut down, because I think it's I think it's really hard for if you have half the Republican conference saying I'm fine with a short term extension and you have the other half saying, though, I want to shut down now, Like that's such a loser argument that I think they'll just take it and punt it to December. But what you have a much better read on the House Republican So what's what's your guest.
I could see that happening.
I think it's the way I can see that happening is if McCarthy negotiates with the Freedom Caucus on impeachment. So maybe there's something that he can, you know, dangle a carot that he can dangle impeachment wise that gets him that continuing resolution or the short term extension to December. But there, you know, when you talk those guys right now, they are hardcore no CR because that's not you know, where the bases. That's not what anybody wants to hear.
It is well past time. If you if you listen to just Marjorie Taylor Green, you know you're in the freedom caucus, but a sort of freedom coca is adjacent.
It is well past.
Time to start this impeachment and Querer it should have happened a lot of people think it should have happened earlier this year. So I don't think they're in any mood to keep pushing it. I don't think they're in any mood to push the potential shut down either. So I saw, like Mark Levin tweeting today, Reagan shut down the government some eight times, and you know it like the least it's the least house Republicans could do now basically is where the bases. So I don't feel like
they feel like they have much flexibility. I don't think they want to have much flexibility, so I would be surprised.
But there are some.
Carrots that McCarthy and he's a good negotiator with.
Them, so we'll see.
It is so pathetic. It's like, really, it's like the least we can do is a great phrase for it. Yeah, it's like because nobody is going to the bout box saying, you know, what I really want is for the Park Service to get shut down like that. That's why I'm setting you to Washington. But they go and they can't deliver on the things that they want to deliver on, and so yeah, so they're like, all right, well, what can we.
Do because basically it's impossibly get anything done.
Especially yeah, yeah, right, that's the thing.
They control the House of Representatives and they want to government from there, you can't, right, and they barely control the House of Representatives, that's right, real quick. My unpopular take Andrew Johnson worst president ever. Wish he had actually been impeached. But the thing that impeached him on was crazy. It was after he took over from Lincoln, they passed the law saying you can't get rid of your cabinet secretaries Lincoln's cabinet secretaries.
And then that's crazy.
President's got to be able to hire there a cabinet And so then he fired Stanton, and Stanton wouldn't leave the War Department. He's like, no, I'm not leaving, not leaving, like and people were like defending him.
It was wild.
And then I still wish he'd been impeached, even though I disagre read with the rationale for.
They've just done it. They were just asking questions, just asking questions. Yeah, did you and he did break that law? But the law is kind of crazy.
Yeah, I mean many such cases.
Yeah, all right, Well, speaking of Republicans in difficult situations, here's Ron DeSantis has been I mean, a tragedy continues to strike Florida this week. There was this horrific, horrific shooting in Florida earlier this week. We can put b when b one up on the screen. This is from the New York Times. I'm going to read from the
article here. A white gunman wearing a tactical vest barged into a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday and fatally shot three black people in an attack that the authority said they were investigating as a hate crime. Now, Ron de Santis has echoed that, he said he's he's seen the details and that this is the manifesto and this is clearly a racially motivated hate crime. So he's on the same page as law enforcement in that question.
The victim, Angela Michelle Carr, fifty two years old Anault Joseph le Garry Junior known as AJ, twenty nine years old, and Gerald Deshaun Gallion nineteen years old, twenty one year old gunman with an AR fifteen style rifle and a glock handgun, as the New York Time says, both of which he purchased legally in Florida. So then Ron DeSantis, obviously as governor of Florida, this falls under his purview to handle the fallout. He did a press conference, and
let's play some some audio and video from this. You can see him getting booed after the press conference.
Laura's Governor, Ron de Santis is here a w he to come back and.
Thank you for given a.
Moment.
We've already been looking to identify.
Funds to be able to have one avants.
Security, I said after the press conference, but clearly that was in the middle of the press conference. Definitely not after the press conference. Now Republicans have looked at the media coverage of this, and Ronda Santis is certainly going to be dealing I think with that that situation going forward in the aftermath of this hurricane that we covered earlier in the show That's Heating Florida right now and will continue to be a huge process for the communities impacted in the days.
I've had, the months ahead, the years ahead, but.
Republicans on media coverage of what happened there, and that's become sort of a news cycle in and of its own. This is Senator Mike Lee. We could put B three up on this. This is he's responding to an AP journalist who said something to the effect of, you know, Ron de Santis had this created the climate of fear, and the n DOUBLEACP put out a travel advisory to Florida, and then you know, sometime later there's the shooting, the racially motivated shooting of.
Three black people.
So tying A and B together, Mike Lee jumps in and says Scotis effectively immunized journalists from public figure defamation liability in nineteen sixty four. Over time, that immunity, coupled with political leanings of most journalists, had turned the news media into the communications assault arm of the Democratic Party.
Now I don't agree at all about it.
Does exhibit A.
I'll read it right here.
It's the tweet from it is from Steve Peoples, who said rond dea Santis scoffed when the NAACP issued a travel advisory the spring warning black people to use quote extreme care if traveling to Florida. Just three months later, DeSantis is leading his state through the aftermath of a racist attack that left three African Americans dead. And I'll
put the next element up on the screen. This is my colleague David Harsani writing at the Federalists and saying, essentially, there's nothing in DeSantis's rhetoric that would be responsible for motivating a racially motivated terror attack. And so the Republican response and the conservative response has become a news cycle in and of its own, basically saying to point fingers at Ron DeSantis for you know, the ap curriculum that we talked about here on this show, for other things
in Florida. Essentially that the left interprets one way and to connect it to a shooting is basically a smear.
And that's what Mike Lee is arguing. I don't agree at all.
And the question of liability for the media, that's a much more popular, that's an.
Increasing and popularity.
I mean, yes, it's a very self interested, but for legitimate reasons, I don't agree with that at all. Ryan though this is going to be in the few Sure, this is going to be a problem for Justsantis. We've seen him in ways that Florida voters appear to like turn the tables when questions like this happen and say this is awful what the media is doing. But at the same time, he can't escape the scrutiny no matter what.
Happens, right, And so Michael is trying to blame the NAACP for warning people that black lives are at risk in Florida, and then three months later, three black people are killed and he's by a racist guy to Dollar General and he's like he should be saying, well, NAACP was kind of right about that, Right.
He's blaming the AP for regurgitating the NAACP's line sort of credulously.
And then you've got remember when Rick Scott he did that really creepy thing where he's like, it's socialist and communists and everybody believes in big governments stay out of Florida, warning you don't come down here like that rhetoric also like come on, you can't have a socialist can't visit Socialists can't visit Florida, Like what do you can't people believe in big government ought not to be warned not to go to Florida.
He's talking about.
So.
But on the Rhonda Santis press conference, I was watching that, I'm thinking, you know, he has a responsibility as a governor.
Those are these are his constituents.
Like, he made a choice that he was going to be as divisive as he possibly could and as partisan as he could, and that was going to be his kind of leg up in the presidential primary, that he was going to pick fights with Democrats, slash the media, which he believes to be the same thing, and you know, fire elected prosecutors, you know in cities around Florida, and you know, take take take over the curriculum, and on
and on. He had, he made that choice, and maybe it has fifty four percent of the state behind him, but that means you might have forty six percent of the state vocally again, you even in a moment where.
Just several years ago everybody would come together.
Right.
Yeah, that's I think that's an interesting contrast that And actually we've seen this with hurricanes past that Ron DeSantis has the way that he's approached tragedies like hurricanes under his governorship has been pretty well approved.
It seems to.
Have like actually been efficient and a proper use of government, a useful application of government. And he's actually again emerged from a lot of those other tragedies, probably stronger politically if anything. But yeah, we didn't used to see quite this level of polarization. It used to be that these
things were like unifying moments for various reasons. But his approval rating this is as of July, a Florida Atlantic University poll had him at fifty four percent of voters approving of the way to Santis is handling his job. Then a strong plurality forty one percent saying they strongly approve forty one percent. But to your point, Ryan, that
means twenty four percent of voters strongly disapproved. That's a lot of strong disapproval, which means he's generally well liked in the state of Florida, probably beyond just a partisan Republicans when you have numbers like that, But at the same time, that means the disagreement with Ron DeSantis is also highly highly polarized, and I think as he continues running for president, that's only going to get that's that will only become ratcheted out.
That will only be stronger. The reaction to him and.
Probably some of his numbers as he sort of flails on the national campaign trail will bring his numbers down in Florida, I imagine, especially if you end up looking distracted. You know, if you end up looking like you're treating tragedies as campaigns for a president, which I as campaign stops on your presidential bid, that's a pretty bad look too.
I haven't seen that so far, And I do want to say I actually am in the camp where I think tying DeSantis personally Ron DeSantis is rhetoric personally to what happened, I think makes no sense. But I also take the point that that you were making that, you know, is it insane for a journalist to say this is what the NAACP, a major organization, a major national, powerful organization, was saying.
Yeah, I mean I take that point.
Too, right. Yes, I agree with all that that Bronda Santis is never born.
You may very well still have this shooting. Andrew Gillen could be governor, right and you might still have this shooting.
At the same time, what Mike Lee ought to be asking is why did the NAACP say that like, what is it, What is it that has happened between the NUAACP and the Republican Party, which used to be allies that led them to a place where they were issuing a travel warning to the state and so worked through that rather than blaming the AP for reporting on it and implying that like there's there would almost be some defamation in reporting, like even if there was no nineteen
sixty four defamation protection, Mike Lee knows better, like you're allowed to report what the NAACP says and does as a reporter.
It wasn't.
It was definitely not the moment, the journalistic moment that I would be like, maybe we should look at for themation cases because they didn't eat like people's again.
Who's going to suit Florida?
Yeah, right, People's didn't or DeSantis, I guess like People's didn't make an explicit he didn't really have to. But he also didn't make an explicit point of culpability to He didn't say Ron DeSantis created the conditions that the NAACP issued a travel advisor because Ryan DeSantis is a racist and caused the shooting. And we actually do see journalists kind of crossing that bridge sometimes. So of all of the opportunities, I don't know that this would.
Be one of them.
So, speaking of extraordinarily polarizing events, there's been a series of climate protests that we wanted to take a look at. And first of all, nobody from burning Man is watching the show. Maybe they'll watch it when they're done, although actually maybe well from them, man, Yeah, maybe there's a little some Wi Fi connection out there and they're they're they're beaming, they're beaming it in and they're all sitting around. You know, I did my honeymoon at Burning Many.
I didn't know that, but I'm so glad you broke that to me on air because.
That is too perfect.
Did our honeymoon at burning Man back? This is two thousand and seven, very very long time ago.
Hell of a time. The bush are burning Man, nothing like it.
And so if we could so in order to get there, it's basically one or two roads, and it's hours outside of Reno, even which is in the absolute middle of nowhere, and everybody is supposed to bring all of their own things with them, you know, gas and water. But you know, if you, let's say, I have to run your car for three or four hours in the highway or on the on the kind of state parkway unexpectedly that might
cause some problems for you. And so there was a climate protest that blocked traffic for miles and miles and miles in the Nevada Northern Nevada desert on the way to burning Man. And so let we'll play how it ended, but then we'll play a little bit.
Of what led up to it.
So here here's a clip of how this how this ended in quite a brutal fashion.
Did anyone get that they say, get down.
The crowd, want the.
Crowd, down the crowd.
So that's a tribal policeman that the tribal police say that his conduct is now under review.
This this was awesome.
Uh afterwards you see some blood on the face of these these women, like he really roughed them up.
Uh, this was several hours, but not with the truck. Not with the truck.
No, this is like they're he even does the like stop resisting thing, uh with while they were absolutely clearly not resisting at all.
So he's under investigation for after he ran through the barricades, his treatment of the protesters, which we didn't fully see there, but.
Right and so so.
So it's a fascinating dynamic that they're kind of blocking people from getting to Burning Man. And so let's play a little bit of the discussion between the burners and and these protesters.
We've got some of this clip here.
Are what are you guys are attacking?
Let's caused the problem?
Attack the big attack, the big corporations, attack the government. No attack us.
We're all We're all.
The same boat here, guys.
This is this is the most liberal group of people.
The better.
That's better liberal policies. Biden is really more oil than any president since Bush like. Come on, so liberalism is not the answer either. We need to change the system. We need burners to rise up. You're intelligent, you're a conscious human being. You're awakened.
We have it.
Here's a flyer.
I didn't say.
Anything about ready system change.
We need a man.
Ain't burning Man. Three principles, Rise, honesty, Advocate for change. If we can make a full city of one hundred thousand people in the desert with zero resources on a dry lake bed, we can actually change some polity people need to make.
So there's a good video of that with things like twenty five minutes long and just a lot of these different arguments going on, and so you did get a chance to hear the protester articulate the theory here that they're gonna Actually I'm not sure what the theory was. What they what's the goal? What's the goal there?
Well, I mean, she's not wrong from the perspective of somebody who has that, and I think you show that perspective on climate change that the left is in some
ways as culpable as the right. Again from that perspective for perpetuating the system, because you can do sort of band aids here and there, Inflation Reduction Act, which is sort of was an environmental policy in many many ways, but that's sort of your band aid that's not going to fully change the entire system that Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, etcetera. Are part and parcel of. So I guess I understand it from that perspective.
On the other hand, Oh yeah, the analysis is dead on, right, yeah, yeah, right, but the prescription what like?
And also I liked one of their demands.
We didn't show it there, but across the street it said ban private planes, which is which is a wonderful message for these burners here now obvious. See those people don't have private plans because they're rolling in there on cameras, although maybe they flew into reno of them right and then and then drove from there. But the wealth at burning Man is just obscene. It's it's Silicon Valley. It's the richest people from northern California who have you know,
liberal to libertarian values. You know, tons of libertarians out there, so it's not just liberals. Uh, but yeah, so banned private jets. That's cool, I'll go with that. But how are you going to ban private jets by blocking like you know, it's like what what by by making everyone there hate you so much that they're supporting the police right barreling through you and almost killing you.
Like, if you've lost people to the point where they're like.
Willing to overlook that, then how are you kind of organizing a coalition that's going to have enough power to implement the prescriptions that you your analysis rightly says we need.
Yeah, it's really visceral for people who are you saw in those videos just incredible line of traffic backed up to.
The running out of gas and it's one hundred degrees right, you made that there's no gas station for hours.
You made that point but before we started taping the show that it's actually really dangerous when you're out in the middle of desert and you're the desert and you're idling potentially for hours. If the climate protesters get their way, you run out of gas. How are you supposed to deal with that situation? Obviously there were a lot of people backed up, and I'm sure people would be helping each other out in the true spirit of burning man.
But radical self reliance, though, is the true spirit of burning man? Was like, Hey, radically self rely on yourself man, Yeah, and I'm going to burn on.
The other end, you know that. I want to play the video here from Washington, d C. Actually not too far from where we were. That came in over the weekend because climate protests are obviously there's been a lot here recently, and you know, don't have we don't need to have sympathy for like the politicians and lobbyists here in DC. But you'll see in this video that's not really who's bearing the brunt of the problem.
We could just roll it here because we can talk over it.
Yeah, take a look yeah, you see here, all white and like older.
Yeah, look like retirees.
Climate protesters blocking a really busy strip of road here in northeast.
DC and far from the power center.
Right, multi racial, ostensibly sort of middle class people trying to get to work. And when you're listening to the audio, you can find the video online. It's just people saying over and over again, which we have seen for years as these traffic blocking protests have transpired, people saying I need to get to work please, like I need to make my shift and need to punch in, I need.
To pick up my kid.
And I think the real problem even for people who are on the same page, which you hear in the DC clip.
One woman saying we all know the world is melting.
Yeah, that woman that we just saw there, that was her point. She's like, look, you think we don't know the world's melting. Yeah, like we know that.
It's even people that are on the same page who are saying like, like, we get it, but we also need to get to work. And it's this lack of empathy I think with the material concerns of everyday Americans that comes up when.
You have retired.
Yea all white retired climate protesters, or even people who are.
Just you know, blocking your ability to have a normal day.
That is just so deeply visceral for people saying like, listen, we are we get it, but I got kids to feed.
But I also, I mean I get the impulse, I get the fear, the anxiety, the desire to just do something. When you look at what's going on in Florida right now, when you understand the threat to a sustainable planet, certainly at this population level, uh and you and you look at the minimal amount of progress that's been made. I can I can see where where they would say, you know what, just throw it all out, but it but that's all that is is personal satisfaction at that point.
All that all that is is kind of making you feel a little bit better about what you did in this crisis without any connection between your analysis and your action actually doing something. And so if you think deeper about it, you don't actually get to credit yourself for doing everything you could if what you did didn't actually help like good like.
And they was counterproductive.
Right.
The left has a new phrase over the last several years, which is intentions don't matter.
Impact matters, Actions matter.
And so when people are apologizing for, you know, whatever they're apologizing for, people have now absorbed that, and so they don't say anymore what their intentions were.
When they did something.
They just acknowledge the impact that their words or their actions had on people that they harmed, and they pledged to educate themselves and do better. So if intent doesn't matter, like if you believe that and you're not just saying it to get out of whatever trouble you're in, then you have to connect your action yeah, to actual impact.
Absolutely, and if you're.
If you're not making progress, if you're actually making things worse, then your intent doesn't matter. And so we have if you want to put up C five one another one of his incidents in Canada, which I think we've seen a bunch of these in the UK. That is, I think it is just going to lead to draconian penalties for people who do this kind of thing.
Also in Canada, protesters splash paint on a Tom Thompson piece at the National Gallery this week. Again we are seeing an increase in this, uh, this this type of activism that feels it's really intentionally obstructionist. And I don't use that phrase pejoratively. I know it's really charged, but I don't use it pejoratively because on the left they would say, yes, it is obstructionist. That is the entire point of you know what David Serota and Adam McKay
were making, don't look up. It has to be obstructionists because we need to radically rethink the way that we're our relationship with the planet. At the same time, an interesting thing from Canada is the protesters say that paint was washable and that there's no damage to the painting.
There's also a lot of paintings are covered. A lot of these masterpieces have a little covering, which this one did.
Right, and so it's an inverse I think. Also the traffic protest, I still don't think people want to see it. I mean, they think it's you know, silly. But when you're attacking art, that's like sort of high culture as opposed to blocking traffic, it's a very different thing. So I think climate protesters are trying to reckon with us themselves, you know.
I think this goes back to a kind of naivete and a delusion that we have that all of us across the political spectrum have and the dudes on Chopo Traphouse have talked about this that like on the right, this like idea that there's all these conspiracies to kind of produce new events so that we forget about the events before, and that all of these things are psyops,
this whole you know, psyop analysis of the world. What that assumes is that if people only had the right in in front of them, then people would be able to act. And so what it does is it explains our failure to act as well. People don't understand what's happening because there's all these psyops. But that's not true. We know what's going on, We have the knowledge. We just don't have the power to do anything about it.
And I think that is so kind of humiliating and so difficult to just process as a human being's pessimistic that you're just a powerless adam in this getting pushed around by these structures. That we then tell stories that if only people knew, then we'd be able to change something. So and so the corollary there is if we just splash enough paint on these paintings and get it into
the news that there's a climate catastrophe, coming. If we block people on their way to work in DC, if we block people on the way to burning Man, then that will wake people up. They will know that there's a climate catastrophe, and then they will use that knowledge and they will they will take power and they will do something about it. But what's broken is that the structures make it impossible for a population to express its will because we are locked out of the government, we're
locked out of decision making authority. So we can raise as much awareness as we want.
That's not the problem.
The problem is we don't have power, can't rain Nobody wants to admit that we don't have power.
Yeah, and you can't rain in the corporate powers, you can't reign in the government powers collusion with the corporate powers for those reasons, and it actually reminds me, and this is an extreme connection what we're talking about in the last block, where Republican voters are demanding the release valve of a government shutdown and an impeachment inquiry, and
again that's because they feel helpless against the system. They feel like the system needs a radical check in the form of both of those things, which will ultimately, you know, be not measures that radically change the system. Right, there are measures that will make radical demands of the system, that will make radical condemnations of the system, but will not ultimately change the system. It's more of a sort of esthetic and it's, you know, in substance, it's a rebuttal.
It's the fire with fire, But you can really understand why people are demanding fire with fire. And I think again, extreme connection. I know, but fire with fire is blocking
the roads. It's a similar thing. And I'm not saying that it's exact one to one, but I do think there's a powerlessness that people feel, especially in a world that has been shrunk over the last one hundred years because of technology, and that what happens in China and India is now dramatically affecting the lives of people in Kansas or in Canada. We don't have control really over
what China and India does. We can try, and we don't feel like we even have control over our own government, let alone the governments in.
China and India. And because of the way the world has shrunk.
It all matters.
But it's point in it's such a sad way that even in the sense of the depth of that powerlessness of those people on the street feel They still feel like if they just raise a little bit more awareness, then we're going to solve this. Yeah, I agree, Big if true news out of Joe Biden who says that as a twenty one year old he convinced strom Thurman
to support the Civil Rights Act. If we can put up the quote from Biden here, he says, I was able to literally, not figuratively, talk strom Thurman into voting for the Civil Rights Act before he before he died, and I thought, well, maybe there's real progress.
But hate never dies. It just hides, it hides under the rocks.
This is the latest in Joe Biden's long, long history of just completely fabricating nonsense about his role in the civil rights movement.
It goes back.
This is probably the most This is the second most absurd of all of them. And we'll get to the most absurd in a minute. He actually got in a lot of political trouble back in the nineteen eighties for claiming that he was he marched, you know, and was involved in the civil rights movement, and pressed on it. It turned out that he went to I think like one luncheon thing after a church event or something, and that was and he had kind of then embellished that
into like serious involvement in the civil rights movement. His most absurd one was he basically said he broke into prison to see Nelson Mandela.
Remember this one.
This was during the campaign, and this this was during the twenty twenty presidential campaign, and.
Before you really start to see like obvious cognitive decline in him. So it's not just an old Joe Biden.
For Joe, he's a liar, Like, yeah, he's he tells lies. He also has I think lies to himself.
That's probably true. This is even more sad.
Yeah, maybe, yeah.
And so the White House was pressed for some clarification on this. What do you mean that he literally, not figuratively, talked strong thrmin of aving for the Civil Rights Act? And they said, what he actually meant, because it's physically impossible.
He was twenty one not in the Senate.
And also Strom Thurmon voted against it.
Yes, Strom, so they literally voted against it, not figuratively.
Think of all the layers here, Strom Sermon did not vote for the Civil Rights Act, Joe Biden did not talk him into it, and Joe Biden was twenty one years old, not anywhere.
Near the Senate.
Now, let's let's let's be generous.
What he was thinking about, according to the White House, is that strom Thurmon ended up voting for the nineteen eighty reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. Which let's sit with that for a minute. That is that is something, and it also shows how far our politics has come in a way that you know, MLK said, arch of
history is long, it bends towards justice. It's been more of a pendulum than a bent arc, in the sense that by the nineteen eighties, you did have kind of unanimous support almost for the Voting Rights Act in Congress.
In two thousand and six, I believe it was maybe even more recently than that, there was a Voting Rights Reauthorization Act that passed ninety eight to zero in the House, in the Senate and overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives, and then just a few years later John Roberts gutted it, saying that Congress's intent on this passing it in nineteen sixty five had been basically been fulfilled, completely ignoring that it had just been reauthorized in a bipartisan vote and
signed by a Republican president, George W.
Bush.
And so the fact that strom Thurman was among that pendulum swing that direction then only to see it swing back, I think is a fascinating commentary. But let's talk for a second just about Joe Biden. Strom Thurmon the other thing that he might have been thinking of. And we put up this second story here. This is from history, and David Stein, we published this in the intercept, helped that at this piece as a great piece of journalism
from September twenty nineteen during the campaign. The story that Stein on Earth's is that in the nineteen seventies, Joe Biden was far to the right of Ronald Reagan when it came to the crime and to the drug war, and relentlessly pushed Jimmy Carter to get tougher and tougher on crime and kept insisting to the Democratic leadership, give me This was called give me the crime issue, and you'll never have to hear about it again because he's
going to be so tough on crime. After Reagan was elected, strom Thurman takes over the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee and Biden becomes the ranking member, and he goes to strom Thurman and he says, look, we can do a crime build together. You and I can get tough on crime. He said, and this is his telling of it. If you get your right wing guys, and I love the idea that strom Thurman is not a right wing guy, you get your right wing guys not to kill it.
I'll get my left people not to kill it, and Collective will do a tough on crime bill.
And Reagan had no interest.
Initially, the entire nineteen eighty campaign was about unemployment, it was about inflation, it was about malaise, it was about around hostages.
We kind of retcon it to be about.
The war on drugs and the crime wave, but it wasn't like that wasn't just the reality of it.
What that wasn't what the nineteen eighty campaign was about.
And Biden just kept pushing and pushing and pushing, saying, we need to make this the centerpiece of our agenda. Reagan vetoed it one of his big tough on crime bills because Reagan didn't want to spend the money.
He was still a he had.
There was that pull between the small sea conservatism and the and the and the push against a strong federal government and the desire to be the tough on crime party, and whereas Biden didn't have that. Biden was fine with big government and he wanted to be tough on crime.
And so his alliance with strom Thurman is really what then enables him to put together the coalition that eventually becomes the War on Crime, and you know, ending with his not ending with his nineteen ninety four crime Bill, because he continued to do the Rave Act and other kind of quote unquote tough on crime.
Legislation after that.
So that's the actual thing that he talked strom Thurmon into doing. And maybe he did actually talk him into voting for the Voting Rights Act in nineteen eighty I don't know, maybe he did.
I mean, yeah, who knows at this point. But at the same time, I mean, this is part of a pattern with Biden, who also he had some interesting words about his work with George Wallace. He's had interesting words for Robert Bird. In fact, he called Robert Byrd a quote mentor, guide and friend. Robert Bird was a leader in the KKK.
He was, but Bird was one of those.
He renounced that past and like, yes, so if we're you know, we're going to allow for that.
I think we got to allow for that.
I think I think we absolutely have to allow for that. I also think it's a pattern with Joe Biden.
And Harry Bird. Was you renounced it less, But.
It's interesting with Joe Biden. And because we're the reason that made me think of Bird is that we're also doing a segment in the show about how Biden gets a surprising win against Pharma, And it's just this pattern in Biden of that I actually think the left really needs to reckon with in that he is a political chameleon and he's willing to say whatever it takes, whether or not it's true, and he's gotten away with it.
He's actually like done that to the presidency, which is, you know, he had to drop out of a presidential race at one point because he was he was caught plagiarizing essentially in the campaign.
It's dogged his entire career.
And this speech said that you know, for thousands of years my family has been living here. It's like, what do you mean thousands of years? And they realized it was a Scottish politician that he'd ripped off.
Yeah again, like it wasn't first of all, it wasn't true, and secondly it wasn't even him.
It is amazing. But at the same time he has had all.
Right stuffhard him too when he got busted for that.
Right it did, and but he at the same time he continues to.
Just do enough to get things done.
He's not like radically reforming anything, but he does just enough to get things done, to the point where the arc of his career is such that in twenty twenty three or in twenty twenty the rest of the Democratic Party feels the rest of the candidates are talking about things like Medicare for all that makes voters uncomfortable, and Joe Biden has he's just a step, you know, beyond that he says no Medicare for all and gets elected as in the United States.
It just he's had a very telling arc.
I think he has a fine tuned antenna. He's a very good politician in his ability to find the kind of political center. And he doesn't care. He's amoral about it. Yeah, he doesn't have any value. He's just going to.
Go where it is.
And I think part of it comes from coming from Delaware. Delaware as several things that make it kind of I think a good breeding ground for a good politician. One is that it's so wildly corporate dominated that it you know, you know, he understands corporate power and so as a very strong sense of where where that power lies. But also in such a small state, you know, he and people like Tom Carper know everybody in that state.
Like this was like they know by first name.
Like when I've reported from that state, people are like, oh, yeah, I had dinner with Tom Carper, I had dinner with Joe Biden.
Just regular people on the street.
And also it's a microcosm in the sense that there's rural white working class areas, there's rural black working class areas.
There there's there's.
Wilmington, there's the Wilmington suburbs, and so you have kind of every different political dynamic. And so he is able to go into these towns, have authentic conversations across the spectrum with people wrote racial and political, and then regurgitate those just you know, churn him back out to a national population.
Uh.
And so that that enables him to find the center at all at all times, and it helps him. It helps him like fend off the charges from Republicans that he's some radical socialists, and it's one of those frustrating things for Republicans, like, look, he's doing all these things that are pretty progressive, and people just keep assuming that he's a centrist kind of reasonable guy because it just looks like one, right, And.
He's always willing to talk to other people, you know, clearly like exactly I was going to say, like being George.
Wallace or strom Thurman.
He's he has those conversations, which is something that a lot of people on the left take issue with and say, we're not Essentially it's like we don't negotiate with terrorist line, which you can see some of that argument. And at the same time, if he talks strom Thurman and the voting for the pouting right sect of nineteen eighty.
Which who knows whether that's true his funeral that he spoke at, right.
I think it was birds, I think, but maybe he did both. You might have done both.
That would't surprise me at all. Actually, ran this is let's go back to the Nixon era for our next subject, because this is this is actually new information that we're receiving declassified CIA presidential daily briefings that were recently declassified. We've learned and just in the last month more about the coup that overthrew a en Day in Chile. And Ryan, you have a lot more information to share on this just fascinating stuff.
Is Joe Biden's freshman year right in nineteen seventy three.
So the so recently, a group of Hispanic members of left wing, Hispanic members of Congress Greg gasar O, Kazi Cortes, niave Alasquez left to center left, Maxwell Frost did a trip to South America, met with a bunch of you know, governments and also dissidents to you know, try to build bonds between the kind of left here in the United States and the rising left down in South America. They met with Gabriel Borock, who's who we've talked about on the show. Is the or they met with. I don't,
actually I don't. I don't I think they met with him. I don't want to say that for sure, but they had. That's the president of Chile, kind of millennial lefty guy who's been an officer for about a year. AOC had attached an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act asking for the documents related to the nineteen seventy three coup in Chile to be declassified CIA documents that never even got a vote. Lots of amendments don't get a vote,
but it got a little tiny bit of coverage. Now, Borick had pushed for the release of these documents, and so they were released by the embassy in Chile, and they were released with a note that says, we hope that this helps with US Chile and relations because you know, Pinochet was in power until nineteen ninety and still has you know, still looms over the over the politics there.
Like his opponent was a kind of Pinochet's supporter and talked about you know, uh, talked romantically about the time period and so that this is not history for them.
Uh.
And so what they're released is two presidential daily briefs from one was uh, September eleventh, which is a day of the coup.
The other was from three days before the coup.
And what you see is, you know, Nixon getting information from the intelligence agencies that a coup looks like it's going to happen. That at first they talk about the navy might might be the one that's gonna lead the coup. Do you have them September eleventh, they're still not you know, certain that it's going to happen. It's the whole situation is murky and unclear, and the US role in the coup is kind of contentious because the US very clearly
and actively destabilized the country, wanted Allende ousted. Kissinger famously said, make the economy scream. There were CIA agents who were you know, played active roles in you know, destabilizing the economy through different work stoppages and other kind of other kind of sabotage throughout the economy. But there was also a you know, very native Chilean element to the coup. The Chilean right, you know very much h you wanted the support of the United States, but wanted you know,
it was going to do it. They weren't taking necessarily orders, but it's more like they wanted permission. And what's clear from the newest Dygram is that the permission was there.
Like after the.
Coup, the Nixon administration condemned it and SAIDUS is this is outrageous violation of democratic principles. But as we as we know now, they were very secretly supportive of it immediately and did everything they could to like make sure that the coups stuck as it did then for seventeen seventeen years.
And so a lot of this comes from and there's parallels with Guatemala, for instance, how the CIA destabilized Guatemala. Ayendi tried to nationalize. He did nationalize copper minds in Chile, which was a huge I mean, American business was like sixty percent.
Of the Chilean economy at the time.
And so to business interests that have their tentacles all over the CIA and have since the inception of the CIA in the OSS, they are saying, we got to do something right. And so what's interesting also though, is the pretense. And I think it was Nixon who said the scream thing to kissing jer and then Kissinger sort of carries it out. Yeah, it directs the from the Nixon tapes, I think, but directs the CIA to take various different steps.
Right they told the CIA do it, and yeah, exactly.
And the CIA is funding certain dissidents. But the economy under Allende had all absolutely faltered. And you can make the argument that's because of his more collectivist policies, or you can make the argument and it's because the United States said, well, great, like we're not doing business with you anymore, and there's no market for all of this copper.
Sorry.
And so it's clear interventionism and in their economy on our behalf.
But it's happening in the middle of the Cold War.
And again what we see with Guatemala, we saw this to some extent with Cuba and other places throughout South America Honduras, is that there were there were business interests, but you also had Allende with contacts in the KGB we know from declassified not declassified but obtained KGB Soviet information that they had met with a enda that they had in some ways fueled the rise of UH and is one of a socialist Marxist, socialist kind of guy, hard to define than a communist, like a hardcore He's
not Chae Gavara, he's not fit out Castro, though he was also cooperative with Cashro.
At the same time, you have this like real fear that.
There's going to be this Soviet bulwark in South America that embolden's Cuba right off our coasts with nuclear weapons, and it's just I think when you see parallels to it today, it's a great example of how it's like Listen, we have been doing this for decades and it never works out the way you Henry Kissinger, who's still trying to like make excuses for ideas like this. It has never worked out the way the sort of realists during the Cold War set it would never.
And the irony is that the upshot is that it's ending with a lot of these countries forming tighter relationships with China.
Yes, while we were looking at the SIVI Union the whole time. It's like, whoops.
But it did the same thing. It pushed people during the Cold War into the Soviet Union's arms in Indonesia, for example, where people did not want to turn to the Soviet Union, they wanted to have good relationships with the United States. And you see the exact same thing playing out today. And I think, Ryan, you want to talk about Guatemala in this context.
Yes, if we had put up that second one to bring it to the present day. We talked I guess two weeks ago about the upcoming Guatemalan election with Bernie and Bernie won. Bernardo Arevalo, the progressive insurgent candidate who's the grandson of the first president elected back in the nineteen forties, so they're the democratic legacy that survived through the civil war that came after the US back to coup in nineteen fifty four. Is is clearly resonant with
the Guatemalan people. So he wins, but immediately another and I'll just just read this ap article. It's just insane what the left has to deal with when they take power. Progressive candidate Bernardo Arivallo was confirmed the winner of Guatemala's presidential election by the country's Supreme Electoral Tribunal on Monday, but the same day another government body ordered his political
party suspended. Rivallo has faced a slew of legal challenges and allegations of irregularity since his unexpected victory over a candidate favored by the country's conservative elite. Rivallo appears certain take office as president on January fourteenth, but it was not clear whether his Seed Movement lawmakers would be able to take their seats in the country's Congress. And so another situation where you have the will of the people
expressed through an election. They want Arivallo in power, and they want him to be able to enact the agenda that he ran on, and he's just getting stonewalled at every turn, they might not even let his party take power, and then what and then you have a situation that Castillo in Peru or elsewhere where he can't then deliver on what he was elected to do. You'll see some protests and all of a sudden, oh in the shame,
we had a no confidence vote. And if the United States is serious about quote unquote root causes trying to like actually bring stability and prosperity to countries so that they're not so that people are not kind of pushed out two hour border because of both economic and political crises, then you would think that we would say, you don't, how about you honor the will the people down there, yep,
Like let the guy take power. But that would require allowing Guatemala sovereignty and potentially even allowing Guatemala workers to ask for higher wages.
We talked about foreign aid, like in the context of Ukraine, particularly earlier in the show, and the way that it's actually fairly normal, like the Trump apologists during the first impeachment, like there were some specific things that Trump did that were different than how it normally goes because he's just like more nakedly transactional.
But it is normal to use foreign.
Aid as a as a carrot to get to manipulate other countries, and to some extent it's understandable, but it's also malign in many cases like this one, and throughout our history in Latin America, where we look and conservatives people on my side say, well, these Latin American countries just need to take care of their own business. It's not our business to worry about. You know that this is a problem is dragging the American economy down, and
Guatemala should deal with Guatemala. Why can't Honduras fix Honduras And it's like, well, they're reeling from decades of a foreign policy that was the pretense was understandable and correct about nuclear weapons and communism in Cuba. You know you don't want nuclear weapons right off the Florida coast, obviously, but it was so often motivated by business interests, literal banana republic stuff that we were fomenting in these countries that they're still reeling from and that.
We are still interfering in.
We talked to the former ambassador to Haiti, this is a similar situation had the United States.
Because we want to be able to deport.
Impoverished Haitian migrants that have lived in other countries all over South and Central America back to Port au Prince.
Because we want to be able to do that.
We're backing somebody who basically doesn't have the will of the people and using our power to ensure that he remains in power in this transactional quid pro quote when it comes to migrants, it is still happening. This is still our policy essentially, yeah right.
And all of these kind of conservative Guatemalan elites who are trying to block Rivallo from enacting as the agenda are either acting on the behalf of the United States or think they're acting on behalf of the United States. And if you guys really cared about root causes all they you know, with a flick of the wrist, they could tell them back off.
He won the election.
The United States is proud of the Guatemalan people for holding this free and fair election. Now it's time to allow him to govern. And how can we help, because you know, rather than the previous efforts to quote unquote help, which is just to try to undermine democracy by saying, well, let's create a gigantic area of Honduras or Guatemala that has no laws and we're just going to sell it to crypto bros.
And you just do that, oh you're doing.
But I was actually just going to talk about bo Kelly because this our left far right clash in Latin America right now is really interesting when you have both the fear of the sort of Cardillo and then the nostalgia in some ways too, because you have rampant crime again created in no small part by our border policies
and our drug policies all throughout Latin America. And then you have people in America looking at Bukele, especially people on the left, and just sort of like this is outrageous and just sort of dripping with sanctimony over what
bou Keley is doing. And at the same time, you have people in Latin America who are disgusted by, you know, the sort of former Sandinista rising to power again because people have really visceral, deep memories in their lifetimes of the left dictator and the right dictator and this is coming to a head again now. It's it's actually like really fascinating, but it's so sad the way that we're we have learned essensibly zero lessons from.
Our own lifetimes.
Yeah, and the conservative Guatemalan candidate fashioned herself as a bukeley. I'm going to do it basically what he did and lost in a landslide. And we can talk about more in the future the Future show. There's this a wild story unfolding in Honduras where under the under the coup president, they enacted this law that allowed basically bitcoin crypto dudes to come in and build their own country almost.
With its own sovereignty.
And then once Shiamora Castro was elected kind of progressive down in Honduras, she's like, no, as you're just done.
You can't do this anymore. Now they're like basically suing.
Honduras are taking there, They're like doing They're they're using all of the power of international capital to say no, no, no, like we actually own this state.
You do not.
It's like, well do we believe in? What are we exporting? Crypto bros or democracy?
It starts with copper mining ends with crypto mining. I want to.
Revisit some comments that Jensaki made while she was watching the Republicans.
They haven't done that yet. Oh, yes, how dare you run?
Yes?
No, it's actually a pretty interesting thing to talk about. So let's actually roll right now a couple of clips of Jensaki from her show on MSNBC, which I sometimes forget exists as kind of remarkable.
Kaylee mcananey is on Fox News.
So former Trump Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino Bush Secretary on Fox News. Jensaki is the host of her own show on MSNBC these Days, and she got into a sort of tiff with conservatives on Twitter during the Republican debate because she tweeted, essentially, and we'll hear her talk about this in the clip, that
Democrats do not support late term abortion. I think she even said, like nobody supports late term abortion, And then on her show, in an attempt to kind of fact check Republicans who sought to dunk on her over that comment, she basically confirms the criticism of her. And it's really interesting. So let's take a look at Jensaki from this weekend.
This claim that Democrats support abortion up until the moment of birth is entirely miss leading. First of all, abortions pass the point of fetal viability do not happen often. They are incredibly rare, and those that do happen involve agonizing, emotional and ethical decisions. According to the CDC, the vast majority of abortions in the United States, over eighty percent in twenty twenty, happened before ten weeks of pregnancy, and over ninety percent take place in the first twelve weeks.
Less than one percent one percent happen after twenty one weeks of pregnancy. If you look state by state, you see a similar pattern, as compiled by the Washington Post. In Virginia, since two thousand and abortion after twenty eight weeks has been performed only in three of the last
twenty two years. In Oklahoma in twenty twenty one, only six out of nearly six thousand abortions took place after twenty one weeks, And in Colorado, where the Boulder Abortion Clinics specializes in late term abortions, less than two percent of nearly twelve thousand abortions in twenty two anyone took place after twenty one weeks, and just sixty took place
after twenty five weeks or later. Are most Democrats in favor of a legislation that allows for this Yes, for all the reasons, I just outlined at the end of the day. The point here is that no one is rooting for late term abortions. No one is running on the platform of aborting viable babies.
Yeah, so that's not a fact check at all. Those are facts that everyone is on the same page about. Every Republican that I know would say exactly everything that Jensaki said. Nobody denies any of those facts. Which interesting is that she started the segment by saying the Republican attack on her was quote misleading, that the Republican talking point that Democrats support abortion up until birth is quote misleading.
That's how she starts the clip.
She ends the clip with that line where she says, do Democrats support legislation that allows for abortion of viable babies? Yes, That's how she ended the clip. And that's why I wanted to play the full thing because a all of her facts there are completely correct. It is most often in agonizing, horrific decision that women make to abort late term babies. Late term is not a medical definition. It's something that's used basically to convey a viability, so around
twenty one weeks. After twenty one weeks, these are not in most cases. Third term abortions there, but they are because of medical technology, in many cases viable babies. And they're also pain capable babies. And that's another important thing to remember when Jensaki is saying, listen, look at these numbers. This is exceedingly rare. But would democrats allow for Do most Democrats allow for the termination of pregnancies, the abortion of babies up until that stage?
Yes.
Her thing at the end where she says bottom line is nobody is quote rooting for these late term abortions. I think is again absolutely true except for some fringe of the far left sort of abortion advocacy wing, that is largely true. These are horrific decisions that women have to make, but Democrat policies absolutely allow for it. And Jensaki just said yes to that herself. So she's trying to have this sort of semantic debate about whether democrats.
Saying Democrats support abortion up until birth is the same as Democrats.
Allowing for abortion up until birth.
And I would say when Republicans argue and conservatives argue that Republicans support or that Democrats support abortion up until birth, there's absolutely nothing factually inconsistent about that statement. Because the Women's Health Protection Act, for instance, which virtually every Democrat in Congress voted for and supports, has a mental health
exception up until birth. So that means you can and a doctor can give any woman a mental health exception to terminate a pregnancy after viability, after paying capability up until the moment of birth. Now, whether or not that happens often is a completely different question. The point that Republicans are making is that the legislation and the policies of Democrats absolutely allow for that, and Jensaki agreed. So when we can debate whether or not these are frequent,
we can look at the facts that Jensaki shared. It's absolutely true. I'm going to read from John McCormick, who covers this issue really well for National Review, who wrote the odd thing about Saki's false assertion that late term abortions are quote almost always performed when the baby cannot survive after birth or to save the life of the mother, is that during her TP segment she quoted the same
Colorado abortionists. This is a guy out of Boulder who said to the Washington Post, quote, in an average week at my office, twenty five to fifty percent of the patients have some serious catastrophic fetal abnormality, and there are some weeks in which this is true for one hundred percent of the patients. In other words, in a quote average week, fifty to seventy five percent of the viable babies he kills with a poison filled syringe are physically healthy.
That is from the abortionist's own rhetoric. That's his statistics on his own clinic. Now, according to Guttmacher, as McCormick continues, it's a pro abortion think tank, there are nine hundred and thirty thousand abortions performed annually, and one point three percent of abortions are performed at twenty one weeks or later. This is the same fact that Sak would agree with. That equals twelve thousand late term abortions a year. So again,
we all agree that these are rare. We all agree that these are a small, a tiny fraction of annual abortions that occur.
But these are viable babies.
In many, many cases, and they are pain capable babies in almost all cases. And that is absolutely a consequence of laws that democrats quote support, which is exactly what Sak was herself fact checked for saying, and then in her own fact check confirmed. So all I'm going to say here is that as we're as we're wrapping up and I toss it to Ryan, all I want to say is that it is really, really obnoxious for Democrats to hide the ball and pretend that their policies do not allow for these abortions.
I remember a Naomi.
Wolfe essay from the late nineties where she sort of said, people who support abortion.
This is when she was more of a leftist than she is now.
People who support abortion, she wrote, basically, should be open about the reality of abortion because the reality is ugly. But there's a moral argument. This is her perspective at the time. There's a moral argument to allowing women to
have the freedoms to make these decisions. Now I completely disagree with that, and we could have that debate, but her point is correct that Democrats who support these policies should be honest with the American people, and the media, even more importantly, should be honest with the American people
about what's going on. And the media has a responsibility to hold Democrats accountable for supporting policies that support for a bora up until birth, and that support abortion through viability in early stages you know, twenty one weeks.
You know, that's called late term, but.
Early in the phases of viability at least, that should absolutely be something. And I understand the politics of it. I'm not naive to that, but Democrats can spin all they want. The media should not spin on behalf of Democrats, and Democrats should have the decency to be honest with the American people. I'm not saying anything that Republicans are perfectly honest about their positions on abortion, but I am saying the media never gives Republicans a pass for it.
They're constantly giving Democrats a pass for it. So Ryan I find this very very frustrating because Jensaki is a member of the media now. But also we've seen fact checks, so called fact checks from people like Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post that do a similar thing, that minimize the fact that we're talking about twelve thousand late term abortions a year, late term abortions a year so past the stage of viability, and that is I think that is a huge number, but it doesn't get any play.
It's minimized, and Republicans are treated like crazy people for saying that it happens.
And if I had to guess it was an honest mistake from Saki because I've gone through the same thing where like where you hear Republicans saying that Democrats are support abortion right up until birth.
That's insane, right, that's impossible.
So you go then you go read the Women's Health Protection Act, You're like, oh, okay, they do support the legal right to it basically right up until birth. This one was through a mental health exceptionally.
Then it goes.
I think Saki said everything else very well. You know, a lot of this is you know that almost all of these situations are terribly tragic, and I think Naomi Wolf makes a fair point that you know, own it, say like that, say that this is the right, that this is a fundamental right of the woman to make that decision, and that it's not a place for government to come in and tell people what to do between the choice between a woman and her doctor.
H So that's where they are now.
I also think that Democrats would at this point be willing to compromise on a like if if they could get Roby Wade codified, I think you would have a lot of people from will Row.
Allowed for abortion in that stage too.
It allowed for.
States to allow allowed for states to allow it.
But there I would imagine there'd be some type of like if that was the only thing that stood between legalizing re legalizing abortion nationwide and and the status quo in which so many states are just straight up banning it, then I think Democrats would ultimately, uh, you know, compromise on that.
But it feels like that's not where we are.
In our politics. That it's it's either it's either one thing or the other. But we'll see, you know, if you know, if Democrats get a trifecta in you know, in twenty twenty five, we'll see if they get rid of the filibuster and actually push ahead with something. If they don't and Republicans get a trifecta, like that's also within the realm of possibility. We'll see if they push a nationwide ban. But it's hard to see the two sitting down and saying, all right, here's how they do it.
In a lot of European countries.
Yeah, you know that there are regulations after thirty weeks after thirty but whatever, it just feels like we're not in we don't have a politics that allows for that type of negotiation.
I mean, even the pro life movement is royaled right now about the question of Lindsay Band, Lindsay Graham's fifteen week ban and Ronda Santa signed a six week ban. These things are like even hot in that area.
And I've seen some.
Six week ban you basically don't know you're pregnant.
Right, Yeah.
I've seen some viewers say because I think when Dobbs was decided, we were still over at the Hill and we had a lot of conversations about abortion, and I've seen some viewers, you know, ask like why I'm anti abortion, And I have no problem saying anti abortion.
I don't need it to be pro life, because that's exactly what it is.
Anti abortion, but it's not. It has absolutely nothing to do with religion. For me, it's a simple disagreement with
people over when life begins. And I've come down on the side of Christipprehichins, which is that the science makes it really difficult for the pro abortion side to say that it's not a life and that's why I think, you know, Ryan and Naomi Wolf in the nineties, like it's a much more honest position to say, it's a balance of the rights versus the life, and like truly, that's just my position is that life has begun at the point where just about every abortion takes place, and
it's my position of minority. It is completely unpopular in this country, is not politically viable in any way whatsoever. And I understand that. I think it happens to be morally correct. But that's why those twelve thousand like infant lives that are painfully in many cases ended a year seems like a five alarm fire to me. It seems like something that we should be talking about all the time, even though it's a small minority of abortions which are
now typically medical, not typically you know, medical abortions. They're not the same sort of physical process that used to take place. It's a lot of times in most times now when you have ninety percent, you know, some huge percentage of that ninety percent taking the form of an oral, medicated abortion.
So it's different than what it used to be.
I get that twelve thousand lames a year is seriously crazy to me, But if you have that sort of disagreement about rights versus life, then I understand so I get that. I just still it's very frustrating that the media kind of runs cover and pretends things like the Women's Health Protection Act didn't exist.
Well, let's say you're president and the Democratic Congress comes to you and says, all right, that you won Farren Square, you're the president, this is what you believe. We'll give you a twenty week ban after twenty weeks if life, life, and health and physical health of the mother. There's exceptions, but no mental health exceptions after twenty weeks.
But before twenty weeks abortion is legal. Would you sign that?
Yeah, I would do like any compromise to end abortion after twenty weeks. And you know that's what is tough for the pro life movement. And I think it's actually an interesting they're interesting parallels with climate on the left that like incrementalism, as people talk about in the pro life movement is really controversial. And I think you saw Biden sort of face similar things with the Inflation Reduction Act.
Like it's just if you see something as an absolute emergency, a political emergency, and there are good faith disagreements or politics about whether abortion or climate constitute these levels of emergency, it's like should we be blocking every freeway in the world if our kids aren't going to be able to breathe fresh air.
Speaking of Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, yes, we're going to have the block that I teased ten minutes ago up now. Alex Lawson of sold Security Works is going to join us to talk about the long battle for fourteen sixteen year battle that's been going on to allow Medicare negotiation to negotiate drug prices.
That's up next stick round.
The Biden administration yesterday announced the ten medications that it is going to be allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices over and we're joined here by Alex Lawson, who is the executive director of Solid Security Works, which as an organization been working on this issue trying to get the government to be able to negotiate drug prices for how many years.
Now, really long time, you know, on drug prices for over a decade. We've been working in a variety of ways to push just any action that the government can take to lower prescription drug prices. We pay the highest in the world. Medicare negotiation is sort of the nicest one that we've pushed. It's the most obvious one. Medicare is the largest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world, and we are saying, just use that purchasing power to negotiate a better deal than paying the highest prices.
In the world.
And this has been a Democratic priority at least since I say priority in quotes, because they say that they wanted to do it, at least since two thousand and six when Ram Emmanuel had this super clever campaign strategy as the d TRIPC Chairmany called it six for six and one of the six was we're going to negotiate drug prices.
Then, as Alex remembers.
In two thousand and nine, when they finally got a majority, first thing they did is promise big Pharma. Okay, not actually do that, because it's not O six anymore.
It's so nine.
That was very specific to six.
Yeah, six, We're going to do it. Oh oh nine. No, no, no, no, nine, not this time.
And so they said, if big Farmer will support us, spend one hundred and fifty million dollars defending us in reelections and not opposed Obamacare, we will not include prescription drug negotiations in there.
So then they lose their majority.
So then what happens after that in this fight between big pharma and advocates saying like this is insane what we're paying.
Yeah, I think a lot of work just continues happening the whole time. But the deal that was cut with pharma that has to be one of the worst deals that's ever been. One hundred and fifty million dollars is literally nothing to these companies.
So but you know, all the companies together just had to pay that.
Which is nothing.
I mean that's like one hour of one day of profit of some of these drugs. So great deal for them, really bad deal for the American people. Expansion of Medicaid is great, if you want to think of it that way, but we didn't have action on prescription drugs through the basically the entirety of the Obama administration. Now Hillary Clinton had a robust plan to come after pharma six for sixteen it something like that, but it was real and at the time, insurers were lining up to punch pharma.
That's always they always fight each other.
It's nice when you can have industries against each other.
Which is what that first Obamacare pharma deal was about. It was taking on insurance and not pharma. The correct way to do it, if you're wondering, is you take them all on at the same time. You can't actually think that one of them is going to be on your side.
But along the way, you know, there are a lot of victories.
You have to move policies slowly but losing the ability to charge as much as the company wants. Right, with no basis in anything, it doesn't have to have show any clinical value. Companies can actually just push poison right, they'll corrupt the process. You know, the FDA under Janet Woodcock get a special seal that says this heroin is not addictive, and then bang, you have the overdose crisis.
Right.
So that's the caliber of sociopathy that you're dealing with with these corporations, and so you have to be able to hit them from any angle. There is a lot of work on importation, which it makes absolutely yeah, well from anywhere that has it's called parallel importation.
A lot of stuff is from Canada.
But Canada has the second highest drug prices in the world because they're right next to America, so pharma just jacks up their prices as well. The truth is that these molecules are the same right, it's one factory, and if it sends it to America, like charge them, you know,
as much as humanly possible. And if it goes to another country that has a government that actually says, well, what's the therapeutic value of this, Let's actually figure out what the value of this medication is, and that's what we're going to pay. And pharma, you know, hates that. They're like, no, no, no, we would rather just charge
whatever we want. And in the case of insulin, and this is it's not just insulin, but at least an insulin, the price they're going for is a price that's so high that some people die, right, not everybody, because that would kill their market, but they want some people to die so that everyone else is terrified enough that they'll spend every dollar they have and every dollar that they can borrow to keep them or their loved ones alive.
That's a cartel.
That's extortion, and that is what we needed to break in any way possible. And Medicare negotiation was the one that had the most political sort of buy in from people, as you said, all the going all the way back to when it was created. There were a lot of Democrats at the time, this corrupt carve out for pharma was created by Billy Tousen, which is like in this town, I would say it's probably the most corrupt story that exists is the creation of the non interference clause.
Tell the Billy towsand story real quick.
Billy towsand Democrat turned Republicans.
He came to Congress with one goal, which was to deliver for pharma. He was a Democrat. He rose to be committee chair where this was advancing. When the Democrats lost power, he just switched parties so he could keep that committee position, insert the non interference clause which forbids medicare from negotiating. Literally as soon as he did that, he just quit Congress and he went and took a two million dollars a year job at Pharma, I mean.
The head of of Big Pharma, the head of.
The lobbyist organization. I mean, it is as clear as day this one. So even since then, Democrats, some Democrats, many Democrats have known that this is something that needed to be overturned. There was a lot of negotiating and just sort of back and forth about what the policy itself would look like. And I don't want to go
like too far into the policy weeds. But if you remember, the House passed a bill called HR three, and if you look at the battle during that, you can see sort of the contours of in the Democratic Party of what this policy was going to be. And basically it comes down to like weaker or stronger, and HR three is quite strong. You know, I think my side won more and HR three would be the starting point in build back better. That sort of compromises down to what
actually got passed. And you had some pharmadem deliver some really key kneecapping for pharma and because of that, you know, we don't have all drugs, We only have some drugs.
It doesn't start right away.
So pharma is an incredible opponent to have because they have almost unlimited money and their entire profit comes from controlling the government. If the government didn't give them the ability to charge whatever they wanted, they would not be able to do it.
Well, it's crony capitalism at its finest, as you just explained perfectly. And I want to ask about this quote you have in Ryan's story and we can put that back up on the screen.
Ryan did a great report on this.
In the intercept you say this was an unexpected victory and a long fight against an illegal cartel of three corporations who have raised their insulin prices in lockstep. You're referring there to Eli, Lilly, No, NORDESK, and Santafe. And then you continue to say the inclusion of insulin in the list of negotiated drugs shows that the Biden White House is it fucking around?
Tell us more about what this.
Says in terms of the Biden White House, because you just explained this. The arc of pharma's power in Washington, DC when it comes to controlling drug prices amazing. But it's also still this like push and pull, and you have people in the Biden administration who are actually tugging on the other side of the rope in this grand game of tug of war to the point where you have insulin included here.
What does that mean?
So the way I read it is that it reminds me of FDRs. I welcome their hatred line about banks and speculators. I believe that the Biden White House, the people in the Biden White House who they realize that if you're going to go after pharma, you got to go as hard as possible. You can't be like, oh, well they're going to run ads against me, maybe I'll do less. They're going to run ads against you if you even mention their name. But the thing is everyone
hates Pharma. Pharma is the most hate did institution in this country. According to that pupil that you know, ranks all the institutions, Pharma is dead last. So pick the fight with Pharma. Be very aggressive. Of course they're going to say, oh, you can never win in court and all of the things that they're going to say.
They also said that we'd never get it passed. The IRA passed.
They did everything they could, and you know, I have that begrudging respect that you should have for your opponents. We didn't see some of their maneuvers coming. We didn't see some of the committee plays where they did decap the bill.
They threw everything they can at this.
But the Biden White House and Democrats in Congress understand that this issue a it's morally correct, right, this literally helps people, it's incredibly important. But then politically it sells everywhere. It does not matter in this country where you go, if it is a room full of camo and ra hats or a parking lot.
Full of electric vehicles.
The people all hate pharma, they hate high drug prices, they hate getting ripped off. And the really amazing thing is most Americans don't even know how ripped off we're getting because they don't fully get that we pay to develop the drugs in the first place. It's taxpayer dollars that develop these drugs at the NIH, and we give grants out to research facilities in universities.
That we pay for it.
Then we give the patent to these companies who turn around and charge us whatever they want. The ripoff is so amazing, so profound that it's hard to imagine. But just I think another thing in DC that is important is it's also so big that when you stop it, you can.
Use it to pay for other things.
There's so much money in stopping this ripoff that you can pay for enorm miss other things with it.
You're like, oh, how are we going to pay for that?
Well, let's just stop getting ripped off by FARMA, And everyone's like, hey, that's a great idea, let's do it. That creates this one way street. In my estimation, it's going to be really hard for FARMA to turn around.
And That's why Pharma's strategy, as I understood it during Build Back Better, was not to try to take their piece out of it. They just tried to destroy the whole thing because they reasoned that if anything passes, they're going to be part of it because they can raise somewhere between one hundred to five hundred billion dollars their little provision by not getting ripped off by Farma anymore.
So anything that went through it was going to have them.
Whereas if you're the carried interest loophole guys who are with private equity, like you can go to Cinema and say get us out of there, and she'd be like, okay, because that's only maybe fifty billion dollars or something, and then she was all right, fine, cinema wants it.
Out, we'll take that out.
But there's so much money in format that they had to stop the whole thing, and briefly it looked like they succeeded. It looked like they had taken down the entire kind of Biden agenda.
Legislatively, they had to work really hard to get Joe Manchin's phone number.
Right and until until Mansion came back and kind of rescued it at the very end, which what happened there like a obviously West Virginia filled with old people who don't like paying high drug prices.
Mansion is a good politician.
Why why did Manson agree to do something that hurt pharma?
In your estimation, Oh, you're gonna get me in trouble here now. It's because Joe Manchin is not terrible on pharma. I mean, that's just the truth. When we were pushing for Janet Woodcocks to removal, for her not to be confirmed at the FDA, it was in partnership with Joe Manchin.
Is he just not bought by that industry held oil?
Right?
So he but he in his worldview, he understands that West Virginians are hurting, you know, like and and literally hurting early hurting, and Pharma is not his people. So I you know, that's my estimation of Joe Manchin on this is that he is not uh, you know, a pharmadem I use that you know, like there there are definitely uh Democrats who sing who dance to the tune that pharma calls, and he's he's not one of them.
And so what what can by the bide administration still do sorry Sang sang the song of Joy for what they did do.
When you know, I hear.
Talk of march in rights, which is, you know, when if we helped fund a thing, you can march in and sell this is what you can charge for. There's international price setting that we can do. There's other executive action, there's legislation at the state.
Level that could have an impact.
So what what could still happen and what has the Biden administration kind of left on the table.
There's an enormous amount that can still happen.
I'll sort of you have to rain me and I'm a nerd, so but I'll start. I think one of the most exciting things is Governor Gavin Newsom in California is actually making big strides on public manufacturing. So he's bringing online public manufacturing of insulin with an eye towards public manufacturing of anything. For example, the FDA keeps this list. It's the shortage list. Right, everyone's heard of the drug shortage. It's just getting worse. A lot of stuff is written
about the adderall drug shortage. I think that's because a lot of journalists need adderall.
Adderall.
So it's getting a lot of limelight. But this is an old issue and a lot of the drugs are cancer, are chemo drugs, these are this is classic market failure. So these are generic drugs. They're not hard to produce. The market hasn't failed in other countries just here. This is a total prime the pump type thing. And so instead of just keeping a list of the drug shortages, the FDA could just end the shortages.
Right.
They're like, I identify it. We we need four hundred thousand units of that drug. Okay, well I'm going to purchase four hundred thousand units of that drug.
Boom, the shortage is done.
Gavin Newsom's work in California is showing one path towards doing that. The federal government could do a lot to make that easier for Gavin Newsom and to create a marketplace amongst the states to use those publicly manufactured drugs from California. So that's something that I think is not widely talked about, but it has a lot of potential.
Importation again is a huge one.
States are importing drugs through the so called personal importation loophole. The loophole is so old now that it's just settled law. We should actually work on that and make it settled law. And one of the things is you could have a lot of policies done at the federal level that would incentivize states to import their drugs.
This is one.
This is also super nonpartisan. Colorado and Florida are the two that are taking the lead on this. There are enormous costs faced by the states for their workforce. Let them buy their drugs the exact same drugs from a country where it's cheaper. You have all fifty states doing that, and then you know it's a national policy. So there's those. There is also the federal use, which is something that
you brought up with marching or just government use. The government does have the ability to say this privilege that you have to have a patent. That's a privilege, and if you abuse that privilege, you will lose that privilege and we will allow another manufacturer to produce that drug at a reasonable price.
My dad actually texted me this morning because a drug he takes eloquist, it's a hip of violation on my part.
I'm just sorry about that. That that's true. I can violate hip. Am I bound by HIPPA?
No, you know, if your father gave you permission, then go with that.
You're good to go.
So you know that made the list.
Now it's not until twenty twenty six that this goes into effect, correct, But the prices are so insane for these drugs. He had to get like a on a special like program that brings the prices down, but that costs money itself.
It's just giant mess.
If people want to know the rest of the drugs that are on the list, that can check my intercept story out. And also just to let people know, Alex Lawson I founded this publishing house many years ago called strong Arm Press, which published my book We've Got People back in twenty nineteen.
So thank you to.
Alex for that, which gives me an opportunity to plug my next one.
So the next book is called Squad Such an Entrepreneur, There you go.
Such a it's coming out at the in December, and it's about basically the left from like twenty fifteen, starting with Bernie up through Build Back Better and the IRA. And we'll put a link in the video here because the publishers getting.
Out free stickers.
WHOA, you'll get a free sticker if do is sign up for some thing.
I'll put it right here.
Yeah, I should put it. I got room right here for a sticker.
Hi.
Excellent, Alex, thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
Well that does it for.
Us on this edition of Counterpoints, our last edition of the summer.
When we come back next week, it'll.
Be post labor and I will be into the no more white.
She had, no more white Ryan was not wearing his white pants.
Is set.
But in all seriousness, it's a big fall coming up. Probably looking at as we talked about earlier in the show, government shutdown. Probably looking at an impeachment inquiry, So all kinds of things going on. Four indictments against the former president and a presidential election, all of that and more coming to you on the other side of Labor Day.
We'll be here to cover it all.
I can't wait see as soon