Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/18/21: John Deere Strike, Sanders vs Manchin, Epstein News, Katie Couric, Sanjay Gupta, Colin Powell, Buttigieg's Paternity Leave, The Trump Factor, Monopoly Power with Matt Stoller, and More!

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

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Bernie actually published an op-ed in a local West Virginia paper calling out Manchin. Manchin hit back. What does it mean? We'll get into all of that. Some pretty spicy Epstein details from the new Michael Wolff book. You know, some things to say about both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, so you don't want to miss that one. We've got all your Katie Couric RBG news for you. Also an update on that whole Sanjay Gupta, Joe Rogan, Don Lemon, of course, had to insert himself into the whole thing. We'll break that down for you. Matt Stoller is going to be on to talk about how monopolies are behind a lot of the fragility and the supply chain issues that we are all experiencing that's helping to drive inflation. But we wanted to start with an update on this massive strike of John Deere workers, 10,000 workers strong. We brought you these updates last week.

Of course, these are all UAW members. They went on strike because they were very unhappy with the fact that the big thing they've been contesting is this two-tier wage and benefit system that subjects certain workers who joined later to effectively second-class citizenship. John Deere was thinking of instituting even a third tier. This is a consistent theme we're seeing across a lot of these strikes that, of course, we've been covering, have been breaking out across the country. So let's check in on the very latest with that strike. Here's some reporting from Jonah Furman. What the company is doing to try to break the strike, they're bringing

in scabs that are sourced from their own white-collar management and engineering positions. Let me read you this. It's here. This is from a salary worker at John Deere. The Deere, quote-unquote, strikebreakers are currently 650 salary employees pulled from engineering and management positions across Deere. Note, I say strikebreakers because I can guarantee that with our lack of skill and numbers, we will not be breaking the strike.

This individual goes on to say, To my knowledge, most of us will be allocated to a part-centered year and spend an enormous amount of time, money, and effort trying to get us all trained. But not many of us are really ready for this. We'll be working 12-hour shifts, six days per week, with day and night shifts. In my position, I am not looking forward to this. I think the wage employees deserve a lot more than what they were offered, and I absolutely support them striking. I feel like I'm betraying some of my values

by crossing the picket line, but it has been all but said that not crossing the picket line means getting fired if you are salaried. So that's what John Deere decided to do. Use their white collar, untrained salary workers, office workers in most cases, and use them to try to fill in as scabs for the workers who are out on strike, effectively threatening these white-collar workers' jobs if they don't participate in this. So on the very first day that these white-collar workers are brought in, let's check in how that went. Throw this next element up there. Not even 8 a.m. and an ambulance is moving into location. As far as I know, no one was badly injured. But here we are on the first full day of John Deere using non-union workers to attempt to replace UAW members on the factory floor. Didn't even

make it till 8 a.m. without a 9-11 call. Later details came out that apparently one of these workers had crashed a tractor. So not a great strategy there that the company is employing. And, of course, casually risking the lives and health and safety and well-being of their white-collar workers. So it turns out they don't have any more respect for them than they do for the blue-collar workforce. They're treating them terribly. I mean, everybody who's watched The Office knows Daryl's rules, right? Like, do not touch the equipment on the warehouse floor. And that's exactly what apparently John Deere has made official company I mean, we're talking only about a 5% raise. And that's what they're talking about, which is that, look, they're like,

you have been working us to the bone throughout the entire pandemic. You guys are making more money than ever. Like your most profitable year ever was 2020. And you're not coming to us and, you know, negotiating in good faith. And so what's really happened is that John Deere, just going and showing you exactly what is happening in the entire economy. That's why we decided to start with this story. And the intercept Jonah Furman, who had on the show, they wrote a great piece with labor notes, which is that the tight labor market is ready to pop is what the John Deere

strike shows. The end of the national mobilization around COVID is releasing built up pressures in workplaces nationwide. I was actually thinking about it in the context of American history. One of the books behind me, Freedom from Fear, which I reference a lot, it describes the national mobilization that happened throughout World War II. And then one of my favorite books is actually a biography of Harry Truman by David McCullough. And actually, people really forget that that post-World War II period, in all Western democracies, but especially in Britain and here in the United States, there was a real reckoning with, hey, like our workforce showed up, we cranked out the bombs, men went off to work. We sacrificed. We did the thing you wanted us to do.

Right. And that is when you saw the explosion of the labor movement across the United States and building on the successes and the groundwork of the 1920s and 30s. That's really when we solidified, I mean, employer-based healthcare, probably not the best system in the world, but that's when that came to pass. All those big strikes in the railroads and more. I think we're in a similar moment, which is that you have this massive distortion in the economy, COVID-19. We required all of these workers in order to come and sacrifice. The businesses, just like back in the war, have massive, big benefits. And now as we're starting to get on the tail end of this thing, people are saying, look, you're not going to take advantage of me anymore. And we're seeing the great reassessment of work for non-salaried workers, which we'll get to. But among those who

are within unions, they're like, look, we showed up for you. Now you need to show up for us, given the fact that your books have been padded exponentially through the stock market more. So if you think about it in the context of history, I think a lot of this stuff makes sense. It does. And the other thing that, and this piece is really excellent. I highly recommend it to you in The Intercept because it puts the John Deere strike in historical and broader context. And one of the things that they point out is that this isn't actually a brand new phenomenon in modern times. It's a continuation of an uptick in labor militancy that we saw and we tracked in 2018 and 2019 before the pandemic hit. Remember, you had this massive wave of teacher strikes across the country, predominantly, in fact, in red states. So you already were starting to see this agitation among workers of like, listen, we've been putting up with these stagnant wages, with these crappy contracts.

We've been putting up with this for decades, and we're kind of done with it. So now you add on top of that, you do have a labor market that is kind of tight. And these two-tier wage and benefit systems that started to be put into place, this was like a neoliberal era, quote unquote, reform, it started to be put in place in the 90s. They have now made these two-tier systems a focal point of the pushback. And it's really important. It's really significant. Because if you're a worker who's been there for a long time, look, the fact that your brothers and focal point of the pushback. And it's really important. It's really significant because if you're a worker who's been there for a long time, look, the fact that your brothers and sisters who came in later are getting a worse deal, well, that doesn't directly affect you. But remember

when we talked to Trevor Bittleman last week from Kellogg's, he said, no, no, we're no longer putting up with this. Like this is an existential battle for the middle class. So the thing that the two-tier system does, too, is it's an attempt to break solidarity. It's an attempt to break apart the workforce so you have one group that says, look, I got mine, so sorry that it's rough for you, but I'm not too worried about it. These workers are rejecting that mentality and really embracing a solidarity that's incredibly encouraging to see. The very latest from Jonah this morning is that there's plans for a huge show of force, potentially thousands of workers out on the picket lines with the John Deere strike coming up here soon,

which would be incredible to see. But also important to put into historical context, and this is again from that piece, Let me just read this one part. This strike wave is not the 1940s when 1 in 10 U.S. workers went on strike in the space of a year, but it isn't the labor lull of the 2010s either when large strike activity in the private sector fell toward zero. Today, workers are increasingly militant, that is, unwilling to accept bad terms of employment, but they're not particularly organized with union density at a historical nadir. The unions are playing an inspirational role, but they are not the only source of the action. What we're seeing now is strike activity beginning to rise from a decades

long trough as the quote unquote essential worker, a new category of worker board of the coronavirus pandemic challenges the boss to make good on that designation. I saw one person with a quote saying like, look, when you have that realization that your boss will literally kill you, like they will casually risk your life, that kind of changes your relationship to your employment. And I do think that's a lot of what we're seeing here. That happened in the meatpacking plants. It happened in Amazon warehouses or allegedly happened in Amazon warehouses for the Amazon lawyers. And, you know, for the many people that we interviewed here who had to deal with that. The Washington Post has a good story on this elaborating as well. Let's put it up there

on the screen. What I like about what it does is it ties the great resignation, which we covered in our last show, about the record number, 4.3 million Americans who left their jobs, and it ties it specifically, again, to the workers and their ability to wield leverage in the economy. And I think really what happened is, speaking of greats, we've had two great resets. Yes, I know it's a loaded term. But 2008 was a great reset of sorts in terms of the US economy. And that problem was there is that because the market, there was so much unemployment and more, so little stagnation of wages, is that a lot of workers, UAW workers and more, they took terrible contracts because the auto guys were like, look, this is the only

way we stay in business. And the government kind of forced their hand. So that way we had zero labor activity. Now, it's been a long time. It's been several years now since 2008. And we just had another national crisis. With a tight labor market, people are saying, screw it, I'm not putting up with this anymore. And that's exactly what the Obama years were defined by. Wage stagnation, a great frustration. That's ultimately what erupted under Trump. 35 years of neoliberalism exacerbated really by the financial crisis. And I think this, if anything, is a tried and true ability of the actual workforce and the population to say, we're not dealing with this anymore. So in a weird way, it might be one of the best things that's ever happened because it is resetting the balance of power. Yes, corporations got

more rich than ever during the pandemic. We were the first to cover that. We minted a lot of new billionaires. Many of them were hedge fund financiers, all these people. And yet, look, I don't want to paint a picture as if everything is hunky-dory or whatever, but things are trending in a different, and in my opinion, a better direction. And when you have the economy basically where you need the workforce more than ever, especially during the supply chain crisis, some people are getting mad. They're like, oh, the unions, et cetera. You have to understand that they've been treated and pissed on for 35, 40 years. Also, it really reveals with this John Deere strike, this is not, quote, unquote, union leadership or union bosses or whatever. Actually, the members rejected the contract.

A 5% increase contract. That leadership negotiated for them. Now, there is in particular a lot of dissatisfaction in UAW with their union leadership, which has been indicted for massive corruption scandals, where effectively, you know, to make a long story short, they'd sort of thrown in with management and were effectively on management's side, negotiating poor contracts, giving up tons of concessions. And so a lot of the rank and file have said, no, no, no, we're done with this. This is enough. And so they took matters into their own hands, rejecting that contract that had been negotiated by leadership by like 90 percent to 10. I mean, overwhelmingly,

and this is very unusual ultimately to see. There's also an update on that IATSE strike authorization that we had told you about. Those are the sort of backstage crew workers who make Hollywood run. 60,000 plus members strong had voted to authorize a strike. Their leadership has also negotiated a tentative agreement that still has to be ratified by membership. But as of now, that strike has been averted or at least pushed off. So we'll keep our eye on that. But it is an extraordinary moment. And you layer on top of that, union favorability is at near all-time highs, certainly is at all-time highs in terms of recent years. You have younger demographics that are particularly favorable towards labor and towards unions. And the last thing that I'll say here is that, you know,

it's kind of an antidote to the totally sectarian polarized politics that you see here in D.C. These workers are all different political stripes. I mean, if you look at the data, 40% of them voted for Trump. So, like, there you go. Yeah, I mean, you have, you know, you have Trump supporters. You got Bernie supporters. You got Biden supporters. You got all of that in the mix. Okay.

You have people from all kinds of different races and backgrounds. These strike waves are hitting small town America, big city America, small city America. I mean, this is truly across geography, across demographic, across partisan affiliation. It's a real demonstration of solidarity and how working class people can actually achieve and flex power. And it shows you what can happen when you have a divisive politics, but a politics that's divisive in the correct way. Yeah, that's right. Where you have the working class pitted against corrupt management or against, you know, a public sector where budgets have been stripped and stripped and stripped and the workers have been completely abused. You see that with

school bus drivers walking out and those sorts of things across the country, too. So it really is quite an interesting moment. The last piece of data we have for you on the story, this is from Heather Long, who's done a really great job of tracking all these trends from the beginning. She points out, so in addition to the strike wave, obviously you have, as you were mentioning, the great resignation workers quitting their job, feeling like they can get a new opportunity. Workers who switch jobs right now, they almost always earn bigger raises than those who stay at the same firm. But right now, that gap is the widest it has been in more than two decades. Bottom line, now is a great time to switch jobs for workers who

are not in a union, who don't have that collective power and bargaining power in their own workplace. They're saying, screw it, I'm out of here. And for a lot of workers who are in a union, who have that collective bargaining ability and that ability to act in solidarity and put pressure on their employer, a lot of them are choosing to use that leverage to try to stay in their job but be rewarded with better benefits and better salaries there. So it's a pretty extraordinary moment that we're watching take place. It's titanic. And really, it's funny because we've been covering it for years, if not months, a lot of the stuff, the groundwork for this, like you said, late in the teacher strikes,

but also the tight labor market of 2019, you're seeing things begin to bubble up. Then of course, COVID happened, it kind of scrambled everything. But immediately, all of the conventional explanations for why this is happening, they didn't make any sense. Everyone was saying unemployment. Look, I mean, we have had natural experiments now. We had unemployment, and then we took it away. And guess what? The situation arguably got worse for employers in terms of mobility and more. We've seen the same thing in terms of wage stagnation. And Washington Post, New York Times, they're just now beginning to wake up to what's happening. It took 4.5 million people quitting their job in August for them to be like, hold on. Hey, wait a second.

What's happening here? And I'm not talking about the reporters themselves, really like the front page in terms of what they even discuss on the air. But I will say I checked the New York Times Sunday edition, which is supposed to be the most important, and they're still talking about January 6th. I swear to God, Crystal, they did some reconstruction of the January 6th attack and the seven most instrumental people. Meanwhile, this is happening across the whole country. People are quitting their jobs. They're finding new ones, higher wages.

There's strikes. This is the biggest story in America right now. That's why we're leading with it. It doesn't have a cheap partisan angle to it. Which is why they don't know how to cover it. They don't. It's not, you know, Biden's bad or AOC's bad or Trump's bad or whatever. So it's confusing to them. They don't know how to cover it. They have a massive blind spot because all of them are basically almost all from the same class background and socioeconomic status. So huge blind spot where working class issues are concerned that stories like this just fall right through, even though

this is a massive trend across the country. Let's bring you some of that D.C. news, though, because this is significant. So remember when Senator Sanders was running for president and he would get asked about, OK, well, if you want to get Medicare for all passed, you got people like Joe Manchin. Like, what are you going to do to get him on board? And he always had a ready made answer, which is I would go to West Virginia. I would do the rallies. I would put direct pressure on him. And, you know, that's the most effective way to try to get entrenched people on board.

Well, he didn't literally go to West Virginia, but he said figuratively go there. He published an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail. Let's go ahead and throw this up on the screen. And he calls out Manchin directly. Here he says, we need every Democrat to back the Build Back Better bill. Why do they have to call it? They're so terrible. We now have a historic opportunity to support the working families of West Virginia, Vermont, and the entire country and create policy which works for all, not just the few. A couple of things here that are interesting. He points out that poll after poll shows overwhelming support for this legislation. I've looked into the numbers in West Virginia. This bill is extremely popular in West Virginia and is popular in a bipartisan way and not just like the

individual provisions. Oh, if you just ask them on this thing or you just ask them on that thing, according to data for progress poll, at least it has majority support among Democrats, independents and Republicans. So he's right on that. But this is the part that I think really, you know, kind of was was meant to goad Joe Manchin here. He says he says, where is it? Oh, here we go. Poll after poll shows overwhelming support for this legislation, yet the political problem we face is that in a 50-50 Senate, we need every Democratic senator to vote yes. We now have only 48. Two Democratic senators remain in opposition, including Senator Joe Manchin. So going to Senator Joe Manchin's hometown newspaper, calling him out directly, of course, Manchin responded. Let's throw his response up there on the screen. He was a little more aggressive,

I would say, than Bernie was in his. He says, this isn't the first time an out-of-stater has tried to tell West Virginians what is best for them, despite having no relationship to our state. Millions of jobs are open, supply chains are strained, and unavoidable inflation taxes are draining workers' hard-earned wages as the price of gasoline and groceries continues to climb. Senator Sanders' answer is to throw more money on an already overheated economy while 52 other senators have grave concerns about this approach. To be clear again, Congress should proceed with caution on any additional spending and I will not vote for a reckless expansion of government programs. No op-ed from a self-declared independent socialist is going to

change that. David Strata did point out to me, this is just kind of a funny aside, that apparently Bernie won more votes in West Virginia in the 2016 primary than Manchin won in his re-elect. Oh, wow. So to say he has no relationship to the state, I think is untrue. I also know the senator has been to West Virginia any number of times and has a particular interest in the state. But I mean, basically what this shows is these negotiations have gone off the rail. Manchin seems to be getting more intransigent, not less. He has now ruled out the centerpiece of the Biden sort of climate piece of the Build Back Better agenda, which was a renewable energy standard. This is the only part of it that really has teeth in terms of where climate is concerned. Let's go ahead and throw that New York Times tear sheet up on the screen.

Democrats weighing now a carbon tax after Manchin rejects a key climate provision. I mean, again, this is something we've been highlighting for a long time. Manchin is the chair of the committee that was going to be tasked with writing these climate rules on a renewable energy standard. He has now said, I don't support that at all. So now they're thinking about a carbon tax. Now I want to be fair. They have some language in this article about how they're going to try to make sure

that it doesn't hurt working class people, etc., etc., etc. But energy prices are already going up. Natural gas is about to double, actually. Natural gas prices going up. We're talking about not just at the pump. We're talking about heating your homes, all of these things. A carbon tax, a straight-up carbon tax, if you don't have a lot of mitigating loopholes and credits and things put in there to protect the working class disproportionately hurts lower income people. This seems like a disastrous idea. And of course,

the line from progressives from the beginning has been no climate, no deal. So this morning, it seems like they are even further away from having any sort of negotiated deal here than they were last week. No, it's a good point, Crystal, and this is actually even more important. We still have not mentioned Kyrsten Sinema, who to date has been reported will not support any increase in a tax on a corporation or an individual. So that's kind of the main ballgame here, and a carbon tax would 100% apply. So even if you did get Joe Manchin on board with the carbon tax, which is actually a big if, and he's spoken on both sides of the issue over the last several decades, there's no guarantee that Kyrsten Sinema would vote for any of that or support it. So Sinema has previously floated a carbon tax as an alternative

to taxing corporations. They say it whenever it comes down to voting for it, it's like, are they actually going to do it? I don't think so. Who knows? There are a million barriers here. And also Manchin, the very latest, is that now he's saying, oh, for the child tax credit, it's going to have to be aggressively means tested. No one earning more than $60K can get it. And we've got to have a hard work requirement in there.

So significantly damaging, effectively, the effectiveness of that program. So that's where we are. Right. And I think it's important to say that that is basically, and again, that is very, very far apart from people who are like Tammy Duckworth, Dick Durbin. So not, you know, Bernie or Elizabeth Warren. Increasingly, I just see this whole thing as a morass. And the biggest problem is we've talked about this endlessly. Nobody knows what's in the damn bill, so they can fight over it endlessly. Most people do not care whatsoever about this.

There's actually a significant little amount of – and when I mean significant, like the level of public consciousness around the bill is extraordinarily low. There's not a lot of – people are more pissed off about gas prices than they are anything about here. And that's about the mess. That's a massive messaging failure on behalf of the Biden administration. It is also, frankly, on the it's on the media as well. They really just don't know how to cover a lot of this stuff. I mean, most people would not even tell you about Joe Manchin's positions on X, Y and Z, what that means substantively, a means test. I mean, most people may not even know what a means test is necessarily. Sanders did talk a little bit about this on the Sunday shows of the weekend. Let's take a listen

to what he said. Again, I mean, I think, you know, I'm not going to negotiate on TV, but I think there is going to have to be some give and take. But let's be clear. I mean, we started this process in the Senate Budget Committee, which I chair, at a $6 trillion amount, which, by the way, is the least of what we need if we are, in fact, going to transform our energy system and deal with the existential threat of climate. All right. We came down from six to three and a half trillion. OK, that is a huge, huge compromise. So I think at the very

least, in my view, we have got to be a three and a half trillion. So there you go, Crystal. You know, I mean, I just increasingly see Bernie over here kind of representing one poll. I would say the majority of the Democratic caucus, probably more towards the Bernie-Biden side than anywhere else. But then Manchin and Sinema, not just on the left side for those who are just listening, but so irreconcilably far different on the key provisions. I just don't know how it could all come together. The White House is apparently negotiating this. I mean, I don't trust them at all. They're completely incompetent, in my opinion, over the last year or so in the way that they've handled Congress. So all of that together. We do have a fun, as we've been doing these breaking points polls, we've got a fun poll to show all of you. This is my favorite one so far. Let's put this up there

on the screen. Do we approve of the United States Congress? Yes, 2%. No, 94%. Unsure, 5%. I want to talk to that 2%. Yeah, I want to talk to that 2% too. That's out of 44,000 respondents. And again, all... They just accidentally hit the wrong button. Yeah, probably.

Remember, not scientific, any of that. These are great fun, though. We're seeing hundreds of thousands of you engaged. I mean, this is... Please continue. So when we did the Biden, the first approval rating when we did was Biden, and I think he got like 80-something percent. 70-something. Said they did not approve of him. That's pretty bad. Then we did Kamala. In the 90s? Yeah. Let's see here. Kamala's at 89%

disapproval to approve. Okay. No. Yeah. Okay. So this one is, I thought that was maybe bottoming out, but you guys feel even worse about Congress than you do about Kamala. So that was an interesting piece of information. But I think the American people have tuned this out because they don't believe that it's going to happen. I mean, I think that's it. I think there's just so much nihilism. And sadly, betting on the side of like cynicism is all too often the right bet. Biden has really screwed this up. Like there's just no, there's really no excuse for it. He had a lot of different tactical and strategic approaches he could have taken. They have control of the House, the Senate, and the White House. They could be doing, they could have done a lot more and they

could have done it a lot faster and they could have put a lot more pressure on these intransigent senators who, we should also be clear, like Manchin and Sinema are the ones that like to get out front and like to sort of take the incoming and take the heat. They are not the only ones who are an issue here. That's right. Mark Warner. Mark Warner's another. There are others that are basically hiding behind Manchin and Sinema because they just have a different political calculation in terms of what they think is going to benefit them. But Manchin and Sinema are not the only issue here. So it's hard to see how this all comes together. Circling back to the carbon tax thing and the climate stuff, I mean, progressives, the one thing they said, they haven't been clear really about any of their red lines in terms of the dollar amount or which programs have to be in or how they want to approach this.

And they've been pushing for, hey, let's keep as many programs as possible and we can just limit the time on it. That's been the approach that they've favored in terms of negotiations. But the one thing they have said from the beginning is no climate, no deal. And Joe Manchin has basically just said no climate. So take from that what you will. Yeah, no, that's right. Hey, so remember how we told you how awesome premium membership was? Well, here we are again to remind you that becoming a premium member means you don't have to listen to our constant pleas for you to subscribe. So what are you waiting for? Become a premium member today by going to BreakingPoints.com, which you can click on in the show notes. Okay, let's move on to this next one.

I've gotten a lot of requests. Everyone's like, when are you going to do an Epstein update? When are you going to do an Epstein update? We do it whenever the news warrants. And we brought you previously that explosive new reporting from Michael Wolff's book. Again, none of this was denied whatsoever by Steve Bannon, that he sat with Jeffrey Epstein for hours. Bannon claims it was for an interview. Epstein was under the impression that he had hired Bannon in order to bolster his image, and he was media training him for a possible interview on 60 Minutes, which never ended up happening. Epstein then got arrested, and then he died in prison. From what? We'll never

know. He died. Okay. He's dead. That's all we know, right? It's convenient for a lot of people. Well, Michael Wolff in his new book, and again, all the caveats, it is Michael Wolff, all of that. I can tell you I've read a lot of his work. Some of it was made up, but a lot of it is sourced in what they call deep background, as in he will string things together and then write the account as if that's exactly what happened. Again, that's not the best way to do journalism, so I think people should take this with a grain of salt. However, if this had been denied, then that would be one thing. This central allegation around Steve Bannon was not. So at least some of it seems to be factually correct. insider that Epstein himself, according to this book, believed he could make a deal to dodge sex trafficking charges by giving up dirt on Trump or Bill Clinton after his 2019 arrest. And he discussed ways to restore his image with Steve Bannon and Israeli Prime Minister Ayyub Barak. Now, this actually completely tracks and makes sense. I've previously talked about how Ayyub Barak. Now, this actually completely tracks and makes sense. I've previously talked about how Ayyub Barak

was in all sorts of very strange business deals with Jeffrey Epstein. He was seen coming in and out of famous New York City apartment, staying the night over at Epstein's house sometimes while young women were also seen entering the house. So Ayyub Barak absolutely has had multiple associational connections with Epstein's house sometimes while young women were also seen entering the house. So A. Barak absolutely has had multiple associational connections with Epstein, business connections

and more. That has long been pointed to by people who believe Epstein possibly may have had ties to the intelligence community, etc. I'll just put that out there. But the important part is that from the discussions themselves, Epstein did believe that he could strike some sort of deal with prosecutors because he believed that the Trump DOJ would have two different things that they wanted. Number one, they wanted to cover up and possibly put the hold on anything that Epstein knew about Trump. Now, look, in terms of the reporting on that one, Epstein was a Mar-a-Lago member back in the mid-2000s and 1990s. Him and Trump apparently had a falling out. But Trump has referenced previously in

interviews saying, oh, Jeffrey, he likes them young. So if they did know each other, there's photos of them. Yeah, very creepy. And all that. Clinton, on the other hand, by the way, Godspeed to him. He was released from the hospital this weekend, so I'm glad he's feeling better. But he has had a long, long and sordid history with Epstein. He flew on his private jet a number of times.

Remember that we previously saw the report from his private island in the Virgin Islands. Clinton claims he never went there. Well, the IT guy who was on that island gave an interview in which he said that he saw Clinton sitting there on that island. Once again, I mean, maybe Clinton didn't know anything, but there's photos of Clinton getting a massage from a known Epstein traffic victim while he was on a trip with Ghislaine Maxwell. I believe she was of age at the time she was giving the former president a massage. That's right. Anyway, I think she was like 19. But I mean, it was also very creepy, though, Crystal, because what they did is they had her dress up in like a flight attendant's uniform

so that they can fly her all over the globe. This was also whenever, you know, they're meeting Prince Andrew. This is at the time when they went and sat on the throne. So there was a lot of creepy stuff that was happening here. But in the book, they specifically point to Epstein thinking that he might be able to avoid charges because he thought that the Trump DOJ would one, want to cover up any sort of past association with Trump back in the 90s, but also that they would want him to give up dirt on Bill Clinton. And he specifically mentioned, according to Wolfe's book, which again, he sources to conversations with Steve Bannon and Abe Brock. And remember, those people might also have an ax to grind, but this is the best that we have since Epstein is dead,

that he specifically would mention Clinton's sexual proclivities. So that, I've tried to be as responsible as I can in putting that all together. It's quite interesting. It's quite interesting. According to this, he had two theories of why he was arrested at this time, which it's also an interesting like peek into his mind that he wouldn't be like, oh, I got arrested because I'm a criminal pedophile sex trafficker. He's been away for 30 years. And I'm going to get out. Right. So he was like, I've been getting away with this my whole adult life.

And so why am I being charged and arrested right now? And he had sort of two theories about that. One was that the Trump DOJ wanted the goods on Clinton. Yep. And the other was that the New York prosecutors wanted the goods on Trump. So that's why he thought, well, in either scenario— You can play them off each other. I can play them off.

I can give them what they want. I can potentially strike a deal. And listen, we'll never know whether he would have been able to ultimately pull that off. The other—there's a couple other pieces here. One is that he reportedly, Bannon, told Epstein that he was the only person that he was afraid of in the, you know, in the campaign. And I guess maybe even when Trump was in office, but that he, Epstein was the person that Bannon was fearful of and what he might be able to tell the public. And Epstein reportedly said, you should have been. So that's one other piece, which is interesting. And I don't know,

again, some of this stuff is on video. And there's a transcript. Again, these are direct quotes from a transcript, which have not been denied whatsoever by Steve Bannon. So some of this, you know, he may have real receipts to back it up. And then the other piece of this is that he claims, Michael Wolff claims in this book, that Epstein believed Bill Barr was the one who was really pulling the strings. We have a tear sheet of that. In the White House. Let's go ahead and throw that one up.

Jeffrey Epstein bragged Bill Barr was in charge, not Trump. So apparently Epstein said, at the moment Bill Barr is in charge, it's Donald's pattern. He lets someone else be in charge until other people realize that someone other than him is in charge. When that happens, you're no longer in charge. He said the motivation was simple. It was money. Barr believes he'll get a big payday out of this if he keeps Donald in office, manages to hold the Justice Department together, and help the Republican Party survive Donald.

He thinks this is worth big money to him. So that's the other sort of big bombshell here that's in this Michael Wolff book. Yeah, I mean, this is really some explosive stuff. And once again, all of the caveats included there with Michael Wolff. However, these are direct quotes from a transcript which have not been denied. It's the same level of evidence that we have on the Hunter Biden laptop, right? Which is that there's this laptop, there's all this stuff on it. If it's not true, Hunter and the Biden people are welcome to come out and say so, and they're not. Instead, Bannon is giving an alternate explanation as to why the transcript

exists, as to why exactly he was shooting a quote-unquote documentary with Epstein. But, oh, it's been a couple of years. You know, it's weird, really weird. It hasn't come out yet. I'm still waiting. I'm sure anybody would love to see it. I would sign it.

I'd pay for it in order to go and watch it. So, look, you have here a conversation sourced to a transcript that has not been denied, conversations with the former Israeli prime minister, Ayyub Barak, who we know was a deep associational connection, past business history and all more with Epstein. He's been named in some previous allegations by some other women and has been seen coming in and out, staying at that townhouse. And we also have here a specific, what Epstein believed was his quote-unquote

get-out-of-jail-free card. Yeah. Playing Trump and Bill Clinton off of each other with direct knowledge of both's past social history according to him.

Right. That's all we have. Again, according to, even if we accept that this is what he said in the transcripts, which seems more likely

than not. I mean, it seems true. This is also the world according to Jeffrey Epstein. Right. So take it for what it's worth, but- That's a good point. Pretty interesting stuff here.

All right. Okay. Katie Couric. This was a long requested one. I find this to just be an absolutely explosive account from Katie Couric, who I know is only revealing this now because she wants to sell books. But I think it's very important for us to cover, Crystal, because here's the thing. If she's willing to admit this, what are people sitting on that we do not know about? For those

who have not heard about this, and that's why this is a much bigger media story to me, in my opinion, let's put this up there on the screen, which is that Katie Couric covered up RBG's, the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's, dislike for Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players taking the knee back in 2016. Katie Couric says that she edited a 2016 interview to, quote, protect the justice after she said people who kneel are showing, quote, contempt for a government that made life possible. Now, obviously, that was an inflammatory political statement at the time. But here's the important point. Katie Couric says that she did so specifically in order to protect Ginsburg's reputation because she felt that Ginsburg had a, quote, blind spot

whenever it came to the issue of racial justice. And here's the even more explosive part. Couric claims that Ginsburg, who was 83 at the time, was, quote, elderly and probably didn't fully understand the question. Now, here's the thing. She's a cynic Supreme Court justice. Right, so that was 2016. She died many years later, 2020. So that means there were a lot of very important cases, as I recall, Crystal, which were decided in that time. So Katie Couric,

according to her, had information where she believed that the former Supreme Court Justice was not all with it. And look, I don't know either way. I know some people who spoke to RBG. They claim she was with it. She also survived multiple bouts of cancer. I mean, listen, you know, she was a lion in that regard. But we have multiple things happening. Number one, Katie Couric was arguably one of the most famous journalists in America.

I mean, you know, America's Sweetheart, Today Show, all this before my time. But I've read about it. In terms of what she's— She's not very nice. You can tell that story. But she was revered, I mean, across this country. She had the infamous Sarah Palin thing. I mean, everybody knew who she was.

She is outwardly admitting that in this particular case, this 2016 period, she sat on and edited out a highly newsworthy clip. Look, a liberal Supreme Court justice poo-pooing the kneeling protests at the time. That's news. And if that happened to me, I can tell you as a journalist, no matter whether I like them or not, that's the first thing I clip and I put out there. Absolutely. Because it's about contributing to the discourse. If RBG is too old to understand the question, that's on RBG. Yeah, but we also know that is a total, like,

bullshit rationalization. I agree with you. She didn't want RBG to be canceled. She just didn't want her to be canceled. Exactly. She wanted to protect her. And so she did include in the article, she was with Yahoo News at the time, Katie Couric, she included that RBG said that the protest was, quote, dumb and disrespectful. But I just want to read you the full quote because it's pretty inflammatory. You can see why she was like, oh, this is going to be a big problem for her if we put this out. She said that the protest showed contempt for a government that has made it possible for their parents and grandparents to live a decent life, which they probably could not have lived in the places they came from. As they become older, they realize that this was youthful folly. So very inflammatory and insensitive comments.

No doubt this would have been a massive scandal. And so it matters not only because, you know, if she isn't able to understand the question, et cetera, et cetera, obviously that is significant. But I think more to the point here, RBG has been held up as like the quintessential do not know wrong liberal icon. And as we've talked about on this show before, when you create heroes out of these people where they're just unimpeded and they're an icon and they're more of a celebrity than they are, in her case, unelected, extremely powerful official with the power to, you know, change law and interpret the Constitution. It's really important that we actually have a clear picture of who these people are. Supreme Court justices sit for interviews so incredibly rarely. Yes. I mean, look at Stephen Breyer right now. Everybody watches what the guy says. He's like, is he going to retire or not? What's happening?

Well, and that's the same thing here. I mean, this is part of, if you are a liberal or progressive, there was a big conversation about RBG needs to retire so that her seat can be filled by Obama so we can make sure that we maintain liberals on the Supreme Court. actual views are and massive blind spots with regards to racial justice, that may have more successfully put pressure on her to retire at a time when she could have been replaced by someone who would still be there. So there's huge potential consequences to covering for a figure with this type of immense power. And it's insane that she did this. The other side note here is when she was weighing, this was like a big conundrum. She's like, oh, geez, what do I do about this? Which, again, the fact that this is even a conundrum is crazy. Like you said, no matter who we interviewed, if you had this kind of bombshell, that would be the thing that you would know that would be the focus of the story.

So there's a big conundrum. She's doing soul searching. There's an internal battle at Yahoo News and all of this. The person she turned to for advice, David Brooks. From the New York Times. Who's also an opinion columnist. He's not a journalist. And he was the one who was like, she probably didn't understand the question.

Yes. So you should just take it out. And the last piece of context here is after the interview aired, I guess RBG's office either wrote or called Katie in Yahoo News and was like, she didn't mean that. Can you take that part out, et cetera, et cetera. That's not the way that this works. That is not the way that this works. I cannot believe that, A, that she will admit it. B, that it just goes to show that she wasn't the only one who knew.

Here's the thing, too, that people should understand. When you have these big network interviews type things, there's a lot of people in the room. We're talking about crews. We're talking about editors. We're talking about there's sign-off. There's executives. She also called a former head of ABC News, and he was like, you got to keep this in there, and she didn't listen. If you're that guy, what are you doing? You're sitting on the huge scoop. I mean, you should call ABC and be like, hey, you're not going to believe what Katie Couric did over there. But when you go on and you work for everybody, there's a lot of business to protect. These types of secrets, they can stay there.

It really makes me wonder, what are people sitting on? I have no idea. One of the best things that ever happened during the Trump years was, remember whenever he just released the full video of 60 Minutes interview? He was like, screw 60 Minutes, and he just released it. He ended up looking like a buffoon. He looked worse. But I mean, I was like, hey, this is actually great. I would much rather see the full thing. This is the thing about these edited, cutting room floor. If they're willing to admit several years later, now she's dead, now it doesn't matter anymore, what else are people sitting on? That's what I want to know. And I have seen many of these types of productions in the White House, you know,

the ABC, Good Morning America, George Stephanopoulos shows up, they have 30 hours of footage. What are people sitting on with the Biden administration? I mean, that's a real, Obama. I mean, what clips are there of Obama with people talking and more that were never released? We will never know. Well, and you know 100% if this was a conservative Supreme Court justice. Oh, done. Yeah, it's out. It'd be out immediately.

There'd be no soul searching and call to David Brooks. What do I do? Did he really understand the question or whatever? No. It would be put out as well it should. It's news. Yes. It says everything that the instinct of Katie Couric in that moment was to protect the powerful rather than to protect the people who might be impacted by the decisions of this woman. Right.

That says everything about how our journalist class actually sees themselves. And again, Katie Couric is as big as they come. She is as influential. She's as much of an A-list journalist as you could possibly be, although at this point she was at Yahoo News. So that was a little bit of a come down for her. But that is the way that our journalist class sees themselves and their role. How do I protect the powerful and make sure that they're okay versus how do I make sure that the public has the information they need to be okay?

I think that says it all. Completely outrageous. Maybe they'll finally take these RBG flags down that are all around D.C. I would fully support that, even if this is their reason for it. They're not going to cover this story

on CNN or MSNBC. That's a good point. Actually, apparently, Brian Stelter talked about it. Did he? To his credit. I mean, their reason for it. They're not going to cover this story on CNN or MSNBC. That's a good point. Actually, apparently Brian Stelter talked about it. Did he? To his credit. Okay. I mean, he talked about it. He's like, this is terrible.

You know, it's like a one-time thing. Unfortunately, no one watches this show. Just a one-time thing. They'll never know. That's right. Speaking of CNN, all the terrible things that happened over there on that network. You'll recall we covered the great conversation between podcaster Joe Rogan and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. They had a very spirited discussion around vaccination, myocarditis, whether children

should get it, etc. It was actually pretty cordial. We played the particular part here on the show where Rogan grills Sanjay Gupta and gets Gupta to admit that they should have not have called ivermectin, quote, horse dewormer while on the air, explicitly saying repeatedly that Rogan consumed horse dewormer, which Rogan, I think, rightfully sees as, you know, a slander against him and really defamation. But, you know, given the laws and all that, it really wasn't going to work. Well, what is really disgraceful, in my opinion, is that CNN then dragged Gupta on the air of the network and basically forced him to retract his comments about ivermectin and horse dewormer. And Don Lemon essentially makes Gupta sit there during this struggle session where he's like, we didn't do anything wrong, right, Sanjay? And gets Gupta to say like,

yes, it's correct. There's no evidence around ivermectin and all that. I mean, what I take away from this is Gupta's in an extraordinarily difficult position. I took away from the interview with Rogan that he is a genuinely good person. At least that's what it came across for me. I think he was coming at this honestly. He clearly listens to Rogan. He wanted to communicate something. And I thought he was a straight shooter as they come kind of within that industry. I've met him before. He's an extraordinarily nice person.

But on CNN, it just goes to show that if you want to protect your job to survive in this industry, you have to just like basically conform and spit out the party line. I'm really not exaggerating here. Just for those who are listening, I actually encourage you to watch this clip just so that you can see how much they make him squirm. Watch Don Lemon basically whip Sanjay Gupta into compliance saying that they didn't do anything wrong. Let's take a listen. So very important. I know it's in large part a tongue-in-cheek interview, you know, because it's Joe Rogan and there's lots of, you're jockeying back and forth. But he did say something about ivermectin that I think wasn't actually correct about CNN and lying, okay? Ivermectin

is a drug that is commonly used as a horse dewormer. So it is not a lie to say that the drug is used as a horse dewormer. I think that's important. And it is not approved for COVID. Correct? That's right. That's correct. It is not approved for COVID. And you're right. I mean, the FDA even put out a statement saying, you know, basically reminding people it was a strange sort of message from the FDA, but that said, you're not a horse, you're not a cow. Stop taking this stuff is essentially what they said, referring to ivermectin. Now, I think what Joe's point is that it's been approved for humans, but not necessarily for COVID. Right. Yeah, that's correct. It's been it's been used for a parasitic disease for something called river blindness.

And it's been very effective for that. But, you know know just because it works for one thing doesn't mean it works for something else and you know there's still a few ongoing clinical trials around ivermectin but for the most part if you look at the data there's no evidence that it that it really works here when joe got sick he took ivermectin he also took monoclonal antibodies which is you, an infusion of these antibodies. So he took both those things. It's very likely it was the monoclonal antibodies that made him feel better so quickly.

Sanjay, always a pleasure. I hope this was an easier experience than Joe Rogan. You held your own, though. It was very good. Three hours. I mean, I don't think I've ever spoken to another human for three hours before just like that. It was really something. Sanjay, thank you.

Best of luck with the book as well. You got it. World War C. Thank you. That's a pretty remarkable interview there, Chris. He's like, oh, we didn't do anything wrong. I mean, you know, I mean, and it's funny. I've seen these memes going around where it's like Joe Rogan drinks water.

And CNN is like, Joe Rogan consumes liquid, sometimes uses an engine coolant or something like that. Look, Rogan, all that other stuff aside, can't you just admit that you screwed it up? Just say it. Just be like, listen, Sanjay, you made a good point. They also point out the evidence or whatever around ivermectin. That's fine. But they still force him to come on the air for his struggle session to be like no no we didn't do anything wrong we didn't do it and he's just sitting there he's like stone faced there's a it's repulsive there's a couple

things that are funny about it first of all i like the way that lemon frames the beginning as a tongue and cheek interview yes that he did with rogan's tongue and cheek as a way to diminish it like oh we we get you know as a way to like give him a pass for going on with the, you know, with the terrible Joe Rogan. It was tongue-in-cheek. It wasn't a serious thing. Yes. When in reality, the conversation that they had over the course of three hours going back and forth and citing evidence and talking to each other about the risk factors and, you know, digging into the statistics was a million times more serious than what they do on CNN all day long and certainly what they did on CNN right there. There's another moment there that I think

is very revealing, though, where Gupta starts to say, I think the point that Joe was trying to make and then Lemon jumps in and cuts him off because it seems like Gupta is about to say, like, he was trying to make the point, like, I didn't take horse dewormer. I took the human version. And that is extraordinarily common. And no, there isn't a lot of evidence that it's effective for coronavirus. But there is evidence that it's effective for other things like river blindness, as Gupta points out here. And, you know, he references the evidence, which is important. But

yeah, I mean, the obvious takeaway from that interview should have been, you know what, guys, we got this wrong. Look, there are some people who, because there's been a run on ivermectin, have been taking the livestock version. They shouldn't do that. It's not safe. But Rogan is not one of those people. And to act like ivermectin that across the board, the only thing it's used for is horse deworming is just a lie. It's just not true. That's true. And the more, the real point that Joe made,

I thought very effectively with Sanjay, which of course they're not going to get to at all, is that when you lie about something basic like that, what does it do to people's trust of what you're saying on anything? And that's the real issue here. It's not about Rogan or what he took or his ego or anything. It's about you lied on something super basic. And even now, when you're caught red-handed, you still can't admit it. You still can't say, you know what?

We got this wrong in this way, and we wish we'd said it in a different way. Let's move forward, and we're going to do better. No. Just say that. That's it. That's all we want. That's all. And you know, it's just I always think back to that, which is that in the past, whenever CNN and other organizations would screw up like this, it's just like, listen, we screwed up.

This was something. Or even say this. Our opinion commentators made a claim. It was inaccurate. We're sorry. And, you know, that's not something that we're going to stand by. And I just love, A, being like, oh, it was a tongue-in-cheek interview. It's like anybody going on CNN, that should be the real tongue-in-cheek for this country. But if you want to know really how the media did treat Joe whenever this was happening, whenever he was sick, I mean, frankly, in my opinion,

they were wishing him ill. This is how they actually spoke about him. Let's take a listen to this. CNN is saying I'm taking horse dewormer. Rogan telling his 13 million Instagram followers that he was treated with several drugs and he included ivermectin on the list, a drug used for livestock. Rogan said the word ivermectin. Yes, that's the deworming medicine made to kill parasites

and farm animals. Why would they lie and say that's horse dewormer? So things are clearly bad, but they're being made even worse by people who have refused to take the vaccine and instead are swallowing horse paste. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a second. He said that he got better because he ate cattle dewormer. They must know that that's a lie. You have individuals like Joe Rogan, for example, who don't want to take an experimental vaccine but will take horse dewormer.

I mean, look, we could play even more of that if we wanted to. You know, that was CNN and MSNBC. And I think it's very important that people understand how these people were talking about it, why they should just retract it and just say, look, that's not what we were meant. Or Sanjay was right. And at the end of the day, the fact that they had to bring him on the air and basically publicly whip him and say, no, no, no, no, we actually did everything okay, I think that's really disgraceful, Crystal. It is disgraceful. The other thing is I believe that he got a lot of pushback, Sanjay Gupta did, even doing this interview. He wrote an op-ed about it.

I believe that this was a sort of professional risk for him and that in terms of his social set and in terms of the people who are his friends at CNN, they thought this was a terrible idea, that he shouldn't go on there, that he shouldn't, you know, quote unquote, legitimize Rogan, who has a like wildly larger audience than they do. And so I do want to still give him a lot of credit for doing it anyway, for doing it effective, for engaging in good faith. And I think that that conversation did way more to educate people who may have had some questions and not already been exactly in the place that Gupta is than anything that he's done on CNN this entire time. I think that's exactly right. So breaking news this morning, Crystal, Colin Powell's family announced that he died this morning from complications due to COVID-19. He was the former Secretary of State during the Iraq War, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all of that.

He died from complications due to COVID despite the fact that he was fully vaccinated. He was 84 years old, to be clear, in terms of what he was facing there. And it was at Walter Reed National Medical Center. So this is a big, big development here. It's stunning that, you know, A, that he died. He was fully vaccinated. We both tried. We were unable to determine which vaccine, which he received. But yeah, we should look at this. And really just look, Colin Powell was a fixture of American history for decades. I mean, the Gulf War, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, instrumental in the foreign policy of George H.W. Bush,

and we can't help but also remember his life and the fact that he did help sell the Iraq War to the United Nations under the Bush administration, ultimately falling out and then becoming a sort of statesman in his own right, endorsing Obama in 2008. That was a really big moment. Did he speak at the DNC this year? I can't quite remember. I know he endorsed a Democrat from every year from 2008 onwards, but his life will always be,

you know, intertwined with the Iraq war. It is stunning that he died, you know, from complications due to COVID and he was fully vaccinated. Yeah. And there are a couple of things to say. I mean, first of all, on the coronavirus piece, we know that elderly continue to be at the most risk. Always at the most risk. And in fact, you know, I, my 13 year old daughter is vaccinated when the vaccine is approved for children. I will be getting my children inoculated, but we do know from the risk factors that even fully vaccinated elderly people are more at risk to this disease, severe illness, and yes, death, than young children who are unvaccinated. So while the vaccines are incredibly effective, we see that in the numbers here. We see that in the numbers around the world, especially at preventing that

severe disease and death, especially among the elderly, it does still sometimes happen. Now, on the life of Colin Powell, it can be uncomfortable, but I believe when you have someone who has been an incredibly influential public figure, I do believe that you have to tell the truth about them, even in death. So the fact of the matter is, the biggest legacy that this man left in this country was lying the American people into war. And he was in a position where he did have- And he knew better. All the reporting shows, he knew better, the most skeptical. he was reluctant to do it. He was skeptical, but he went out there and he made the case. And because he was so held in such high esteem by members of both parties, the fact that he so forcefully made that case and sold those lies was a linchpin in terms of ultimately getting us in to that war.

Sadly and tragically, that is the biggest imprint that he left on this country. And of course, we're still living with the consequences of that war and, of course, of our years in Afghanistan as well. The incredible toll on our servicemen and women, the way that the entire Mideast was turned upside down, the way that it ultimately fueled terrorism and made us and other people around the world less safe. The hundreds of thousands of civilians from the region who were ultimately killed in those operations. So, you know, he was ultimately killed in those operations. So he was ultimately held in very high esteem. Even after that, he was able to make a comeback and be held in high esteem again, especially by the Democratic Party. But in my view, that is his greatest legacy. Certainly send my condolences and our condolences to his family for their incredible personal loss,

but a momentous day in terms of the death of Colin Powell. Yeah, it's really stunning. You know, actually, the Iraq part is just so tragic if you consider his story. I read a little bit about him. He was, his parents were, I think, Jamaican immigrants or West Indian, I believe, somewhere in the Caribbean. He was raised in New York City, a product of the local community college system, which is what vaulted him from ROTC, served in Vietnam, rose through the ranks of the United States Army, all the way to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was instrumental in terms of the Gulf War, in terms of setting a new foreign policy in the H.W. Bush administration,

and then having his credibility with the American people sacrificed upon the altar of the Iraq War. Somebody who was deeply skeptical of that, but went along anyways because George W. Bush and the people inside wanted him to. And that, you know, was going to be his biggest legacy. So a complicated figure, a tragic end to a story. And yeah, we just wish his family the best here. I think that's the best thing you can say. Wow. You guys must really like listening to our voices. While I know this is annoying,

instead of making you listen to a Viagra commercial, when you're done, check out the other podcast I do with Marshall Kosloff called The Realignment. We talk a lot about the deeper issues that are changing, realigning in American society. You always need more Crystal and Saga in your daily lives. Take care, guys. Crystal, what are you taking a look at?

Well, folks, our nation's ports are backlogged, supply lines are jammed, prices are rising, and the Biden administration cannot even promise that Americans will be able to get their Christmas goods. It's a bit of a disaster, and politically, it is an utter catastrophe. Not to mention that massive infrastructure legislation currently hangs in the balance as right-wing Democrats look to serve their corporate masters. In other words,

an odd cascade of events has led to the Federal Department of Transportation suddenly being one of the most crucial agencies in all of government. So it's a bit strange that we hadn't heard anything from boy wonder Pete Buttigieg, who you might recall was randomly given the post of transportation secretary. Now, when Pete was given that job, it was a clear political sop, a reward for his role in destroying the Sanders campaign. After all, Biden himself had actually ruthlessly mocked Pete's lack of transportation experience on the campaign trail. You remember that? But what Pete lacked in experience, he of course made up for in vague platitudes about his love for all modes of transportation. I've also had a personal love of transportation ever since

childhood. More than once as a college student, I would convince a friend to travel nearly a thousand miles back to Indiana with me on Amtrak. Though I know that in this administration, I will at best aspire to be the second biggest train enthusiast around. I spent a spring break in graduate school aboard a cargo ship studying there. Travel, in my mind, is synonymous with growth, with adventure, even love. So much so that I proposed to my husband, Chastin, in an airport terminal. Don't let anybody tell you that O'Hare isn't romantic. Well, we have now received word of why the man who never saw a camera he didn't like was suddenly

nowhere to be found. It wasn't working. Pete has been out on a lengthy paternity leave. Here's Politico with that scoop in an article titled, Can Pete Buttigieg Have It All? They didn't previously announce it, but Buttigieg's office told West Wing Playbook that the secretary has actually been on paid leave since mid-August to spend time with his husband, Chastin, and their two newborn babies. For the first four weeks, he was mostly offline except for major agency decisions and matters that could not be delegated, said a spokesperson for the Department of Transportation. He has been ramping up activities since then. As he does that, Buttigieg will, quote, continue to take some time over the coming weeks to support his husband and take care

of his new children, the spokesperson added. So, we've got a pretty interesting question on our hands here. Now, I am personally a huge supporter of paid family leave for moms, for dads, for caregivers, frankly, of all types. It is a national disgrace that millions of Americans cannot take paid time off after giving birth or adoption or for any other reason. But in a moment of national crisis, when at least in theory your job position is critical to the well-being of millions, does your responsibility to your family fully trump your responsibility to the American people? Now, plenty of liberals right now are saying, yes, family comes first and that is that. Politico quotes a liberal advocate for paid leave who said, I am thrilled that the secretary did that and showed that work and family go together. And it's not only liberals who are applauding Pete here. Glenn Greenwald, he tweeted this,

saying, the only valid and decent thing to say about Pete Buttigieg's paternity leave is that adoption is beautiful. All parents, not just cabinet secretaries, should have the ability to take leave from work to care for new children, and prioritizing family over work is noble. What makes this conversation so interesting, though, is that you got a conflict of two important principles. First, yes, family is important and all workers should have paid leave. Importantly, Pete is not a hypocrite here. He supports paid leave for all, so in a sense, he is just living those values. On the other hand, Pete accepted a position of high responsibility to his fellow Americans, and we are in the middle of a real crisis. So yeah, he's got a responsibility to his family, but he's kind of also got a responsibility to the nation as well. Now,

there's been a trend in liberal thinking to ignore those broader societal responsibilities altogether, pretend like they're completely irrelevant as a consideration. There's a notion that your sole responsibility is to yourself, to your self-actualization, to your wellness, to your ambition. Now, that is a highly narcissistic view, and with its emphasis on the individual above all else, it's also in a sense a conservative view, since it makes no allowance for the collective whatsoever. Now, I could do a whole other monologue on the roots of that narcissism, which I personally think lie in winner-take-all capitalism and a collapse in the belief that we can even accomplish anything collectively anymore. But Pete's whole trajectory is a perfect example

of what this culture of narcissism looks like when applied to politicians. They become important not because of what they might do for the public, but because of what the public might do for them. How we might help them manifest their destiny, whether it's Kamala or Stacey or Hillary or Pete. Voters are meant to serve the aspirations of the politician rather than the politician serving the people. That's why there was so much more interest in Pete's relationship with Chastin, his Iron Man training, and his truly beautiful new family than on whether Pete was remotely qualified for the position of Transportation Secretary in the first place and what, if he was Transportation Secretary, he might do with that power.

It's another example here. That's why Kamala's speech at the DNC, delivered at a time of mass death and financial chaos, was still all about herself and how proud we all should be that she was achieving such a significant milestone rather than, say, what she might do as Biden's second in command. After all, Kamala wasn't selected for the slot of vice president because of what she might bring to the job. She was selected to serve as a sort of national political celebrity. Instead of everyone getting health care, everyone gets profiles on her shoe choices and puff pieces on her inspirational background. We are supposed to be fulfilled because she is fulfilled.

And it's the same with Pete. He wasn't put in this position to actually do a job. The idea that he was chosen for his expertise and governing ability is hilarious. He was put in a prominent position to serve as a figurehead, modeling an inspirational story, while other people do the unsexy work of implementing rules and trying to unclog our backed up ports. So in the job he was actually picked for, he's performing spectacularly well. To answer Politico's question, Pete can have it all. It just may come at the price of the rest of us having an actually competent and engaged leader

at the Department of Transportation. So let's be real here. Stop pretending like it actually would have made a difference to have Pete at his post as our supply chains broke down. Pete and our other political media celebrities, they're not there to govern. They're there to live their best lives, regardless of what impact that may have on your life. And I think, Zagar, that to me was like the part of the story that was kind of missing is there was this kabuki about... One more thing, I promise.

Just wanted to make sure you knew about my podcast with Kyle Kalinsky. It's called Crystal Kyle and Friends, where we do long form interviews with people like Noam Chomsky, Cornel West and Glenn Greenwald. You can listen on any podcast platform or you can subscribe over on Substack to get the video a day early. We're going to stop bugging you now. Enjoy. All right, so what are you looking at? Well, if you were to ask me why the Trump era sucks so much, I would not give you the same answer as the mainstream media. On a policy level, he did mostly bad stuff.

And on a rhetorical level, occasionally he had something good to say. But the answer is that Trump actually banished any sense of meaning from our politics to the extent that even the tiniest little bit of it remained before he came on the stage. So look, say what you want, but there was an actual debate around Obamacare in this country. Healthcare or no. Public option, private option. It was mostly dumb, and it obviously turned out terribly, but it was a debate nonetheless. With Trump, it didn't even have the veneer of the debate. The people who voted for him, when they're being entirely honest, will tell you they didn't really care what he actually did, and that the reason that they did is because he pissed the other

side off immensely. And the people who voted against him, they did the same thing, except the converse. They voted against him simply because he pissed them off, not for any substantive reason whatsoever. And that is why Trump's long and ugly shadow over our politics is so awful and why if he runs in 2024, it will be truly clown show 2.0. If you're a Republican, probably the last thing on earth that you should want is Trump to run again. How can I say that? You say, presuming that you're a Republican that actually wants something to get done, consider Trump's latest statement, quote, if we don't solve the presidential election fraud of 2020, Republicans will not be voting in 2022 or 25.

It's the single most important thing for Republicans to do, he says. Translation, if you as a Republican are not willing to make Stop the Steal a central part of your campaign for office, then I will denounce you and I will tell my people to not vote. Consider how monumentally stupid this is. And it comes at a time where the Democrats look truly 2010-level doomed in the midterm elections. Biden is missing his action as approval rating hovers in the mid-30s. He has no enthusiastic base, an economy is going sideways, and his legislative agenda is basically dead.

Organic movements across the country right now are rising up against mask mandates in schools and critical race theory. I mean, Republicans on an actual grassroots policy level are more fired up than they have been in more than a decade. And yet Trump comes in and says, yeah, but if you don't validate my both idiotic and unpopular idea, then I'm going to tell my most committed supporters to not vote. Literally only Trump could rescue defeat from the hands of victory after already running this stupid playbook in a place called Georgia during the special election. Or consider a potential Trump 2024 run.

It really should not be that difficult. I mean, the man came 45,000 votes away from winning the presidency. And in 2020, Biden has been such a disaster, he could easily be beaten in 2024. Or let's say it's Kamala Harris. I mean, Trump would probably win like 500 electoral votes in that case. And yet, what are his people signaling will be his major agenda if elected. Not inflation, not supply chains, not healthcare, not really anything to do with your life whatsoever. What is it? Yeah, their signature issue should be, oh, that's right, more stop the steal and election laws. Good luck. Having watched Trump monumentally screw up basically every single thing he ever tried to pass or sign into executive order,

I can tell you that even if you did care a lot about this, he's probably the last person that you should try to get it done for you. But on a broader level, it again shows that with him at the helm of the Republican Party, this is it. This is all there is. Nothing more. Just election fantasies to satisfy the egos of one man who, for a variety of reasons, has a massive sway over the Republican boomer mind. Now, you might think I've been hard on Republicans here in this monologue, but what about the Democrats, soccer? Yeah, I mean, I've got bad news for you. It's just as bad over there, too. Consider the Virginia gubernatorial election that's happening right now. We talked a lot about it. Terry McAuliffe in the tight race

with Glenn Youngkin. Well, we told you about how Terry McAuliffe is saying that Glenn Youngkin is a Trump style candidate and it might sound dumb. Shouldn't he talk about policy? Well, it turns out people don't care about that at all. A recent survey of Democrats early voting in Fairfax, Virginia found that not one person who was voting for Terry McAuliffe gave a policy reason. To a T. They all said the same thing. They hated Trump. And since Trump was for Glenn Youngkin, they were against Glenn Youngkin. After all the hullabaloo about critical race theory in schools and vaccine mandates and more,

it all comes down to Trump. You guessed it. What about Gavin Newsom? It really does defy logic that a man who let his state devolve into Mad Max-level territory and openly defy his own rules would popularly be affirmed by the people of the state of California. How the hell does that happen? And you already know the answer. All Gavin Newsom had to say was that Larry Elder was tied to Trump. He played a photo of Larry Elder and Trump together on loop.

He played clips of Larry Elder once saying Trump was, quote, God-sent. And in the end, Gavin basically won around the same percentage of the vote that he did in his last election. Because when it came down to it, Californians would rather live in squalor than have somebody who was tied to the Trumpian buffoon. This is the problem with Trump.

He lets everybody off the hook. You could be a CEO. You know, Black Lives Matter. I'm against Trump. You could treat your workers like crap. You could ship jobs overseas. You can amass billions of dollars in wealth. Many people, about half the population,

will not care because he said the most important part. You're against Trump. Or you can be a Republican who makes Stop the Steal the single most important part of your election campaign. And meanwhile, you can do the bidding of that CEO I just mentioned for campaign donations. And guess what? Nobody will punish you because you stood with Trump on the only issue that matters to him. If you care about issues in any way, Trump is probably the single worst thing that could happen to our politics.

But here's the thing. I'm not naive. I think we deserve exactly the thing. I'm not naive. I think we deserve exactly the problems that I'm laying out. We have allowed ourselves to become sclerotic, useless, lazy, and low IQ in our public discourse. And I cannot think of a better way to reward us for our sins than for Donald Trump to come back and do it all again. God help us, I guess. So there it is, Crystal. How good is that Fairfax thing? I mean, Fairfax early board. Yeah, every single one of them. Thank you guys so much for watching.

We really appreciate it. If you want to watch that full interview, we give our premium subscribers two full long-form interviews a month. That's one of the many benefits. But really what it is, is look, you guys help us keep the lights on here. Given the wild fluctuations on what gets monetized,

doesn't get monetized on YouTube, prioritizing the algorithm, the only thing that we can rely on is you guys. That's why we are able to put on the show every single day that we want to. I already know that Epstein one is probably not gonna make it. The Don Lemon one probably isn't either.

And the only way that we can make sure that we cover the news in exactly the way that we need to exactly for you is with your support to maintain 100% independence. So thank you all very much. And we have a lot of benefits, show an hour early, long form interviews and all that, but this is really what it's all about. Yeah. Love you guys so much. Have a great day. We'll be back here with a full show tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the show, guys.

We really appreciate it. To help other people find the show, go ahead and leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps other people find the show. As always, a special thank you to Supercast for powering our premium membership. If you want to find out more, go to crystalandsauger.com. DNA test proves he is not the father.

Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son.

But I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars. Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest runningrunning weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.

Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually

at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to Voice Over on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.