Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/21/21: Welfare Proposals, Tax Policy, Trump's Next Move, Airlines Backdown, Rogan vs CNN, Kill the Bill, Marriage Disparity, College Football, and More!

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

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What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Lots and lots of movement on the Democratic agenda. The White House now has some fairly concrete proposals, pushback from Kyrsten Sinema. The whole thing, I'm just going to be real with you, it is a dog's breakfast. It is a mess. There is very little that's redeeming about it, but we want to go through all of the details, both on the spending side and on the revenue side. According to Donald Trump, your favorite president has a new social media platform

called Truth. A lot that's very interesting about that. We'll get into what maybe it says about his future plans and all of that good stuff. Southwest Airlines kind of backing down on their vaccination policy. So we'll get to that. Joe Rogan has now responded to the Don Lemon response of his interview with Sanjay Gupta. So we'll tell you what he said. We also have a couple of folks on who are trying to unionize college athletes, specifically football players. Very interesting effort there. So we'll talk to them.

But we wanted to start with some of the details of the Build Back Better plan. I want to kill myself every time I say that. But let's go ahead and throw this Jeff Stein tweet up on the screen. So the White House has now gotten much more involved in the negotiations. They are saying top line number, which remember, originally six trillion, then it was brought down to three and a half. Now they're saying, OK, somewhere south of one point9. 1.9 trillion is now the maximum. Of course, Joe Manchin had wanted 1.5. So much, much closer to what he and the other corporatists wanted than what Biden wanted or what the progressives want. We told you before that Manchin had basically said no to the key core of the climate provisions, which was effectively a renewable energy standard,

that's out. Replacement unclear. We know the dollar amount is quite low. So whatever they're doing on climate is effectively peanuts. The child tax credit, they may extend it for one year. Sort of pathetic. Community college, which we had been told was actually a key priority of both the president and the first lady, that's gone. Replaced by some scholarships. Pathetic. SALT still being negotiated. Actually, that's back in from what I hear. That's still on the table, guys.

This tweet says SALT is out, but that's actually not quite accurate. SALT's still potentially on the table in terms of making sure that rich people get their tax cuts. Pre-K, universal pre-K, this one is actually good, is still in. Child care is still in. Hold that thought for a moment because there's some big problems with the program there. Big cuts to housing, elder care. They're saying they want to go forward with the Medicare benefit extension, that's expansion, that's dental vision hearing. But the money that

they're saying would go to that is not sufficient to actually do that. The other health care programs, including, I checked with Jeff Stein directly on this because none of the articles I was reading mentioned the Medicare prescription drug pricing negotiation. That appears to be probably out. Very tenuous. There are a number of senators, not just the ones who have, you know, made a business of being obnoxious in front of cameras on this stuff. But there are a number of other senators who take a lot of money from Big Pharma who are standing in the way of that extraordinarily popular proposal that Democrats have promised for more than a decade and which has about 80 some percent support. So the bottom line is this proposal sucks. There's very little in it to like.

Even if you the one thing that progressives said that they had to have, you know, they said no climate, no deal. That was the one thing they were actually clear about. Very, very little climate provisions here and honestly, very little to get excited about in this entire package. What I think is hilarious is all of the stuff getting put out. You know, we broke this morning from the Wall Street Journal, Crystal, that the community college provision was killed by whom? The four-year college degree industry. They lobbied hard against community college. Why? Because that would disrupt their corrupt pipeline to bilk people out of tens of thousands of dollars by applying to the four-year

college degree industry. And we're about to get to some even more of this stuff in the taxes segment. You guys really aren't going to believe. I do think that it really has everything. That the only thing that was out and is now back in is SALT, because there are dozens of members from the Northeast who are going to bat for SALT and say, we will not vote for this package, period, unless it includes a SALT deduction. Once again, in order to reiterate for all of you, the SALT deduction, the state and local tax deduction, was taken out by the GOP tax bill. They want to go ahead and bring it back. It is overwhelmingly, 90% of its benefit goes to people who make over $1 million a year. There's no way to spin it. It is a tax cut for the rich. In fact, given the previously meager

tax increases on people who make a couple hundred thousand dollars, and we will also get to whether that even is going to continue, those people would actually not pay anything more under the original Biden tax plan because of the SALT thing. Some of them would get a tax cut overall. Actually, Crystal, if they don't raise taxes, which we'll talk about in the next segment, they will be getting a massive tax cut if this does go ahead and put into place hundreds of thousands of dollars in the level. But I think it's important that we focus on the part which will actually impact people's lives. And they are screwing around with child care in pretty much the exact same way they did

with Obamacare for middle class Americans. People's child care prices under this would almost certainly rise by thousands of dollars. Right. So let me explain this part and we can put Matt Brunig has been the one, the analyst who's on the left. Right. I mean, this is a guy who wants to see child care be affordable and thinks that they should go a lot further in what they're doing here. So Brunig points out, OK, what the bill says right now is they are lifting the pay of child care workers, which is really important because child care workers are dramatically, dramatically underpaid. And so they definitely deserve a raise. There's no doubt about it. But then where is the money going to come from on the other side to pay for this raise?

Well, the thing that makes sense is for the government to kind of fill the gap so that consumers can afford and workers can afford childcare for their kids. So if they want to work, they're able to work. And so childcare workers can themselves earn a living wage and earn a decent salary for taking care of all of our kids. That's what makes sense. Well, they do that at the low end of the income spectrum. But if you are a middle class worker and your income is $1 above the levels they set here, you are likely to see a dramatic increase in your child care costs to the tune of somewhere around $13,000 a year. And just to give you a sense here of some of the numbers that we're talking about, the Democrat child care proposal mandates higher wages for child care workers but then does not follow through on the public subsidies for all families. The result will be a massive increase in child care fees for families with incomes slightly above their state's median income.

Oh, my gosh. So the national median income, and this, again, this is all set state by state. So whatever your state's median income is, if you're a dollar above that, $13,000 a year more in childcare. I think the national median income is like $67,000 a year. So you're not talking about wealthy people here. These are, this is the core of the middle class. Now, I mean the upper middle class. So, you know, it's another perfect example where because they want to means test and they want to save money and they have to make it so freaking complicated, number one, that it's hard to understand. And number two, you're hurting a lot of people who, you know, are going to be, this is going to be dramatically unpopular with a lot of people. And more importantly, it's going to put them in a really bad place. I just looked,

I mean, in one of the highest cost states in the United States, in New York, the household income there is $63,998. So probably, you know, $10,000, $15,000 or whatever lower in like Kansas, Nebraska or somewhere. But these are not rich folks we're talking about. And again, I'm talking about household income, not individual income. Josh Barrow put this particularly well, and that's why I look at this just purely as Obamacare once again. relying on states as partners, assume a design that intentionally adds costs, won't hit families. And as we're pointing out, the design absolutely would increase that cost. If you like your child care provider, it does not look like it will be able to keep that child care provider. And Crystal, I don't think it takes a genius to say $13,000 in increase per cost of after-tax income is what, almost a fifth of what these people are making already?

Actually, no, on the after-tax side, even much, much more. And so when you consider how much of an increase that would be for a lot of these people, it would actually almost conversely probably lead to women dropping out of the workforce. That's exactly right. I'm almost certain, right? If your price is going to go up $13,000, that could erase somebody who's making $25,000 a year in pre-tax income or something like that. And then after you consider the cost, you're just going to say, I might as well just not work. So congratulations, I guess.

And there's this weird dynamic where then if mom drops out of the workforce and they're earning less money, then they fall below the median. Then they could afford child care, but then if she goes back to work, then they're making too much and they can't afford it. These are like the original welfare penalties. Look, I don't want to pick, there are other, the universal pre-K proposal here is actually good. It's the one thing that you can look at and say, okay, that would be a good thing. But, you know, it all comes back to a number of incredibly dumb strategic and tactical mistakes. Number one, by deciding to do this all through reconciliation. Number one, there's been incredibly little explanation, conversation,

or pressure put on anyone around the specific proposals here, which are really popular, each of them individually on their own. People look at this and it's just like, you know, it's just a bunch of a package of stuff. And it's hard to like really dig into the details and feel the impact of what each of these proposals would actually look like. So that's been a disaster. That's allowed Manchin and Sinema and all the other bad actors in this to effectively make this about the top line number rather than the actual specifics of the bill. So that's been a disaster. Of course, the other thing that's been a disaster, part of why

this is all hamstrung right now is because they decided to separate the thing that business does want, which is the infrastructure package, from the thing that business doesn't want, which is the social welfare spending. The minute that they pulled those two things apart, they made this whole package much, much more vulnerable. And yes, they had this, you know, complicated legislative maneuver to try to keep the two things glued together. But that created a real vulnerability here for the entire package. And the other thing that I'll say that was a dramatic mistake is Biden wanted to get this bipartisan win. That's why they stripped out the infrastructure pieces and had them on their own, which is, again, the part that the business community actually wants. There's a bunch of goodies in there for them, a bunch of public-private

partnerships that they'll profit off of. And so he was obsessed with this whole idea of can I get 10 Republicans to vote for my thing? And that wasted a lot of time and a lot of momentum. So much of a presidency is about getting done what you can in the first 100 days. And instead, because they had to have these long, drawn-out negotiations around the infrastructure package and trying to figure out what Republicans could possibly support. It's dragged on months and months and months. Meanwhile, Biden, of course, is sinking in the polls. I mean, to levels that were not seen since Trump, and he ain't got the same enthusiasm. There's a new poll that says Trump has higher approval rating than Biden right now. So that's where we are, and that's in part because they

have allowed this thing to linger for so, so many months. It's a mess. That's the bottom line. It's a total mess. It's possibly worse than Obamacare in terms of how it would actually work out politically. And look, just ask yourself, is there any reason why you think right now that this bill needs to pass? Go and ask people around you. Honestly, people were more invested in the Obamacare one than they are in this. Nobody knows what's actually in this bill. Everybody thinks it's like some weird stuff going on in DC, 1.6, 1.9. I don't really understand. Bottom line is, it looks like if you rely on childcare, which they've been pushing now for a long time, price actually might go up for you. I just think politically, it's a total and complete disaster.

Meanwhile, I mean, you've got all the coronavirus approval rating that Biden has is just going dramatically down. His independent number today is at 28%, 28%, a group that he won in the high 50s whenever he ran for, whenever he won the presidency in 2020. And that's from a very high quality poll. Yeah. I think on on Monday we'll do a whole set, because we've had now, I think, six, seven different polls that came out with the same thing. Look, I mean, you should look at the average, and in the average amongst the independents,

it's an average of around a 20% to 30% drop. And I don't think that it's an accident that they're focusing on this stuff. Meanwhile, people are wondering what the hell is going on with corona and more. It's a nightmare. I mean, I guess, should we move on to taxes? Yeah, I do want to. Because people should be explained. I do want to move on to the taxes piece.

I want to emphasize what you said about Obamacare. Because part of why people were invested in that is because it was one thing. It was health care. Oh, the pre-existing conditions. It was health care. People could understand that. People could understand, okay, this is a debate about health care. What's my health care?

Is the price going to go up? Is the price going to go down? Is it going to be? Like, it was about health care. What's my health care? Is the price going to go up? Is the price going to go down? Is there going to be, like, it was about one thing. When you have a debate about 50 things, it's kind of hard to wrap your head around what your vested interests are in all of it. And you've got, of course, you know, predictably the media is terrible at covering these sorts of things as well. But it's not just a media failure. It is a dramatic Democratic Party failure and should definitely be seen as such. Speaking of failure, taxes. So we covered for you

that's basically the social welfare part. And that's the part that, honestly, even though some of these pieces are still moving, is more fully formed. The pay-fors are sort of right now like, eh, who knows? It could be anything. It's that shrug emoji. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. The latest from our good friend Kyrsten Sinema is that, let's throw this Wall Street Journal tear sheet up on the screen. You got to love this. So, and by love this, I mean hate it. Sinema's opposition stymies Democrats' planned tax rate increases. Let me read you from this piece. It says, Senator Kyrsten Sinema has previously told lobbyists that she is opposed

to any increase in the top tax rates, either for individuals or for corporations. That's according to a person familiar with her remarks, but her stance is now pushing Democrats to plan more seriously for a bill that does not include those major revenue increases. So I love how she is. This didn't even come from like her age. It didn't come from the Democratic Party. She's not leaking it to the press. The people she's talking to about this, it's not her constituents, certainly. It's not you guys. It's lobbyists. That's how we're getting insights into how Kyrsten Sinema is going to the mat to make sure that high income, high wealth individuals, high income individuals and corporations don't pay any higher rates of taxes. It just really pisses me off, Crystal, when we talk about this, not even about this, but in the entire design of the plan from the very beginning,

this has been a total blank check for the billionaire class and it's actually what's great about this is some of you who followed us for a while might remember there's a billionaire I have a feud with Clifford asked miss he's a hedge fund manager he's a big libertarian among us doesn't have a feud with he made it out on his own even though he takes a lot takes nice tax breaks from the state of Connecticut for his fake hedge fund business. Don't sue me, Cliff. Allegedly fake hedge fund business where he conjures money up out of nothing.

But I got to be honest, the billionaire himself writing in The Wall Street Journal, kind of calling it like it is. Let's put this up there on the screen. I find it remarkable for how he's willing to just say the quiet part out loud. His headline is Biden's real tax target isn't the super rich. His plan would socket to the, quote, working rich whose taxes are already high, not billionaire investors. He points to by working rich doctors, lawyers, other high income professionals. I'm not standing for those people whatsoever. But here it is from the horse's mouth that this billionaire is saying Biden's tax plan isn't going to do a damn thing in order to touch me. And you can see clear as day that the

billionaire tax rates, nothing. They're not being touched whatsoever. Those making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, like doctors and lawyers, yeah, their taxes would possibly go up. But Sinema says, no, not whatsoever. Now, Biden, after the Sinema thing, has apparently been floating a possible increase in trying to go after these people. Let's put this up there on the screen where Biden aides are now pitching taxes on billionaires and stock buybacks and a higher corporate rate has appeared to fall out of the economic package. But here's the thing. I already went back and checked. Joe Manchin has already said he will only abide by a couple of percentage increase in the corporate tax rate. What do we already know about the corporate tax rate? Most corporations don't pay it almost whatsoever. It's basically a fake rate given the amount of exemptions and write-offs and all these other people have.

I believe Amazon at one point paid 0%. Or actually, GE, I believe, was paid by the government in terms of its tax rates. Just to give you an idea of how this stuff works. Yeah, very, very fair system. Meanwhile, people have to pay exorbitant amounts of payroll taxes when they make like $10,000 a year. But you check this out. What do we also know, which is that included in that, where he's talking about the tax on billionaires, what they're talking about is capital gains. What did Kyr all held in equities. Step-up basis, the carried interest loophole, and the capital gains tax

rate. You don't touch those three, the richest people in America, the top 0.1%, they won't pay a dime. And Cliff is saying it out in the open. He's like, look, you're not taxing me. You're not touching me. And he's exactly right. So by the way, you guys remember that $600 proposal? Well, now it's still $10,000. But $10,000, if you consider inflows and outflows, is still below the average poverty wage of what people make in this country, which means that the IRS, under that proposal to increase the inflow-outflow reporting mechanism to 10,000, would still be able to target bartenders, handymen, people who are 1099 contractors, people who do freelance work, and all of that. And they can look exactly what's in the bank account, and they can look at what people are reporting. Now, I'm not saying people shouldn't

pay their taxes, but I would just say whenever it comes to enforcement, maybe we go after the billionaires who don't pay any of their taxes as opposed to the handyman guys. Way more complicated, way more litigious. Yes. And so, look, I don't think it's that like the IRS is dying to only go after low-hanging fruit, but they've been starved of resources to the point where – Well, it's easy, right? Yeah, that's what they're able to do at this point. It's not that they don't have the legal tools to be able to audit wealthy people. They just don't have the resources or potentially the technical expertise

to be able to do it. Just to back up for a second on this taxes piece, because I think this is actually really important, and it can get a little bit fuzzy and a little bit complicated. I'm not crying for the quote-unquote working rich, as Cliff puts it here. No, nobody is, yeah. But he is correct to point out that effectively when you're increasing, when you're talking about increasing just the marginal tax rate, you are leaving the billionaire class untouched completely. The biggest thing that they use, the biggest potential loophole in the entire system is the step-up basis thing. And we've explained it here a couple of times, so just to go over it again because it is a little bit technical and a little bit complicated. What a lot of folks do, and it's been reported that Elon Musk is one example of a person who does it, but it's not just Elon. It's very common practice among the

ultra-rich, is rather than certainly taking an income or rather than selling the stock or whatever asset they own, they'll borrow against that asset for the course of their lifetime. That way, they're not actually realizing a gain. They don't even have to pay capital gains tax, but they don't pay anything on it. Then when they die, they leave it to their heir. And that is when the step-up basis comes into play. Their heir is able to recognize that asset at the new level without having taxes on any of the increase in value of the asset over the course of the lifetime. So that stock that appreciated and appreciated that Tesla stock or whatever it is over the course of Elon Musk's life, that is never taxed, never taxed. It's just lost.

And so that's why they were thinking originally of going after this step-up basis thing. And when that fell out and people like Claire McCaskill and others were some of the villains getting paid to make sure that this particular way of targeting billionaires fell out, that left very little in the way of impact that would – things that would actually impact the billionaire class. So that's what he's pointing out. Now, where do we stand today? It's hard to say. I mean, cinema's now saying, I don't want to raise the top rate at all. The step-up basis and these other things that I would like to see have already been sort of shot down.

Carried interest loophole, maybe. I did see a hilarious item that Reverendend al sharpton yes is arguing against closing the carried interest loophole which only benefits wall street ghouls because it will quote hurt black business people trying to build wealth so using identity to stand for like the richest people in the country incredible classic. Classic. Incredible classic stuff. The latest, latest, latest, according to Jeff Stein, is if Sinema ruled out those other things, they're looking at maybe a corporate minimum tax

so that you wouldn't at least have a situation where GE or Amazon or whoever isn't paying anything in taxes whatsoever. And that's apparently something that has pretty broad support. Even Republicans feel like, you know, these corporations probably should paying anything in taxes whatsoever. And that's apparently something that has pretty broad support. Even Republicans feel like, you know, these corporations probably should pay something in taxes. So that's kind of the latest, but it's all very, very uncertain.

And how much can you get from that? Also don't know. Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath. I think it's a perfect example of if anything does go into this thing, I bet you that $10,000 one will actually, you know, the inflows and outflows that will increase tax audits on the poorest Americans, that one will get in there. Every single other one, oh, yeah, this interest group, no. This interest group, no. At the end of this thing, I bet you what will happen is that that IRS proposal will be included.

There's no way they're going to pass something without salt, which means there is almost certain to be a massive tax cut for the rich in this bill without touching any of the billionaires, possibly a modest increase in the corporate tax rate. I think it's a total carbon tax, too. Well, Manchin shot it down. He said, quote, there is no discussion of a carbon tax. Well, thank you. Thank you, Joe. So anyway, it's a mess. 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.

Let's get to this Trump social media. This broke late last night. We had to hurriedly edit the show. I saw it. I was like, we've got to bring it to everybody. The time is here, ladies and gentlemen. Former President Donald Trump is launching a new media company. Let's put this up there on the screen. It is called Trump Media and Technology Group, TMTG. Part of the release is right there. There will be a social media component of it called Truth Capitals Social, and the website has TMTG News listed as its brand. Let me read here.

Trump Media and Technology Group Digital World Acquisition Corp has entered into a definitive merger agreement for a combination that will result in the Trump Media and Technology Group with an enterprise value of $875 million, increasing to a cumulative valuation of $1.7 billion. TMTG will soon be launching a social network named Truth Social. Truth Social is now available for pre-order in the Apple App Store. Truth Social plans to begin its launch for invited guests in November of 2021, and a nationwide rollout is expected in the first quarter of 2022. Anybody who wants can go to truthsocial.com to sign up for the invite list.

And President Donald J. Trump, he's the chairman of TMTG, said, quote, I created Truth Social and TMTG to stand up to the tyranny of big tech. We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American president has been silenced. I mean, look, he does have a point. He's right about that. He's got a point there. This is unacceptable. I am excited to send out my first truth on Truth Social. So it looks like truths will be like tweets on Truth Social very soon. TMGT was founded with a mission to give a voice to all. So we can see there that they've got Truth Social, TMTG+. What they're teasing there for TMTG+, is a subscription video service.

So I guess Trump is technically now a competitor of ours. Well, there you go. Very interesting. And TMTG News. You know, I have a lot of interesting thoughts on this. Number one is, does this mean he's going to run again for president? There was a lot of discussion which, look, this is going to make Trump fantastically wealthy even more so than he already is. I have no doubt that how many, I mean, millions of people will sign up in order to, for his subscription video platform.

You just think about, you know, millions. Look at Netflix. It doesn't take that many people to take people paying $10 a month or whatever to become fantastically wealthy when we're talking about millions and millions of people. And something like this doesn't take, a technology platform like this doesn't take that much money to run either. There's not that much in the way of overhead costs. You're not producing a good or anything like that. Exactly. It's 2021 with, I guess they can't use Amazon Web Services, but with a server company or whatever and a basic platform UI in order to have some sort of Twitter-like functionality. I mean, we have Gab, we've got Parler, we've got all these other ones out there.

I don't think it would be that hard for him to step up. It's not a surprise here that this is structured as an SPAC, for what people know. It's a way in order to go public while still having private investors and not having to IPO. And you can actually hide some of who the money is behind this stuff. I actually would love, yeah, I mean, I'm sure every journalist or whatever is going to pour over the filings. I'm really curious to see who is financing this thing, to see how much of his own money is in it. But the main question is on the politics of it. I mean, if he's going to be running this business, and I guarantee you he's going to be making a ton of money from it, does that mean that he would want to run again for president? And I saw takes kind of flying around every which way, which is one was that, look, this sets him up for true comfort. I'm not saying he

wasn't like a poor man or whatever, but anybody who's ever been in the real estate business knows, you know, one thing is always depreciating, selling or whatever. It's always complicated. You're never really liquid. This is going to generate a lot of cash for Trump. But second is, would he really dedicate himself to trying to form his own social media network before running for president and thinking that that would be a viable? Because one of the things that you and I always pointed to was in the early days, Trump's advisors were all behind the scenes saying, we cannot run for president if we're not back on Facebook. They're like, we just can't do it. They're like, if we are not on Facebook, we will not be able to raise the money that we need. Same with Twitter. We needed social media. Social media was key to Trump's win in 2016. It was key

to the multi-million dollar juggernaut that he generated throughout the campaign. His team, to his credit, were very, very good at raising money. YouTube as well. I remember our channel used to get so many Trump ads. And what's fascinating on all of that is if they're abandoning it and effectively going to, I'm not going to call it the ghetto because it'll have millions of users, but look, it's not Twitter, it's not Facebook. It won't have the billions in order call it the ghetto because it'll have millions of users, but look, it's not Twitter, it's not Facebook. It won't have the billions in order to spread the reach. Is that a kind of, you know, white flag of we're going to make our money and we're probably not going to run for president again?

You can read a lot of different ways into it, but it is pretty fascinating. It does. In that way, it could be seen as a kind of a capitulation. Yeah, in a way. In a certain way, because, yeah, they behind the scenes believe Facebook was absolutely instrumental to both campaigns. And they used it way more aggressively and put way more money into Facebook in particular than their opponents did. There's another thing that's interesting here. First of all, let's say when this news first came out, I kind of rolled my eyes because he did that, like, you know, embarrassing effort at his own social media platform before

that was just like a blog, basically. Oh, right, yeah. We shut down. Yeah, which they shut down because it was totally ineffective. Nobody was paying attention to what he was saying there. But this is a much more

sort of fully formed and serious effort, it would seem. To your point about it's not going to have the reach that he did on Twitter, I mean, partly, look, the reality is on Twitter, you have every elite is on the platform. And so what he would say there, they couldn't avoid, they engaged with a lot, they covered, It became news, all of that stuff. And we've already seen that with him off of Twitter, even as he's putting out his statements

and whatever, it just doesn't generate the same amount of elite freak out as it did when he was on Twitter. And I would believe that would continue to be the case on Truth because, you know, right now every journalist in D.C. is on Twitter. I don't think every journalist in D.C. is going to ultimately get on truth. Well, they might only to report on what Trump is saying, but it won't be part of the same zeitgeist. It's not the same. It's not the same deal. It's not the same ecosystem. The other thing that I just have to mention here, which is hilarious, is, of course, this is all pitches like, oh, this is the free speech platform, etc. Apparently, one of the

rules of the platform is you're not allowed to disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and or the site. Us. So, one of the us's would be Trump. He's the chairman of the company. So, apparently,

I mean, in that way, Twitter is wildly more free. You can certainly criticize Jack on there. People do it all the time. Yeah, I know. You can criticize the platform itself. People also do that all the time. So it's just very revealing to me. It reminded me of my favorite moment when Mike Lindell was announcing his free speech platform.

And he's like, free speech, but no cursing, no taking the Lord's name in vain, no pornography, et cetera, et cetera. It just reveals that what they mean by free speech is we get to control what things are censored and what things aren't. It's a battle over really like who gets to control the space. They aren't actually committed to quote unquote free speech principles as evidenced by the fact that you're apparently not allowed to criticize the former president on the site. I would not say that that qualifies as free speech. I will say, you know who should be worried as hell about this? Fox Nation and a lot of these other subscription services on the right. There have been a lot of pro-Trump personalities who have been raking in a lot of money in cash,

kind of basically grifting off of his name. And, you know, I think everybody knows who I'm talking about. But if you go and you consider all of the ways that Fox and radio companies, websites and others have been able to bundle kind of like pro-Trump sentiment into media, well, Trump is cutting out the middlemen. One of the things he hates most is people profiting off of his name. So he's like, hey, you should pay me. Actually being Trump. So this is the fascinating thing. I mean, I'm already thinking there are so many, you know, right wing radio hosts and more, which, you know, they're super pro Trump. All their money and audience and all that comes from Trump. What's going to happen in a world when Trump himself becomes the person who owns the company, right?

So if you think about it, that means that, you know, Cumulus Radio, they employ like Bongino or somebody. I mean, what's going to happen? I mean, Bongino has this deal with Cumulus. I know he's thinking about quitting or whatever because of the vaccine mandate. But if you think about that and then Trump himself, A, who is he going to hire? Most of the people who are the biggest pro-Trump personalities already work at Daily Wire or, you know, Daily Wire or Cumulus or Fox or Fox Nation or whatever. Maybe they have their own podcast. He's going to have either trouble buying out those personalities and then starting his own or he could just hire his own and make his the official one,

which would put them effectively out of business. I'm thinking just this because I come from the conservative media background. I mean, this is actually, from a business perspective, a seismic event. If I'm Fox, Fox Digital, or any of these people, I would be worried as hell. This is a direct threat and competitor to Fox News Corporation. Especially because we know, because we follow stuff too, it's not just liberal media that has suffered in the Biden era. Oh, yeah, the Fox people. Conservative media, it's all down across the board. So they've already taken a huge hit in terms of views and clicks and revenue and all of that.

So when you then layer on top of that, now we're just like a pale imitation of pro-Trump as compared to actually being Donald Trump. Yeah, it's like, how do you compete whenever Trump himself is the person who's got his own thing? And your whole identity isn't about an ideology or a value system or whatever. It's just a personality. It's just about shilling for this one man. So it does make it kind of complicated for them, I really feel for them. Yeah, I'm telling you, two years from now, three years from now,

I bet there's going to be a lot of conservative media organizations going out of business. This is going to be a big, big, big thing. I think Trump, I hate to say it, but TMTG is going to be a very successful product. I guarantee it. Successful financially. Yeah, financially. Politically, if your goal, to bring a full circle, if your goal is to run for president and win again, this is not a smart move. Doesn't look like it at all. Could be one of the little indicators that he may not be running again. But hey, who knows?

We'll see. Okay, let's move on. This is a really fascinating thing on the lines. There was a lot of discussion around Southwest Airlines, whether there was a sick out or not. There was contravening evidence kind of in both directions. But I do have to say, the fact that Southwest's new announcement does look like the sick out may have been part of some of the flight shortage and what we were seeing. Let's put this up there on the screen from CNBC. So Southwest has actually dropped its plan to put unvaccinated staff on unpaid leave starting in December. This was

really tough for them, Crystal, because as we know, Southwest was a federal government contractor and contractors were subject by the Biden administration's vaccine mandate in order to either get vaccinated or not. The airlines, the order that required them to get vaccinated or receive an exemption for medical or religious reasons. So they scrapped the plan there, but they have not yet received the religious or medical exemption as of the federal deadline in December. What it looks like is that there seems to be some sort of negotiation happening. They already have an incredibly high vaccination rate amongst their pilots. We don't know the exact Southwest one, but we do know, and I'm about to get to this, with Delta Airlines. But it is interesting that Southwest and Delta have both taken away their kind of punitive measures, given that they have overwhelmingly high vaccination rates.

We saw that with United Airlines staffers. I think it was like 98%. I mean, at the end of the day, the amount of people who were terminated for not being vaccinated was like 235, something like, you know, a rounding error in terms of what the actual numbers of staffers were. But whenever it comes to pilots, it does look like, like I said, I mean, whether you believe Southwest or not, that it was weather or, you know, right wing, what have you, believe it's entirely a sick out. It does seem there was a big confluence of events that there was enough of an organic

pushback that two of the airlines are taking away the punitive measures for not getting the vaccine on, even though they do have 90 plus percent vaccination rates amongst their pilots. It's also worth noting here, there's a distinction. So federal government contractors are subject to a more stringent vaccine. It's an actual mandate. Whereas, you know, what was announced for businesses with 100 people or more was vaccine or test. For federal government contractors, which these large airlines qualify as federal government contractors, you either have to get vaccinated or you have to offer some kind of legitimate medical or religious excuse. And so that's what Southwest is kind of leaning into. Like, all right,

guys, if y'all don't want to get vaccinated, you better come up with something good for us here in the next couple of weeks. And it's fairly unclear, at least as I read it, what will happen if ultimately you do end up with a group of employees who don't get vaccinated and they're not able to come up with anything approaching a sort of legitimate excuse, they leave it unsaid what's going to ultimately happen. But they're effectively sort of taking the pressure off, giving people more time, encouraging them to get their exemptions in and move forward with that process.

Because, you know, I mean, there's no doubt of whether the chaos was because of a sick out. There's no doubt that there have been protests. There's been a lawsuit filed by the pilots union. So there was certainly pushback within the organization. Absolutely. And, you know, that's just something I haven't seen the media acknowledge that one, you know, despite all the people putting up the Southwest Airlines CEO being like, it has nothing to do with it. I mean, I don't think that this, this announcement is going to follow that if it had nothing to do with it. We should also say, I saw that religious exemptions whenever it came to the COVID vaccine, it's complicated. So like right now, the Supreme Court actually just rejected a

challenge to the main COVID-19 vaccine mandate. And this was actually Justice Breyer who turned away a religious challenge to the requirement. Now, again, this isn't dealing away with religious exemptions, the religious challenge to the idea of the main mandate itself. But it is an indicator that these types of things would not necessarily be enough in order to come all the way to the Supreme Court and strike down the national policy. There are no major religions that have said that the vaccine is against my religion. Actually, if anything, frankly, they've been encouraging. Yeah, exactly.

So it makes it a little bit challenging to come up with a sincere religious objection when every major religion in the country is in support of getting people vaccinated. Look, obviously, there's different views. Sure. I'm sure there's somebody out there, but yes. And so you put this together with the Delta Airlines CEO. Let's put this one up there. The Delta Airlines CEO, Ed Bastian, this was from a couple of days ago, but interesting when you pair them together,

he refuses to impose what he called the, quote, divisive vaccine mandate. But again, you know, it just strikes me, 90% of the staff of the pilots already have the vaccine. And because they, quote, work collaboratively with employers, they don't want them to threaten to be fired. And again, though, we really don't know yet how this is going to go ahead and be – we don't know how this is going to be interpreted, whether the exemptions are going to be able to go through. I was reading recently about religious exemptions and the COVID-19 vaccine. I mean, it's complicated because part of the problem was, is we saw an abuse of religious exemption whenever it came to the measles vaccine. And we saw these, oh yeah, I mean, this was a huge thing in New York state because, I mean, I'll just say it, there were a lot of Orthodox Jewish communities

who didn't want to get vaccinated. And there was a massive fight in New York about- You're talking about recently. Oh yeah. This was only a couple of years ago. I think we covered it actually on Rising with the, whenever we interviewed the Surgeon General, I remember, around religious exemptions because of large measles outbreaks that were happening. Once you have a critical mass of the population who's unvaccinated, it actually leads to the outbreak amongst children. It became a whole thing. And then New York State wanted to remove the religious exemption completely. It gets very, very dicey whenever it comes to religious freedom and all of that.

We see the same thing in Minnesota, I think, with the Somali-American population. Obviously in California as well. Colorado actually randomly has. And with them, it's more like the hippies. That's like a crunchy granola situation. Yeah, this is a horseshoe there. Well, it's just fascinating, right, because this will set up for possible challenges in court. We've seen the religious exemption challenge to the idea of a mandate itself has not yet gone through to the Supreme Court. And from the people I spoke to, they don't expect it to be there,

especially given that amongst private employers that they have the testing requirement, it seems to be that it's not going to be an all-out mandate or not. The problem is actually amongst these federal government contractors. But Southwest and Delta now giving their pilots some time in order to try and get their affairs, not actually up or out, fire them, I think like United had. And that ultimately could result in a better equilibrium situation. I mean, look, they're 90-something percent vaccinated. You look at that, you also see that if they get their exemptions in, that would be roughly in line with the general population. But I do think it is interesting, and I don't think there was enough media coverage of the fact that, look, it was clear that the Southwest Airlines cancellations and more had not all to do but somewhat.

And again, the degree was to how much to do with the sick out or not. But the fact that they're going to come out and reverse their policy tells us that it was a contributing factor to that. And the fact that Delta also jumped in there, one of the big three, showed that there was at least some organic pushback. But to be clear, it's like 10%. It's not thousands and thousands of people. In a sense, what they're doing here, too, is kind of kicking the can down the road. Giving people more time to figure out their excuses, their exemptions, so that they can, if they're really adamantly opposed, can try to figure that out. And so the question is, you know, what comes next?

And the other question is how heavy handed in enforcement is the federal government going to do? Are they really going to fine you or whatever? If it really comes down to it and there's this kind of stalemate where the airlines are saying, hey, we got this unvaccinated population without an adequate exemption, but we're not going to fire them. I mean, is the federal government going to just look the other way? How does that all ultimately shake out? Hard to say. Yeah, we'll keep an eye on that one. Okay, let's go ahead and move on. This is our fun segment. We always believe we save the fun ones for the end.

Joe Rogan, we're listening to his latest episode with Michael Malice, and I'll try to make this as serious as possible. We discussed previously how Don Lemon dragged Dr. Sanjay Gupta on his show and publicly flogged him saying, no, no, no, Sanjay. We did not lie here on this program. We did not lie. It's not a lie to call ivermectin a horse dewormer. You know, it is used in some veterinary capacity. That's basically like saying anything that pets also take is a pet medicine. And I think we all know what's going on there. I thought it was a very, very ridiculous move for them to have Sanjay Gupta on, basically kind of publicly confront him, try to make him apologize, essentially, for saying that CNN had acted incorrectly.

And when he started to actually explain Joe's view, Don Lemon cuts him off so that he can't possibly even explain, like, well, here's the reality, and here's what might have been wrong on our network. So Joe responded to Don Lemon in the eloquent only way that Rogan can. Let's take a listen to what he said. Now, I do not know what the motivation for demonizing this particular medication is. Again, I'm not a doctor and I'm not a scientist. But I would imagine some of it has to do with money.

The reason being is that it is a generic drug now. The patent has run out. So anybody can make it. And it's worth like 30 cents a dose. Now, Merck has its own antiviral that's supposed to do the same thing that they claim ivermectin does, as does Pfizer. They're both about to release it. I don't know if that's why the FDA is making snarky tweets about it being veterinary medicine, but I do know that it was used for humans for fucking years before they ever started using it for animals. And I also do know

that there is a massive amount of medications that have veterinary applications, including penicillin. Well, Joe, it's like me calling Child Protective Services because my neighbor was feeding her baby cat food. And by cat food, I mean milk. Yeah. I mean, it's insane. It's insane.

Dogs take Xanax and all these other things. Wait a minute. Dogs take Xanax? Yeah. People have anxiety-ridden dogs? Of course. I guarantee it's the person. Or cats.

Yeah. Come over to my house. My dog just lays down. I know. I met Marshall. Yeah. He's a sweet. He doesn't need Xanax.

Because he's fucking. He's a dog. He's happy. He's chill. Yeah. Yeah. But. Actually, some people get rescue dogs.

I should take that back. Sure. Because I did have a dog that had anxiety because I got her when she was two. Or maybe it's an older dog gets a puppy and the dog doesn't know what to do. There's situations. Yeah. Yeah. That could be.

Yeah. But I don't think it's necessarily about the money so much. It's about obedience because they're the ones who are promulgating how everyone has to act. And then you have this guy from Austin over here, this comedian, telling people there was another way and the science isn't as settled. And all of a sudden, their sense of authority is diminished. Because when you have choices, that means that person who wants to be the one to go to no longer is the one who has all the answers. Well, this is what is so funny about that. They don't understand that when they say things that are absolutely untrue, it diminishes their authority. They're not even aware

of what they're doing. But they have an alternative. When Don Lemon goes on with Sanjay Gupta and says, actually, it really is a veterinary medicine. It really is deworming horses.

This was the lie. He goes, it's not a lie to say it's also used as horse medicine. That's not what you said. That's not what you said. That's not what you said. You didn't say this drug, which also is used for horses. Of what relevance is that?

It doesn't have any relevance. Exactly what you're talking about with penicillin and with a gigantic number of medicines that also have veterinary applications. But by doing that, you just prove my point. They don't even understand what they just did. You think it's going to end with you? See, because it used to be that way. They would say something, and no one would have recourse. Do you know what this is?

But when you're saying something, and then the person you're saying it about has literally ten times the audience you do. You dumb motherfucker. Do you know what you did? You just proved my point. I know. We had to include the dog thing in there. It was just funny. But I wanted to make sure everybody got the first part of what he was talking about and then the actual response there with Lemon. It is a great point. Exactly the one that we made here, which is, look,

in the distribution age of the internet, and especially in the age where Don Lemon gets like 400,000 people in the key, 400,000 people overall, in the key demo, what is it, probably like 100K? By the way, if we were getting that, we would both be on the street. So that gives you an idea of how much of a joke the actual viewership for these programs is. But as he's pointing to, when you have 10 times the audience, you can't say things which are not just lies. But whenever you try to cover up what you're saying, whenever you try in order to apologize or, sorry, to fudge the facts in a certain way and say, no, no, no, we didn't actually do this way. We have the internet now. There's not even just this show. I mean, we're bigger than Don Lemon, but, you know, broken as many mortars of magnitude larger than us. He can respond and to show and point out exactly what. And when you have enough people who are invested, which they clearly are, then it's just meaningless.

You know, it really is like Don Lemon still thinks it's 2002 and you can lie about the Iraq war with impunity and still survive. But they're in a bubble. It's a it's a whole new world out here, Don. They're in a bubble. First, let me say about ivermectin just to get all the caveats out there. It is at best unproven and at worst doesn't work. There is not evidence to support the idea that it is an effective treatment for COVID-19. So let's just put that out there. But all of his points about it being weirdly demonized, I also thought were really interesting. And I thought his guests made a good point there about, you know, sometimes it's not as simple as just, oh, it's about the money. It's also about power.

Yeah. and questioning the official line, that causes a reaction above and beyond just being able to say, oh, look, guys, here's the data. Here's what we found. You know, there are trials. It does work for river blindness and these other things, but we haven't found that it's worked here. And here's the, you know, the trials that are ongoing and we'll keep you abreast of the data. No, there has to be this whole like freak out and labeling it as horse dewormer exclusively. And yes, there has to be this whole, like, freak out and labeling it as horse dewormer exclusively. And yes, it has veterinary applications as well. So do a lot of other drugs. And yes, by the way, there also were people that went out because there was no ivermectin available to them and got the horse version.

And you should not do that, guys. It's not a good idea to do that. But that is not what Joe Rogan did. His doctor prescribed it. Yeah. He's like, I idea to do that. But that is not what Joe Rogan did. And so his doctor prescribed it. Yeah. He's like, I can afford people medication. So that is not what Joe Rogan did. And when you say that that is what Joe Rogan did, that's called a lie. So there's a lot there. I also think on the media piece, it is funny because they're in this bubble where it's not just that they look down their nose at Rogan or at us. I really genuinely think that they don't understand. No, they don't

understand at all. That there's a world outside of cable news that exists and is also much larger than what they're at this point, pathetically small audiences ultimately are. They don't have the control over the information and over the culture that they once did. And I don't think that there's been an adjustment to recognize that reality. I thought one of the most telling things in the exchange between Don Lemon and Sanjay Gupta is Lemon started off that exchange by saying, I know that interview was kind of tongue in cheek. Right. It's like, why would you say that?

Why do you, in an attempt to just diminish the whole thing? Like I know you just did this as some stupid lark. Well, what makes your interview not tongue in cheek? It's actually far more tongue in cheek in my, it's basically fake. You're both in weird boxes.

Right. It's much shorter versus like contrast that to the three-hour long conversation that they had, Sanjay and Joe, going back and forth on the data and that. What about this study? What about this instance? Let's look it up right now and let's talk about it and let's go through it. less tongue-in-cheek and much more serious attempt to get at the truth and help people weigh where their risks were and what is the right decision for themselves and their families and their lives than anything that you've seen ultimately on CNN. But I thought that very dismissive comment at the beginning from Lemon kind of said it

all about how clueless they are about their role at this point in the media ecosystem and about the fact that, yeah, if you say something that's just not true, that doesn't, to Joe's point, that doesn't improve your credibility. That doesn't help you make your point. That undermines your credibility, not just on this, but on every other news story. He said it very well to Sanjay, too. He was like, do you understand how when people see that and then they see what's happening in Syria, they go, I don't know about that. Or with Hunter Biden, he goes, how can I trust what you're saying on a variety of other subjects whenever I know that you lied about me and many other people know that you lied about me? And that's why, look, the flashpoint around this is very useful in

pointing out why do people have all-time low trust in media? Sorry, second all-time low, actually, according to the latest Gallup data. I went, I looked and relished. The Financial Times did a piece. I mean, all three of the cable networks are already back down to their 2015 levels of ratings. And it's just going to continue to crash, crash, crash. And what did we cover earlier in the show? The Trump social media network, which may mean he's not running again. They're screwed. If it's Biden versus like, even like Ron DeSantis, you know, good, good luck. Okay. In terms of trying to get people to pay attention the way that they did under Trump, Trump was the greatest thing that ever happened to them. He saved them for about five years, but without him, they're dead. All of them. And you know,

like I said, Trump social media, Trump's media network, that's going to cannibalize Fox. Um, for the other ones, I mean, they're just slowly losing out to the internet. Our show is already many, many multiples bigger than what the key audience demographics are for these mainstream media channels on their cables. And there's people who are way bigger than us. So when you consider all of that, their days are numbered. But we shouldn't exaggerate on one thing. They still have a stranglehold on power, right?

Like the people in power think that they matter. So they do matter, even if nobody watches them. Elites are still in the same bubble that Don Lemon is in. Exactly. They still imagine. That's why they didn't care. They still imagine that they have the cachet and have the audience levels and have the hold on the culture that they once did.

So because it's this elite group, it's actually interesting. This is the whole Morning Joe strategy was not to get the highest ratings, but to pitch to an elite audience and to become influential that way. And it worked. When I walk down my street in the morning, like 6 a.m. or something like that, all I see are Morning Joe TVs on in people's living rooms. Yeah. It's fascinating. Everybody around me works in politics on the Hill or like whatever. And I know that's not the case for most people. It's like, but it's always interesting to me.

I'm like, oh, this is what they watch. Like this is how they get their media. CNBC, it's the same strategy. Same thing. Very low ratings. Like not a lot of people have CNBC in the background all day, but they get extraordinarily high ad rates because the people who are watching are disproportionately wealthy.

So and that's where the money is. If you're selling a product, nobody else has any. So that strategy as a business model has worked for them, but it perpetuates the same, you know, just total insular bubble thinking where they think this little world that they exist in is the only thing that matters. Very true. 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, guys, as we discussed, we've now got some real

details on exactly what the White House wants in the final reconciliation package. And as I said before, there is just no way around it. This thing is a dog in nearly every way. So let's just go again through some of the details per Jeff Stein. First of all, overall price tag, maximum of $1.9 trillion and more likely in the $1.75 trillion range for those keeping score at home. That is more than $4 trillion less than the $6 trillion progressives ultimately wanted, but it does give you a pretty decent sense of what direction this package that has been proposed is ultimately tilted in. Critical programs are stripped down entirely or they're radically reduced. The child tax credit would only be extended for a year. In the middle of a pandemic, when voters routinely say that health care is their top priority, every health care proposal would be significantly scaled back. Now, progressives are holding on to the fact that expansion of Medicare benefits may be kept in. But even on that front, analysts are warning the numbers don't really add up,

and it might be dramatically underfunded. Biden even collapsed on what he said was one of his own top priorities. That's free community college. He told voters very recently that he was insisting on that provision being in the final package. So much for that. It is gone, replaced pathetically by some scholarships. But wait, there's much more here. Affordable housing money, slashed. Eldercare money, slashed. Paid leave, slashed. Prescription drug reform most likely is going to be out. Finally, and critically, the climate change provisions have been totally gutted. Manchin, as you know, rejected the renewable energy standard, which was at the core of the Biden climate proposal. Now, look, we have no idea what it's going to be replaced with, but we do know

whatever it's going to be is going to be small potatoes. They're only allocating $300 billion for whatever the climate piece ends up being. Now, look at this. As Ryan Grim put it, that dollar amount with no real way of tackling utility emissions is effectively climate denialism. Here's hoping Bill Gates figures out that whole dimming the sun thing, I guess. Now, there's a lot to say about all of this. The first and most pressing thing to say is that progressives must reject this proposal and be prepared to vote it down if it ultimately comes to that. It's not a close call, guys. Remember, the rallying cry of progressives throughout this whole process was no climate, no deal. And to their credit, up to this point, they have held the line. They won that first game of chicken

with corporatists. They forced everyone back to the negotiating table. If they cave now, when their only clear demand was gutted like a fish, they'll be betraying their supporters and they will never be taken seriously in D.C. again. But as I look at this proposal holistically, more important to them not being trusted again, it seems to me that this is really a generational betrayal. Because it's young people, once again, who got the worst end of this dog. You're denying them the chance to go to college without being saddled with crushing debt. You're denying them the ability to afford to raise a family. You're denying them the ability to inhabit a planet that isn't catastrophically careening towards disaster. You are once again

allowing corporations and those who already got theirs to rob the future from the young. Now, do I think progressives will actually vote this bill down? Not looking too good, guys. Pramila Jayapal, whose leadership I have praised up to this point, seems pleased as punch with this disastrous mess, outrageously claiming that, quote, all our priorities are there in some way, shape, or form. She also said this nauseating trash about Joe Biden. The president is the inspirer. He is the closer.

He is the convincer. The mediator in chief. He really is doing a phenomenal job. Are you kidding me? Corporations will get everything they want in this package. Oil and gas, they crush the climate provisions. Big pharma, they get to preserve a grotesquely inhumane status quo. And the proposals to actually tax large fortunes, those have already been tossed aside, remember? The entire corporate strategy was to avoid debates on the actual provisions of the bill, which are popular and which are desperately needed. Instead, they wanted to attack the price tag of the bill, getting the public only to focus

on the question of the top-line dollar amount and ultimately hack the bill down to something small, something toothless, and something perfectly comfortable for the polluters and for the powerful. Their strategy has been wildly successful. If corporate lobbyists could have written this bill, it would look something like the proposal that is being floated right now. It strikes me that there's also something really fundamental to our society that's at stake here, too. I don't think it's too grand a statement to say. The failure of multiple administrations to accomplish even the most basic and overwhelmingly popular reforms is an existential threat to the republic. Remember, Obama would always say,

don't boo vote. And people did. They voted for him in huge numbers. They voted for Biden in huge numbers, too, as turnout in the Trump era surged to extraordinary heights. And they haven't just voted. They've organized. They've marched. They've knocked on doors. They've sent money to politicians. They've called their members of Congress. They've told pollsters what their priorities are in no uncertain terms. Right now, today, you'll see workers in the streets on picket lines and quitting their jobs en masse, all a form of demanding much more. And yet all of it in our political process seems to come to not. We had the largest protest movement in history last summer. It didn't result in one single change at the federal level. Not one. 83% of Americans support Medicare drug price negotiations.

Democrats have been promising this basic, obvious reform since 2006. And yet it looks likely to fail yet again. Fight for 15 has transformed the conversation around the minimum wage, sparking mass support, even in states like Florida. Yet at the federal level, we have gone the longest time in the history of the program since the minimum wage was lifted. What are people supposed to do with this information?

With the knowledge that it doesn't matter what they do. Their desires and their priorities never move Congress. Now, we're already seeing where that leads, and it's nowhere good. Politics collapses down to culture war signaling. Nihilism sets in. The public either tunes everything out that's happening in D.C., or they vote for some reckless idiot like Trump in the hopes that maybe he's just crazy enough to actually do something different. Political violence escalates, rage building, despondency creeping. Politicians win by painting their opponents as an existential threat rather than, say, the strength of their vision and their ideas. Now, progressives obviously can't fix all of that right now in this moment, but at the very least, they can tell corporate America that they are not

getting their privatized infrastructure goodies until the American people get the bare minimum in return. At least make the ruling class pay a tiny cost for their very latest betrayal. And Sagar, signs are not good. They seem to be, I mean, it's just amazing. What was that tongue back? 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, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, it's pretty cliche at this point to say that COVID accelerated all the pre-existing trends in America. Richest in America got a lot richer during COVID. Our already polarized country became a lot more polarized. Our consumer society consumed at levels it never has before. Our 40-year-long dedication to globalization over being a serious country became much worse. And in that vein, new data about family formation, children, and the foundation for most people's lives is just as unsettling. Before the pandemic,

it was absolutely clear that marriage in America was becoming a luxury good. 2018 was the lowest marriage rate on record. And it's not that Americans didn't want to get married, it's that they reported that they simply could not afford to do so. The same held true for children. American women reported wanting up to 2.2 children on average, but they were only having around 1.7. The number one reason as to why they cited? It was cost. So what's going on here? Well, in crisis, where economic disparity was never more clear, what do you think happened? Fortunately, we have some data to actually see that. The Institute for Family Studies' new survey, it found that the most precipitous increases and decreases in getting married and having children after COVID is among the richest and the poorest

in America. Right now, interest in family formation in America is highest amongst the rich. The desire to marry actually increased 9% amongst higher income Americans who aren't married. Among those who are lower income, it's only 2%. For having kids, the number is even more stark. Among lower income Americans, the desire to have kids has dropped a net 11 points. For the higher income, it increased net 1%. This is particularly bad for a number of reasons. Chief among them is that COVID just accelerated and possibly ended one of the more interesting data points that we've always had when you look at family formation. Poorer Americans, and indeed poorer people across the

globe, despite not having the means necessarily, always have more kids than many other segments of society. Children were seen as both a safety net in older age, but also often for these people who sought more satisfaction in children than in material goods. With COVID, it seems that trend is beginning to decrease and childlessness is beginning to rise amongst the less educated, lower income Americans, with gas just poured on the fire. Look even further. You could say, okay, Sagar, who cares? We're just leaving aside that the civilization's most basic job is to replace itself. Maybe you'll recall, though, that other monologue I did on the crisis of American men. What stuck out most to me from reviewing the data on rising single male population of the United States is just how miserable it makes everyone. Declining

single male wages over the last 30 years have made many men in America much less desirable partners. This leads to less coupling. Less coupling that we know from the data leads to better economic fortunes for both people. It leads to educational attainment. It leads to better health outcomes for both partners. It leads to better self-reported happiness all across the board. But the forces in our society are pulling people away from this. Economically, it's actually never been harder than ever to get married. Take a look at this. Seriously. The average wedding cost in 2019, before the pandemic, was $28,000. $28,000. That is pre-tax income of about one-fourth of this entire country in the course of a year. The average wedding venue right now alone is $10,000. How about childbirth? Well,

in 2020, the average cost of childbirth for a person with employer-sponsored health insurance was $13,811. The out-of-pocket cost for an individual with employer-based healthcare is $1,000 to $2,500 per kid. But then consider the actual cost of raising a child. Right now, the average cost, average, through age 17 is $233,610, or an additional $13,000 per year, if you want to include college, that obviously exponentially increases. It is no wonder that in an economy where wages have stayed flat for 30 years that people don't want to have children. Now it may seem crass to discuss things in this way, but all the current evidence points to the fact that we have both had a cultural shift and an economic

one. But the problem is, we've been celebrating that cultural shift for so long, we ignored the economic drift. The problems of the 1950s are mostly dead. Women in America have been able to and continue to work at the levels that they choose to since the 1990s. And since the 90s, we've instead constructed an economic system which devalues wages and economic opportunity for middle class people of both genders, but especially the poor. The American dream was and is simple. If you work hard, you can have children

and get married and live in a moderately comfortable life in a setting that you choose. That could be where you grew up. It could be thousands of miles away. But that opportunity was supposed to be ubiquitous wherever you were. Instead, opportunity today is really only ubiquitous for the social group for whom the entire economy is structured, the richest people in America. The dream is alive for them precisely at the expense of the middle and the poorer classes. A common question I get when I discuss this is, Sagar, how do you even know this isn't an entirely cultural phenomenon? How much of this is even economic? I've got an easy way to find out. Let's remove the economic barriers to people and just see what happens. Joining us now, we have Jason Stahl.

He is the founder of the College Football Players Association. Great to have you, Jason. Welcome. Good to see you, Jason. Great to be here. Let's start with the most basic question. What is the College Football Players Association? Well, it was an organization I and others founded about two and a half months ago.

It sort of generated from an idea that college football players themselves had last summer. They were being asked to return to play in the midst of a pandemic, and they wanted to sort of organize their own organization. This idea fell by the wayside pretty quickly. I tried to basically keep it alive and well over the past year. Tried to partner with others to lead it. And then, yeah, about two and a half months ago, we launched it. It's an organization dedicated to health, safety, and welfare of college football players nationwide. Most importantly, we're trying to be a true membership players association. We're trying to get past, present, and future college football players on board as members to essentially use the institution as a collective voice to advocate for changes that they desire in college football throughout the United States.

So tell us a little bit about that, Jason. There was a court case here that we covered about college athletes, how they're being treated, unionization, and then tell us about the pushback that you've been receiving on the college end. Yeah, I mean, I think there's been a lot of things that have been favorable to us here over this past year. I mean, if you had the Alston Court ruling this past summer, you had athletes able to monetize their name, image, and likeness. And then you had recently the head of the National Labor Relations Board essentially putting out a memo saying, look, what we're going to do now, any case that comes before us regarding unionization of college athletes, we're going to make sure that we recognize those athletes correctly as workers who are entitled to a wage or entitled to collectively bargain, who are entitled to unionize. We hope to be a part of that. We are a players association now.

We are not a union. But what we want to do here is we build up our membership. We want to do the education necessary to talk to guys about what it would take to unionize different schools, different conferences, and hopefully, you know, some of the biggest teams in college football. Now, in terms of responses to what we're doing by universities or by the NCAA or by conferences or the college football playoff administrators, thus far, it hasn't been much because, I mean, what we're doing now is really outreach through media, through social media, obviously, to really get guys on board as members. I mean, that's really key. We don't want this to be a players association in name only.

We think there are enough of those out there. We want to be a true membership organization that attempts to organize college football players into a vibrant movement. Yeah, I mean, I was a college athlete and I saw a little bit up close the way that the football players were treated in particular. And it's very clear to me they weren't treated as students first and foremost. They were treated as workers. That was their job. That was their what they brought to the university. At least that was the way that they were viewed and the way that they were treated. And of course, for a lot of these guys, you know, the vast majority of them, they're not going to have a professional football career. So in terms of football playing, which is obviously very, very hard on your body and sometimes very

hard on your brain as well, this is it for them. And they don't have a voice in how affairs are conducted, and they're certainly unable to benefit financially from the very difficult and challenging work that they're ultimately putting in here. What was it, Jason, that drew your interest in making sure that football players specifically could be organized in this way? Well, for me, Chris, yeah, everything you said, 100%. I mean, you as a college athlete know what college athletes in general go through. And I think that, yeah, you know, I think you correctly identify kind of what football players go through. And, you know, that for me is what pulled me into this. I mean, look, I was a professor at the University of Minnesota for 10 years. I was a historian. I have a PhD in history. I study institution building.

So this is very interesting to me as a sort of real-world project from a research perspective. But what really pulled me into this is over that 10-year career as a professor, I had 60, 70 football players as students, probably as high as 500 student athletes total. With all of them, but especially with the football players, you see behind the scenes what they go through. I mean, you see what the real world reality is of what a college football player at a D1 Power 5 school goes through. And it is no joke. And for me, it was really the health, safety and welfare issue. I was a whistleblower internally over a two year period. I tried to raise alarm bells at the University of Minnesota regarding what was happening on the football team here.

I was devoted for my position because of that. What were some of the specific things you saw? What'd you say? I mean, just a mental and physical degradation, I think, that people really do not understand exists behind the scenes. We have college football players across this country who are medically retiring from the game in unbelievable numbers from practice-related injuries. The practice cultures of so many college football programs, and I'm not saying all, but so many, are abhorrent, are really wounding and traumatizing

men en masse in this country. And I think if you watch tackle football, there's obviously a perception about the game, the game itself, that if guys get injured during the game as fans, as players, I think there's a certain level of injury that we're willing to accept in games. What I saw coming out of practices were unbelievable amounts of concussions, career-ending injuries in an environment, in a practice culture that really just sees young men as sort of interchangeable bodies and not as individuals. And I think that that really is what pulled me into this.

And if we want to do anything with the college football players association we want to change the culture of those practices because those practices are just ruining the lives of young men so just you know I can tell you I grew up in a college town college station Texas Texas A&M this is the sports was the lifeblood the entire town depended on these men, and they were never really compensated for what a lot of them came through. I'm personally very, very sympathetic to this. How could the College Football Players Association benefit the students' lives? Give us an example of what unionization could look like, how you could bargain for better conditions,

all of that. What would it actually look like in practice? Well, I'd want to start here even before we got to unionization, because I think there is something a players association can do before we're really, you know, everybody focuses on unionization and that is important, but you know, the work you have to do to even unionize a single school is just, you know, especially with a transient workforce like this. I mean, we're going to be talking about years trying to organize a single school likely, right? What I am trying to talk to people about is what we can do with the Players Association first. Because right now, the NCAA, the NCAA, which has started itself, which was started as an institution to protect the health, safety, and welfare of college football players specifically, right? When the NCAA started, we're talking about like 30,

30, 35 guys died in one season back when the NCAA began, right? And that's why it started. The NCAA now has completely abdicated its responsibility when it comes to health, safety, and welfare. People think that the NCAA is on the ground making sure that these coaches and these programs are following rules behind the scenes in terms of number of hours guys should be practicing, in terms of number of fully padded practices you're supposed to have. They're not. Nobody's watching. Nobody's watching. Nobody is watching. And so as we look at this billion-dollar industry, what we need to look at is right now there's no cops on the beat, right? There's no regulatory enforcement here. So we think the College Football Players Association can be an integral part of this, that when we establish association chapters on campus, which we're going to hope to do here,

you know, by the end of this football season, we will show that the power of an association chapter can be just merely making sure that the rules and regulations that are already in place are actually being followed, because right now they're not. So well said. Such an important issue. Jason, thank you so much for your time today. We're really grateful. Thank you, Jason. Thank you so much for the time. No, absolutely. Fully supportive. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. It's so heartening just to see how much you guys can support us and how every day I'll check whatever gets demonetized or whatever.

I'm sure Rogan, probably because it said ivermectin, it's probably a goner, even though I'm sure it'll be very popular. We rely on you in order to support us through premium subscriptions so that we don't have to worry about any of that. And we deeply appreciate it. Of course, you get to watch the show full, all the benefits, et cetera, that come with that. But really, it's just about supporting the work that we do here. So thank you. And if you can, the link is down there in the description. Love you guys. We'll have that daily poster segment for you tomorrow, other great content over the weekend, and we will see you back here next week. See you next week. Thanks for listening to the show, guys.

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Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. This author writes, 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 Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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

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