Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/3/23: McCarthy Speakership ENDING? Gaetz Files To Vacate, SBF Trump Bribe, 3 Massive Shocks To China Econ, Nazi Revisionism, UAW Calls Out Jim Cramer, Canada's Orwellian Podcasting, Trump Business Death Penalty, Ro Khanna On Newsom Labor

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss Gaetz filing a motion to vacate in hopes to oust Kevin McCarthy as Speaker, author Michael Lewis reveals that SBF planned to pay Trump 5 Billion Dollars to drop out of the presidential race, Peter Zeihan talks about 3 ways the Chinese economy will get hit all at once, the US media embraces the Nazi revisionism around Ukraine, a UAW worker calls out Jim Cramer, Saagar looks into Canada's new Orwellian crackdown on Podcasting, Krystal looks into Trump's business fraud trial in New York, and we're joined in studio by Congressman Ro Khanna to talk about McCarthy speakership and calling out Gavin Newsom on his recent Labor ruling decisions in CA.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of news breaking this morning. In fact, we're excited to be joined by Congressman Ro Khanna and give us an update on what the heck is going on with Speaker McCarthy. Maybe he might be speaker for only one more day. We will see whether Democrats feel like bailing him out. So we'll give you all of the latest on that. We also have Sam Bankman-Fried, the one-time golden boy of crypto and of Washington. His trial starts today. So we'll break that down for you. Also some eyebrow-raising revelations from a new Michael Lewis book about him. We'll see how believable any of that is. We've also got

some new details coming out of China about their property bust and how widespread the implications of that could be. Some updates with regard to Ukraine and Nazi revisionism. I don't know why we just keep going in this direction. So we'll cover that too. We've also got some updates for you on that UAW strike, including a worker who is not a big fan of Jim Cramer and had some things to say. There's some good stuff in there. Just want to say thank you to all the premium subscribers. You guys signed up big time yesterday to help support this new focus group. So as we said, we've got a focus group next week. It's going to be in the city of Atlanta with Democratic voters this time. So we're going to hear all of their unvarnished thoughts about Biden, about the

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At one point, we originally, the story appeared to be he was backing down, Crystal. He was like, maybe I don't have the votes. We'll see. And then late last night, or I guess late for me, around 7 p.m., he goes ahead and he officially introduces the resolution to vacate the speakership for Kevin McCarthy, also then drawing tremendous laughter from the Democrats in the chamber. Let's take a listen. Clearing the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives to be vacant.

Resolved that the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives is hereby declared to be vacant. For what purpose does a gentleman from New Jersey seek recognition? Okay, so that laughter you could hear as Av Gates was exiting the chamber. Democrats obviously giddy because it just means more drama and chaos on the Republican side. So it'll be fun. And Matt Gates actually gave a press conference immediately after introducing this resolution. Let's take a listen to what he said. If there's a deal made with Democrats, the only deal is to make one

with McCarthy because I'm not offering anything and won't offer anything. And by the way, if the Democrats want to own Kevin McCarthy, they can have it. Because one thing I'm at peace with is when we stand here a week from now, I won't own Kevin McCarthy anymore. He won't, but he won't belong to me. So if the Democrats want to adopt him, they can adopt him. I mean, the speaker did not just fail to remediate the breach of the agreement with the email us in January. He accelerated the instances of breach.

Like after I laid out the breach, he went and violated the 72 hour rule. After I laid out the breach, he violated the 100 million no amendment suspension rule. So he seems to be reverting to the very unfortunate muscle memory of Washington, D.C., that has put our nation atop a $33 trillion debt that has led to $2 trillion annual deficits in our near future and the rapid global de-dollarization of the economy. When you look at the BRICS system, you know, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, they're moving away from the dollar. And just in August, they added six new

countries, including G20 economies in the Western Hemisphere and Gulf monarchies. Moreover, you saw U.S. News say that the number one economic trend of 2023 is de-dollarization globally. This worries me. You all get all worked up that there's going to be some uncomfortable, chaotic moment that I'll feel pressure from conservatives or Democrats or whomever. I feel the judgment of history. I feel the weight of that. I worry that when the history books are written about this country going down, that my name is going to be on the board of directors here. And if this country is going down and if we're losing the dollar, I am going down fighting. Okay. So big words there from Matt Gates. If the Democrats want to own him, they can have him.

But then the question is, Crystal, will the Democrats vote for him? I don't think they really want to own him. Nobody knows right now. The interesting thing, too, is McCarthy, as of yesterday, ahead of the vote and before it all became official, he did not even say that he would negotiate with Democrats, somehow saying it's not good for the institution. Here's what he had to say. This is his reaction. I think this is about the institution.

I think it's too important. So anytime that somebody has an ethics complaint and they can't get the way they want about it, they want to roll up, and the inside's going to depart and fight people inside that, I don't think that's good for the House. I believe Nancy Pelosi, for the last two speakers, has always't think that's good for the House. I believe Nancy Pelosi for the last two speakers has all I can say, this isn't good for the House.

McCarthy's saying that this isn't good for the House. He said he's not good for the institution to try and bargain with Democrats. News late last night, actually late, by the way, around midnight, calling Hakeem Jeffries. Who knows? Who knows what happened on that conversation? So the Democrats have a meeting sometime today, a caucus meeting, where they're going to try and decide what to do. But, you know, in terms of the whip count, nobody seems to know. Gates appears to have somewhere between four and five votes on his side, on the Republican side, against the speakership. They only have a three-vote margin, so that appears to be enough to deny McCarthy the speakership. But that also means, Crystal, they only need four to five Democratic votes in order to keep Kevin McCarthy.

I know that there are people, you know, the whole problem solvers caucus, the blue dog caucus, all those people, very likely candidates. However, the leader of the blue dog caucus yesterday was asked, would you help bail out Kevin McCarthy? He said, why would I bail out somebody who's never asked me anything? So if he is to survive, a deal has to be made of some kind. We don't know what the contours of said deal would be. We don't know exactly what it would look like. I do think, I mean, I'm curious what you think. It would appear to be the worst headline on earth for Kevin McCarthy to say, Kevin McCarthy needs Democratic votes in order to survive this vote. There also, though, is a prospect of, you know, people say things all the time.

Right now, it's Gates and like four or five others. And when I say or, because some people are maybes. All he needs is what, two, three of those people? Cut a deal with those and be like, all right, which committees do you want? Tell me what you want, guys. And those two or three who are right on the fence, they cut a deal. And then Gaetz and one other person votes against him, against the speakers. If he survives, then Gaetz actually looks like a fool, even though they get no Democratic votes. All of these are prospects right now of which we don't know. It is going to be a dizzying 48 hours because that vote has to occur within 48 hours according to House parliamentary rules. So far, it seems the

Democrats are very disinclined to save Kevin McCarthy's ass. I don't think he has done a lot to build, you know, positive working relationships. That thought that we played, that sound we played of him talking about the institution, whatever. I think there was a lot of eye rolling from the Democratic caucus because they feel like, you know, oh, you care so much about the institution. Sure, buddy. I think one thing that would definitely be important to Democrats is you got to end this impeachment inquiry and these other sort of things that you've given to the right wing of your caucus. And I don't and that's an untenable position for him because remember, it's not just about him keeping the bulk of his caucus behind him, but this guy is the chief fundraiser for the Republican party as well. So how's he going to go out and make the case to Republican

donors about like, oh, you got to back me and you got to back the Republican party. If he's in some sort of a weird coalition government with Democrats. Right. And then, you know, not to mention the ire of the base and the grassroots and what's Trump going to say about all of this? I mean, it's just it's a pretty impossible situation for Kevin McCarthy at the moment. And I do think Democrats are happy to let him twist in the wind. You mentioned, you know, one person who was like with the Problem Solvers Caucus, who was like, he's never asked me for anything. Why would I help him? I also noted Jerry Connolly, who's kind of a, you know, very establishment. I wouldn't necessarily call him like a moderate in that way, but he's kind of more towards the center of the caucus. He says that Democrats should let McCarthy

fall. I will not enable the speakership. I'm a hard no. Democrats should think long and hard about this. There's absolutely no upside to preserving Kevin McCarthy in the speakership. It's an unstable speakership. I saw other Democrats who were saying, listen, we're going to do whatever leadership tells us to do and we're going to unify behind them. Now that could all fall apart. Perhaps McCarthy gives them something that's worth them backing him and keeping him in the speakership. But at the moment, you know, not knowing the contents of that conversation from last night doesn't seem like Democrats are inclined to bail him out. And this vote could come as soon as today, by the way.

Yes, that's right. He can delay it up to two days. That's kind of the window and the time limit that he has. So it will be at the latest two days from now. But there's also rumblings that it could very well be today as early as noon. So this could all be coming down really quickly. In terms of the whip count for McCarthy, you were already alluding to this saga. This is from Punchbowl News. It's like DC Insidery publication. And they've already got four on the record of saying they want to dump McCarthy. They've got another three who are inclined in that direction. And then you've got another group that's sort of publicly undecided. Mike Cloud, Andy Ogles, Keith Self, Ken Buck, and Ralph Norman. So that's another five who are like on the fence. And again, he can only lose four. It's three vote margin. He can only lose four. And

you've already got four on the record saying they want to dump him. So maybe there's something that he can offer these individuals. Maybe there's something they really want that they can bargain for because he only needs to move a couple based on where the whip count is today. But this is,

I genuinely don't know how this ends up getting resolved. And it will get resolved in some fashion. I just have no idea how it's all going to shake out. Exactly. And that's, yeah,

we want to be transparent. Nobody knows right now. It's a complete chaos factor. The other thing is, one of the reasons I'm inclined to believe that McCarthy will survive is who the hell else would replace him? Well, that's always been the question. Right. Because the thing is, when Boehner left, Ryan, Paul Ryan never wanted

to be Speaker, allegedly. I don't know if that's true. But, you know, all the reporting and all that stuff at the time was he didn't want to be Speaker, but he had enough credibility because he's a former vice presidential nominee. He was like good on camera by their standards. And he was somebody who could play ball with the Freedom Caucus and he could still get the centrist Republicans together. So even though he hated the job, you know, people were willing to effectively draft him. There's no such figure. The only figure would be Steve Scalise. But, you know, I look, Steve Scalise, he's had a tough go of things, obviously survived that shooting a couple of years ago. And now he's got, I think he believe he has cancer. Yeah, he does. Other for cancer. Yeah, he's undergoing treatment. He's

not in a position where he can be speaker. He's got health problems of his own. He's the only other person who really has that level of credibility, I think, in the House. They even tried to do a whole draft Scalise thing before it was revealed that he had his illness. And he was like, look, I don't want the job. And it appears, especially now, there's no way he could be in the running. There's simply no other figure. I mean, I guess it's possible Jim Jordan could be someone like that, but there's also no indication that Jim Jordan wants the job. You know, last time I believe one or two people made a vote for him, or there was some sort of element to try and, you know, to cast 13, 14 votes or whatever in his direction during the big

speakership fight. But there's no indication that this is something that he even desires. McCarthy really is that candidate because he's just been around for a long time. He's been playing the game. But unfortunately for him, he just doesn't have a lot of the votes. And then, of course, the Democratic chaos element of, are they going to back McCarthy? One thing that I actually think could play a huge role in this is Ukraine. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Matt Gaetz has been accusing Kevin McCarthy of making a side deal on Ukraine funding with the White House and with the Democrats. We don't yet know if that is true. McCarthy denies that it's true. But right now, GOP senators and what I think a lot of Democrats are thinking is, well, maybe we will vote for him, but you have to put $100 billion or something like that on the floor of the House of Representatives for Ukraine,

which would probably pass as of today, although I'm still not sure. I guess you don't need that many Republican votes if you get all the Democrats to vote for it. And then there's obviously no question that all the GOP senators would vote for it. They probably have more than 80 votes or something like that in the House. So again, it's very possible that that's what they do. That could be some sort of deal that is struck. They also may, Crystal, strike deals about procedure in the future, about their ability

to bring stuff to the floor without the ascension of the Speaker. But it does remind me of something I said, I think at the time, months and months ago when this was all happening. I was like, man, if I'm Kevin McCarthy, why do you even want this job? You are the weakest Speaker in over a century. It has literally been over a century since we saw not only the motion to vacate, but the multiple ballots to be able to elect someone. I believe it was more than any time since like the 1800s. Also, one of the things on the motion to vacate, nobody knows how the

motion to vacate is supposed to work because the last time it was done was like 1909. And there's no parliamentary procedure. There's this entire thing called the Congressional Research Service where they're supposed to provide research and just be like, here's how it works whenever X and Y happens. Usually it's easy. On this one, they had nothing. They're like, we don't know. We're totally uncharted territory. How this is all supposed to go down.

So that introduces even more chaos into the system. We truly are in uncharted waters. I've got to be honest. In a way in uncharted waters. I gotta be honest, in a way it's fun. You know, it's fun to be able to cover these things. And it's just, it's totally uncertain. It's a lot like the CR. We just have no clue. We don't know who is going to be third in line for the presidency of the United States in two days from now. Yeah. I mean, one thing I will say that I think came out in the initial McCarthy's initial fight to become speaker is he is a survivor and he is willing that can be a useful trait in terms of holding on to whatever scrap of power Speaker of the House even represents at this point. So I wouldn't bet

against him. As you said, Sagar, the glaring question has always been, OK, but if it's not him, who? And I saw Gates got asked about this yesterday and he still has no answer. And he's like, yeah, well, you know, we'll figure that out. Basically down the road, it was like you can't beat someone with nothing. So, you know, I think we'll probably it may be kind of reminiscent of the speaker fight where there's a bunch of ballots. There's a bunch of these motions to vacate. They keep going at it. They keep going at it until he's able to give away even more of the store to the people who are dead set against him. The other thing that I keep thinking about, too, is part of what has made this very complicated to understand and part of what is further exacerbated the rift is the contours of that initial deal to bring him into the speakership were never made public. That's right. So it's always been this sort of like he said, he said about what was actually agreed to and whether or not McCarthy is in violation of this secret deal or not. Like none of us has any way to judge. And I don't even think the full Republican caucus

has any way to judge what was actually agreed to in that deal. So Gates claims he's in violation. There may be pieces where it's more clear cut, where it was more public. But overall, the fact that this was so secretive has made it so that you really can't assess whether he has held up his end of the bargain or not. Look, we have no clue. Just here's the takeaway. Nobody knows what the hell is going on. We'll be tracking it. It's going to be interesting.

Counterpoints will be on tomorrow and obviously we'll be here back on Thursday. So maybe we'll know. Maybe we'll be able to do that. I think we'll post this one early and we'll get it out to everybody just because things are moving quickly. We've got Congressman Ro Khanna coming into the studio very soon. We'll ask him his reaction as well. I believe it'll be before the Democratic meeting. So I'm very curious to hear what he has to say. Yeah, for sure. And Congressman Khanna randomly has ended up relating to this. Being from California and being in the House means that he's at the center of the News Newsom Feinstein stuff, but he's also at the center of what's going on

with Kevin McCarthy. So it'd be interesting to hear his perspective over whether he and his colleagues are inclined to bail Kevin McCarthy out. All right. But there is another really big thing that is happening starting today, which is the trial of Sam Bankman Freed, one-time crypto golden boy and darling of Washington, now indicted for many counts of fraud for basically allegedly stealing a bunch of customer funds and using them inappropriately, including to buy his own giant mansion. He also, you know, is implicated in all sorts of like straw donations and chicanery here in Washington as well. So with this trial starting today, Michael Lewis, who was following Sam Bankman for it around for a new biography, his book is, I think, not coincidentally coming out

at the very same time. He gave a 60 Minutes interview and revealed something that is very interesting. Not sure if I buy it or not, but let's take a listen to what he had to say. One of the most shocking passages in this book, I thought, came with this revelation that Sam had looked into paying Donald Trump not to run. That only shocks you if you don't know Sam. Sam's thinking we could pay Donald Trump not to run for president. Like, how much would it take? Did he get an answer? So he did get an answer. He was floated. There was a number that was kicking around, and the number that was kicking around when I was talking to Sam about this was $5 billion.

Sam was not sure that number came directly from Trump. Wait, wait. So Sam's looking into paying Trump not to run, and he actually didn't come from Trump himself, but he actually got a price? He got one answer, yes. The question Sam had was not just is $5 billion enough to pay Trump not to run, but was it legal? Well, why didn't this happen? Why didn't he follow through? Well, they were still having these conversations when FTX blew up. So why didn't it happen? He didn't have $5 billion anymore.

What do you make of that, Sagar? Are you buying it? He didn't have $5 billion anymore. What do you make of that, Taga? Are you buying it? I don't know. I mean, maybe somewhere someone around Trump said something. I mean, I think it's probably worth explaining to everybody what effective altruism is. Because, you know, it's something that people who are online and like nerds, people in Silicon Valley will know. It's effectively the principle, and you correct me if I'm wrong, where you become rich as possible and amass as much wealth so that you can strategically deploy your assets in the best way to achieve the most optimal social outcome. So the thing is with Sam is he ostensibly

was using his wealth to fund pandemic preparedness, to fund congressmen who would align with his agenda. They also coincidentally did not believe in crypto regulation. Shocking. Not always about effectability. The altruistic part is a little bit secondary sometimes. But the overall point was in that scenario, that is the effect of altruist dream.

It's like, okay, well, I'm worth, what was he worth at one point? Like 40, 50 billion? Hard to say. Something outwards. He's like, okay, well, if I could just take 6% of my net worth and then achieve a massive outcome, like just paying Trump not to run,

that would be the ultimate effective altruist gamble. This is something that Sam Altman and a lot of these other guys believe in. I'm personally very dubious of the entire ideology, especially because it's all like privatized and doesn't have anything to do with democracy, but that's a whole other conversation. But I don't know.

I mean, it definitely seems like something he would think, like that he would think to try. Yeah. In terms of like whether it would work. Whether there was an opening there or not. I don't, I personally don't think so. Yeah. It seems to me like Michael Lewis is a little too credulous in some of these exchanges. I haven't, you know, the book is just coming out, I think today, and there's an excerpt of it in the Washington Post that I read that, you know, it kind of plays into these stereotypes that were created about Sam being like the boy wonder, the boy genius. It goes through this whole narrative about, oh, he's on the Zoom call with Anna Wintour. And he's also doing, you know, eight other different things at the same time.

And he's playing video games and whatever. And so, I don't know. Like you said, Sagar, I could see him having this idea. Do I actually think that Trump would really be open to it? Not really, because the other problem for Trump, I mean, part of what Trump needs out of a White House run at this point is also to get out of his legal trouble. Yes. And no amount of $5 billion or $10 billion or $80 billion is going to solve that problem for him. The only thing that can even partially solve that problem for him is if he ends up back in the White House. So I'm skeptical that he really, you know, that there was a real number, that there was a real possibility that this would come to pass. And also on the effective altruism piece, I did a whole thing on effective altruism that you guys can go back and watch that expresses my concerns.

One of them you gestured out, Sagar, which is the fact that, you know, oh, these brilliant billionaire oligarchs are going to save us and understand precisely what the biggest risks to society are. troubling because they tend to put a higher premium on things that are like long-term civilizational risks and allows them to hand wave away a lot of current present day manifest suffering. Right. So anyway, I've got issues with that. And I've also always had a lot of question marks about whether Sam really bought into this philosophy even, or whether it was just part of his brand and part of his cover. And I think that's the other thing you have to consider both when, you know, as we watch this trial starting today and watch all of that unfolding and also consider these, you know, excerpts from Michael Lewis's book, which I do intend to read. I want to read the whole thing.

I think I'll read it. But he also is clearly a liar. I mean, caught in numerous brazen lies. And this again, maybe it can come back to the effective altruism thing too. If he really thinks like, oh, if I lie, it's going to be better for civilization a thousand years from now or whatever. Those are the sort of justifications that he could have been making for some of his just blatantly illegal, immoral, wildly unethical lies, stealing, manipulation, etc. So with all that being said, we've got the trial starting today. Jury selection starts today. Put this up on the screen from the Wall Street Journal. Their headline is the star witness at Sam Bankman Freed's trial is his top deputy and ex-girlfriend. Caroline Ellison's testimony

has the potential to be particularly personal and raw. She has pleaded guilty to seven criminal counts, and she's also agreed to cooperate with the government. Prosecutors have said that she not only was involved in criminal activity ranging from bribery in China to defrauding FTX customers of billions of dollars, but also acted at Bankman Freed's direction. Her lawyer declined to comment. Bankman Freed himself has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers say prosecutors have not adequately established that Ellison acted at his direction. His spokesman declined to comment. And just if you guys have forgotten some of the details here, there were two entities. The girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, was in charge of one of them. And then the actual crypto exchange where people are supposed to be just parking their funds and then doing with them whatever they want, not what Sam Bankman free wants, what they

want, FTX, Sam was in charge of that one. And so the allegation, which I think is pretty clear at this point, is that they were using funds from customer accounts, basically stealing that money to fund bets over on the Caroline Ellison run piece of this. And that there was whole secret code, et cetera, that was going on in order to try to, as crypto went down and they were suffering losses, they were trying to use customer funds to fill that hole. Obviously that's theft. Obviously that's illegal. Those allegations. And so the idea here is that Caroline, having been both the girlfriend, living with Sam Bankman Freed, being in charge of this other entity, will be the best position to say exactly what was going on.

I thought they had a good quote here, Sagar. They said, at bottom, every fraud case is just a human drama. And Caroline is the likely vehicle for getting a lot of that out. Yeah, because it's just all about accounting. It's like we don't have the money over here. We need to be able to place bets. So we're going to take the money from over here. Who authorized that transaction? Who made the order? Now, given the multiple guilty pleas by FTX executives, I don't think it's that complicated.

Also given the emails and immense documentary record, and as well as interviews and on the record statements by Sam Bankman Freed in multiple interviews now, I also don't think it's that complicated. He doesn't really have a particularly good explanation for how all of this went down. It revealed not only the unregulated nature of this international crypto exchange, it also led to the collapse of multiple other companies that were embroiled with FTX, places like Binance, places like BlockFi, where I personally lost money as I did my whole thing about at that time. My problem, I think, with all of this is that it wasn't even sophisticated. Like the guy who eventually took over FTX in the bankruptcy was like, look, I did Enron. Enron was shell corporations, inflation of stock,

a true financial scheme that required a lot of complex understanding. This is just straight up fraud, like a Ponzi scheme of you put money in, I take it out. And then the more that comes in, as long as it's all backed by some fake asset, it's all just going to keep going. And then the moment one thing got called out, it's like a rug pull from the entire company and half of the industry just collapses overnight. It's like stunning. It really is. It's so hard to put yourself into their heads. Like, what were you thinking? And there was this very Wild West gold rush kind of mentality. He was hiring people, including Caroline. I mean, she had no idea what she was doing. She had no background in making these complex trades. And

she finds herself the head of this multi-billion dollar organization. In the Michael Lewis excerpt that I referred to before, he interviews this other woman who ends up being head of PR and handling all of the scheduling and incoming and whatever for Sam, which ended up being immense, who also had zero experience and just sort of happened into this position. They're all living together. There's no corporate controls. I saw somewhere Sam couldn't even name the people who were supposedly on their board because it all just came back to him and his whims, whatever he felt like doing and whatever he could justify to himself, feeling like there was never going to be any scrutiny, like there was never going to be any accountability, like he was such a genius that he'd be able to keep all of these thousands of

balls in the air and never get caught for the wildly illegal theft and criminal behavior that he was engaged in. So, you know, I think it's going to be part of why this trial is important, too, is because SBF and FTX, like they were the biggest, they were the wildest in terms of the allegations here. But this was an industry that is nascent and is in a lot of ways unregulated, where a lot of times the regulators and certainly the politicians can't really wrap their head around it and haven't really figured out how to deal with it. There was a lot of intentional skirting and flouting of international regulations.

At Binance in particular, they were intentionally not headquartered anywhere to try to keep themselves from being subject to any jurisdiction So I think it also pulls back the curtain on not just SPF and what was going on at FTX But this particular moment in crypto history when things seemed like they were you know flying high and it was just gonna be up and up And up forever and underneath the surface there were a lot of unscrupulous actors there was a lot of fraud there was a lot of just like fly by night see to your pants type of activity so it's going to be it's going to be fascinating to watch it unfold to watch this guy who was once a darling in this town in particular um but in the news media they loved him they loved the idea of this boyish

wonder genius wunderkind etc um and to and to watch how he attempts to defend himself from allegations that seem wildly indefensible. One thing I'm really happy about this case going to trial and no plea is I want all this stuff to come out. I want an open court. I want the cameras. I want the files.

I especially want the federal election charges to come to light about who is donating donating to, the schemes, want people to take the stand under oath. Too many times these things get wrapped up with a little bow and you never actually know anything about what was going on deep below the surface. So I hope and pray that nobody takes a deal. It's very possible, though, that it could happen. He's facing a long time in prison. And it's not just him. It embroils his whole family. There are multiple crazy things that have come out in discovery, like his father being like, if you don't give me $2 million, I'm going to CC your mother on this chain. I'm like, and this is, you know, I actually have friends who have taken this man's class at Stanford. And they're like,

he's one of the world's renowned tax lawyers. It's one of the most respected people in his field. And they're like, I don't recognize this person. I think that to me, really what comes away is I think this amount of wealth is a poison. It just poisons your head. Things start to feel crazy. Because at a certain point, he could manifest things of anything he wanted. He bought himself a $40 million apartment. He bought himself multiple senators and congressmen.

He's buying himself dinner. The very day he's indicted, he's supposed to have dinner with Mitch McConnell. It's like these, the life all just becomes so surreal that it becomes reality. And I think, unfortunately, it poisoned every single person who was involved in this. And that's what every great fraud story is. Like they say, it's just a human story. That's all it is. Yeah, I mean, and to go back to the Trump thing where we started, I can imagine him in that state, like, like fantasizing about

spending billions to save democracy and get Trump out of the presidential race, et cetera. That, that doesn't seem farfetched that Trump was like really legitimately entertaining it. And it all told him a number or whatever that piece I find farf-fetched. But, you know, on the human piece of it, maybe it's a small detail, but just to me, it shows you what a POS this dude is. Caroline, who was his girlfriend and, you know, his partner in business and they're living together and whatever. When Sam is under fire and after she is now cooperating with the government, he leaked all of her personal journals to journalists to try to make himself look better.

And he's such an idiot in a certain way that he didn't realize that actually the contents of those journals and the very fact that he would be so slimy and underhanded as to do that to a person, it actually really backfired in terms of people's perception of him. And it's what ended up landing him. of people's perception of him. And it's

what ended up landing him. He was under, you know, what do they call it? Supervised, whatever, house supervision. He was like able to stay at his parents' mansion while he was awaiting trial. And once that happened, the judge was like, no, your ass is going to jail. So sometimes the smartest people can also be the absolute dumbest. And I think we have seen that with Sam Bankman-Fried. Absolutely. At the same time, there's some really interesting stuff going on right now in China. A friend of the show, Peter Zaihan, had an interesting update about his prediction of a coming collapse.

Here's what he had to say. The problem with this pattern and this type of growth is if you do it enough, you start to distort the economy. And you absorb more and more capital and more and more labor and more and more resources. pattern, this type of growth, is if you do it enough, you start to distort the economy, and you absorb more and more capital, and more and more labor, and more and more resources, and eventually you get to the point where there's diminishing returns, because you only need so many roads, you only need so many factories. So first, building bridges to nowhere. The Chinese absolutely reached that level probably back in the early 2010s, and most of the construction we've seen across China is of questionable economic use, and the debt has been building up. Corporate debt has basically doubled since 2010. They tried to follow the Korean model as well, but what they discovered

is that their workforce was already fairly unproductive, and while overall productivity for the Chinese labor forces have gone up by 50 to 100% in the last 10 to 15 years, the debt load has gone up by a factor of five. So from a cost-benefit point of view, Chinese labor has actually decreased in terms of its overall productivity. Capital flight is strictly regulated, in many cases forbidden, and every time that the people find a new way to get money out, the Chinese government changes the law, and so it all gets bottled up at home. Now, for the Chinese development model, this has proven successful at keeping the Chinese citizens' money as part of the process that then funds all of that investment. This is going to hit them from every possible

angle when it breaks, and it's going to do so by ripping the heart out of public support for the entire system and the CCP and the government in particular. So to back up what Peter is saying there, we can put this up there on the screen from the Wall Street Journal, a really interesting analysis about a forthcoming property bubble. So what they write there is basically, does China's property bust make a financial crisis inevitable? And the chart that you can see is the total amount of real estate in the Chinese market, the individual residential mortgages, and then overall development loans. Really what they say is that a forthcoming

property bust there is almost certain at this point, because you have seen massive amounts of vacancy, the inability in order to deliver property on time, and then the tie-ins of massive shadow banks like trust firms, which are increasingly trying to shed property exposure. Quote, total loans to property developers and homebuyers peaked at nearly 30% in 2019. They've fallen to 23% by mid-2023. But the biggest chunk, individual home mortgages, while they may be relatively safe for now, the down payments and all of that are moving towards a direction of a huge amount of indirect exposure for the entire Chinese economy to the commercial banking sector and to property. Property, it appears, has been the single biggest driver of the Chinese middle class

and of Chinese wealth. It was one of the ways that the Chinese Communist Party can sell the so-called Chinese dream. You accept authoritarianism. We make you relatively more well-off than your parents ever have before in the history of China. And it's like, we're good to go. The problem is, is that increasingly hasn't been the case. We've had multiple blowups, like the whole Evergrande thing and more. But what he points to about the structural problems on top of an overall dissatisfaction at a very individual level about the economy, faces big issues for them right now, Crystal. Huge. And I mean, anyone who's lived through 2008, even though it's not exactly analogous because our system is different than their system, can understand the way that real estate shocks can reverberate throughout the entire economy,

can potentially trigger bank failures. At the very least, even if banks remain solvent, what are they going to do? They're going to hoard cash. They're not going to lend us much money. That causes problems downstream for businesses. And if you have huge loss of value in terms of these homes that Chinese citizens have been using to build their own wealth, that's obviously an issue for the home ownership class. So it's a huge question mark. And the expectation was that China would come out of COVID and their COVID zero policies and their pandemic era lockdowns, and they would really go sort of like whole hog and they'd be growing like crazy. That has not come to pass whatsoever. And it's because of these issues in the real estate market predominantly,

which by the way, property drives about a quarter of total economic activity in China. To wildly oversimplify, part of what Peter Zaihan is saying here is effectively, in the early stages of their rapid growth, it was all about industrialization. It was about building. It was about building factories. It was about driving exports. That was the big focus. That's why you have all this like overbuilding, you know, too many airports, too many bridges, too many roads, because they just sort of like exhausted that avenue of growth. And then the next avenue of growth that they pushed was really around property, real estate development, and home ownership.

So the fact that we're coming to the end of that, and that's something that they were aware of. They've been trying to delicately pop this bubble without it being a complete catastrophe. And they may be able to pull it off. They've taken some steps to reduce their risk. You have a very active, involved government that could potentially soften the blow. So it's not inevitable that you have some sort of a massive collapse, but there are a lot of really big risk factors, which I think is evidenced by those charts that we showed of how things have fallen off a cliff already. Exactly right. And the problem is this is infecting the entire Asian market, which is deeply tied into China. Let's put this up there on the screen. Right now, the World Bank is saying that Asia faces one of the worst economic outlooks in half

a century, and almost all of it just comes back to China. It's because China's economic output, their initial target right now is only 5%. And the World Bank actually says it will probably only grow at 4.4%, which is down from 4.8 expected. That's a lot for us, but that's not how it works in a developing economy.

They got addicted to 8, 10% economic growth. They even downgraded the 2024 forecast for GDP growth all across the East Asia Pacific, largely because of intra-trade with China. And what they say is that Chinese retail sales right now have plunged to below pre-pandemic levels. House prices are not working, increased amount of household debt, lagging private sector investment. A lot of this also comes to the actual stranglehold that the CCP has on the economy. And there's no real private investment in China. Everything is controlled and manipulated by the government. One thing is too, as I've been reading a lot about, Xi Jinping has effectively decided that he will not choose the easy way out. The easy way out would be to put the hand off, let the market go wild, allow less control

from the government, but allow the economy to be rescued. He so values the ability to control the total tight grip of the CCP and authoritarianism on the Chinese way of life that he is not willing to go down that road. He believes in the long run, you should just suck it up, take the losses way of life, that he is not willing to go down that road. He believes in the long run it's just will, you know, you should just suck it up, take the losses wherever you can, even potentially a crisis. But as long as the regime remains intact, that's the most important thing. It's a major departure from some of his predecessors and especially the Deng Xiaoping like school of economic thought and how the way China should be governed. So it's a fascinating,

like ideological collision happening in China. And ultimately, I mean, I think that is what will be the end. If Ding Xiaoping-ism, I guess if you could say, was the type of governance that would be in place today, they wouldn't be in this type of problem. But with where they are ideologically and with their obsession about power,

they simply can't get their way out of this, even with throwing as much money as they possibly can into the economy, even with their rigged statistics. Don't forget, this 4.4, who the hell knows if it's true? It could be 2%. I remember reading in the past about a manipulation of economic data that goes all the way down to the factory level on up. These are all legacies of Mao Zedong communism. But the point is that, I mean, Peter's got a very aggressive timeline, but I always think it's just fun to play his clip because, I mean, look, he called the Ukraine invasion, right, basically to the year 2022. And structurally, it was a counterintuitive take a couple of years ago. And at this point, it's just not counterintuitive

anymore. So I have no choice but to at least take it seriously and be like, look, maybe not 10 years. I don't know if his prediction is correct, but who knows? I mean, it's certainly possible. Like as you said, in 2008, that's a huge portion of why we are in our politics today. To me, it's just Iraq and 08. That's it. Those are the two chief things for why we are today. It's very possible China could find itself in a similar situation. And as I always warn, just because you're on the way down doesn't mean that you won't be more aggressive in many ways you become more aggressive whenever you get desperate So things could actually become more dangerous in terms of the global geopolitical situation I think it's also worth saying because China has in many ways bucked the idea of like the neoliberal model of growth There have been a lot of naysayers about China. There's been a lot

of like doom forecasting or doom wishing on the Chinese economy that hasn't come to pass before. And so as we, you know, consider these numbers and look at what's going on, I think it's important to bear in mind that there have been a lot of people have been really wrong about China in the past. And I also think it's important that, you know, while we abhor the authoritarianism that has been involved, the growth model, it is responsible for lifting more people out of poverty than anything else in modern. The fact that you've had global poverty go down is basically all because of what has happened in China and somewhat of what's going on in India as well, which is also a bit of a different model. So I think those things are important to bear in mind. The other thing you were pointing to the ideology saga, you know, one of the things Western

economists or neoliberal economists would say was like, OK, now you're at this stage of growth and development. What you should do is start selling a bunch of crap to your own people and like move into this like service sector and consumer dominated economy like what we have here in the good old U.S. of A. And that would be one solution to this problem. It happens to be a solution they do not want to pursue. And so that makes it, you know, on the one hand, I understand that because it does, I think, get to some of the, like, you know, the rot of what's going on here morally, ethically, ideologically in America.

But on the other hand, it also constrains your choices of how you get out of this particular pickle that they are in. And the last thing, and I'll throw in here to the mix as another stumbling block and challenge for them, is they grew, especially in the early 2000s, so rapidly because of PNTR, because of the opening up, because of being able to feed our domestic markets. And now you have a very rapidly changing global policy landscape, in particular with regards to the United States through CHIPS Act and through the Inflation Reduction Act. And that has already hit exports coming out of China, but coming out of the entire region. And so on top of everything else that's going on, increasingly protectionist policies, which I support, by the way, from a U.S. perspective, but those protectionist policies are also making things more challenging for China and for some of the region. Yeah, I agree. You know, it's funny because as you were talking about with China, we don't, it's one of those where in a certain way, I almost like sympathize, I guess, because

they're like, yeah, we don't want your degenerate like Western values. Like we're not we don't want our kids addicted to video games, to drugs and don't know something. We want people to be hardworking. So I'm like, oh, OK. But like the way they accomplish that is like complete ideological control and straight up. Don't support that part. Yeah. I don't support that part at all. I'm like, I don't know if it's possible. Yeah. I mean, in some ways I'm sympathetic. We don't want to become a consumer based economy. But at the same time, it's like you built your entire system to basically serve the consumer whims of the West. That's not a particularly sustainable model either. And I would also say, I think PNTR is more single handedly responsible than any Chinese domestic

policy that they pursued intentionally. And actually, if anything, their genius was basically fooling the West into thinking, hey, yeah, we'll sign all these things and we'll liberalize. Like, don't worry about it. It's all good. Oh, well, we wanted to hear that. Of course we wanted to hear it. We made a lot of money.

Yeah, we believe that. So it was a great deal, you know, I think for everybody. And Deng Xiaoping, there's a great biography of him where I forget the exact quote and I can't find it right now, but it effectively

comes down to, he's like, we will fool the West into thinking that we will liberalize by signing these deals at the time. And at the same time, we'll rob them blind and we'll steal everything that makes them great. And then we will beat them in the long run. I mean, I think in many ways, you know, he's up there with like Lee Kuan Yew in terms of like the great genius statement statesman of all time. I'm not saying it like an endorsement. It's just that I don't think it's a deniable fact that he put them on to this path. But look, regardless, always interesting. We always got to keep an eye on it. Yeah. Could be huge reverberating impacts. I mean, this is a gigantic economy. So what happens there? It's not like we are isolated or insulated from it. Okay, let's move on to the next one. We brought you about the news last week of Canada celebrating a literal Nazi in the parliament. This led to the resignation of the Canadian speaker.

Prime Minister Trudeau had to apologize to the Canadian people for the background. It was when Zelensky was appearing before parliament and they honored a quote unquote Ukrainian freedom fighter who was in his late 90s. They failed to mention that the so-called freedom fighter was a member of the Waffen SS who volunteered and whose unit was implicated in multiple war crimes that have been verified. We don't know if he has. The Polish government has since actually indicated they may seek to extradite him, just to give you a little bit of an idea. This, though, has set off a really fun discourse about, well, can't we sympathize with these Ukrainians? They were stuck in an awful position because they've been conquered by the Soviets,

and then the Nazis came in, and the whole enemy of my enemy is my friend. At a conceptual level, maybe. But we're not talking about a Wehrmacht soldier. We're talking about a straight-up volunteer for the Waffen-SS sworn guard of Hitlerism. Let's put this up there on the screen just to give you a little bit of a taste of what some of this apology looks like. This is from Politico. Quote, A lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on.

The ongoing turmoil over the parliament recognizing the former trooper highlights one of the most important reasons why. And the headline is fighting against the USSR didn't necessarily make you a Nazi. And yet, as they actually quote here from the Nuremberg Tribunal, quote, the tribunal declares to be criminal within the meaning of the charter. Those persons who had been officially accepted as members of the SS. And again, this person was explicitly implicated in massacres. This unit that occurred in either Ukraine, Poland, I forget. The borders have moved since all this has happened. And I think, you know, I was talking to Yegor about this. There are, there's, I don't understand

this like Nazi revisionism. There are heroic Ukrainian fighters who fought on the side of the Soviet Union against the tide of Nazism and who still were not like sworn allies of Stalin. They were still Ukrainian. They were still Ukrainian nationalists who fought valiantly and bravely. Some of the worst battles on the Eastern front occurred on current Ukrainian soils, horrific slaughter. I mean, hundreds of millions of people who were killed there. And many of them were Ukrainian soldiers. Yes. Who were caught in a tough spot, but don't forget this, you this whole fairytale idea of like, oh, we only fought for the Nazis because they were fighting against Stalin, in many cases, the Nazis would come in and they would hang half the

people in the streets. And then they would also be like, hey, tell us where all the Jews are. Unfortunately, a lot of people were complicit within that. And it has led to this really bizarre moment where we're trying to whitewash history and make it so that actually the Soviets were the real enemy. Now, I'm not going to glorify the freaking Soviet Union. Did a whole monologue about Stalin's murderous invasion of Finland yesterday. But just to give people a taste, this is the highest levels of government. This is from Secretary Anthony Blinken, our Secretary of State. Here's what he tweets. He tweets, 82 years ago, Nazis murdered 34,000 Jews at Babinyar.

Soviets buried the history, which today Putin's government manipulates to cover for Russia's abuses in Ukraine. The US is committed to justice for Holocaust survivors and accountability. And as a very basic fact check that is added to there, it's Soviet prisoners of war who were among the people who were massacred at Bobinyar. The Soviets actually liberated Bobinyar and Kiev in 1943. Quote, the Soviets held a trial in 1946 in Kiev for 15 German policemen who were involved in said massacre. This is not Soviet glorification. They did plenty of horrible things.

In many respects, they are responsible for just as many, if not more, deaths. And we can talk about that all day long. But why do we have to do this jujitsu of the mind to be like, no, they were actually the enemy at that time. We're going to outright blame the Soviets for something that they didn't even do at the time and then tie it to Putinism. The invasion of Ukraine is enough. The current invasion, it's horrible. It's like, why are we doing this revisionism? And honestly, it is the strangest tide that I have seen in recent days. And I think all of it comes back to, if we have to talk about Nazism in Ukraine, you just seem like you're a Putin ally.

And it doesn't make you a Putin ally to say, yeah, there's a neo-Nazi problem inside of Ukraine. Does it validate all of the Russian criticisms of Ukraine? No. Does it mean all Ukrainians are Nazi? Absolutely not. But yeah, it exists. It's an issue. It just means that the conflict is a gray zone, like it is in almost every conflict that's ever happened in all of human history. The Secretary Blinken one, first of all, I genuinely don't understand why people are feeling the need to do this.

Like, the Politico Europe piece that's like, well, it's not necessarily a Nazi, it's like, this thing is already over. The Prime Minister already apologized. Like, the Speaker of the Parliament already stepped down. Like, Jewish groups were in rage. Why are you going back to this? You lost this one. Why? Why are you doing this? You don't have to do this. It's over.

Okay. The Secretary Blinken one, it doesn't even on its face make sense because he's like, on the one hand, he says Soviets buried this history. Right. And on the other hand, he says Putin's government is manipulating this history to provide cover for Russia's abuses in Ukraine. Which is it? Did they bury it? Are they using it? Are they manipulating it? Is it probably like what? It doesn't even literally make sense on its face. And so it goes back to this very Disneyfied black and white view of the world, view of this conflict where they're the bad guys and now we got to rewrite all of history to make sure that they were always the bad guys they're always

going to be the bad guys and if putin's trying to use world war ii history to glorify them justifies evasion well we're going to change our minds about what happened with the nazis that we're going to be completely different and we're going to try to revive these historic ukrainian nationalist freedom fighters who signed up to be Nazis. I mean, let's be clear about this. If you were in the Waffen-SS, you had to swear allegiance to Hitler and the Nazi Party. You were a Nazi. Like, it's not, it is not complicated.

You don't need to go back and be like, well, really, maybe they weren't necessarily. No, they were literally a Nazi. Okay. Now, there may be gradations of the atrocities they committed or whatever. We don't know what this man did in his life, but you don't need to glorify him in parliament and you don't need to justify glorifying him in parliament. No. And that's the problem is they tried to make it conceptual. They're actually not wrong. And so I will say it. There are some people who were in the Waffen asset. I'm not, you know, justifying or excusing their behavior, but who did not participate in atrocities. They

were probably more akin to like elite Wehrmacht troops. And in many respects, you know, did fight very bravely on the Eastern front, but that doesn't erase the reason that they joined. And just because they were deployed in that way, doesn't mean that they couldn't have easily been deployed to a death camp. And in many cases they actually did both. So it's just, uh, again, history does not smile kindly on this considering especially what happened with Nuremberg. Can I's just, again, history does not smile kindly on this, considering especially what happened with Nuremberg. Can I also just say, and maybe you can help me understand, illuminate the history on this saga. Did they really delude themselves

into thinking Hitler was going to give them their freedom and their independent state? I mean, that seems really wild to me. Well, in the initial months, it wasn't a crazy idea. So in the initial months, and a lot of Ukrainians don't want to talk about this, but like in Kiev and in some of the places that Hitler rolled through, they had signs being like, welcome, we glorify Hitler. They had actual swastikas that were up. Again, I mean, it's actually Hitler's stupidity and the German army's idiocy where they didn't cast themselves as a army of liberation. And instead they embraced like full scale slaughter. Their plan in the East was depopulation. They had this, I forget what the name of it was called, but it was effectively what they, they gave an order where they're like,

all food is for German troops. They're like, food is not a priority for Soviet prisoners of war and for Soviet residents, effectively famine, starve them out and to kill them. The best book I've ever read on this subject is called Stalin's War. It's actually a recent book, quote, A New History of World War II by a guy named Sean McKeegan. It's a very, very provocative book. It is still the best book I've ever read on the subject. I did the monologue yesterday about the Winter War. That's where I learned a lot of the colored in know, colored in details. I mean, even yesterday I talked about the Winter War. Here's, you know, I didn't have the time to go into a lot of it. I mean, even the Finnish history is complicated because after that peace deal I talked about, well, they decided to deal with the Nazis and they actually worked with

the Nazis to invade the Soviet Union. It's called the Continuation War. And, you know, they basically were like, look, we're willing to fight with whomever they want. But the part of their history that they glorify is not that. They glorify, we fought always for Finnish independence. That was like the point that I was trying to make in that monologue. It's just interesting, though, because within all of this and all of this historical revisionism, it's really like 1984-esque of like Oceania has always been at war with East Asia. We're like, no, like Russia is bad now, which means it's been bad for all time. It's like, well, we were actually allies at the time.

We were, you know, who do you think was funding the Soviet military? It was us. This is the only reason that they were able to succeed in the first place. They would never have won Stalingrad or any of their major battles if it wasn't for Lend-Lease and the tremendous amount of military and economic aid that we were able to provide for them. So I don't know. I think all of this is very bizarre. I think it comes back to exactly what you said, is we just love, the Disney version is just easier.

We invaded on D-Day. They're bad. We're good. That was it. And it's always been so. 90% of the casualties were on the Eastern Front. We have no idea what happened over there. It also leads to this

revisionism, too, about corruption, just to give you an idea, too, of like, OK, we're finally allowed to talk about Nazis in Ukraine. Put this up there. Just yesterday, Politico got its hands on, quote, leaked U.S. strategy that sees Ukraine as a massive corruption, as a massive threat inside. But really what troubled me, obviously, it's not, you know, it's no joke that corruption as a massive threat inside. But really what troubled me, obviously, it's not, you know, it's no joke that corruption is a problem. It's that Biden decided not to raise it for the first year of the war when they were getting the vast majority of support because he thought it would validate critics of the war in Ukraine. And honestly, what's even creepier is inside of this 21-page memo is a straight-up Afghan-era, like an Afghan an Afghan era nation building plan. They're like,

here's our recommendation for how you need to redo your military. Here's our recommendation for how you need to redo your banking sector and your energy sector. I'm like, when did we sign up for this? I thought we were shipping them weapons. But as I did my monologue about, no man, we're paying their small businesses. We're paying their emergency responders. We're bankrolling their entire civil society. This is Afghanistan 2.0. The US military does not know how to do war without nation building. And that's what we're signing up for in Ukraine right now. Not only that, I mean, there were some real red flags here in terms of their view of how you eliminate

corruption is basically like market radical neoliberalism. Right, yeah, that's a good point. I mean, everything was like, oh, the problem in the banking sector, better make it privatized because Lord knows there's no corruption in our banking sector with it being privatized. So one of their envisioned milestones, they say, is that Alpha Bank has transparently returned

to private ownership because it was an institution now known as Sansa Bank, was previously Russian-owned, now nationalized by Ukraine. Got to privatize everything to root out the corruption because that's certainly been the secret solution to all of our problems here. So there were some major red flags here. There's number one, the fact this was hidden. There was a public version of the report that was much more sort of like high level and sanitized. This was the private version that Politico was able to get their hands on. The number of industries that we had a lot of opinions about was quite extraordinary. And then the suggestions themselves also were, you know, fit a playbook that we've been rolling

around out around the world for quite a long time. Ask Afghanistan how it worked out. We try to take one of the most corrupt nations on earth, of which Ukraine was before the war. This is an indisputable fact. And how it worked out for us, taxpayer dollars, our effort, and even for the Afghan people, for all of those so-called efforts. It didn't work out so well. But we simply do not know how to operate without running that playbook. Anyway, just wanted to give people a new... It's insane, really, to see this level of revisionism.

But honestly, it is a good view into the elite mind of like, okay, Russia bad. That means Russia always been bad. And that means we have to go retroactively, you know, basically lie about stuff from, what, 80 years, 75 years ago. It's just craziness. It's absolute madness. But that is the absolute state of where we are with the Ukraine discourse today. It is pretty wild. All right. We wanted to bring to you some updates on what's going on with United Auto Workers Strike, which has expanded significantly. We'll get to that in a minute.

But first, I have to show you Jordan Sheridan, who's doing great work on the ground for us and for his network, Status Quo. He was talking to a worker, and this worker brought up on his own his thoughts and feelings about CNBC anchor Jim Cramer. Take a listen. What's that guy, Jim Cramer? Is that his name? Oh, yeah. Let loose. Feel free. He needs to bring his fat to Lansing and get one of these plants over here and see how it feels. You know, it's it's it's those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Right. And I feel like people who don't do what we do don't know how it is. I think there's a nuclear option on the table, if he's not careful.

And that nuclear option is a country called Mexico. Say, listen, all the new, you want to know where the new ones are going to be made? We're going to continue to make the old ones. But Pueblo's got a 55,000 person factory for VW. And they got a good educational workforce. It's $5 an hour. No real pollution control rules. That's not to be mentioned.

Free health care. So you know what? You want to play ball? You want to keep doing this? Mexico. Glad to see you're standing up for the American worker here, Jim. Thanks for that. See how many people buy GM cars?

See how many people buy big three cars, period? You know, if they want to shut down and go someplace else like that, that's fine. Go ahead. Do it. I've been, I've owned GM cars my whole life. They do that. I will never buy a GM car again. Bring his fat behind here and see what it's like. Walk a day in my shoes.

I mean, Kramer has been cartoonishly evil with regard. I mean, it's not just those comments that where he's like, hey, just ship all the jobs to Mexico, which is the idea you would suggest that. I mean, you're talking about ruining people's lives, which are ruining towns, right? Destroying entire cities and ruining people's lives. Just casually throwing that out there is unbelievable. But he's, I mean, there's been so many clips that we've played here of him just being brazenly on the side of bosses and trashing the auto workers, et cetera,

that it's nice to see this is obviously breaking through and actually helping to strengthen the resolve of the workers who are there striking on the picket line. No, that actually I think is the most interesting part is that clearly they are paying attention right now. They can see how this is all being covered in the media. And as that happens, I think people are really starting to pay attention because the union has garnered a lot of public attention as to how the people who are in charge are reacting to this. Crystal, you found this clip of this billionaire, if you want to set that up. Yeah. So this dude, some CEO billionaire guy, goes on and blames the unions for driving up

inflation. We've got that clip for you. And we also have a little reminder of what his economic views have been historically, where he called for a, quote, nice little recession to force workers to get back in the offices. Let's take a listen to this. The UAW is on strike. They're asking for 40% of wage increases. The unions, it's funny because the Democrats, what's wrong with the Biden administration? Why is he so unpopular?

It's inflation. That's what people say. It's the economy, dummy. It's the economy. People have less in their pocket. But now he's backing the unions who are forcing wages up, which is creating the inflation he has to kill. Some of the cities that have issues on commuting, like New York or L.A. downtown, L.A. downtown,

San Francisco, the CBD, that are difficult to commute to, that's where the pressure's so hard from workers saying, I don't want to drive into the city an hour and a half and drive home an hour and a half every day. But I also think a nice little recession will clear this, and you'll see people come back to the office. Nice little recession. Nice little recession, Sagar. Great guy.

This stuff makes me so crazy. You know, it's like, it's been proven, because every increase in the unemployment rate is directly tied to suicide. 2008 killed tens of thousands of people. And not to mention, when you lose your health care, also, money is the number one cause of people. And not to mention when you lose your healthcare, also money is the number one cause of divorce. It caused a huge amount of relational problems. People lost their houses. It's horrible. I mean, ruined millions of people's lives and left a lot of trauma for a lot

of families. And so when we're just casually talking about recession, you should never wish that on anyone. It leads to literally immediate death and to a tremendous amount of suffering, you know, throughout the entire economy and really on a personal level. That's the other thing that's so callous about the Jim Cramer, like, oh, just ship it to Mexico. I'm like, let's also just think about what we're saying there. We're like, we're going to get these poor Mexicans to work with no worker protection. That's right. And with lower wages and exploit them in their country so that we can buy a car, which let's all be honest, it ain't going to be cheaper. The current price of a car is like $50,000. So they'll still keep the price the same.

They're just going to take the money that they would have saved supposedly in wages. They're not going to pass it on to you. They're just going to take it right back to the shareholder. So all of this is just a very convoluted and disgusting way to look at the overall economy. But I think that the more that we highlight these things, the more attention that people can understand about what the people in charge really do think of them. Like whenever you try and make it a binary choice,

things start to get real revealing. And that's where we're at. This is a psychopathic mentality. It genuinely is. And just so everyone is totally clear, the stuff he said about inflation and workers' wages causing it is complete garbage, complete garbage, especially if you look specifically at the auto industry, where workers have actually taken a pay cut when you account for inflation. OK, their pay has gone backwards at the same time that new car prices have skyrocketed. And you know what?

The automakers have found that it is more profitable for them to sell fewer cars, but have them be astronomically expensive. And by the way, like many other industries, use the excuse of inflation to jack up prices and not to say they didn't have issues with supply chains, issues with semiconductors. There are some genuine things and none of them had anything to do with the wages that these workers are being paid, which account for somewhere between four and five percent of the cost of the new car. So these supposedly brilliant minds, I don't know if he's just an idiot. I don't know if he hasn't looked at the numbers, or I don't know if he's just happy to shamelessly lie in service of his own twisted, ugly, psychopathic economic ideology. But whatever

it is, what he's saying there is dead wrong. And there are no numbers that can back up what he is spouting there, the nonsense what he is spouting there. The nonsense that he's spouting also on CNBC. I always think it's funny whenever people are talking about carbon, they're like, oh, these wages, all this. I'm like, what? You don't want to talk about dealers? That's probably like the number one source of markup. Like you don't want to talk about the financing model and the way that a lot of these people even keep themselves afloat. You don't want to talk about industry. Like you said, semiconductors, that's actually an area where national policy could get involved.

I mean, the big three have nobody but themselves to blame in a lot of ways. I mean, they have not designed good cars for a long time. And in many respects, it's not because of the union. It's because they got fat and happy and their shareholders were basically printing money by giving themselves stock buybacks as well as the CEOs making a ton for themselves. And that's why Toyota, Tesla, and all these other people clean them up. So anyway, I think there's a lot more like-

Well, I have a Ford F-150 and the Mach-E and I love them both. Well, listen, Crystal, those are the two premier models. Go ask somebody driving a Chevy Equinox how it compares to like a Honda CRV. You'd be a fool in my, look, this is not any advice. In my opinion, you would be an idiot to buy an Equinox over like a CRV or a RAV4 or

any of these other ones. And I think that honestly, that is a tragedy. Like if I think cars are cool, I wish American cars were awesome. But if they are not at the higher end of the spectrum and we're talking about middle-class, you should buy Asian every single time. I'm only talking from a consumer level, replacement parts, mechanics, reliability, weather. On every metric, it wins. The only American car that can even come close on that is Tesla. And that's in the electric sector. So anyway, that would be my non-union. Personally, I love my American-made cars. My cars are great. You got great ones. You got actually the good ones, but the vast majority of people aren't buying those. But what he's spouting is nonsense. I do want to give people a quick update on what

is going on with the strike. Go ahead and put this up on the screen about there was an announcement of an expansion of the strike, but they're only hitting Ford or I guess expanding with Ford and GM. It looks like they are making some progress with Stellantis, which is interesting. Wall Street Journal has a look here at some of the dynamics and what's going on. It looks like the big thing that Stellantis gave ground on was cost of living issues and the right to strike over plant closures, which is a really key ask here. Fain says that they're making progress, but gaps still remain. So, you know, this just continues to pace a lot of pain for the people that are involved and certainly a lot of pain for these companies that are involved. That part I don't mind so much. And we'll see where we

go from here. Fain has been making these announcements usually Friday morning of when and how they're going to expand the strike. Remember, this is part of that stand-up strategy, which is we're not going to go out all at once to help preserve the strike fund and also to keep these companies on their toes about what's going to happen next. Seems like they're making a lot of progress at the negotiating table, even as they have not yet achieved their goals and don't have a contract with any of the big three. So we will continue to watch it very closely because obviously it's a huge deal, not just for autoworkers, but for the economy overall. That's right. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at?

Well, in our AMA questions for this week, one of our viewers asked from Canada, can we bring more attention to the country? I explained that to the extent that we cover it, it's when it intersects with our politics or to a broader theme that we care a lot about. In this particular case, it's because Canada has long been a leader in North America for piloting censorship programs, eager to abuse their lack of First Amendment protections to stomp on Western traditions of free speech, free expression, with Orwellian government control. The latest example is one that was flagged by friend Glenn Greenwald, and it bears really investigating. The Canadian Radio, Television, and Telecommunications Commission announced a new policy requiring online streaming services to provide the government with information about their activities in Canada. These streaming services include podcasts, which must register with the government to, quote, permit regulatory controls.

So what are these regulatory controls? What are we talking about here? The current registration requirement is driven by the so-called Online Streaming Act, which passed last year. It will require these newly registered platforms to, quote, need to make support Canadian and Indigenous content. We'll include provisions that will require these platforms to quote, create a broadcasting system that is reflective of Canadian society and quote, strengthens indigenous broadcasts and supports the vitality of indigenous languages. So basically, legislation and compliance is required under the law

that will then direct racial and cultural quotas to those who wish to broadcast in Canada, giving the government broad authority over who you can hire, what you can broadcast, and even including languages. Now, listen, I understand Canada is a completely different country than ours. It has a very different legal framework

that doesn't actually make this all that unusual. And the perusal of the law itself is still a dedication to, quote, though, equity in broadcast, racial quota demands, and it all just looks very familiar to anyone in the United States. Maybe it is a preview of what they would wish they could do without First Amendment protections. Furthermore, it actually really calls into question shows like ours that actually have and are US-based with a sizable Canadian audience.

Will YouTube or Spotify be forced to enforce these regulations in the future onto us or face bans of our program if the government requires it there? These are not simply rhetorical questions. One of the most stunning censorship episodes I've ever seen occur in the entire West was just two years ago with respect to the Canadian truckers.

Recall, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Canadian response to the trucker protest was the biggest story in the world. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the never-before-used Emergencies Act in Canada, he outlawed freedom of association, authorized a full-blown police crackdown on a lot of these protesters, the Canadian government after-action report on protests concluded that social media itself was the nexus of organizing and would merit extreme censorship in the future, Updated recommendations to the Canadian government were the Institute Disinformation Guidelines that would allow authorities in the future to even thwart organization efforts at the most basic level

for any movement that they deemed threatening. Of course, this followed even other unprecedented actions. The Emergency Act allowed the government to even freeze the bank accounts of anyone involved in the protests, including seizing incoming donations from organizations like GoFundMe, extended to cryptocurrency exchanges for anonymous dosations, sent in via Bitcoin and other currencies. It remains to this day

probably one of the most Orwellian actions, as I said, by a Western government in modern memory. It's right up there with Australia's government's response to COVID. And of course, to head off the criticism, I know it's not happening here. I hope it never does. But it is a preview of how Orwellian censorship

can come to be justified explicitly under the guise of anti-disinformation regimes in the West. Remember that here in the US, there have already been similar demands on podcasting for decades. I mean, largely as a result of the COVID pandemic, especially recently. Quote-unquote misinformation is apparently rife on podcasting. That was according to

anti-disinformation researchers. They faced a real conundrum. Because a podcast is one of those last open protocols that exist in wide consumption. We simply just publish to an RSS feed and it is picked up by whichever podcast player you choose. But as we all know, the vast majority of people are on Apple Podcasts and on Spotify. So what do these people do? They target the companies. They won out, remember, during that whole Joe Rogan debacle. They slapped all those ridiculous COVID warnings on any episode that has to do with the topic. I guess we'll have it on this one. At least they didn't outright ban it. But they certainly tried, and they verily succeeded. So here in the US, the censorship

regime will never look as blatant as it does in Canada. But it may just come in, honestly, a worse form. It's by leveraging private monopolies to enforce ideological ends. If you think that the financial censorship that happened in Canada can't happen here, I mean, there are dozens of left- and right-wing figures in this country that have found themselves

cut off from the likes of Visa and MasterCard, found themselves kicked off platforms like GoFundMe or PayPal, asked Kiwi Farms how it worked out for them when Cloudflare cut them off. They ceased to exist on the internet. Try using Parler after Amazon Web Services nuked them post-January 6th.

It could all easily happen here. In some cases, it already has. We have to pay attention because the moment of action actually may come much sooner than you think. It was interesting to go down this rabbit hole about this. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, this time the walls actually did close in.

Trump spent yesterday in a courtroom fighting for his New York business life after already having been found guilty of business fraud in a civil case. Because of that ruling, the only question now really for Trump is how severe the punishment will ultimately be. And make no mistake, he is really fighting hard. His defense team announced yesterday that the former president does intend to take the stand to testify in his own defense. That's going to be wild. At stake is control of some of his most iconic properties, including Trump Tower itself, in a case that cuts to the heart of the myth of celebrity billionaire Donald J. Trump. It all started back in 2019 when Trump fixer Michael Cohen testified to Congress that Trump routinely lied about the values of his properties and other assets. When he was trying to look good

for, say, Forbes magazine, or, more critically, to prove he had enough collateral to secure another loan from a bank, his assets would magically skyrocket in value. When he was trying to minimize a tax bill, they would instantly deflate. These comments sparked an investigation from New York's Attorney General Letitia James under a broad statute that gives her the power to investigate business fraud. Some of what she found was quite something, even for Donald Trump. Trump had claimed that his own personal residence was 30,000 square feet. In reality, it is less than 11,000 square feet. This led to an overvaluation of roughly $200 million. One would think that a real estate developer would know the rough square footage of his own home. In another instance, Trump pretended that apartments, which were in fact rent stabilized by law, were not in fact rent stabilized by law,

leading to their value being overstated by roughly 700%. Another Westchester County property was valued by Trump at $261 million, in spite of the fact that it had been appraised four different times at a value of $30 million or less. Over a 10-year period from 2011 to 2021, prosecutors found some 23 instances of fraud in reporting asset valuations, each more or less as brazen as the examples that I have just cited. Now, Trump defenders and Trump himself have pointed out that in the judge's initial finding of fraud, he ruled that Mar-a-Lago should have been valued at only $18 million. That amount does seem extremely low, a point Trump himself picked up on in comments yesterday. Just take a listen. They have one property that's worth anywhere from 50 to 100

times what this judge put down as a value, put down a value $18 million, and the property's probably worth, could be anywhere from 50 to 100 times more than that. And a lot of those numbers could even be low. We have other properties, the same thing. So he devalued everything. What he and his defenders failed to mention, however, is that that $18 million number, that actually came from the Palm Beach County assessor when determining how much taxes would be owed on the estate.

So which is it? The low amount that was used for taxes or the more than $1 billion that Trump is now claiming the property is worth? As recently as 2020, Trump's own company said that they actually agreed with the Palm Beach County assessment. So he was either lying then or he's lying now, as is the case with all of these instances. He picks whatever suits his interests in that present moment. Now, the defenses from Trump's team in the first phase of this trial were a bit of a shit show. They tried to argue that none of the banks involved were hurt, point which is irrelevant to the case. They also tried to argue that a blanket disclaimer rendered all of the financial statements worthless and that they should have been seen as such by any lenders. These arguments were so baseless, the judge actually financially sanctioned Trump's lawyers

directly for continuing to offer them after they had already unequivocally been swatted aside. And aside of the quality of his representation, the Trump legal team apparently forgot to check the box requesting a jury trial. So Trump is now stuck with his fate resting in the hands of a judge who he apparently absolutely hates. But however bad the legal team's arguments were, Trump's own arguments were way worse. He outrageously sought to justify the property valuations by claiming he could get a Saudi buyer to pay whatever he wanted for these properties so they couldn't possibly have their values inflated. A shocking admission from a former president who already appears to be thoroughly compromised by Saudi money. So none of that worked out for Trump in the first phase of this trial. Now, the question is just how

big the sanctions on Trump are going to be. Letitia James is seeking $250 million to reflect her estimate of the gain he achieved through this fraud, an amount large enough to cause real financial hardship and potentially force even the sale of some assets. Already, Trump and his sons have had their New York business licenses revoked, which will make it difficult, if not impossible, to continue running the New York real estate empire, a dagger to the heart of Trump's whole business identity. Now, Trump says this is all political. And to be honest with you, in a sense, he's right. Before he ran for president, he was basically granted the blanket immunity that elites typically receive in American society. They can brazenly lie, cheat, and steal

with few, if any, consequences, as long as they're part of the club. Remind me again just how many bankers were jailed for destroying the global economy. Now Trump has lost this elite protection card and is facing the sort of scrutiny and, yes, consequences that you or I might expect to face. In other words, the problem here isn't that Trump is being sued now. It's that he got away with so much for so long, just like so many other elites. And it's that so many other wealthy people get away with the same and worse every single day. For all the understandable focus on Trump's many criminal indictments, this civil trial, it really cuts more closely to the heart of Trump's public brand and his business.

How much of the Trump reality show was reality? How much was just a show? A wildly successful branding exercise that helped launch him into the highest office in the land. It's also the first time that any of the attempts to sanction Trump through impeachment or the legal system have really had teeth. The first real blow to the Teflon Don veneer. The first indication, as I said, that the walls are kind of for real closing in. The first sign that his seeming invincibility may be as much of a mirage as his 30,000 square foot Trump Tower apartment. And that's what really this really snuck up on me. So as we tease, we're excited to be joined in studio by Congressman Ro Khanna of California.

A jam packed week here in D.C. and also a lot going on in your home state. So great to have you here, sir. Good to see you, sir. Always good to be on. Yeah. What is your understanding of what is even happening today with regards to Kevin McCarthy and his speakership? Well, right after this, I go to a caucus meeting where we're going to decide. I'll tell you the sentiment from the Democrats, at least in the progressive caucus.

Yeah. This is a Republican issue, a Republican mess. Let them figure it out. Don't bail McCarthy out. But we're going to discuss it as a caucus and then come to a decision. What about you personally? Is there any scenario where you could see yourself voting for Kevin McCarthy? Like what would you have to get from Kevin McCarthy in order to vote, in order to save his speakership? Well, first of all, I don't think anyone's actually going to have to vote from the question, would you vote to table the motion? It would have to be an appeal from

leadership and the progressive leadership to say, look, we've gotten enough concessions. I don't want to speculate on what those concessions would have to be, but it would probably have to be a very high bar for that to happen. OK. And so you said your sense is the progressive caucus basically has a similar view as you do. Do you have a sense of, you know, the rest of the ideological spectrum of the caucus? Are they feeling like more interested in a deal, more interested in bailing him out. Do you have any sense of that? You know, surprisingly, it's been pretty uniform among blue dogs, among problem solvers, among progressives, that this is a Republican mess. Let them figure it out. We'll see how much unanimity there is in the caucus. But if the caucus is unanimous that we're not going to bail him out, McCarthy's really got to challenge it. At the very least,

we'll have to come to Hakeem and Progressive Caucus and others and make certain concessions. Interesting. Okay, let's move on to California because there's also a lot going on there. Governor Gavin Newsom making his announcement of his choice to fill Dianne Feinstein's seat. Put actually G3 up on the screen here, guys. We have LaFonza Butler has been chosen. She's a former labor leader, SEIU, but then following that term, she went and advised Uber on their quote unquote labor relations as there was a bill or that was it a bill or a ballot initiative to attempt to make sure that Uber drivers were classified as employees and not contractors.

She also was a lobbyist for Airbnb. So a lot of question marks about why she was chosen instead of the woman who you are backing, Congresswoman Barbara Lee. What is your reaction to this election? Barbara Lee would have been the better choice. I mean, she was out there campaigning. She's been a progressive. Originally, the governor said, well, we can't pick Barbara Lee because she's still running. But now he said the person can run. So it was a source of a lot of disappointment to progressives. Look, I think Senator-designate Butler has an inspiring life story. And I don't want to say anything negative about her and her work on LGBTQ equality and women's rights. But it came as a surprise and a blow to a lot of people in the

CBC, Congressional Black Caucus, progressive community, who thought, why not Barbara Lee? What's wrong with Barbara Lee? Why does Barbara Lee seem to keep getting passed over? She was passed over in House leadership. She's now been passed over on the Senate seat. Something is obviously, some people in the party obviously don't like her. And why do you think that is? Probably her progressive politics. I mean, look, she's been someone who's stood up against endless war. She was the only person to say, don't give George Bush a blank check to Afghanistan. She's willing to call out corporations in power. She takes progressive positions that upset the donor class. She doesn't have a lot of friends amongst the

donor class around the country. So I don't think it's coincidence. And so with Gavin Newsom, he's been making a lot of headlines. He showed up to the Republican debate. He clearly isn't enjoying himself. But behind the scenes, we've been covering some of this. If we can go and put this up there on the screen. In terms of vetoing certain legislation and making certain actions, you can see here, vetoing unemployment pay for striking workers and protections for domestic employees. What do you see this as a pattern, in terms of both the selection pick, rejecting Barbara Lee, and also some of his more recent actions that have not been in front of Sean Hannity on the camera. Well, I'm surprised because this is not the 1990s Democratic Party. And you look at three key bills on economic fairness. One, he vetoed giving people

who are striking unemployment benefits. Now, New York and New Jersey have these provisions that if you go on strike, you can get unemployment benefits. It makes New York and New Jersey have these provisions that if you go on strike, you can get unemployment benefits. It makes no sense, especially when you have the writer's strike in your own state. And this is why the bill is being brought. Second, and this one was particularly concerning to me. He said that domestic workers should not be able to get basic safety protections because they work in people's homes as opposed to businesses. Well, if you look at the history of the New Deal, FDR excluded domestic workers because of race. And many of the people who are domestic workers in California are women or women of color. Of course, they should have basic safety just because they work for a person as a nanny or as a home

care worker doesn't mean they shouldn't have safety standards. And then he upset all of the Teamsters by saying that you shouldn't have a human operator on a truck over 10,000 pounds. As a Silicon Valley guy, I'm saying have a human operator. You want to have a person to make sure in these conditions that someone can be safe. So I don't understand why in the modern Democratic Party where even President Biden is moving towards labor, you'd want to hurt labor on three seminal issues. And it's not just me. The leader of the California Labor Fed has spoken out about this and a lot of the unions are upset. I mean, to me, sometimes his actions seem very perplexing

because on the one hand, he also just signed a great piece of legislation that will make sure all fast food workers in the state of California earn $20 an hour. And so when I look at the pattern, I can't help but see, oh, what are the two key donor groups in the state of California and really within the Democratic Party overall, Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Well, the truck bill, obviously, Silicon Valley didn't like that one. And then in terms of unemployment pay for striking workers, Hollywood, you've still got actors out on strike. They very much didn't like that one. So it seems to me as he's positioning himself for a presidential run, he doesn't want to get crosswise with the donor class in two key

industries for the Democratic Party and for his aspirations personally. Look, I represent Silicon Valley. I've gotten support from tech leaders. But at the end of the day, you have to pick whose side you're on. And on this case, yeah, I got a lot of calls from tech folks upset. Why are you supporting AB 316? Why are you supporting the Teamsters? And the reason is I don't want unethical development of AI with no concern

for the human costs, for safety, for jobs. And so the governor has to pick. Is he on the side of working families or is he on the side of donors? Yeah. And so from California, obviously, there's a lot of turmoil, I guess, with the politics right now. And now we have this new appointment seat. I believe that the rules have been made so that she can then run for that seat in 2024. Do you still believe that there will be a competitive primary? Do you intend in like working with this or is this kind of the appointment? Is this it? Is this the end of that primary process? No, I'm still for Barbara Lee and Barbara Lee is still running. I mean, it's unclear whether Senator-designate Butler will run or not.

We're waiting to hear. The governor, I mean, anyone can run. The governor can't restrict them for running. Originally, he said that would be a condition. He removed that condition. Some people suggest that that means that she's going to run, but we have no idea. We're waiting to hear. But I'm going to be for Barbara Lee, I mean, because of her values, because of her support for Medicare for all, which is another thing, by the way, in the state of California. I mean, the governor had campaigned on CalCare. We should get single-payer. We've got super majorities in that state. And we didn't get it last time, Ashikala's bill. I'm going to be out there pushing for CalCare single-payer this time. Gotcha. And what's your assessment of, last question on this one,

because I know you've got to get to that caucus meeting. We don't want to hold you up. But with Governor Newsom, I mean, his ambitions are quite clear. You know, he said he won't run against Biden. He won't run against Kamala even if something were to happen this time around. But clearly this man is angling, right? Do you think he's even making the right political choices in terms of vetoing some of these bills, like putting our values aside and how you should stand on the side of labor, even when it's politically inconvenient. It seems to me like on a fundamental level, when you have support for unions, support for labor, support for these striking workers at historic highs, that he's really misreading the mood and the political moment to sign repeatedly veto legislation that is on the

side of labor and on the side of workers. What's your view of that? It's perplexing. I think he came up in the 1990s. And so he still has the sort of triangulation model of politics. And I supported him for governor. I supported him in the recall. So I've been an ally of his, but it's perplexing to me that he's so good on reproductive rights, he's good on LGBTQ issues, but on economic issues of economic fairness, of taking the side of working families, on calling for a tax cut for the rich. We haven't been doing that. Making sure you're actually supporting single payer, which you ran on in 2018. Hasn't been able to do that. Making sure you're actually supporting single-payer, which you ran on in 2018. Hasn't been able to do that.

Making sure you're with the labor unions and labor and working class people. This is a Bernie Sanders state that Sanders carried. It's a progressive state, and it's not a state of sort of triangulation, 1990s economic policy. So that is, I would say, the same thing to him if he called me up. And of course, I had made the case directly to him for Barbara Lee very strongly and was quite direct. It's just we come from a different perspective. And this is the future debate in the party. Are we moving more towards the Warren Sanders economic populism wing or are we stuck in the 1990s economic framework? I actually think

President Biden is moving more towards the Bernie Warren wing. I think in terms of labor, he's taken some extraordinary actions. There's just no doubt about it at this point. Yeah, it's going to be certainly interesting. I know you got to get to your vote, so we won't hold you up. Appreciate you joining us, sir. Thank you. Always a pleasure. Great to see you, Congressman. Thank you. Stay informed, empowered, and ahead of the curve with the BIN News This Hour podcast. Updated hourly to bring you the latest stories shaping the Black community. From breaking headlines to cultural milestones,

the Black Information Network From breaking headlines to cultural milestones, the Black Information Network delivers the facts, the voices, and the perspectives that matter 24-7. Because our stories deserve to be heard. Listen to the BIN News This Hour podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your gut microbiome and those healthy bacteria can actually have positive effects. Your mental health, your immunity, your risk of cancer, almost any disease under the sun. This week on Dope Labs,

TT and I dive into the world of probiotics, the hype, the science, and what your gut bacteria are really doing behind the scenes. From drinks and gummies to probiotic pillows. Yes, really, probiotic pillows. We're breaking down what's legit and what's just brilliant marketing. With expert insight from gastroenterologist Dr. Roshi Raj. Listen to Dope Labs on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Jeff Perelman. And I'm Rick Jervis. We're journalists and hosts of the podcast Finding Sexy Sweat. At an internship in 1993, we roomed with Reggie Payne, aspiring reporter and rapper who went by Sexy Sweat. A couple years ago, we set out to find him. But in 2020, Reggie

fell into a coma after police pinned him down and he never woke up. But then I see my son's not moving. So we started digging and uncovered city officials bent on protecting their own. Listen to Finding Sexy Sweat coming June 19th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.