Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/10/22: Jobs Report, 1/6 Cringe, Ted Cruz, SCOTUS, Politico, CDC Lies, Candace Owens, Millennials vs Boomers, and More!

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

Krystal and Saagar discuss the December jobs report numbers, liberal cringe on January 6th, Ted Cruz's heated appearance on Tucker Carlson, SCOTUS misinformation during vaccine mandate hearings, POLITICO's major reporting screwup, CDC lies on covid & kids, the frauds on the anti-vax right, intergenerational warfare between millennials & boomers, and more!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Philip Pilkington’s Substack: https://macrocosm.substack.com/ Philip Pilkington’s Article: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/12/generation-against-generation  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. are more than welcome to listen in. I knew nothing about brunch. She was a terrible girlfriend, but she put me onto brunch. To hear this and more, open your free iHeart app, search Good Moms, Bad Choices, and listen now. I'm Jeff Pearlman.

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 of years ago, we set out to find him. But 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,

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Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, thanks for listening to Breaking Points with Crystal and Sagar. We're going to be totally upfront with you. We took a big risk going independent. To make this work, we need your support to beat the corporate media. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, they are ripping this country apart. They are making millions of dollars doing it. To help support our mission of making all of us hate each other less, hate the corrupt ruling class more, support the show. Become a Breaking Points premium member today where you get to watch and listen to the entire show ad-free and uncut an hour early

before everyone else. You get to hear our reactions to each other's monologues. You get to participate in weekly Ask Me Anythings, and you don't need to hear our annoying voices pitching you like I am right now. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com, become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Some pretty interesting stories we're tracking this morning. A look back at the way that both Republicans and Democrats commemorated 1-6. We have all the worst, all the sort of worst takes for you on both sides of the aisle, so you'll probably enjoy that.

We certainly enjoyed putting it together. Also, big moves at the Supreme Court. Biden's vaccine or test mandate seems very much in danger. So we'll take you inside of the arguments and what the implications there may be. Major, major screw up from Politico. It's one of the worst I've ever seen. Unbelievable. They said that Sonia Sotomayor, who had done the oral arguments in this SCOTUS case remotely because of her own concerns about coronavirus and she has comorbidity with it. They said they spotted her out maskless dining. Of course, this creates this whole firestorm. And then it turns out not only were

they wrong, but they didn't even check with the people involved before they published this incredibly inflammatory news item. So we'll take you inside all of that. Also, first time guest on the show, an economist, Philip Pilkington, who has a really interesting piece on potential coming sort of intergenerational warfare. Of course, we've tracked here the way that younger generations have just gotten absolutely screwed, how hard it is to buy a house, how hard it is to start a family, how sort of their trajectory has really been thrown off course for their entire lives. So it'll be interesting to talk to him. But we wanted to start with what was a very disappointing jobs report on Friday. At

least that was the sort of top line number. The full picture is a little more complicated, but let's go ahead and throw this New York Times tear sheet there up on the screen. So the major headline is U.S. hiring slowed in December as employers struggled to find workers. The economy added just 199,000 jobs in December on a seasonally adjusted basis. That is down from November's number, which is 249. It was also significantly off of expectations. We're somewhere in the 400,000 job range. So significantly off of expectations. Those gains were the smallest of the entire year. And at the same time, though, there were some signs that those looking for jobs last month were finding them. The unemployment rate fell to 3.9 percent from 4.2 percent. Wages continue to surge. So when you look at this all together, you see

slow job creation, but you see unemployment rate continuing to fall. You see wages continuing to gain. Of course, those are being eaten by inflation. So there isn't a real wage gain, ultimately. But a very complex picture here where you still have things that are kind of out of whack from the pandemic. And the bottom line is, even as you have had a lot of jobs return, we're still millions of jobs below where we were pre-pandemic. That's the part which nobody really wants to talk about. Biden coming out and be like, we have 3.9% unemployment rate. It's like, yes, but our labor force participation rate is still not that great. Not even back to pre-pandemic levels. We have millions of people who have just dropped out of the workforce. In fact, not even back to pre-pandemic levels. We have millions of people who have just

dropped out of the workforce. In fact, what they point to is that the lack of hiring is not because there's not enough jobs. It's because the labor force participation rate remains quite low. The only good thing out of all of this is that blue-collar workers are getting a pretty significant raise in specific sectors. So leisure and hospitality wages compared to January 2019 are up almost 20%. Retail, same thing, right below it. Business services, education and healthcare, and all industries is actually up by 15% on a baseline. Manufacturing, though, and construction continue to be quite down, only about 10% increase. Of course, none of this really does keep pace with inflation. There's so many myths that have been busted here, Crystal. The number one is, well,

unemployment and unemployment insurance was not keeping the economy down. We know that almost for certain. Yes, that's right. Which is that the labor force participation rate did not change. And it seems that a lot of people, I'll say it till I'm blue in the face, just said, hey, that job sucked. I'm not going back at that wage. People used to I'll say it until I'm blue in the face, just said, hey, that job sucked. I'm not going back at that wage. People used to treat me very badly. I'm just not going to deal with it. I'm taking some time off.

Early retirement. I'm going to spend more time with my kids. Schools are still chaos. I can't afford to go back right now. That, more than anything, is what is a quote-unquote drag on the economy. But even looking at it that way, I think, is really bad. I mean, these are all human beings. These are millions and millions of people making individual choices. And on balance, while it is bad for Biden, and yes, you know, it's a very transitional time in the labor market, I continue to just see a good trend for blue collar workers and for people out

there who want to start a business like now is one of the best times. The big problem is inflation. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. And that's why people feel so unsettled and so uncertain and like why you have such a high proportion of the American public who say they are worse off financially than they were last year. I mean, the other piece of that

is that there were pandemic era programs that really benefited people that helped them have a little bit of savings in the account so that they were able to pay down some bills,

not be so entirely like right back up against the wall. That's all been spent down. The bank accounts are back down to where they were before the pandemic spending programs. And now you have prices rising at the gas pump, the grocery store, in the sense that even though I may have more choices now, I may be able to leave my job, I may be able to get a higher paying job. Even though that's going on, all of those gains are being eaten by inflation. And I think that's the big part that's kind of missing from this report.

Because honestly, you know, the top line number of the number of jobs created isn't great. But the fact that there is a tight labor market, which is what this obviously shows, is a wonderful thing for workers. Some of the things we've been tracking have been very encouraging in terms of the great resignation, in terms of the union movement, the strikes, workers who feel like they can assert themselves and actually achieve some gains in their workplaces. I mean, Lord, we haven't had that in our entire lives. No, we haven't had that. Literally your life or my lifetime. We haven't seen that. But on the other hand, you have deep pessimism about this economy. People feel like they're sliding backwards.

People feeling like we may be headed into a recession, which, by the way, is not a crazy fear, especially when you have the Fed looking at unwinding some of the extraordinary measures that they've been taking and hiking interest rates to try to check inflation. So that is not a crazy fear on the part of Americans. The other piece of this, it reminds me politically of where Obama was in 2012 and then even trying to sell the case for Hillary Clinton going into 2016, which is that they really wanted to argue, the economy is great, guys. This is amazing. Don't believe your lying eyes. I mean, I did a great job with the recovery, and Americans felt very differently about the reality because they saw the way, you know, the way their lives have been turned upside down. They saw the way that middle class and high-earning jobs went away during the recession, and what replaced them was mostly low- jobs, so massive inequality, the slowness of that

recovery, people never bought that the Obama recovery was an amazing thing. And now basically, even his economists admit that some of the moves that they made and the inadequacy of the stimulus and all of those things, their failure to bail out homeowners while they were bailing out Wall Street, contributed to a slow recovery. So ultimately, they even had to kind of acknowledge, you know, what the American people were right about this. Well, Biden is now in the position of trying to do the same thing, sell the American people on a recovery that they just frankly are not feeling. This jobs chart got a lot of derision online, justifiably so, I would say. So the White House tweets this out under President Biden. The economy has created more jobs per month than under any other president ever.

Per month? Per month. Okay, so a couple of things there. First of all, average per month is a super weird and selective metric, especially when you're comparing yourself to people who served entire terms or people who served two terms. So you're taking your average over one extraordinarily strange year versus, you know, eight years under Obama or eight years under Bill Clinton, et cetera. So that's one thing.

But the other thing is, like, obviously there was going to be a lot of jobs recreated coming out of the pandemic. Not that we're fully out of it, but that was going to happen regardless. So it just, it's not very persuasive. I remember when Trump would do this. He'd be like, in our first year in office, we've created more jobs than President Obama did. I'm like, yes, well, his first year in office was the Great Recession. It was 2009. That wasn't really his doing. Every president does this and it always annoys the crap out of me. But Biden is just so tone deaf with this type, with this

chart. I mean, the CEA, they continue to put this stuff out. Remember the infamous gas prices chart? We're like, well, it's dropped by a single penny. See, we're actually making some progress. Look, you need to meet people where they are. And he did a little bit of that in his speech. It was a very small glimpse, which we'll show you. But he continues to fall prey to the same things that Trump did, that Obama did, where whenever you're out of step with the American people, the worst thing you can do is start with fake charts. And the second thing you can do is only talk about the stock market.

And lo and behold, that's what he started doing. Let's take a listen. There's never been a time I can think of when the middle class and working class have done well that the wealthy haven't done very well. Working families need to get a fighting chance. And by the way, the stock market, the last guy's measure of everything, is about 20% higher than it was when my predecessor was there. It has hit record after record after record on my watch while making things more equitable for working class people. The same.

You know, I mean, look, yeah, he said per the last guy, but then the Biden and a lot of their people were coming out and saying like, oh, see, the stock market is high. The moment you start to try and play those games, which aren't in touch with the average American, you're just not going to be able to make it. I actually thought the best part of his speech when we noticed this was when he was talking about rising car prices. This was in a back and forth with some of the reporters around inflation. And he actually got to, I mean, this is always a problem. And he seems to understand a tiny bit, but then he's just so deeply unpopular and obviously just barely there. Every once in a while has a good moment. This was one of them. Let's take a listen. But here's the way to look at it. If car prices are too high right now,

there are two solutions. You increase the supply of cars by making more of them, or you reduce demand for cars by making America's poorer. That's the choice. Believe it or not, there's a lot of people in the second camp. You hear them complain that wages are rising too fast among very middle class and working class people who have endured decades of stalled incomes. Their view of the economy says the only solution to our current future challenges is to make the working families that are the backbone of our country poor or keep them in the state they're in. See, that is actually astute in terms of talking about supply. But again, no credibility, not like he actually has a plan in order to get any of this stuff done,

and continues to play with the same chicanery charts that Obama and those people did, where normal people look at you and go, what are you talking about? My life is miserable. You know, there was a book I read back in 2014 called The Unwinding. And if you think about it, it was written by George Packer. It interviewed a bunch of people who had just been whacked by the Great Recession. And a consistent theme through all of it was, what is Obama talking about? I'm still suffering out here.

I gave him a second chance. But the script for Trump was written in that book in retrospect. Is that America was getting hollowed out. second chance. But the script for Trump was written in that book in retrospect, is that America was getting hollowed out, is that there wasn't a real connect between the White House and more. And whenever that happens, people go elsewhere real quickly. We've literally seen this movie before, and yet they continue to repeat the same mistake. I mean, if the Republicans hadn't run a cartoon character of like plutocratic out of touchness in Mitt Romney. Obama was very vulnerable because of this exact dynamic. And then I think this plays out very dramatically when he tries to put,

you know, his hands on Hillary Clinton and say she's the one to continue the policies. And people said, hell no, we don't want that. And we feel like you are very disconnected from the reality of the lives that we're actually leading. I mean, that's one factor of many why Trump ends up ultimately in office. And so, listen, Biden has a lot of numbers that he can pull on the unemployment rate, on the number of jobs that are created, apparently on the stock market, all of these things. But it really doesn't matter throwing a bunch of numbers and charts and data at people when they just don't feel that and experience that in their lives. I think we've shown you guys a couple times the high proportion

this came from the New York Fed about a third of Americans who say are worse off financially now than a year ago. That's the highest number since the beginning of the pandemic when the bottom literally fell out of the economy. So that's a stunning number. And then CNBC just had some polling that backed up the pessimism and the struggle that Americans are feeling right now in their own households. Let's go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen. Biden's disapproval hits a new high. And the big reason is because people are dissatisfied with what he has done on the economy. The economy was the top priority for men and women of every age cohort of Latino and white voters, those with and without college degrees. Black respondents said racism is their chief priority, but the economy was second place.

And 60 percent of the survey's respondents said they disapprove of Biden's handling of the economy. That is a six point decline from September on personal economic issues. Voters were even more likely to criticize the president. 72 percent disapprove of his handling of the price of everyday goods. Sixty six percent disapprove of his efforts to help their wallets. So again, you can throw all the numbers and charts and data, and Obama tried very much to do the same thing and frankly was a much more talented, charismatic, and persuasive communicator of that message. If people aren't living that and experiencing that, and if you are not sort of – it's a tricky dance because you don't want to feed into the pessimism. You want to try to sell what you're doing as an accomplishment. But if you aren't landing in terms of feeling like, you know, people understand what they're going through, then you're politically going to be in a very bad place. People are just going to think you're out of touch.

And that's where things stand right now. That's what happened. And this is the problem. I mean, look, I've said this so many times around FDR and the Great Depression. A lot of it was just, I understand how bad things are out there. Here is everything I'm doing every single day in order to try and do something about it. And he's very haphazard. He's not in front of the camera.

He's not a charismatic leader. Over the weekend, where was he? I mean, I know he was at Harry Reid's funeral. Did he say anything? I didn't see a single clip of it. Why has the administration not come out with order after order after order? I mean, that meatpacking thing took months in order to move through the bureaucracy. That should be a line item of a massive agenda in order to bring down prices in the United States. And was fully inadequate. And it was not even in there. Even the one thing

they did. Exactly. So that is one thing that they have done. One, Strategic Petroleum Reserve. He tapped it once, did nothing else. There's no talk about import and export rules around our oil. That's for gas prices on food. The same thing. I mean, the port of L.A. continues to be backed up. It's not as bad.

Never mobilized the National Guard. At the end of the day, the person who was most effective in clearing that was a private guy on Twitter who tweeted about how some of the local regulations of the ports were backing things up and the mayor of Huntington Beach got involved. The president is nowhere. He's not there. I mean, this again gets down to the fact that energy, vigor, and the bully pulpit, in this case, is the one thing that could connect him to the average American, which really was his strength in the campaign, but I think he's just too old and he's not up to the job. And you know what, though? I actually think, so I was thinking the same thing.

Like, he just can't do it. He gave a very forceful speech on January 6th. That's true. Called out, I mean, it was forceful. He, you know, denunciations all around. And I thought, oh, it's not that he can't do this. He doesn't care. He just hasn't been doing this.

So, like, you're willing to put this energy behind, you know, making sure the Republicans, at least rhetorically, behind making sure the Republicans don't steal the next election. How about you put some of that energy towards, like, actually trying to win to start with? Because as things stand right now, Republicans aren't going to have to steal the election. They're going to be able to win it fair and square. So maybe channel some of that energy in the direction of making people feel like you understand their concerns and you are doing something about it, which is why we pulled that little part of the speech where he talks about inflation. He says, you know, these guys, their answer is to make sure that you're poor so you can't buy a car to start with. And yeah, that will solve the price problem. But is that really the direction

we want to go in? Use that forceful ability to call out corporate greed, to put some, I mean, by name, put some of these corporations on blast that are manipulating prices. Yes, focus on the beef market and the meatpacking industry, but you have to go much, much further. And then you can say, look, there are some encouraging signs here, but I get it. Your wallet is squeezed. You are feeling this at the pump. You are feeling this at the grocery store. And we are going to take to task the people who are putting you through this. Do that and then have some actual actions to back that up so people feel like it is making a difference. They're not going to buy this fantasy story that the economy is all well and good and that their lives are actually great.

They just don't realize it. Yeah, no, I think you're exactly right. All right, moving on. January 6th, the one thing apparently Biden cares about. We tried to put together as many of the cringe, most cringey parts that we possibly could. We have two blocks here back to back. The first part here about the Democrats. Nancy Pelosi and the congressional Democrats, for some reason, thought it would be a good idea to invite Lin-Manuel Miranda of Hamilton to both give a speech and compose a special song for the occasion. It's

so cringe we cannot play the entire thing, mostly because I just simply can't stand to watch it. Let's go ahead and give the people a taste. I call your attention to... A new year brings hope for the future, new energy to face the tasks ahead of us, and a renewed promise to strengthen the foundations of our democracy. We are all stewards of the American experiment, working to pass down to our children and our grandchildren a more perfect union that treats all its citizens with fairness and equity. We are all stewards of the American experiment, working to pass down to our children and our grandchildren a more perfect union that treats all its citizens with fairness and equity. We should never take our rights and liberties for granted,

and we must remain committed to finding a way forward together. That's what I wrote about in the song Dear Theodosia from Hamilton. I believe no challenge is worth abandoning our efforts to unite as Americans. We'll keep working, generation after generation, until we reach that someday. Dear Theodosia, what to say to you?

You have my eyes, you have your mother's name. So I didn't think that could be topped, Crystal. But on a substantive action, it honestly got worse. So on January 6th, there were two Republicans who were on the House floor. One of them was an elected representative at the time, Liz Cheney. She decided to call her father, Dick Cheney, out of retirement to join her on the House floor, nauseating. He should only be there for, I don't know, like a trial or something. And he is standing there and is being greeted warmly by Democrats. This is not an exaggeration. Let's go ahead and put this up there, and I'll narrate over for those who are just listening. On the right side of the aisle the Bush administration. Holding hands there with Liz Cheney. Now shaking hands with Dick Cheney.

You have all those people behind them. I cannot think of anything more nauseating and empty of our politics there, Crystal, in terms of them warmly greeting Dick Cheney. I got so angry I broke my Twitter hiatus. And I was like, ask yourself this. Who is more responsible? If you really care about democracy, like if you really care about the state of American democracy, who is more responsible for destroying faith in our institutions, in the media, in basic governance? Then is it Dick Cheney or is it Donald Trump? You could say Trump, but Trump came along after the crimes and the ineptitude.

And it's so difficult to even put into words how destructive Cheney was to the United States. And it's put aside because he's willing to say, I don't recognize the country on January 6th. Maybe you created the country that happened on January 6th. No reckoning with that whatsoever. How about that? Jacobin actually had a pretty good piece on this that said, listen, no one should downplay the crimes of Donald Trump.

Yet compared to Dick Cheney's crimes against democracy, Trump is an amateur. Cheney reduced nations to rubble, shredded the Bill of Rights, and enacted programs of surveillance, abduction, detention, and torture more in line with the state terrorism and military dictatorships

than the norms of liberal democracy to venerate Cheney as Democrats in Congress said yesterday is to show complete contempt for democracy. And it, I mean, I don't know what to say. It's not surprising. It's not surprising, but this guy should be, if anyone in the country should be in prison, it's this guy. I mean, honestly, honestly, to pretend like he's some ally in a fight to preserve our democracy is bananas. It's utterly, utterly disgraceful, and it's obviously not a one-off. I mean, the veneration of Liz Cheney, another perfect example, and, you know, she's not complicit. She's not responsible for the sins of her father.

But she has the exact same ideology. So she's following in his footsteps with the exact same sort of policy and worldview that he ultimately had. You see the way that, you know, the Lincoln Project ghouls who were all complicit in the George W. Bush era of criminality. All of them venerated people, threw millions of dollars at these people to be totally ineffectual, by the way, in trying to beat Donald Trump. Their ads were, in some instances,

more effective at persuading people to vote for Donald Trump than to vote against him. Nicole Wallace is now a top star at MSNBC. I mean, she really is their rising star. It's possible she could replace Rachel Maddow in the primetime hour. All of these, you know, security state ghouls who were, again, involved and complicit and lying to the American people during those Bush years. Oh, now they're superstars with cable news gigs on MSNBC, CNN, heralded as, you know, wise statesmen. It's really disgusting who they have made common cause with.

And you don't have to do that in order to have a very effective critique of Donald Trump. In fact, your willingness to partner with some of the great criminals against democracy undermines, undermines the case that you are making here against Donald Trump. Because what, you think people believe Dick Cheney has credibility on like the sanctity of democracy it's ridiculous I do want to say on the Hamilton thing they know their audience

they know their audience I mean listen who was gonna like really tune in and care about these festivities and whatever it's the sort of people who are like totally enamored with Hamilton and listening to the soundtrack still unironically, et cetera, et cetera. You're right. They're just playing to their audience, Sagar.

But the problem is that audience is not big. And so, remember this, January 7th, CNN bragged about how January 6th coverage beat every single other network at the time. And you emphasized this on January 6th, which is that at the end of the day, it was the best thing that ever happened to them from a media ratings perspective. But on the anniversary, not so much. Put it up there. So Fox News actually beat CNN and MSNBC on the January 6th anniversary by a lot.

And here's the reason why. Fox News actually ended up cutting away from a lot of its January 6th coverage. I'm not saying they're not doing that intentionally. But at the time, and they were actually criticized by CNN, what were they covering, Crystal? CDC, Omicron, lockdowns, schools, stuff that matters to people's lives. That's part of the reason. They try to resurrect the spirit of January 6th, every day is January 6th because it was the best thing that ever happened to them. They have a shrinking audience of these upper middle class liberals who love Hamilton unironically and it's not working. The country is tuning out because bread is too pricey. So is gas and people are like, hey, somebody please fix what's going on for me. And they've got frickin' Lin-Manuel Miranda in the Capitol. Look, I'm sure he's a nice guy.

But it's like, why is this the priority on what you spend so much of your time, energy, and media attention on? Here's the other thing, too. Like, let's say that you are a person. And I do think that there are democracy reforms that are really important to fight for. I mean, no one can look at the system and say, like, it's operating well and effectively. But they're not spending their energy actually fighting to do anything. It's all just, it's the equivalent of kneeling in the kente cloth. I mean, it's just all of this symbolic, let me, we can show, they did a candlelight vigil that night.

Let's go ahead and play a little bit of that. So this is what they're spending their energy and their force and their political capital on, is these displays of upset over what happened on January 6th. And look, there's plenty of good reason to be upset about what happened on January 6th. You are legislators. What are you going to do? And how are you going to do it? Focus on that. And then maybe people will tune in

and then maybe people will care rather than you're just, you know, displays of how sad and sorry you are. So that's why this ultimately frustrates me. And look, you're 100% correct that their highest ratings were on January 6th. It's been all down since then. Fox News has also fallen off. Everybody has because they just are so stuck in their little partisan, shrinking, narrow, partisan brain worms world where reality never penetrates. You're over on Fox News.

They're still claiming that the unemployment program is why people aren't working. On Larry Kudlow's show. On Larry Kudlow's show. That's over. So what's your excuse now? I mean, they're just so out of touch with the reality of grappling with people's daily lives, just stuck on the stupid culture war nonsense and not doing anything to actually fight for changing the country in ways that would be beneficial to the broader American public. So it's no wonder that people have tuned out. Yeah, absolutely. All right, but the prize

for the greatest personal debasement on January 6th has to go to Senator Ted Cruz. You guys may have seen this already, but there has been a sort of shift over the past year. On the day of January 6th, there was a lot of willingness among Republicans to say this was terrible, like this was awful, to use sort of strong language around it. And Ted Cruz, in particular, repeatedly used the word terrorist to describe those who were involved in January 6th. He says just the ones who were attacking police officers. That was not always

apparent from the comments that he was making. So he went on Tucker Carlson's show on January 6th and effectively begged for forgiveness for using this word. Let's take a look at that confrontation. I mean, there are a lot of dumb people in the Congress. You're not one of them. I think you're smarter than I am. And you never use words carelessly. And yet you called this a terror attack when by no definition was it a terror attack. That's a lie. You told that lie on purpose. And I'm wondering why you did. Well, Tucker, thank you for having me on when you aired your episode last night. I sent you a text shortly thereafter and said, listen, I'd like to go on

because the way I phrased things yesterday, it was sloppy and it was frankly dumb. And I don't buy that. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't buy that. Look, I've known you a long time since before you went to the Senate. You're a Supreme Court contender. You take words as seriously as any man who's ever served in the Senate. And every word you repeated that phrase, I do not believe that you use that accidentally. I just don't. So, Tucker, as a result of my sloppy phrasing, it's caused a lot of people to misunderstand what I meant. Let me tell you what I meant to say. What I was referring to are the limited number of people who engaged in violent attacks against police officers. Now I think you and I both agree that if you assault a police officer, you should go to

jail. That's who I was talking about. And the reason the phrasing was sloppy is I have talked dozens, if not hundreds of times, I've drawn a distinction. I wasn't saying that the thousands of peaceful protesters supporting Donald Trump are somehow terrorists. I wasn't saying the millions of patriots across the country supporting President Trump are terrorists. And that's what a lot of people have misunderstood. Wait a second. Hold on. What you just said doesn't make sense. So if somebody assaults a cop,

he should be charged and go to jail. I couldn't agree more. We've said that for years. But that person is still not a terrorist. How many people have been charged with terrorism on January 6th? Like, why'd you use that word? You're playing into the other side's characterization that, as Joe Kent just explained, allows them to define an entire population as foreign combatants. And you know that. So why'd you do it? So, Tucker, let me answer you directly. The reason I use that word for a decade,

I have referred to people who violently assault police officers as terrorists. I've done so over and over and over again. If you look at all the assaults we've seen across the country, I've called that terrorism over and over again. That being said, Tucker, I agree with you. It was a mistake to say that yesterday. And the reason is what you just said, which is we've now had a year of Democrats in the media twisting words and trying to say that all of us are terrorists, trying to say you're a terrorist, I'm a terrorist. And so look, I don't like people who, who assault cops and, and I stand up and defend cops and the reason I use that word is that's the word I've always used for people that violently attack cops. And the reason I use that word is that's the word I've always used for people

that violently attack cops. But in this context, I get why people were angry because we've had a year of the corrupt corporate media and Democrats claiming anyone who, who objected to the election fraud. And by the way, remember what was happening during those protests. Wait, wait, wait, wait, can I just ask, hold on, you work in the Senate. I just I guess I just don't believe you. And I mean that with respect because I have such respect for your acuity and your precision. And I've seen it on display. I've covered you as a reporter.

I know how you speak. And you have sat there for a year and watched people use language to distort the events of that day. Intentionally. Insurrection. Coup. Terrorism. Saying it's an insurrection is a political term. It's a lie.

I've repeatedly denounced it. And when it comes to, look, I was focusing on what I normally say. What you aired was a little 15 second snippet. What I normally say is violence is wrong was a little 15 second snippet. What I normally say is violence is wrong. Peaceful protest is right. If you engage in violence, you should be prosecuted. If you're speaking, you have a right to speak. I say that all the time. Well, I agree. All right. That's actually hard to watch. But there's there's a lot to say about this. That's a very important clip. Yeah, it is. So the first thing to say is that both of these dudes are full of it and slimy on this count, because I actually tend to side more with Tucker in terms of we shouldn't be throwing the word terrorism around.

It is used to justify an expansion of the security state. We saw that with the Black Lives Matter protests, George Floyd protests, and we have seen it with January 6th. However, Tucker, very clear and very forceful on not calling these protesters terrorists, but he very casually called Black Lives Matter protesters terrorists previously. So that's one thing to put out there. With Ted Cruz, he has, it's not like he just used this term once. He tries to play it like. Yeah, he used it. Oh, sorry. Yeah, he tries. He tries to play it like, oh, I was sloppy in my wording. And Tucker, rightly, is like, here, give me a break. You are very precise with your words. You're a very intelligent person.

And you did not use this casually. And actually, we have CNN track this. He has said this 17 different times. Ted Cruz publicly described the Capitol riot as a terrorist attack at least 17 times, spending at least five months before the time this week he got attacked for it by Tucker Carlson, and so is now claiming that it was just a sloppy slip-up. This was very intentional language from Ted Cruz, and I would have a lot more respect for him if he explained it and justified it, even though in some ways I disagree with,

again, the casual using of the term terrorist to describe, you know, people who, even people who were violent in the Capitol attack and even people who were violent in the Black Lives Matter protests. Neither one of them is being consistent and straightforward in this clip here, ultimately, which is why it's kind of a mess. I think you're right. And actually, personally, it causes self-assessment because I was like, hey, you know what? You know, you shouldn't use the word terrorist whenever you throw it around, specifically because you can see how it's used by security state people. And so, yeah, even when it's a group which you may not even agree with, you should be very careful about checking your rhetoric. I'm probably being very guilty of violating that, and I regret it. But

that's the thing, too, about Ted Cruz, is that he was very clearly trying to triangulate here by saying, look, I'm one of those Republicans who's willing to call it out, just like I did BLM. Tom Cotton was another one of those folks. I think he even used the term insurrection the day afterwards. I'm not exactly sure. But he basically tried to meet it with the same way that he met with BLM, but it is just not acceptable for a lot of people within the Republican base. Now, I actually probably agree more with that type of framing just because of the policy ends that Tucker is obviously objecting to. But the problem here, and this is why I don't get, why go on in the first place and supplicate yourself this way? I don't get it. You know, if it was part of a political strategy to try and win back white suburbanites, the Glenn Youngkin-style voter, while still being able to maintain MAGA, honestly, one Tucker attack, you would have been fine.

It would have been a one-day story. But that clip went on for six and a half, almost seven minutes, which in cable is eternity for that to happen. And he came off looking insincere. Now he's insincere to the voters he was trying to win over, those suburban types. And the MAGA folks still look at him as lying Ted. So you actually didn't come out more powerful at all. I mean, ultimately, we all know that he used it intentionally.

I would have respected him more if he went on and said, look, this is what I say. I get why the left is doing this, and I don't agree with it. And that's it. And if you disagree with me, Tucker, that's fine. I'm the senator from the state of Texas, and ultimately I answer to them. Boom. I just gave you a good answer.

And I, look, I think I tend to err more on the side of, look, we should be very careful with these terms and they are weaponized. However, do I think there's a case you could make here, especially if you apply it consistently and make the argument? And do I think Ted Cruz, who is a very intelligent person who does a lot of stupid things, do I think that he could, being the lawyer that he is, make that case in a way that was fairly clear? Yeah, I think he's capable of that. And he had been actually consistent in calling both groups, regardless of their political ends and whether they serve your partisan interests or not, calling them both terrorists. So yeah, I would have respected it a lot more, even as I continued to disagree with him, if he actually came on and made the case. But I mean, this is just embarrassing.

Like to borrow a term from the right, he just completely cucked himself. I mean, that's what it really is. It's true. It's a lot of like six minute long cucking and it's completely embarrassing to watch. Again, Tucker is a total hypocrite on this. He also could have done his research and, you know, brought up the fact that, hey, when it was the other side, you did call them terrorists and let's have a conversation about why you see that in a different way. I'm the one with the consistent standard here. But instead, he just sort of like debases himself and begs for forgiveness. Yeah. And that's the thing, too. I don't think it's going to work. I mean, you know, at the end of the day, did you really win back the MAGA base?

I don't think so. I think they would have respected you more if you stood up and said, look, this is my view. At the end of the day, you know, I stand with President Trump and everybody knows that. You could have just done that. I've seen Lindsey Graham do it. I've seen Jim Jordan do it. A lot of these guys who disagree with Trump necessarily on policy, but, you know, still like I'm a defender of the president. It was a totally unnecessary move. It made you look worse. And actually, it hurt the ultimate goal, which is if you do want to run for president again, now everybody thinks you're insincere. You know, you did supplicate yourself on national television, just, you know, submitted to a public flogging. And all at the same time, now you also are a hypocrite in terms of what you're doing. So just a total loss across the board.

It's honestly sad. It was pathetic. It was indeed pathetic. Okay. Supreme Court, I believe that was mentioned in the last segment. So we can go ahead and use it here for our transition. A lot going on at the Supreme Court. Top line, what is happening is that the vaccine or test mandate looks extremely in danger after oral arguments before the Supreme Court. But we'll start with a very interesting moment. Justice Sonia Sotomayor making a claim that there are hundreds of thousands of kids on ventilators. We have audio, not video, because the Supreme Court doesn't allow that. Let's take a listen. Country today than we had a year ago in January. We have hospitals that are almost at full capacity with people severely ill on ventilators. We have over 100,000 children, which we've never had

before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators. So saying it's a different variant just underscores the fact that without the without. OK, that was so egregious, even the Washington Post and others, PolitiFact, some of the most left leaning fact checkers out there had to come out and be like, whoa, hold on a second. There are not over 100000 children who are in the hospital. Let's go ahead and put that up on the screen. Sotomayor's false claim, they gave her four Pinocchios for the over 100K number for serious condition. Also, there was another rumor floating around that Justice Gorsuch had said that hundreds of thousands of people died of the flu. He actually said hundreds comma thousands of people every year, Just to clear that up for anybody who's been following this online,

look, the actual number of children who are in the hospital on this is actually pretty difficult in order to ascertain, largely because of HIPAA, obviously, state-by-state data. As of January 8th, there are about 5,000. So, look, that was two days ago. That was HHS data. It generally tracks. But look, compare that to the number of kids, obviously, who have gotten it. And then even whenever we continue to see that a huge number of these cases, especially kids who are in the

hospital, are with COVID, you come in with a broken leg, you test positive, and you're technically qualified. So keep that in mind. But it is off by a factor of 20 when we're talking about the justice. I think there's a lot to be said here, which is that think about the type of media that she has to consume in order to believe that is true. That means that's a systemic failure. That's not just on her. That is on a whole architecture of psychotic media obsession on this. I'm doing my whole monologue on the CDC's own role, but that's a major indictment of the elite class in this country. I totally agree. I did a monologue last week, as you know, based on a New York Times article by David Leinhart, just laying out the data, which is very clear about the way kids have

been hurt by school shutdowns and the comparatively low risk that kids are at when it comes to coronavirus, and especially when it comes to Omicron. Boy, were people upset. Yeah, I was surprised by that. I was, I mean, I was, I guess to me the data is so straightforward. I'm not saying that there's zero risk to kids, but compared to other risks like the flu and pneumonia, compared to just the risk of driving in the car to the school place, you are at much lower risk.

And we know it very clear the way that kids' academic achievement, the way that their mental health has suffered, the way behavioral problems have spiked, the way suicide has increased. So we have very clear data on the way that closing schools hurt kids and actually no clear data on closing schools helping kids. It's not even clear that it did reduce their risk to Omicron ultimately. But you can see when you have someone who is as knowledgeable as Justice Sotomayor has to be with such a skewed perception, I mean, just wildly off about the risks that are facing kids, then I understand how you would view what I was saying. It's like, my God, how can you put our children at risk like this? Jesus Christ, you're a mother. because there are a lot of people who have consumed media that because off by a factor of 20 on such an important,

I mean, what could be a more important metric than the risk level that is facing our children right now? Right. And then just to bring it to the substance, which is also very important, is this mandate does look like it's going down for the general population. So let's go ahead and put that up there on the screen from The New Yorker. Vaccine mandates have a bad day at the Supreme Court. Let me try and explain it best that I can. So the conservative majority in their questioning, what they were hinting at is that if Congress were to give OSHA the ability, the OSHA agency the ability to implement a vaccine mandate, they would have written vaccine mandate specifically within the charter of OSHA. Now, this conflicts with the general, more liberal view of the court. And I

don't mean that pejoratively. I'm just saying in terms of how it is looked at through administrative law that OSHA, by its ability and its mandate to keep people safe, can then go ahead and try and mandate vaccination. This doesn't even necessarily matter whenever it comes to the science. And I know that sounds ridiculous, but law doesn't really work that way. But from the Supreme Court kind of more textualist, conservative view, what they're saying is that OSHA doesn't have that ability because Congress never specifically enumerated them with that ability within the law. Thus, and this is what Justice Gorsuch and others were saying,

is it is very clear that this OSHA mandate was used as a workaround of Congress and that because of the inability of Congress to function, that the Biden administration was using administrative law to circumvent the democratic process and implement it. Actually, somewhat sympathetic to that. And we could even talk about it from a more scientific point of view, especially with Omicron. I don't think it makes any sense. But that is kind of a decent summary of it. Now, from the liberal point of view, Kagan, Sotomayor, Breyer, and others appear to be more in line with what I was saying about the interpretation of the actual abilities that Congress has given OSHA.

And we're looking at it from that way, especially given what they looked at as the severity of the virus. But given the 6-3, it doesn't look like this is going to stand. So basically, and this is why this is relevant, not just for this particular vaccine and test mandate, but more broadly for how the court approaches their role versus the role of these agencies, is Congress actually granted OSHA very broad authority. The OSH Act of 1970, Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, permits OSHA to issue binding rules that provide, quote, medical criteria which will assure, insofar as practicable that no employee will suffer diminished health, functional capacity or life expectancy as a result of his work experience. So that is a very broad granting of authority.

And basically you're saying to OSHA and you can interpret that, you know, however you see fit in order to protect workers. What the court is effectively saying here is that they are uncomfortable with a federal agency being granted such sweeping powers and that they believe the law should more specifically enumerate what powers agencies are ultimately given. So that has potential ramifications, not just in this case, but in a lot of other cases where the power of a federal agency is ultimately questioned. So on the more broader vaccine or test mandate for the public, I mean, every analyst that I read said it's going down. And I think to your point, Wall Street Journal raised this, which is an interesting point that maybe I have some issues with. But they said, look, actually, with Omicron, there isn't a lot of evidence that being vaccinated stops the incident of illness. Now, look, you are much less likely to be hospitalized and much less likely to die if you are vaccinated. But in terms of stopping the spread

with Omicron, it doesn't actually seem like there's not evidence to say that the vaccines are effective. We don't have the science to say that yet. But putting that aside. So on the broader public question, it looks likely that is going to be struck down on a more narrow question of health facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid funds. They seem more likely to uphold that one, because in that instance, the federal government is basically saying, they seem more likely to uphold that one. Because in that instance, the federal government is basically saying, look, you got to play by our rules or we're pulling our funding. Roberts and others seemed more likely to agree ultimately to that more narrow instance. Yeah, I actually do think it makes sense, right, which is that we do have very specific case law around what it means in order to work in a medical

establishment. Now, once again, whether you disagree or not as to whether that should be implemented from a legal perspective, that has a much more narrow kind of focus with a lot of different regulations in the way that we have it right now, especially in the way that the state has it. But whenever it comes to a private workplace, especially over 100 workers, that is a whole other can of worms. It also is indicative of much more meta levels, like you were saying, around how the conservative majority is going to be looking at specific laws. And this goes to the Federalist Society and a lot of the specific legal doctrine that these guys subscribe to that is now within the court. So it's good to try and familiarize yourself with it here

if you do care about some of these big cases that are happening. That's kind of the best summary that you'll see. It's almost certainly not going to stand, even though I believe it is still kind of going into effect with the appellate court. So it's a bit of a chaotic situation, and we'll keep everybody updated. Yeah, and the last thing I'll say is it is somewhat of a break with precedent because there have been previous vaccine mandates at the local, that were even more stringent, that didn't even have the testing out that were ultimately upheld. So

obviously, this vaccine mandate is supposed to go into effect today. And they have not decided to sort of block the rule from being implemented as of today. But it looks very likely to ultimately be struck down with broader implications for how they orient themselves with regards to the federal agencies. That's right. So speaking of the Supreme Court, Sotomayor, this fits very nicely. This is one of the worst media screw-ups that I have seen in a long time. And it actually has some pretty big implications. So let's give everybody the background, which is that Politico playbook, I don't even know how to describe it, has this kind of gossipy rag section called Spotted,

where a lot of people will see people about town and say, Spotted, I saw so-and-so and so-and-so having dinner, and then it will end up there. People famously, you might remember, there was that time that Robert Mueller and Don Jr. were at the same gate in the airport. Okay, these are the type of cringe things that people in Washington care about.

Also, dirty little secret. One of the ways that you know you should hate somebody here is when they send in their own birthday or spotteds into Playbook with the hope of trying to get in there. I won't name any names, but I know some people who have been doing that. Anyway, so there's this restaurant called Late Diplomat here in D.C.

I actually live nearby. Frankly, dramatically overrated. I have no idea why people love it so much. But it's kind of the place to be seen, see and be seen. It's like the high dollar restaurant. It's very hard to get a reservation. So there was somebody who was dining there, actually right after that Supreme Court oral argument. And they noted who they thought was Justice Sonia Sotomayor,

dining with Democratic leadership, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, and a few others. Amy Klobuchar. Amy Klobuchar. This was a really big deal because Sonia Sotomayor called, basically was like, I have to do the oral arguments from home. I have a comorbidity. And I'll admit, when I saw this photo and I saw the headline that Politico had said,

Sonia Sotomayor out dining in public, I was like, you—my blood pressure was so high. I was like, you hypocrite. You're calling out sick. I was like, you go out to dinner, you're hobnobbing and drinking French wine at Les Dips. And here's the photo. So let's go ahead and put that up there on the screen. This is the photo that was sent in to Politico that wasn't even published. And they said that the woman who was seated there right next to Amy Klobuchar was Sonia Sotomayor.

And I will admit, I mean, she kind of looks like it, you know, from behind. Similar hairstyle or something, yeah. Similar hairstyle, build. And you would think, okay, I could see why that happened. Well, they did not, it turns out, contact anybody else who was at the dinner, and they just published it sight unseen, despite the fact that you can't even see her face right there. They never confirmed it with Sotomayor's office, Chuck Schumer's office, any of the people who were there. And it turns out, let's put this on the screen, that that was Chuck Schumer's wife.

And I couldn't believe it, Crystal, that they ran this national piece of news with zero verification. They didn't go out of their way to try and verify it at all. They took hours to even issue a correction. What ended up happening is that it was published, and then the people in the offices were like, hold on a second. Did my boss have dinner with Sonia Sotomayor? And then they're calling their boss, and they're like, hey, this is totally not true. Representatives for, I think, Schumer's office said they didn't even hear about it until it had been published. That is journalistic malpractice.

It's the most basic thing ever. Right. So you take a photo of somebody. That's essentially like saying a tweet is true by just looking at a photo. Once again, highly incendiary claim. This was something that was really making the rounds amongst a lot of people on the right. Oh, this was blowing up online. It was huge. It was a trending story. People were like, hypocrisy, once again, from the liberal

elite. Look at them hobnobbing after they call out sick, all of this. I mean, you can't publish something like this without, A, recognizing how incendiary of a claim, and B, not going in any way to try and verify it. And actually what's really egregious, let's go ahead and put this up there, is that they ended up putting out an editor's note, so to speak, and say, We publish an item erroneously placing Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor dining with Democratic leaders. The person who sent us the tip in the picture mistook Iris Weinshaw, wife of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, for the justice. Politico standards require we verify this information. The editor who received the tip failed to do so in this case. We deeply regret the error. The corrected version of the newsletter is published below. But here's the thing. They didn't send out a correction to all their newsletter

readers. They only included the correction 24 hours later in the latter edition. And there were still a lot of people who read that newsletter who were like, holy crap, I can't believe that she did this. Yeah, well, and how many people will see the original item and never see the correction? Exactly right. You know, how many people are going to see that? And I'm not, you know, standing up for Sotomayor. I'm just saying, like, the truth should be known. Yeah. be known yeah this again raises the question how many other times did they not check it whatever it didn't cause something incendiary do they just rely on word of mouth I mean I know

it's difficult to understand if you don't live here but this is truly like one of the lifebloods of Washington in terms of the spotted section, like the, what drives news. They report job moves, all this stuff. This is like how everybody starts their day. It is like the insider gossip rag, you know, and it is profoundly influential. Although there are some questions about how influential it will remain because there are a lot of other newsletter competitors out there, Punchbowl and these other things that are sort of trying to compete with it and doing so. But yeah, I think the biggest question it raises is like, oh, you all are just sloppy with this stuff

all the time, aren't you? Because there is no way. Anytime someone gets caught like this, you know damn well it's not the first time that they failed to verify and run it through the traps and just the most basic journalistic practices. So it shows you how dramatically unreliable Politico's premier product, brought to you by Chevron and all these other people, ultimately is. Let's see who was actually brought to them by that day. Yeah, that would be interesting to know. But yeah, I mean, it just shows you how sloppy they are with what they're doing, how careless they are with the facts. And I think how oblivious, because I have to think that they didn't realize what a shitstorm this would cause.

I think you're right. Because I think if they knew, oh, this is a really explosive like this, ultimately you would at least do the very basics of reaching out for comment because you know it's going to be really embarrassing to the people who are involved. So I think they also were sort of oblivious to the cultural context, which is a problem in and of itself that you wouldn't even recognize the newsworthiness of what you're ultimately reporting here. Yeah, so it was presented by the Freedom to Vote Alliance, a shady nonprofit group. Sorry, everyone. In terms of Sunday, it was the same thing. Today's, I'm sure it'll be Chevron or Facebook or some other blue chip corporation. But this is, again, a very important thing to understand, which is that whenever the people who report the news get caught, it's kind of like what they say about drunk drivers, which is that whenever you catch a drunk driver, on average, that means they've driven drunk over

a couple hundred times, right? It's one of those things where if you get caught, I mean, the odds of getting caught are very low. And that means that, you know, to get caught in that way, which is that on average, this is a consistent pattern and a lifestyle. Part of the reason I'm very okay with very stringent penalties on that because I know how common it is with a lot of people and why whenever they do get caught, it is much more of a reflection of a much bigger trend. And in this case, the only reason they got caught

was because it was an item of such explosiveness. But how many times did somebody complain and say, well, that's not actually what happened. You just printed what so-and-so said. Here's my side of the story. And they basically are like, oh, shove it. You know? I mean, you know, or they're like, yeah.

And they include like a little editor's note down at the bottom. This time they only did it at the top because it was such a matter of national explosion. So, once again, you know, be careful what you read. Be careful what you believe. I mean, I myself was guilty of it. My blood pressure was rising. You know, I was like, I can't believe this. You mean, I myself was guilty of it. My blood pressure was rising. You know, I was like, I can't believe this. You know, such a hypocrite, all this. And it turns out to be completely fake. It just, it's a good reminder to me. You got to check yourself

and be like, well, hold on a second. Is that really true? The photo, you know, even though they had a photo, I was like, oh my God, look, it's right there. You know, you see what you want to believe without any sort of check. So it really is a danger. One thing I think that we benefited from on this show is that we both have different news ecosystems that we live in. Because how many times have you brought me an item and I've been like, I saw that's not, or I brought you an item and you're like, no, like the Gorsuch thing. I saw the Gorsuch like, oh, we said hundreds of, we got to include that. And you're like, oh no, no, there was a, you actually look at the audio, listen to the audio, and that's not what he said.

So I hope that we do a little bit of a better job. That's true. Of checking each other because we do have a very divergent news ecosystem. But listen, this is just, again, another warning to be very careful about what you're reading and what you're believing, especially when it fits too kind of cutely into a particular partisan narrative. What's the phrase, like, too cute by half or whatever? And it really was. Yeah, it was too perfect. It was like French laundry.

I was, like, relishing it. Can't wait to cover this on the show. It's totally BS. I mean, come on, guys. All right, Zach, what are you looking at? Well, let me say this at the top. I am as sick of doing COVID monologues as some of you probably are of hearing them. But like it or not, COVID and how we deal with it, it is the single biggest issue affecting the majority of Americans' lives right now.

Masks on or off? Boosters or no? Can I get a rapid test? My friend who I saw three days ago has COVID. Do I need to do anything? My kid's school is closed. Now it's open. Now it's closed again. On and on and on. It's been a miserable two years. And the singular fight of our time is do we keep allowing them to make our lives miserable or do we say enough? Now, despite their best efforts, the vast majority of Americans are in the latter category. The problem is that the ruling elite are not there yet. And in their quest to gaslight us into living our lives in fear, they have corrupted some of the most important scientific institutions in American life. Think about before this pandemic, the reverence with which you thought of the CDC,

or even the FDA, or the National Institute of Health. All three I listed have lied, obfuscated, and disregard the basic scientific process in the quest for social compliance. The latest example is right there. Truly sickening, though not surprising. Those of you who are New York Times subscribers may have seen this terrifying headline. COVID may raise the risk of diabetes in children, CDC researchers reported. Oh my God, let's keep reading. A CDC study says there's a 2.6-fold increase in new diabetes cases amongst kids. That is obviously terrifying.

And the implication is that draconian measures like vaccine mandates for kids, masks in schools, forever virtual learning, and pandemic forever policies are way more justified. There's just one problem. The study is complete BS. Dr. Vinay Prasad, he explains several problems with that study. Number one, the entire analysis hinges on the idea that age and sex match kids without COVID should be comparable to kids who got COVID in terms of diabetes. Given that COVID is more likely to affect kids of lower in terms of diabetes. Given that COVID is more likely to affect kids of lower socioeconomic status, that those kids are way more likely to be overweight or suffering from other medical problems, this is already an issue. Does the CDC

correct for that in their study? No. Next, they're only studying reported cases of COVID in kids. They're not getting a real sample, given that probably the majority of kids who had COVID never even had their case reported. Is that adjusted for in the study? No. Third, kids who seek medical care for COVID are way more likely to get blood tests than those who don't. Thus, this would also capture diabetes much earlier. Is this corrected for in the study? Repeat it with me. No. Finally, one of the databases that they use for COVID cases does not include any distinction in the severity of the COVID case per child and uses the control group of kids who may have not been getting negative tests just for travel purposes. Again, is there any control or correction for this? No. One more, actually, as Dr. Prasad explains.

Even if these results are true, the risk of diabetes due to COVID within 30 days was less than one in 1,000. So even if their flawed and bunk study was true, it still would not justify the scaremongering headline in the New York Times. Did the Times do anything at all to convey any of this? No. They simply print flawed CDC propaganda to justify what they really want, which is kids to get vaccinated and to justify draconian health measures in schools. Not a single word of criticism of the study. Think about the millions of parents who justifiably read that, and they freaked out. How many are going to watch this monologue or read Dr. Prasad's piece?

Probably a fraction. That's the point. This is only the latest example of the CDC getting caught with their pants down, pushing junk science to justify ridiculous pandemic measures. The other that I already brought you here in a past monologue, masks in schools. Let's review a little bit. The study they used to justify it included virtual schools in the control group, not open schools, and it was so flawed, many doctors said it would not pass a seventh grade science project. Yet, despite the obvious flaws and the fact that Europeans don't have masks in schools and don't have any measure increase in children's COVID cases,

CDC director and the organization continue to this day to stand by it. We are seeing the wholesale disregard of science across the board towards social ends. Or perhaps you're like me and you got the Moderna vaccine. Well, the booster guidance was just changed to five months from six months. Why? Not by study of the Moderna vaccine, but based upon data from the Pfizer vaccine, which is a completely different dosage of mRNA. As Dr. Prasad says,

the FDA has never changed a label for a product based upon data for a completely different product at a different dose, at a different rate of adverse effects before. But you got to stick with the uniform narrative. And so science be damned. Take natural immunity. 140 global studies have now affirmed the power of natural immunity in combating COVID, yet it continues to not be recognized by the CDC. Why? Because the CDC relies on their own flawed studies in their study of natural immunity. In almost every single one of

these cases, you have the CDC with their bunk study rigged in exactly the way that they needed to to justify public policy ends pushed from the top. And then on the other side, you have the actual scientific consensus. Diabetes, massive schools, booster guidance, natural immunity. Four concrete examples of obfuscations, outright lies that are being used to scare the public. We need to wake up. This is pure manipulation of scared parents. But worse, it has established a criteria where when one of those organizations speaks, I simply do not believe them by default. The default in the past was I believed, and then you had to prove to me that they were lying. Now my assumption with COVID is they are lying. What if we have a future pandemic where the mortality rate is 1%,

5%, 20%? You think I'm entrusting these people? Not a chance in hell. How many more are there like me? The government has abandoned science, and we will pay the bill for that for so many years to come. That diabetes thing is crazy, Crystal. I'm sure maybe you saw it, right? I did. Well, first of all, they put type 1 in there. And I was like, I don't think you understand what type 1 diabetes is. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com.

Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, we have spent a lot of time covering some of the anti-science insanity coming from Libs on COVID, as Sagar just did. Yale University telling their vaxxed and boosted student body they cannot dine at a restaurant, even outdoors. Sonia Sotomayor, as we've been talking about, multiplying by 20 times the number of kids who are currently hospitalized with COVID. Cities that are closing schools in spite of the clear data on the incredible damage that such policies have already done to children. But we must not ignore the extreme nuttiness and irresponsible hackery that has taken hold in the anti-vax right. Case in point, Candace Owens. So Candace swears that she is in fact unvaccinated. Some have questioned whether that is in fact true, given that she was caught

attending an event at Madison Square Garden, a venue that requires adult attendees to be vaxxed. When she was recently pressed by a viewer on whether she was really unvaccinated, she insisted that she was so super-duper anti-vax that she would literally die before getting the jab. Take a listen. Next question. Are you really unvaccinated? Really? And then there is a shared tweet that says Candace Owens is lying to her followers about being vaccinated. And it shows me at the UFC and it's, I guess, planning for your event.

Oh, the Madison Square Garden website, which says that you've had at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine prior to attending. I would I would say to the people, first and foremost, I am obviously unvaccinated. You follow the story of me trying to get a COVID test in Aspen, and I only had to get a COVID test to show that it was negative because I was unvaccinated. So I didn't go through those jumps and hoops pretending to be vaccinated. I am not getting this vaccine ever. Never going to get it. I don't care if I'm on my deathbed and they say it can save you.

I'm not going to get it. I'm principally now opposed to it. And I do not understand why anybody who is healthy, able-bodied, and young would ever get this vaccine if you're not at risk of COVID. Again, personal choice. You can choose something differently. Regarding the UFC event, I would instruct you not to visit the Madison Square Garden website, but to visit the New York City law website.

You better understand that every time the elites make laws for you, there is a way that they can get around the laws that they're making for you. And there are carve-outs in New York City of when you do not need to present a vaccine card. And fortunately, I fall under one of those carve-outs. That's all I'll say about that. So she says she would not get vaxxed even even if she was on her deathbed, and it would save her because she is, quote, principally opposed to it. So is the principle she's supposedly willing to die for just, like, owning the libs, or what is the principle here? Look, honestly, I have no idea whether Candace Owens is lying to her fans, hypocritically encouraging them to put their own lives at risk by resisting vaccination while herself enjoying the comfort of knowing she is protected. But we have all of the information we need to know that Candace Owens, and many more like her, are full of shit on this topic in the most critical way. If they actually cared about

the grotesque nature of our for-profit healthcare system and the way that pharma greed drives horrendous outcomes, they would use their large platforms to actually try to do something about it. Because while Candace and those who share her views are completely wrong about the risks versus the benefits of the vaccine, they are totally correct that big pharma is a monstrous cesspool of sociopaths willing to lie, cheat, and kill for fun and profit. In America, chronic illness is profitable. So guess what? We have massive amounts of chronic illness. Pharmaceutical companies have been caught in schemes involving kickbacks to doctors,

lying about the results of their clinical trials, and are currently fighting tooth and nail to make sure that poor countries around the world cannot produce their own cheaper vaccines to protect their own populations. They are immoral scumbags driven by one thing, shareholder return. Americans are paying insanely high prices and getting insanely bad results. On every dimension, we are getting screwed with deadly results. Americans pay 3.4 times more for brand name drugs than citizens of other rich nations. So for the exact same drugs, we pay 3.4 times more. American citizens provide 58% of all the revenue to big Pharma, even as we account for only 24% of the

volume. The same mills that have infected Big Pharma, they've infected our entire for-profit health care system. We spend twice as much per person on health care as a nation than other similar countries. We spend nearly $11,000 per year on health care every year per person. In the UK, they spend about $4,600 per person. And oh, by the way, the results that we get for that money are way worse than all of those other nations. In fact, on the most basic metric of health, how long people live, we are last among wealthy nations. Our people are expected to live five years less than the average of other similar nations, and our standing is projected to fall even further. In the average of other similar nations, and our standing is

projected to fall even further. In the next 20 years, we're projected to fall to 64th in the world in life expectancy, behind scores of countries with many fewer resources than we have. Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, these are influential people with huge platforms, and they have all expressed distrust and skepticism of Big Pharma. So if you are so concerned about Big Pharma and for-profit healthcare screwing the public, don't just virtue signal and throw red meat to the base as part of some bullshit culture war theater. Actually do something. Push for real changes that would rein in these monsters. The most obvious solution is to join the rest of the developed world by trying to organize our healthcare system around health rather than around money.

But I have yet to hear a single one of these folks suggest anything like Medicare for All or nationalizing big pharma, reining in patent protections, or even the incredibly moderate and really sort of sillily pathetic obvious reform of allowing Medicare to negotiate for better prices with the big drug companies. Actually, Candace had a perfect tweet a while back that encapsulated how this newfound pharma skepticism leads right-wing personalities to walk right up to the edge of actually advocating for something that would be good. Quote, the COVID vaccine saves lives, which is why the government is making it free. Okay, so explain to me why insulin and asthma inhalers cost so much money. If the vaccines are really about the government trying to save your life, why do life-saving medicines cost so much? Exactly, Candace. Life-saving medicines should be free.

She then clarified that obviously she doesn't actually think life-saving medicines should be free. Quote, To be clear, the argument here isn't that medicine should be free, she tweeted. I believe medicine should be affordable and believe it would be if it weren't for the big pharma racket. If you've followed my work, you would know that I've always been a major supporter of lowering drug prices and the best way to do that is to make prices transparent,

which Donald Trump fought for. In fact, pricing transparency is basically the only thing that any of these folks have been willing to support because Trump did it. And it's fine, sure, but it's hardly a death knell for the big pharma racket, as Candace phrased it. We know this because pricing transparency passed, and it was implemented, and it has not changed a goddamn thing. In summation, we don't need you to die for your

beliefs here, Candace. Big Pharma will roll on perfectly fine, whether or not you get the vaccine personally. What we need is for you to stand by a healthcare principle that actually threatens the profits of corporate America. Until then, you, Gates, MTG, and all the rest, you're not owning the libs. Actually, you're kind of just like them. Virtue signaling to your audience in an emotionally satisfying way while helping to guarantee that nothing actually changes. And that's the thing that I realized, Sagar. It's like the right-wing version of... And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com.

Joining us now to talk about a new piece that he wrote about potential intergenerational conflict with the direction of policies that we are pursuing here in the U.S. is Philip Pilkington. He is an economist. He's also written a book critical of neoclassical economics called The Reformation in Economics. Welcome. Thanks for having me. Yeah, our pleasure. Peace was very interesting and provocative, just laying out how the fact that we don't have population growth, certainly sufficient for replacement at this point, could lead to intergenerational conflict. Just lay out the case that you're making here. Yeah, so I'm kind of making the case off a book that was released recently, and it's got a lot of attention in economic policy circles, and also in finance. I've worked

in finance for about 10 years. So I know kind of both scenes. It's a book by Charles Goodhart and another economist called Pratan. And they're making it, they're kind of laying out, we've known for a long time that birth rates were becoming problematic, probably for about 20 years, and there have long been debates about it. I know in America, it's long been debated about social security and whether it can maintain its solvency. But this book kind of was talking about more of the kind of real forces that most people would face. And I thought it was the first time that economists had actually tried to think through what it would be like to live in a world that has serious

problems with population growth. And although the book is very good, and I much recommend it, it is a technical macroeconomics book. And it focused really on the technicals. And I thought that there was a case to be made to try and write an essay about that, kind of imagining what that would look like through a political economy lens. I think, to really experience this as we age, is that there won't be enough people effectively to man the machines as people get older. And this means that there'll be reasonably large resource constraints on economies. And we'll have to share it between the people who work, the younger people and the older people. And that extends from both consumption goods, but also to ownership of things, especially property, but also stocks and bonds and so on. And I just, in the piece, I kind of try to imagine what that would entail. And the conclusion I come

to is it has to generate pretty severe intergenerational conflict. Yeah, I'm reading here, quote, imagine in 50 years, we've reached the point where the rapidly aging population of the wealthy West is distorting economic life. If the young decide they want to solve this problem, what are their options? Put brutally, the only way the young could gain more control over resources and assets is through forcible confiscation or worse, termination of the elderly. In some of the societies where we see this already in the year 2022, at the most extreme, like in Japan and more, are we seeing some of these predictions

kind of come to light, Philip? No, Japan is a funny one, because it's the first country to experience the aging. It experienced it earlier than other countries. And it's had it's actually had the opposite impact. And so this has long been this has been the debate against the book that I'm talking about. But people say, well, look, so the book predicts, for example, inflation, asset market inflation, just very uncomfortable economic dynamics. Japan has seen the opposite of that. Now, it hasn't been positive. Japan has known turning Japanese in finance and economic speak tends to mean stagnation. So Japan has been experiencing the growth stagnation that we'd expect because there just aren't enough people

to man the machines and buy things. So the growth stagnation is there. Japan hasn't really grown that much for about 20 years. but we haven't seen the inflation. That is very specific to the Japanese economic system. It's because effectively young people are willing to accept wages that don't grow in Japan. Now, why that is, technically speaking, it's because they're paid on bonus systems. Anyone who receives a salary in Japan is effectively paid like a financier here in the West, which is a good portion, maybe 40% of their pay comes as a bonus at the end of the year. That means that when times aren't good and when the growth slows, they don't get an increase in wages. So from a technical point of view, we do not have that wage flexibility in our economies. Do we want it?

Probably not. But also, I just don't think Westerners would accept that. I think that there's a kind of culture of respect for elders in Japan that I don't think we have in the West. And so I don't think we'll get away with overt wage suppression. So short answer, they are experiencing problems, but they're slightly different problems from what we're experiencing. Well, what we will experience, probably. You had a part in here that I thought was really interesting that I hadn't thought of before.

You say the capitalist system discourages family formation and fertility. Can you just lay out the sort of rationale behind that or why you argue that? Yeah, I mean, capitalism is a great system for making and distributing stuff. It will make and distribute stuff as much as it possibly can because a profit motive is there for you to make and distribute that stuff and you can make money out of it. Capitalism doesn't innately care about the human capital that it is formed on top of.

So for the capitalist system, the ideal human, in a sense, is a worker consumer, somebody who goes to work as much as possible, produces as many things as possible, and then goes to the shop and buys those things as much as possible. That person increasingly, it looks like, probably so revolving around consumption, earning and spending, it seems to discourage the formation of families. The problem is that capitalism relies on that human capital. It relies on a growing labor force. It needs it to sustain itself. But, of course, capitalism isn't conscious of itself. It's just people making decisions about trying to make profit or trying to work more or trying to consume more or whatever.

So it's not capitalism can't think about the threats that it poses to itself. It almost I joke sometimes that this is kind of what Karl Marx should have been looking at. He always thought there were contradictions in capitalism. And he thought, for example, rates of profit would fall and overproduction would do this and that. And some of the things he said were true and most of them weren't. But this is a real contradiction of capitalism. If the end point or telos of capitalism is to have everybody turned into a hyper worker, hyper consumer who doesn't spend

time raising a family, then capitalism will eat itself. Right. And here's the question, though. Is there anything that can be done about it? Because, you know, I look a lot of people who are on the right. They like to talk about Hungary. I mean, yeah, they increase their birth rate from like one point two to one point seven. I'm not saying that's bad, but they threw the kitchen sink at it in terms of their economy. And it's a very different country, too, in terms of their demographics, what they're willing to accept, social spending and more. Is it possible in the West in order to reverse this trend at all, Philip? Or am I just being too cynical? You are right that Hungary is the only place that has managed to, through policy, increase its birth rate.

It was from a low base. The communism destroyed family formation a lot quicker than capitalism did. They both seem to put communism had a concerted effort. The post-communist countries tended to have very low birth rates. So Hungary was starting from a low base, but they increased it 30 percent. And that is not to be sniffed at. And I also would highlight that while the birth rate increased 30%, the marriage rate increased even more. And I think that encouraging people to get married is probably the first step here. I mean, if you look at statistics now for people born in the 1980s and 1990s, it looks like best case scenario, only 50 to 60% of those people are going to get married even once. So even married

and divorced, only 50 to 60 percent. That's down on 80 to 90 percent for the previous two generations, for the baby boomers and the World War II generation. So is there anything to do about it? I mean, you're right. Hungary has thrown the kitchen sink at it. They've been very aggressive. They spent a lot on it, But they have seen some success. So that does give hope. Now, one thing I would cancel is there are more left-wing attempts that have been attempted at this for a very long time. So it's not widely known, but Sweden, since the 1960s, has been running pro-natal policies. The foundation of Swedish social democracy was an economist called Gunnar Myrdal and his wife were promoting natal policies beginning in the early 60s.

And these were things like childcare, state childcare, more socialist solutions to the problem. They have not worked. Sweden has had lower rates, lower birth rates than the U.S. for most of the time and currently sits at the same birth rate. So if there is a solution, it really seems more to be the Hungarian solution rather than the Swedish solution. Will either of them work? I don't know. And Philip, the other thing that you dismiss in the piece, which is an obvious solution if you need more people to have a vibrant society and not have this intergenerational conflict, is increased levels of immigration. And you say that that turns out to

be politically destabilizing. But does that always have to be the case? I mean, certainly in America, we've had a lot of waves of immigrants and that's led to tension at times. But ultimately, people are absorbed and the country has been, you know, sort of strengthened and made very vital by the different waves of immigration that we have. And even now, when we've had a lot of very fraught conversations about immigration here, I just looked up the data. A Data for Progress poll recently found 69 percent of people support a pathway to citizenship. So is it, in fact, inevitable that immigration is going to lead to political instability and is not a potential pathway forward to solving the issue that you identify here? Well, one thing is that immigration will not

solve the problem alone. The problem is that when the immigrants come to the highly developed Western wealthy societies, as you say, they integrate to a large extent into those societies and their birth rates fall. So the immigration has staved off population growth decline. Population in the United States, for example, is still growing, mainly adapt to the new surroundings and they lower their birth rate. So, number one, I would say it does help in terms of perpetuating economic growth, and it definitely helps in terms of population growth, but it does not help in terms of the aging structure, which is kind of the core thing that I'm getting at in the essay. In terms of political tension, I mean, I'm sure we all have our, I'm trying to be

as objective as possible about this. The tensions that immigration has brought in Europe have been profound. Absolutely not. There is no politics in Europe that isn't immigration focused. All the headlines from Eric Zemmour in France, now competing with Le Pen because there's so much demand for this kind of rhetoric, to Sweden that I mentioned that have been pro-natalist since the 1960s. The entire Conservative Party in Sweden has been demolished and the Sweden Democrats now are in charge. This trend is absolutely everywhere in Europe. Brexit in the UK, where I am, was clearly driven partly by anti-immigrant sentiment. And I think in the US, probably the somewhat divisive presidency of Donald Trump was in part due to this immigration

policy. But I will say that, you know, I don't think that those things, I'm going to speak to the American context because it's what I know the most about and put Europe to the side for the moment. But again, even with Donald Trump, I think you're right, tapping into this anti-immigrant sentiment, making, you know, immigrants the scapegoats of what ultimately has been a failed policy of neoliberalism that has created this mass inequality and made an underclass that is so desperate. Even with that factor, you still have the overwhelming majority of people supporting a pathway to citizenship, believing that immigrants contribute more good than harm in society. So even at a time when people have been incredibly

stressed by the financial catastrophe and the fallout from that and these roiling politics, you still have a mass majority sentiment in favor of the benefits of immigration within the American context. That could be the case, but the sizable minority that doesn't like it get very angry. And I think that's the cause of a lot of political division and a lot of political tension. The other problem that I see in the American polls is that recent immigrants don't seem to be very favorable to more immigrants. And so it seems that the more immigrants you bring in, the less support you'll have for immigration.

It seems paradoxical, but it seems to be the case. I mean, my baseline assumption is just there are natural limits on how much immigration you can have. You can have quite a bit of immigration. I'm not particularly anti-immigration personally, but there do seem to be political and social limits to it. And there are also problems with job allocation and funding welfare payments and so on. So I'm just highlighting the fact that, number one, it doesn't solve the aging problem because

the immigrants adapt. And number two, I think there is reason to believe that even if the majority is still supported in America, I'm not, I think that's changing in Europe and it may change in America. I think it's, I think the minority that doesn't support it is getting increasingly agitated. And I don't think that's good for political stability. I think that's very well said. There's always going to be a lot of political conflict around anything we do, whether it's family formation policies or levels of immigration. I think that is sort of inevitable. But if you have policies that make sure that people,

you know, are basically OK and feel secure in their own lives, then they're going to be less susceptible to the type of scapegoating politics that we have seen. But I think the piece is really interesting. I think people should read it. It's very provocative. And I really appreciate you coming on and taking the time to explain it. Thanks, Philip. Thanks very much. Our pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching. Really appreciate it. It was a fun show today. I really enjoyed it. Just look, we are in current discussions about how much we can build the show, all of that. I know I say it, but things are coming. It's going to be big. We obviously have

the, it's 2022. We have the midterms coming up. So we're looking at expanding. We appreciate your support. There's a link down there in the description and we can't appreciate you guys enough. Thank you guys. We love you. Thank you. you experienced dad guilt i hate it her heart and she understands but she still happy father's day the show may be called good mom's bad choices but this show isn't just for I hate it. She understands, but she's still prepared. She's like, dude. Happy Father's Day. The show may be called Good Moms, Bad Choices, but this show isn't just for moms. We keep it real about relationships and everything in between. And yes, men are more than welcome to listen in. I knew nothing about brunch.

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