Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/11/21: Inflation, 2022 Elections, GOP Fight, Adam Schiff's Lies, MSNBC, Starbucks, Bezos's Ego, Working Class Polling, and More!

Episode Date: November 11, 2021

Krystal and Saagar talk about the inflation numbers for October 2021, important issues in 2022, civil war within the GOP over infrastructure, Rep. Adam Schiff's lies, MSNBC turnover, Starbucks unionization, billionaire space race, working class swing voters, 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/Jacobin Study: https://jacobinmag.com/2021/11/common-sense-solidarity-working-class-voting-report  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to VoiceOver 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 gonna 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.

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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 Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Lots of great stories to get to. So we have some new polling that reveals just how many people really are prioritizing education as an issue right now. That's right.

And even out of those bucket of people who care a lot about education, what are their top priorities? You might be a little bit surprised based on recent media narratives. We also have an update on Adam Schiff. For once being asked a little bit of a tough question on Russiagate. See how he responds to that. Interesting developments on the Republican side. Those 13 Republicans who voted for the Biden bipartisan infrastructure deal now being effectively excommunicated from the party. Torn a new one by President Trump.

So lots of details there. Big shakeups happening at MSNBC. Some of their top stars seem pretty unhappy. Moving on, all of those details, too. Groundbreaking new study from the folks over at Jacobin, actually talking to working class people. And in a very innovative, it's sort of a poll analysis focus group combo. They actually looked at what messaging is most effective for building that multiracial working class coalition. They did it by geography. They did it by income level. Pretty fascinating stuff that we're going to dig into there. But we wanted to start with some stunning new numbers with regards to inflation. Yeah. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. We got the inflation numbers out as the highest number since the 1990s. But it's important to see where Americans are seeing the most inflation. So please keep this up there for a little bit.

Number one is fuel oil at 60% year over year increase. Gas predominantly there, 50%. Utilities at 28%. Used cars still coming in at 26%. Hotels, steaks, bacon, and pork chops. It's at 28 percent. Used cars still coming in at 26 percent. Hotels, steaks, bacon, and pork chops. It's the same thing. We're seeing a large increase in the protein supply chain, and we're going to continue to track that. Washing machines at 15 percent. Furniture, 12. Eggs, fish, TVs, new cars, chicken, milk, coffee, flour, rent. So basically, gas, food, the stuff that you use to heat your car, all of the things that people generally need. And this is really, I mean, terrible. It's a pocketbook hard.

It's very, very, very bad. And because what it is is that it hits working class Americans the hardest. And really what breaks and should break everybody's heart is that even though we have seen some hourly increase in wages, and we're talking about the great resignation and all of that. If we include inflation in that, let's put this up there on the screen. After adjusting for today's numbers, average hourly wages actually fell 1.2% from October of 2020 to October 2021. The change in the real average hourly earnings combined with a decrease in the average work week resulted in a 1.6% decline in real average weekly earnings. And so, of course, that means that people are

actually making on an adjusted basis less money and they're paying more for goods. So that's a tragedy, Crystal. And look, I mean, there's a lot to be said about why exactly all of this is happening, but it is not just the United States. It's Europe. It's China. They're rolling blackouts all across China. The entire world is just suffering from a massive supply crunch and with just wonky changes in demand. Essentially, what happened is everyone was shut down for 18 months, and then people saved a lot of money. Household savings is an all-time high. Now we have the Christmas season upon us. Boom. 40% of retail sales actually happen in these two months. You combine that with the supply chain that's backed up all the way and all of these crazy shortages that we're seeing in the inputs for food, inputs for the supply chain, inputs for the containers, and you

have a horrific disaster like this. And once again, Joe Biden, nowhere to be seen. Yesterday, the only thing that I heard him notably say was, did you ever think you'd pay this much for gas? I was like, yeah, no, actually. Maybe you should do something about it. Helpful. Yeah, I mean, what's interesting is if you go down that list, you can tell a sort of unique story about each one of these items.

Yeah, we've done that. And you've done it. You've done a really good job digging into some of those things. I mean, part of why a lot of protein and we can put Heather Long's tweet up on the screen here that indicates in particular why Americans are paying higher grocery bills. A lot of it has to do with protein. Steak, steak and pork chops, eggs, fish, chicken. So a lot of those things can be traced back in part to the fact that you had drought caused by climate change that created stress in the corn market. All of these animals, for better or worse, are fed with corn. So you can sort of tell a unique story with each one of these things. Of course, the used cars,

we've been tracking that for a long time. We've talked about housing. Now, rent prices are really starting to go up. There are unique reasons for that as well. But a lot of these things can be traced back to a few factors. Number one, that we need China so much, that we've outsourced so much to China. We're so dependent on them. 31% increase in imports over the last year. So the minute that there's an issue getting things out of China and there aren't enough shipping containers, and that was part of the stories, the shipping containers at the beginning of the pandemic went out from China with the PPE all over the world. They got stuck in ports around

the world. And then when they got sent back, that created a backlog on the other end. So part of it is that we've outsourced so much to China, critical goods that people need, that families depend on, all of those things. Part of it is that we have these gigantic monopolies in charge of almost every economic sphere has massive consolidation at this point. To make that point, just to zero in on one particular issue where monopolies are causing a lot of the price increases here, when you talk about steak, when you talk about beef, there has been massive consolidation in the meat processing industry, and that has created issues and increased prices. Our friends over at More Perfect Union did a great job breaking that down. Let's take a look at that. Now, if you've been to your local meat section lately, you may have noticed rising prices of beef and pork.

It's sticker shock at every stop. And I steak to grill ranges from 13 to over $24 a pound these days. So it did go up $3 in three days, which absolutely shocked me. It's hard for me to watch the American consumer have to pay increased prices at the meat counter because I know that those returns are not coming back to the men and women like me that raise the cattle. The prices of beef have been rising significantly. I have not directly saw any of that in my return.

This monopoly hurts consumers because currently consumers are paying inflated prices for beef at the same time that cattle producers are receiving severely depressed prices. And in the middle, of course, the middleman is walking away with windfall profits. Right. Of course, the other problem with monopoly is the way that workers are treated and the few choices they have. Meatpacking. The meatpacking industry was one of the most horrific examples of workers not being taken care of, getting sick during COVID, unprotect, being forced to go to work sick, or incentivized to go to work sick, I should say. All of those things. dig into each one of these specific goods that you've seen so much of a price increase in, you can track back all of these different supply, unique supply chain issues. But a lot of times it comes back to outsourcing to China and monopolization. It's monopolization. It's also,

the climate is another issue. With beef, we had the worst Montana drought in 2021, and the only one worse than that was 2020. Well, you have a one-third reduction in the amount of cattle that are being able to feed properly. What happens? You're going to see increased price at the grocery store. You know, the same thing is true in terms of consumer spending on meat. It's actually up $84 billion in the last year over 2019. Why? Because people are cooking a lot more at home, which means that the demand for consumer beef is sky high as opposed to people were eating at restaurants or whatever. A lot of people's consumption habits change and it's not a problem. But really what it is, is that you

combine an increase in demand for a variety of reasons, and then you cap that with a massive supply crunch. Then you stack monopolies on top of that. That's how you pay 25% more at Costco for a steak, which if you've been in the Costco meat section lately, it is a total disaster, eye-popping numbers. And it's just very important, I think, what we try to focus here on the show is there's no convenient explanation for why this is. For people who say that it's U.S. government spending, then why is Europe, China, and the entire underdeveloped world also experiencing double-digit inflation? For those who say that it's not a problem whatsoever, that's ridiculous.

People are paying more for stuff. Every single one of these has a nuanced explanation. Gas, I recently went through that. OPEC, the strategic reserve, there's natural gas exports. Heating is the same thing. Used cars is a semiconductor problem. That's why new car isn't up. Hotels, I mean, that one is kind of intuitive, which is you don't go anywhere for a long time. Now you want to go somewhere, you're chasing the same price. I mean, rental cars is another one, right? You know,

I have severe depression, then you're coming out of it. In a way, you kind of want to see that. But listen, I don't want to diminish it. It's a huge problem for a lot of people at home, and a lot of people are suffering, and they should be angry. I mean, I do not think the Biden administration is doing enough about this. Biden should not be joking about, did you ever think you'd be paying enough for gas? As I've said, tap the strategic reserve now. And there's a lot of other import-export things that we've been doing. I didn't know this, Crystal, but a lot of our domestic oil is also being exported abroad for the same reason as natural gas, which is that demand is sky-high worldwide. And so our domestic producers are shipping out a lot of this energy while not prioritizing domestic consumers. So there's a lot that goes into it, And I would ask everybody to keep that in mind. Yeah, there's this idea that our energy industry, like what energy is

jet, like that that's ours. But it just goes into the global commodity market. I mean, it doesn't really work like that. Yeah, it's frustrating when you see things like this, that people are truly feeling and truly struggling with to the point that all of the gains that we've talked about for workers have been taken away and their wages actually year over year decline. It's frustrating when you see something like that just fed into total tribal partisan lenses. Yeah, that's the problem. So conservatives are loving to talk about inflation, but their answer, their explanation is that the Biden administration did too much. Right. And they're like, that's why we should cut spending and induce a recession.

I'm like, yeah. Yeah. When the real problem, as you've been laying out, is that the Biden administration needs to do more to actually effectively try to deal with these issues. And look, some things, you know, there's no magic wand and you can't control everything, but there is more that they could be doing. And then you see liberals making this case like, actually, inflation's good. I promise you. No, it's not. We're not going to talk about this because this is uncomfortable. This is obviously something that is dramatically, we're about to talk about the elections that happen in Virginia and New Jersey. Like you'd be a lot more, you would spend your time a lot more wisely getting a handle on this and speaking to consumers' concerns, regular people's concerns about prices going up than you would, you know, fixating all day every day about whatever's going on with the race in school debate.

Yes, I could not agree with you more. It is stunning to me, honestly, the way I see the media disconnect on all of this. I think it was yesterday when the inflation numbers came out. The only people covering it were Fox. Why do you think? MSNBC, I kid you not, was talking about January 6th subpoenas. They're like, a new round of subpoenas has gone out January 6th. Something's going on with Steve Bannon. I don't care. I don't know and I don't care. Does it affect you or me whenever you go to Costco? No. So therefore, push it out. I mean,

I just can't believe whenever it comes to the way that these people conduct themselves and are really doing a disservice, in my opinion, to the entire nation, which is trying to gaslight people into thinking inflation is okay is insane. Trying to also gaslight people into saying that this is some like a pure, you know, a pure downstream effect of government spending is also completely ridiculous if you see a global phenomenon worldwide. This is almost entirely a product of crazy conditions from the pandemic, which have caused different ways that people consume in an explosion of consumer demand combined with the worst supply crisis since World War II. I mean, you put those two things together, what do you think is going to happen? So I really do wish people would at least spend some more time trying to explain exactly what's going on here because the partisan explanations are just too cute by half, too

convenient. Yeah, everybody's just applying their priors and not actually looking into what's really going on. You're not really looking into what's going on. And if you do that, like I said, I was making a joke, but I do actually think this is what's going to happen. I think the GOP is going to win on inflation. They're going to try and raise interest rates. Then they're going to cut spending. Then they're going to induce a recession. And then they'll solve inflation.

And then we get to live this whole cycle all over again. Yes, indeed. All right, so let's transition to the conversation about schools. There's some new polling that I think is really interesting to dig into. We can throw this tarot sheet up on the screen. This is from Yahoo News. So when you ask voters what their top issue is, even if you're just talking about parents, only 5%, when they're thinking about the midterms, say that schools are their top issue. Overall, only 3% of Americans say that schools are

their top issue. Sagar, I will give you one guess. What Americans say is their number one issue by far. What is it? It's the economy. Lo and behold, it's still the economy, stupid. 31%. So 10 times more people say that the economy is their number one issue. The next highest is healthcare. Also makes sense. 13% say healthcare. 10% say climate change. 10% also say coronavirus, 9% immigration, 8% changing the balance of power in Washington. All of these things more important to more Americans than schools. Again, 3% say schools. What also is interesting is even if you dig into that number, that 3%, okay, you're concerned about schools. What are your concerns?

The largest concern is 18% say lack of funding for education is their primary issue. The next one is low pay for teachers. And then you start to get down to things like the way race is taught, about 7%, and mask mandates, 5%. Even if you look within that 7% that say what they're concerned about is the way that race and racism are taught, you actually find more people who feel that there's not enough discussion of the way that race has shaped America. So listen, all of this is not to say that CRT and the conversation about that doesn't have a lot of energy around it, because I think it does. I think it is definitely a motivating issue for the Republican base. But I would caution those on the right and those on the

left who thought that the Virginia election was just all about race in school to take a look at these numbers and maybe reassess what voters are actually going to the polls based on. And we said it at the time, look, 70% of the country thinks the country is on the wrong track. Joe Biden's approval rating is somewhere in the high 30s or low 40s, that is really bad. Kamala Harris's approval rating is even worse. High 20s. 28%. If you just look at those numbers and you look at the fact you've got a plurality of people that think that we are headed towards a recession, that's all you need to know to understand why there is a massive Republican wave brewing right now.

I don't know why this is so difficult for people to get. I mean, and actually I do, which is that it's hard for the media and for people who work in professional politics to just focus on the most basic levels of inputs in people's lives. And this is exactly what we try to do here on the show. Small P politics versus capital P. Capital P, critical race theory. There's a debate. The media's involved. It's a very convenient narrative for everybody. And once again, is it important? And is it even a motivating base factor for the Republicans? Absolutely. But why did people who voted for Joe Biden vote for Glenn Youngkin? Go and ask them. What do they say, Crystal? I was pissed off. To the extent I cared about schools, I was pissed off that my school was closed longer than everybody else. And two, stuff is more expensive at the grocery store.

You said you would go back to normal, and it's not normal. Why is that not enough of an explanation? There's actually a million things Biden can and should be doing if he wanted to be an effective president. I mean, as I've said it a million times, focus on the most basic level stuff. If you even had the headlines on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve trying to address the gas prices, drag the Saudi king over here and be like, hey, what are you doing? You need to pump oil. Same whenever it comes to our import exports. There are all kinds of near-term factors that could change the price of oil by almost 10% to 15%, not overnight overnight necessarily but within

a month people would reward you for that but you're not doing that nobody knows what you're doing heating bills like we were talking about it's interesting a man contacted me who told me he lives in rural uh in the rural northeast i won't say where he lives he had to pay a hundred percent more in propane costs in order to pay for his house. He said it wiped out one half of his entire winter budget. What do you think is going on? This is not difficult. These are simple problems, actually. We have strategic reserves of propane, of heating oil, of oil, all exactly for crisis reasons.

Convene the governors and say, all right, let's get together. Let's see how much oil we got. Let's disperse it out properly. Let's drop the price. Same with the utilities. Many utilities right now are asking. I mean, I can go on forever, but this is just very basic level competence stuff, which him and the White House are not showing whatsoever. And if you did that, you would win. It's actually not, or maybe you would lose less, but really what it is, is that people feel, I think rightfully, as we covered on Tuesday, Joe Biden is not focused on the issues that matter most to them.

Yes. And these are the issues that matter most to them. You've pointed out, and I still can't believe this, that PCR tests or whatever are required for kids in schools. And that who's covering the costs? That stuff is expensive. It's like $150 a pop. Yeah. I guarantee you, if you were to try and do some school testing program and you made it all completely free, a lot of parents, you know, speaking of schools, would say, hey, that's a great thing.

I mean, I just keep talking about the most basic, competent level stuff. critical race theory or whatever, because it would not necessitate them to be like, hmm, can we change container stacking rules in Long Beach, California, in order to increase the number of ports that go, or the containers that go through by 25%. That's a real thing, by the way. How about we stop making our truckers basically indentured servants so that you could have enough truckers who would actually want to do that job. Pass the trucker fund tomorrow. Congress could do that. That's another issue that I tracked as well.

They're literally, some of these truckers, at the end of the week, they owe money. They don't make any money. It's true indentured servitude. So, yeah, you have a supply of truckers because who the hell would want to do that job, right? So, yeah, I mean, there are things they could do to at least make people feel like we're trying. And listen, for better or worse, most of the time worse, the Trump White House knew how to drive a news cycle. They knew how to make the media talk about what they wanted them to talk about. And the Biden White House is completely buffeted by the winds of whatever's in

the news. And they're unable to take control of the narrative. They're unable to assert this, like, we got it sense. And so it's a complete and total mess, both from a perception point of view and also from a reality point of view. You know, on the race in schools conversation, first of all, there is a true genuine issue with the academic left and the like sort of woke racism that I tracked in my monologue on Tuesday. That is a real thing, okay? It is not by any means a majority thing among the Democratic base or even among Democratic elites. And the idea that Joe Biden is some like woke race warrior is so absurd. It's really, really silly. I mean, it's just like this dude is always five seconds from accidentally dropping some sort of

ethnic slur. OK, that's more the issue with Joe Biden, ultimately. So even from that perspective, the idea that that's really what's driving and motivating independence and the broader American public, it just frankly feels really silly. Now, again, is it a base motivating issue? 100%. And that ultimately matters. It mattered, I think, in these past elections. I think it matters for the midterms because ultimately midterms is lower turnout overall. Who's excited? Who shows up? We saw in Virginia and in New Jersey, there was a huge surge in rural areas. Youngkin did even better with rural Virginians than Trump did, which is kind of, you know, major, major warning sign for Democrats who kind of thought that they had hit bottom in terms of rural America. Clearly, they could do even worse.

But it's important to keep these things in perspective. And the most basic truism still holds, the economy is the top issue. It is not even close. And you found this Axios thing. Let's put this up there on the screen, which is that actually there is no true widespread COVID school backlash. It is just, in keeping with the concept I've been trying to elucidate here, the dictatorship of the small minority, which is that the people who do care and are pissed off about schools, they care a lot. And they make that their number one issue. Yep. They care a lot. They're voting on it.

This reminds me of the gun debate. Yes. Because liberals and those on the left would always point to it like, look, these gun safety measures are really popular. Really, really popular, really, really popular. That's true. But their base doesn't vote on guns by and large. They don't care that much. They don't care that much. It's not even close to their top issue. Whereas there's a significant chunk of conservatives who are really into the Second Amendment who actually do vote on the issue. So you have to look not just at, you know, what is the top issue, but also what is uniquely motivating your base to vote? What is uniquely motivating independents to vote?

What is uniquely motivating Republicans to vote? And so I think the school issues kind of fit into that framework as highly motivating for the Republican base. But at the same time, the Democrats aren't doing a thing to get their base excited and give them a reason to go out and vote. A lot of people are sort of like hoping and wishing that maybe this, you know, kind of lame infrastructure deal that just passed, maybe that's going to be the shot in the arm for Democrats. I wouldn't hold your breath on that one. Well, that's a very good segue to the infrastructure segment. This is something that has really bothered me, which is that there are 13 Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill.

And I'm not saying I support the full thing. Whatever. I'm sure there's provisions within there, etc. But Republicans, and specifically the Trump MAGA base, has turned this into some betrayal by these people. I should note, many of them were from the industrial Northeast, where the infrastructure bill has a 70% approval rating amongst Republicans. So many of these people were actually representing not only the will of their constituents on a broad base, the will of their base constituents, especially if you live in New Jersey. I was talking previously in a previous show about how popular the Amtrak New Jersey,

New York tunnel is. Why? Because if you've taken it, it sucks, okay? So people who have experienced that are like, yeah, I actually would really like the government to fix that. And their representatives acted accordingly. Well, now we are seeing more and more that MAGA and Trump in particular are turning this as some grand betrayal by these Republicans. CNN had a piece where they interviewed a congressman on this. Let's take a listen. A decision of the leadership to whip against this. You know, I don't want to criticize them all, but I'll just say I wouldn't have done it. It shouldn't have been this toxic or this divisive. People should have been able to vote their conscience on it. Yeah. Politically, though, I mean, you're giving, they may argue, the Republicans may argue,

you're giving the president a win when he's at a very low point. What do you say to that? But to vote against it because of that, I don't think that's right. Was it good for the district? Was it good for the country to vote on something just because it hurts the president? It's not the right lens, I think, to see this through. So I just tried to do the right thing. And I think it's very popular in our district. So how would I go back home to say, hey, I know you all like it. It's good for the district, but it's going to hurt my opponent.

That's not the right thing to do. See, I look, maybe I'm crazy. That's actually pretty good rationale for voting for a bill. And, you know, I've gone back and forth with some people on this. And increasingly, there is this idea here that, you know, voting for this would be good for Joe Biden. First of all, I don't even think that's true. I don't think anybody at home gives a damn about this infrastructure bill. But number two, is the idea that any government spending under a Democrat is illegitimate or that any vote for that is illegitimate? If so, congratulations, you just reinvented the Tea Party. I mean, okay, fine. But then be honest about what you are. You're

just pure culture warriors at heart. And Trump in particular is doing this too. Let's put this up there on the screen. I mean, unloading on the 13 Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill for the sole reason that they were giving Joe Biden a lift. I mean, that was the actual response as to why it was bad for these Republicans to vote for him. I remember this man and all of the Republicans in this town complaining endlessly about, oh, the Democrats won't support us even though they support this bill or that bill or, oh, the Democrats are voting against us and their partisanship over country. I mean, this is the same thing. You just reinvented the entire hellish cycle. And if you are establishing a standard, which Trump and the Republicans have now have, which is that voting for a bill which is popular amongst your constituents is bad because it might, and again, might being the operative word, give Biden a win, then you just basically eliminated any chance of any bipartisan democracy whatsoever.

Ever. So thank you, I guess, for saying the quiet part out loud. Yeah. I mean, and really what it is, they're like, oh, they're going to nuke the filibuster. Yeah, I wonder why they might want to do that. Like, it's like maybe if you did show some good faith and vote across the aisle on the legislation that your constituents support and, you know, you're just voting your conscience or whatever. Well, maybe we would live in a better country. Maybe they wouldn't want to nuke the filibuster. And I just have to say this about Trump in particular. Put this on there, because I covered this at the time when I was a White House correspondent, which is he literally walked out of a meeting where Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer offered him a $2 trillion infrastructure bill because they were investigating him about Ukrainegate. And he said at the time, I will not deal with the Democrats on infrastructure

while they continue to investigate me. Okay. So that is what happened whenever they actually did make a deal or tried to make a deal on infrastructure. This is what happened. They kicked him out of the room over impeachment and more. So you know what you, this is the bed that you lay in. I just have no sympathy. And I just can't continue to think about how the standards that are being set here are so hellish and terrible. And also, when you think about it, and next time Republicans are in power, why would the Democrats come across and support you? And on anything.

On anything. They complain over and over again. And I see many Republicans say, oh, they wouldn't do it anyway. Well, you know, somebody's got to give first. Well, but I mean, what you're pointing to is they did try to try both sides this one. Right. Because they actually were willing to do something on infrastructure. That's right. And you blew that deal up. Right. I mean, I'm over Ukraine. Right.

Was it worth it? Right. Exactly. Was it worth it? I mean, you still got to quit. How many times did we have infrastructure week? Yeah, it was a joke here in D.C. Total joke. And that's why this is so stunning, because it's so blatant. It's not something where they can say, oh, well, we've never really supported that or our version of that is different. This infrastructure bill that was negotiated is really close to what Trump and the Republicans were negotiating. That's why.

We covered a lot of the elements that were in the original Republican proposal. Exactly. In 2017. That got brought over. And that's why in the Senate, even more Republicans. It was like 17 Republicans voted for it. Voted for this thing because it would just be so obviously blatantly hypocritical and just purely partisan to vote against something that three minutes ago

under a Republican president, you claim to be all for. So that's why this is so incredibly just blatant, sectarian, partisan politics. You literally supported this exact same thing under a Republican president. And now not only are you not supposed to support it, but you're going to be like excommunicated from the party if you dare to vote in favor of the thing that all of your colleagues were for three minutes ago. And in fact, Jake Sherman has this report. This is really stunning. House GOP leadership is bracing for a movement to strip lawmakers who voted for infrastructure of their committee slots. He says much of the anger is at Representative John Katko, who voted early because he saw

banks and other Republicans on TV dumping all over the bill. So he sort of wanted to get his vote in, I guess, before it got too ugly out there. But this is insane. You're going to strip lawmakers of their committee slots because they voted for an infrastructure package that, again, your party claimed to support three minutes ago under a Republican president. It's really wild. Yeah, OK. So listen, you know, Steve King or whatever, they lose their committee seat. OK. You know, the conference seems reasonable. But this voting for a piece of legislation? You're going to move your committees? I mean, that is totally nuts. And think about the incentives that are being set here.

The incentive now is not only if you vote for a bill, no matter what's in the bill, and you give a win to a Democratic president, then you are not only going to get primaried, you're illegitimate, your colleagues will strike out against you. Imagine what that means for any substantive legislation going forward. This is what happened in the Tea Party, and it nearly nuked the U.S. economy back in 2012 and 2013. Is that really what you want to set? And then here's the other thing. It's all just a matter of mutually assured destruction, because now Republicans are about to have the majority in the House and the Senate, very likely after 2022, and then possibly a Republican president wins in 2024. But maybe things get dicey.

Well, what's going to happen in the Senate? You don't have a filibuster proof. And they see what happened last time. Many Democrats are not going to work with you. And as I said, maybe you could claim that they wouldn't do the same for you. But they did try back, you know, a couple of years ago. They at least used it as a table. It was an ancient history. That was 2019, Crystal, just so people know. The infrastructure offer, 2019. That was like two years ago, okay, in terms of what was happening. Just again and again, I see this complete reversion of MAGA into just like completely like substance-less, nothing except loyalty to Trump and partisan ideology above all. And that will get you nowhere. Both – maybe it will win you the presidency.

Maybe. I'm cynical enough in order to think that that will get you nowhere. Maybe it'll win you the presidency. Maybe. I'm cynical enough in order to think that that could be the case. But in terms of making the country better off, most people don't want to live this way. They really don't. If you're a Republican in New Jersey and you have to take that Amtrak, you want your representative to vote for the bill. What's wrong with that? That's a return to at least some semblance of localism in our politics. Hyper-nationalization, this is going to continue to breed it. And this really is the road to hell. I can't emphasize that enough. I don't want to sound like we're preaching or whatever, but this is a perfect example of how the incentives and the party, you know, pushes you to doing absolutely nothing, which is why we have change election after change election after change election. That's exactly it.

I mean, I was just talking about how you can almost time it. Like, we know what's going to happen in 2022, and that backlash will probably continue. I mean, who knows, 2024, but it looks pretty good for whoever the Republicans are going to put up. And then they're going to suck

in all sorts of manifest ways, and people are going to be pissed off still about the direction of the country because they're not going to really do anything. And then they're going to suck. And in all sorts of manifest ways, people are going to be pissed off still about the direction of the country because they're not going to really do anything. And then you're going to have a wave in the other direction until someone actually delivers and actually has a vision and actually makes people feel positive and hopeful about this nation again. And let's not pretend like Trump's comments at this dinner didn't already have a huge impact. Like, yes, the infrastructure deal is done. That's going to Biden's desk. That's over with.

But one of the members of Congress who voted for this, how do you say her last name? Malia Takas. Yes. Nicole Malia Takas. She represents New York. Reportedly was visibly shaken listening to these comments at this dinner, because ultimately, the Republican Party has collapsed down to just a Trump loyalty test. And if you, for whatever reason, accidental or not, get on the wrong side of that, he can end you. So the message, there's no doubt, has been received

on this. That's right. Okay, let's move on here to a very satisfying moment for me personally. tape possibly saying that Mueller had, you know, evidence whenever it came to Trump, all of that. He proved to be one of the most abject liars in all of Washington. Never, ever really called on the trauma that he put the country through for a couple of years. And finally, he was on The View and unexpectedly, Morgan Ortegas, she used to work at Fox News and also worked at the State Department under Trump, I guess was guest hosting that particular day. Kate prepared and made Adam look like an absolute fool. Let's take a listen. So I want to ask you about something that's in the news a lot right now. You've been really prolific over the past few years being the head of the Intel Committee, and you defended, promoted, you even read into the congressional record, the Steele dossier.

And we know last week the main source of the dossier was indicted by the FBI for lying about most of the key claims in that dossier. Do you have any reflections on your role in promoting this to the American people? Well, first of all, whoever lied to the FBI or lied to Christopher Steele should be prosecuted, and they are. And unlike in the Trump administration, if they're convicted, they should go to jail not be pardoned. So Donald Trump pardoned Roger Stone for lying, he pardoned Michael Flynn for lying. If people lied to the FBI, they should go to jail.

But at the beginning of the Russian investigation, I said that any allegations should be investigated. We couldn't have known, for example, people were lying to Christopher Steele. So it was proper to investigate them. And let's not forget what we learned in that investigation. We learned that the Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was giving internal polling data, campaign polling data to Russian intelligence, while Russian intelligence was helping the Trump campaign. And to be clear, he was fired halfway through the campaign.

Well, he may have been fired. But the effort to get Russian help continued and even beyond the effort to get Russian help. But you may have spread Russian disinformation yourself for years by promoting this. I think that's what Republicans and what people who entrusted you as the Intel Committee Chair are so confused about your culpability in all of this. Well, I completely disagree with your premise. It's one thing to say allegations should be investigated and they were. It's another to say that we should have foreseen in advance

that some people were lying to Christopher Steele, which is impossible of course to do. But let's not use that as a smokescreen to somehow shield Donald Trump's culpability for inviting Russia to help him in the election, which they did, for trying to coerce Ukraine into helping him in the next election, which he did, into inciting an insurrection, which he did. None of that is undercut. None of that serious misconduct is in any way diminished by the fact that people lied to Christopher Steele.

No, I think just your credibility is. Ooh, brutal. Look, she's got him dead to rights. He read the Steele dossier into the congressional record. And what do we learn here? And was hailed as a hero and became a household name. Literal. I mean, how many millions of dollars did this man raise off of MSNBC hits on Rachel Maddow, off of becoming a literal celebrity? I once saw him actually outside the street. I was passing by.

APAC was going on. He happened to be right outside. I saw him get mobbed, and I really mean mobbed, by people on the street being like, we love you. Go after Trump. Give it to him. He was like pumping his fist up in the air. A legit celebrity. It's a rare thing that you see that happen to politicians here in the city. And that was happening right out there on the street. And it was total BS. I mean, how many times did he assure? Here's the other thing. If you're one of

these resistance liberals, you should be mad. I mean, he assured them over and over again. He's like, look, we've got the smoking gun or whatever on collusion. He was prosecuting Trump on the impeachment. He was constantly, look at Manafort, pushing the Steele dossier and this recent indictment of the primary source for the Steele dossier of so

much of this information, which again, he put into the record of the United States Congress, is completely fabricated and false. And he has no apology even to the American people for doing that. Right. And so let's just remind everybody, and by the way, you should go back and watch our segment with Glenn that we did on Tuesday for a full debriefing of all of the latest developments, but one of the main Steele dossier sources was just indicted and arrested for lying to the FBI. And what Steele had always said is, oh, I've got these deep sources in Russia, et cetera. This was like some Washington operative think tank dude who was literally recycling into the Steele dossier, which was funded by the Clinton campaign,

recycling rumors that he heard from the Clinton campaign. I mean, think about that. They're paying to produce this document through a roundabout mechanism, paying to produce this document. And then what ends up in the document is in part rumors from their own campaign. So that's how fraudulent this thing ultimately turned out to be. And, you know, to your point about resistance liberals, if you were someone who trusted the folks on MSNBC, trusted CNN, trusted the Democratic representatives who, you know, you believed in and thought they were telling the truth, like, no one should be more furious than those people. You should be mad. Yeah. I'd be mad. And I really don't blame, even though we poke fun at religious liberals

and white moms and stuff, I really don't blame them for thinking that there was a lot more there because they were consistently lied to. That's it. And Adam Schiff was one of the worst actors. Yep. To your point,

the reason he was so routinely booked on MSNBC is because he was always willing to allude or directly allege that there was secret evidence that he was privy to as head of the Intel Committee that would blow the doors off of this thing. And that once this became public, this smoking gun, it would be all over. It was a wrap. And so the fact that he projected so much confidence in the Steele dossier and in some of the more outrageous and insane allegations against Trump, not that he was open to help from Russia, which obviously like it was a mess and he was open to help from Russia, but there was direct

collusion and Putin had something on him and the P tape and all this stuff. Like a big part of the reason why people gained confidence in that is because they felt like Adam Schiff was in a position to know things that the general public didn't know. And so if he was confident enough in it to read it into the congressional record and allude to all of this still secret evidence, then there must really be some there there. And that's what she's trying to get at with him, and he is completely unrepentant. Yeah, I mean, and what is amazing is that that is probably the highest level of accountability he will ever face whenever it comes to the Steele dossier. It's the highest level. I bet you that the View colleagues there are shaking, being like, oh my god, what's happening? They couldn't even believe that an act of real journalism was happening there on the set. This guy is a really powerful dude. They couldn't even believe that an act of real journalism was happening there on the set.

This guy is a really powerful dude. And this is like the first time he's ever faced a tough question on this. Literally the first time. That's insane. On The View. What? You know, we played that segment earlier during the infrastructure program of a congressional reporter, Manu Raju, going and sticking a mic in a congressman's face. By the way, I completely support that.

Yeah. But why hasn't anybody on Capitol Hill done that? I mean, I, as well, not anymore because we work here, but previously, if we were at the Hill and I had a congressional press badge, I could walk on Capitol Hill and stick a mic and a camera in Adam Schiff's face and ask him a question. And there are dozens of people who are paid to do that every single day on Capitol Hill. Why don't they ever ask them a question about any of this? Why don't you go ask any of these congressmen? And as you said, he continued to portray himself as privy to non-public and secret information. And he was like, oh, well, behind the scenes, the briefings and the amount of endless selective leaks that they would do. Remember the Don Jr. situation and more leaking to CNN?

And then that turned out to be a total fabrication. And even though he burned many reporters on Capitol Hill with fake collusion information, they still trusted him. And now, even after all that, they still won't hold him to account. It's a pathetic situation. And, of course, the grander game with Russiagate was, as so many of these things, to make sure the Democratic Party could be let off the hook for the fact that they lost the election to a guy who was eminently beatable, that their own candidate was terrible, that she ran a terrible campaign, that people were disgusted with Democratic action over years. And this Russiagate ruse was ultimately very convenient for them to not have to answer to any of that.

And of course, Adam Schiff is very much enmeshed in, you know, that power structure. So this was terrible for America. It was terrible for people, you know, who were more on the left, like Bernie Sanders supporters, who wanted to make a real change and ultimately got crushed because people were so persuaded that Donald Trump was this unique existential threat that the only thing you should care about is picking whatever the candidate the media says is most likely to beat Donald Trump. And so that ultimately maintained all of the existing power structures and kept us going in that direction. So that's where we are today. Yeah, that's right. All right.

Interesting shakeup. Speaking of MSNBC, we've randomly had actually very smooth transitions today. Yes. That was totally accurate. Nice. Big news. Let's throw this up on the screen. I believe we have a New York Times tear sheet here.

Yeah. Brian Williams says he is leaving NBC News. Of course, I have to read you the first paragraph because I actually thought it was kind of funny. Brian Williams, the square-jawed news anchor, laid low by a fabulism scandal, which is a pretty funny way to say, like, he blatantly lied about some stuff. Straight up lying. Who mounted a career comeback with a, ready for this one, popular talk show at 11 p.m. on MSNBC. I guess it's all relative. It is more popular than Don Lemon's show over on CNN, so we'll give him that. Announced on Tuesday, he would step down from his program after a five-year run and depart NBC News entirely at the end of the year. So Brian doesn't really say what he is planning on doing, but it doesn't sound

like he plans to totally retire. He'll probably end up with a podcast or something. Yep. Following much reflection and after 28 years with the company, I've decided to leave NBC upon the completion of my current contract in December. I've been truly blessed. I've been allowed to spend almost half of my life with one company. NBC is part of me and always will be. That might be something you should be embarrassed about. Anyway, moving on. He revealed no immediate plans. He says this is the end of a chapter, beginning of another. There are many things I want to do, and I'll pop up again somewhere. New York Times also cites a person familiar with Mr. Williams' decision-making who said that the anchor would consider his

options and hope to return to TV or another media platform soon. So interesting development there. I have like a sort of direct Brian Williams connection here. You're a victim. Yeah. I was a sort of victim of, although ultimately he did me the greatest favor. Yeah, he did you a great favor, but at the time it sucked. That has ever been done in my life, but at the time it was hard to take. So as you guys know, I used to work at MSMBC. I was a host there, and ultimately my show got canceled, my contract terminated. Part of what happened in all of this is that was during the time period where Williams had gotten caught lying about the helicopter ride. Right. A couple other things that ultimately came out.

It was basically like, oh, this was something he kind of routinely did, just make up stories to portray himself as more brave and courageous and heroic than what was actually happening in the situation. So they had benched Brian from he was hosting, I think, NBC Nightly News at that point. Gigantic contract, making millions and millions of dollars, and they have him on the sidelines, and they're trying to figure out what the hell to do with this guy. So they bring in new president of NBC, Andy Lack. And Lack and Williams are old buddies. And effectively, my understanding is that a big part of why Lack was brought in was to effectively figure out what to do about their Brian Williams problem. So this is during 2015. Ratings at MSNBC are total

trash. Everyone's bored with the Obama presidency. There's just a complete malaise. Nothing's really working. And so what Lack decides he's going to do is he's going to plug Brian Williams in to the daytime lineup whenever there's breaking news. So he would effectively supersede whatever programs were going on and start, you know to do his anchorman thing whenever there was big breaking news. And the concept at the time was that we've gotten too progressive, too liberal over here. We want to go back to hard news. We want to be more like CNN, hard news. We're going to lean on our NBC News personalities.

So everybody during the daytime who had any opinion that was like remotely on the left basically got canned. Yeah. So this is the era when Ed Schultz is fired, when I'm fired, when, you know, my whole show is canceled. Ronan Farrow, his show wasn't going all that way. Anyway, Joy Reid actually had her show pulled at that time. And she was kind of, you know, on the sidelines there for quite a while. So there were a bunch of shake-ups then, all because they didn't want it to be uncomfortable for Brian Williams when he came into breaking news if there was opinion going on around him. Which is funny now because, of course, in his 11 p.m. slot, he was all opinion. It was pure opinion. It turned

out that, you know, once Trump got elected in the Trump era, the people who were most willing to be the most ridiculous in their attacks against him, those were the ones that rated the most, whoever was most willing to be absurd on Russiagate, like Rachel Maddow, those were the shows that did the most. So anyway, in a weird sort of way, Brian Williams lying led to me getting fired by MSNBC. But again, best thing in the long run that ever happened to me. And, you know, part of my journey to you today. The other big news at NBC that just came out as kind of a side note to this is, you know, Rachel Maddow, this hasn't been talked about a lot, but she's stepping down from her nightly show. Very soon. Right. She's remaining at MSNBC,

but they haven't even said exactly what she's going to do. It's more like sort of like periodic specials. Right. Once a week or every other week than a nightly show, which is a huge blow to them. Because even though obviously you know what we think of her politics and the way that she lied, especially during Russiagate, she is the one person who routinely still brings in an audience. She's the only person. At still brings in an audience. She's the only person at all. The only person. Right.

So the news that just came out related to that, and we can put this Byron York's up on the screen tweet. CNN reportedly offered Rachel Maddow $20 million a year to anchor their new streaming service. Oh, my God. Which is where Casey Hunt is now. And NBC had to effectively offer her more money and to do a lot less. So she turned down that offer. But pretty interesting to see CNN try to make big moves like that to pump up their streaming service, which is almost certain to fail. Yeah. No, it is wild. I do think that this, and the reason I wanted to cover the story,

was not only so you could share what happened, but this is the end for them. I do think that this, and the reason I wanted to cover this story was not only so you could share what happened, but this is the end for them. I mean, they're big, big personalities. Matt Lauer, obviously, that didn't work out so well. Brian Williams was, I mean, look, whatever you want to say, he was a household name for a long time. People knew who he was. He's gone. Now, Rachel Maddow.

He's someone like my mom. You would say Brian when she would know who he is. Of course. It was a huge thing. I mean, I knew who he was when I was a kid. And then now Rachel Maddow, she's stepping down. Apparently offered $20 million. They are all basically totally screwed heading into the real streaming wars. And meanwhile, I mean, you know, just to toot our own horn, we have been out here building and grinding for years. And they have no idea how to deal with absolutely any of it.

The fact that they were willing to offer Rachel Maddow $20 million on CNN Plus is the most insane thing I've ever heard. Because nobody would actually pay for that. I mean, we're already seeing that whenever you try to put these people behind a paywall or you try to make them compete here in the business, in the real online space, an actual free market of, if you're good, then okay, people will watch you. And if you're not, then they have endless other things that they could watch. They don't know what to do. That's why it's like the idea of Brian Williams

on a podcast is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Like, he's not gonna be good at it. He doesn't even know how, without all the people doing all the work for him. I mean, it's just not the same game whatsoever. So when I just think about the transitional period that we're in, I mean, it gives me some hope. Like Maddow stepping down, Brian Williams out there. MSNBC right now is near an all-time low in ratings.

They have plunged in terms of their ratings. Fox is crushing them across the board. Their trust rating along with CNBC or CNN has dropped dramatically. I mean, this is a real problem. They have an aging audience that if the fact that they do turn into news, they only turn into Rachel or like NBC News with Lester Holt or whatever.

And that can only last for so long, man. I mean, like you always say, look at the actuarial tables. It's going to start fading out as time goes on. Now, in fairness, I think it's still the case. Fox has always had the oldest audience of the cable news

channels, but all of these audiences are really old. And you can tell because when you look at, they like to tout the overall numbers. The overall numbers are irrelevant. The only thing they're making money off of is the key demo, which is like 25 to 54. And there is a gigantic gulf between the overall numbers and then what they're actually—

Like hundreds of thousands of people. Yes. I don't think people are going to realize that. Right. And so, like, oftentimes now in this era, in that key demo, they're barely maybe getting 100K viewers during the daytime lineup, which is pathetic. But, yeah, they're in big trouble. And the fact that you would, even Rachel, who I think Rachel and Tucker are some of the only people who could succeed outside of like, you know, the cable news ecosystem because they

genuinely have a following and people who turn up to hear what they have to say. But even her, I mean, the audience is so much older that they're not who you're going to, like, to buy a streaming service. Yeah, exactly. You know, I mean, they're going to watch traditional cable news because that's not what they know how to get to on the channel. That's what they're used to doing.

You know, they've been doing it for 30 years. You don't want to turn on the TV. So it's just funny to me that these big businesses that see the writing on the wall with streaming and know they need to do something, but they keep turning to like, you know, we're going to have Nicole Wallace on Peacock. We're going to have Casey Hunt on CNN streaming service. Like people are going to show up for that. I just saw Halle Jackson is starting a new show on Peacock. Oh, really?

Yeah. Funny. All right. I mean, I just don't know why. Just as a matter of business, you wouldn't look to some people who are actually successful in the field that you're trying to get into, but whatever. That being said, don't try and buy us

because it ain't ever going to happen. We're not for sale, guys. Yeah. Okay. All right, Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, this is actually a huge deal that I wanted to break down for you. So workers at three Starbucks in Buffalo are starting to vote on whether or not they want to join a union,

and the execs of that company appear to be in full meltdown mode. You're going to love this. So here is the very latest. Vote by Mail is beginning this week in an election that would see Buffalo stores organized under Workers United that's an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU. The fact that the voting is starting is already a huge win for pro-union forces. Starbucks had sought to delay the election, and that is an effective union-busting tactic in the service sector in particular because of their inherent high turnover. If you can push an election off long enough, some of the original organizers might move on, and new employees will be brought in who have to be educated on unionization from scratch. In their attempt to defeat the union, Starbucks also sought to expand the election to

include all Starbucks in the Buffalo area, not just the three that originally filed. This also makes it harder for workers to unionize because they've got to organize a larger pool of workers who haven't been invested in the conversation from the start. So far, the National Labor Relations Board has sided with the union. They have kept each of the Starbucks stores separate. That means if a majority of workers at even one location vote in favor of the union, that shop will in fact become union. And so how is Starbucks handling all this? Are they taking it in stride, confident in their business model and huge profit margins, happy to live up to their rhetoric about supporting and backing their workforce? Of course not. They are freaking out in totally hilarious

ways. So last weekend, they closed all the Starbucks locations in Buffalo early on Saturday, and they invited workers to a big fancy event at the Hyatt. The invitation touted a secret special guest who turned out to be none other than Starbucks founder Howard Schultz. I mean, who wouldn't want to spend their Saturday night hanging out with the billionaire desperately trying to keep you from having power in your workplace? In addition to all the standard anti-union talking points about how wonderful the company already is and how committed they are to supporting their workers, Schultz also apparently wandered into a pretty bizarre Holocaust analogy. Throw that up on the screen. So some workers who attended Mr. Schultz's talk were confused by a story he told about the Holocaust,

in which he noted that only a small portion of prisoners in German concentration camps received blankets, but often shared them with fellow prisoners. So much of that story is threaded into what we have tried to do at Starbucks. Share our blanket, Mr. Schultz said, according to the transcript. Um, okay. Gathering all your employees for a good old-fashioned union-busting meeting is just like Holocaust victims sharing blankets with their fellow prisoners or something. Or maybe the workers trying to stand with each other in solidarity against oppressive corporate bosses are more effectively channeling the spirit of those prisoners. Or maybe we should just leave the Nazi Holocaust analogies out of this altogether.

Anyways, Starbucks is not wrong to be nervous about this effort. This thing actually looks like it has some chance at success. Listen, you've always got to assume the corporates are going to win, and Starbucks has used extraordinary tactics to try and prevent unionization. But the time could hardly be more right. As we've been covering, workers everywhere are rediscovering and flexing their muscle in a variety of different ways. You've got huge strikes at John Deere and likely Kaiser. You've got small-scale walkouts where the entire staff of a restaurant or a chain store just quit en masse and lock the door behind them, telling their bosses

exactly what they think of them in the meanwhile. To the record-breaking numbers who are quitting on their own and jumping industries, that backdrop of renewed worker power gives these Starbucks baristas looking to organize a little bit of wind to their backs. Not only that, but the effort does seem outwardly to have some momentum. Three additional shops have now filed petitions to unionize. You add that to an actually worker-friendly NLRB that has so far taken the union side, and I am almost ready to allow myself a tiny glimmer of hope that at least one of the Buffalo Starbucks may in fact win a union. But just remember, our laws are so

screwed up that even if they do unionize and it survives all of the inevitable appeals and challenges, still nothing is guaranteed. More than half of workers who join a union still do not have a collectively bargained contract a year later. Some companies, they just skip any pretense at negotiations and resort to blatantly illegal tactics, things like firings and closing shops in retaliation. For one example, Dollar General just outright closed a Missouri store that had voted to unionize. Our laws are so toothless that companies routinely get away with this kind of criminal behavior. Now, the PRO Act would give the NLRB some teeth, and it would also force companies and workers into binding arbitration if a deal cannot be reached, killing that stalling tactic.

But Kyrsten Sinema decided we can't have the PRO Act because she needs to take a raft of cash from barely legal pyramid schemes, otherwise known as MLMs. Now, these workers cannot count on Washington, And that's where we come in, guys. If these workers take the courageous step of voting to unionize, we have to have their backs, making sure we raise hell if the company does try to screw them over. For the first time in my entire life, the labor movement is actually starting to go on the offense. We got to make sure that we are watching. Sagar, it's pretty interesting. So far, NLRB is siding with them. And the reason Starbucks is so nervous... Sagar, what's pretty interesting. So far, NLRB is siding with them. And the reason Starbucks is so nervous... Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, a few months back when Jeff Bezos blasted into space, there was a lot of discourse in this country around the billionaire space race.

Many thought that it was grotesque to watch some of the richest men in the world engage in some sort of pissing contest around who could get to technically space with the most flair. Others said, look, who cares? If the government isn't going to space, let the billionaires do it. It's better than having nothing, and they have the business know-how anyways. They have the will, and they have the money. Well, I feel somewhere in the middle at that time. But a flashing red warning sign around the billionaire space space happened yesterday, and it is being completely ignored by the corporate media.

It has profound implications for the future of our country and its legacy in space. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced yesterday that the return to the man-moon landing missions will be delayed until 2025. Not because of a technical difficulty or an engineering problem or something legitimate. No, no, no, no. It is because of litigation. And not just any litigation,

ego litigation from none other than Bezos himself. Jeff Bezos' company, Blue Origin, took the United States government to court for years over losing out on a $2.9 billion lunar landing contract. And you see, Bezos just could not stomach that. So he wanted his company to be the one that landed on the moon, and he was willing to bring all of his lobbying power to bear.

So what happened? Immediately, Bezos protested to the government accountability office, saying that it wasn't fair, that he wasn't getting the contract. The problem is that while all of this was happening, SpaceX literally was not allowed to work on the lunar lander. Per Bill Nelson, the team preparing to land on the moon had not been allowed to do any work on the lander for seven months, which means that Bezos, to satisfy his ego about Blue Origin, is a real space company and not a vanity project, just delayed the return of the United States to the moon by an entire year. This is where the rub is. Bezos speaks very loftily about space, the next frontier, about how he was inspired as a kid to move humanity forward. Okay, great. Look, I love space too.

I would kill to see an American on the moon in my lifetime. But the problem was that Bezos could not let his greed out of the way. He wants America to win in space as long as he provides the lunar lander, gets him more press, more money, more prestige. It's disgusting. The world's richest man arguably dealt the largest blow to the new American space race than any engineering failure ever could, all for the sake of vanity. And that, my friends, is where the danger in all of this lies.

This is only the latest stunt that Bezos has pulled to try to use his personal wealth, fame, and fortune to bring more resources to bear for his rocket company. Check this out. Viewers of the show may recall Bezos, after losing the contract officially back in April, immediately kicked it into high gear. He got Senator Maria Cantwell, the senator from Washington, his own home state and coincidentally home of Amazon HQ, to do something Congress never does, offer more money to NASA, but only on one condition, that NASA would have to give the money to Bezos. This is especially galling because for years, NASA has literally begged on its hands and knees to Congress for

more money if they wanted to go to space. They requested $3.3 billion. Congress gave them $850 million for the moon program. They protested, they kicked, they screamed. They said it wasn't enough. But only in they had a budget crunch and they had to go with SpaceX because it gave the most competitive and cost-effective bid was then the lunar lander that Bezos himself, when he was personally affected, that Congress tried to step in to help him. The way that they wrote the bill was so transparent, it actually gave NASA more money than it even asked for for that project. And then said specifically, it had to pick another company to give the money to, aka Jeff Bezos' company, Blue Origin. Now, luckily, the House

of Representatives actually killed that Bezos bailout, but the damage was done. Bezos' company, Blue Origin. Now, luckily, the House of Representatives actually killed that Bezos bailout, but the damage was done. Bezos ended up dragging this out in court for several months more, and now we're delayed. Now we're a year behind on the landing on the moon because Bezos did not get his contract, and that has profound implications. A lot of countries are eyeing the moon right now, India, Brazil, China. NASA Administrator Nelson actually said in the same press conference, blaming Bezos, that they believed China was much closer than originally thought to landing a manned mission on the moon. So let me guess what they don't have to deal with in Beijing, the egos of billionaires affecting a project of national prestige. The story in a microcosm describes the dangers inherent in the current iteration of our space race. In the 1960s, our national project was to land a man on the moon and it was built

on the backs of great American aerospace companies, which built cutting-edge technology and critically had a contract process that selected the best hardware for the sake of actually achieving the mission as fast as possible. Why? Because the goal was simple. Get a man on the moon now. Today, we are rudderless in our mission. We cannot decide who we are and why. NASA thinks the coolest part of the moon mission is that a woman and a person of color will be there. Great, I guess. Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos is trying to get a contract to further his ego. And lo and behold, the date that we're supposed to land keeps getting pushed back and back. Oligarchic corruption is seeping into what would be a titanic and awesome feat of engineering

and a hopeful leap forward for mankind. And it just shows you that little that we really have progressed since the 1960s. As billionaire Peter Thiel is famous for saying, we were promised flying cars. Instead, all we got was 140 characters. And it didn't have to be this way. We can still fulfill our destiny. It's just going to take some work here at home to actually get there. And Crystal, I mean, what does it tell you? That Bezos' ego and his lawsuit literally cost us a year in terms of landing on the moon. Fascinating new study out of Jacobin about what sort of messaging and priorities actually moves working class voters. We have a lot of debates about this, of course, online and elsewhere. So they've got some actual data to back it up that is truly fascinating.

Joining us to talk about that is one of the co-authors of that study, Dustin Guastella. He is not only co-author of the study, but also director of operations for Teamsters Local 623 in Philadelphia. Great to see you, friend. Hey, good to see you, man. Hey, thanks for having me, guys. Absolutely. Just give us the basics of how this study, because it's pretty unique, was constructed and what you hope to learn from it, and then we can get into the results. Right. So, you know, we were thinking a lot about this major

question. I think it's a huge question in progressive politics, Democratic Party politics, about why it is that Democrats are losing so many working class voters, even though many of the policies that Democrats put forward are actually quite popular with working class voters. So we wanted to figure out what was going on here. And we figured that many of the polling firms that are currently trying to answer this question go about it in a kind of half-hearted way. They present voters with a policy and they tell them, do you like this policy? Yes or no. Or they present voters with a soundbite and they say, do you like you like this policy? Yes or no. Or they present voters with a soundbite and they say, do you like the soundbite? Yes or no. So you get all these mix

of political messages. And it's really hard to make sense of why is Medicare for all so popular, but Medicare for all candidates can't win in swing states. Why is it that progressive policies are popular across the country, but only progressives can get elected in deep blue areas. So we decided to try to create full candidate profiles to actually test what swing state working class voters like, what kind of candidates they gravitate toward, what kind of messaging they like, and what kind of platforms they like. And that's what we did. We tested about 2000 swing state voters without college degrees to see what kind of candidates, we put them up against thousands of head to head candidates to see what kind of candidates, we put them up against thousands of head-to-head candidates, to see what kind of candidates they most prefer.

Right. And Dustin, what really caught my eye when I was reading through the takeaways here is that working class voters prefer progressive candidates who focus primarily on bread and butter economic issues, who frame those issues in universal terms. This is especially true outside deep blue parts of the country. What do you guys mean by that? I think it's a profound takeaway. So this shouldn't be too surprising. I mean, I think it's something that people have known for quite some time that economic working class issues appeal to working class voters. What I think is novel here is that we are saying, you know, taking things back to the language of the civil rights movement, the language of the

New Deal, framing things in universal terms, that is, these programs are going to the language of the civil rights movement, the language of the New Deal, framing things in universal terms. That is, these programs are going to help all of us. These programs are going to help the entire working class and not this or that group of the working class and not this or that section of the working class, but it's going to lift up everybody and we're all in this together. That kind of universal messaging pulls really well among this group. It pulls very strongly among swing state working class voters. I think it's also really important to point out that what you say here is that that doesn't mean you have to abandon social justice. It doesn't mean that you don't talk about civil rights or race at all.

But it's important not only how you talk about it, but also which issues you put as the focus and the centerpiece of your campaign. Just talk to us about what you found there. Yeah, this is something that I think is really an important part of the study and an important part of our findings. You know, a lot of what you'll hear, especially around the Clintonian Democrat world back, you know, 10 years ago, it's different today, is that you can't talk about race or racism. You can't talk about civil rights. You can't talk about sexism because these things are things that piss off working class white voters, right? We didn't find that to be true. What we found is that if you make that your campaign, if that is the thing that overshadows what you're actually trying to do

from a policy perspective and for them and their pocketbooks and their wallets, then you're going to lose. So you need to be able to frame these things as a way of part of your campaign, part of what you're doing to offer a holistic program of working class strength rather than make this the entirety of your campaign. And I think that's significant. I think what it says is that the civil rights victories of the mid-century have been won. We have now moved into an era where we have an electorate that is broadly liberal on these questions, that broadly accepts the want and desire for social justice across a lot of different areas of our lives. But they also recognize the material frustrations of being somebody who

doesn't have enough money to pay the mortgage or is struggling with bills or struggling with rent or these other things. And so you need to be able to center those economic issues if you want to win these voters. Right. And, you know, one line that really struck out to me was this blue collar workers are especially sensitive to candidate messaging and respond even more acutely to the differences between populist and woke language. Can you give us some examples? Yeah. So if you look at some of our talking points, we took these talking points, these sound bites from a variety of candidates that we've seen, Ayanna Pressley, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and we compared them to talking points from what

we would consider mainstream or populist Democrats like Biden or Bernie. And when you look at and compare these things, the sort of woke Democrat on the moderate or progressive side are people who are framing things in a way to talk to very particular groups, particular issues, either racial minorities or sexual minorities, or, you know, even folks with disabilities, these sorts of things. But they're framing things in a way that says these are the groups that are the center of politics, right? And then they're using a language on top of that that is basically stuck in the universities. It's very heavy to understand. It's very activist jargony. And it doesn't make a lot of sense if you're not somebody who went to college. So if you compare that with the kind of talking points

that you see Bernie and Biden using, those talking points are much more favorable. And then the difference between the Bernie and Biden talking points or the populist progressive talking point and the moderate mainstream talking point are that the populist actually names an enemy, right? The populist says the an enemy, right? The populist says the elites are the problem. We need working people to stand up against them. We believe that there's a real problem in this country between these two groups and we need to fight together against them. That actually pulled better than the moderate message, which was about unity and coming together across the aisle and all that sort of stuff. And among blue collar

manual workers, that was the biggest gap that we saw between the sort of candidates and the populist or mainstream. But I do think it's important to say based on these results, the more woke AOC type language, it does work pretty effectively if you're talking about urban or suburban areas, and especially if you have a majority-minority district. So AOC's district, I believe, is majority-minority. It's also urban. So it actually makes sense, based on your results, that she would do well there, even if that language, that sort of jargony language, has limited appeal on a national basis the way that, you know, Bernie Sanders, obviously, especially in 2016, had more appeal to white working class voters in the industrial Midwest.

Yeah, I think that's right. I also think that, you know, our study didn't really go into depth on college educated urban voters, right? So we can't say much about those voters. And those are a big, a huge part of the Democratic coalition. And they shouldn't be considered, you know, all elites, right? Many of those people work for a living. Many of those people are working class. Our study was really focusing on that group that Democrats continue to lose, right? Non-college educated folks and the one that can tip the balance of power, those in swing states. So this was really a study to try to figure out what it is that is most effective among that group. And this is, this is what we found.

And I think, though this is a hunch and it goes outside the scope of the study, I think that if we actually were to study many of the college educated and urban voters, we would find that a similar messaging convergence happens. I think they would probably prefer some more of the woke messaging. But my hunch is that the woke messaging and a lot of the, you know, what we call woke today is a media phenomenon more than it is a voter phenomenon, more than it is a constituency phenomenon. So we'll see in the future, hopefully we'll do some studies on that, but that's just a hunch of mine. The other piece, final question is like, you know, the reason you study, there's a very specific reason why you studied working class voters who could be persuadable to these messages, because that's always so important.

You sort of left out like the hard conservatives who are never going to come over. You didn't focus on them. You focused on independents and Democratic leaning working class voters who were gettable. What's the reason to care about whether that coalition is part of a progressive coalition or not? Because that's another debate that happens. It's like, there are a lot of people who just want to lean into the college-educated vote and forget about those white working class voters altogether. Why is it important to care about what these people think? Yeah, I mean, two simple reasons. One,

over 60% of the electorate is this group. Two, over 60% of congressional seats are this group. So we need to, if progressives have any hope and prayer of being a majoritarian coalition, this is the bread and butter of that coalition. It needs to be at the center of the coalition. You cannot win a majority, even if you get all of the college educated voters, which is impossible, but even if you got 100% of them, you would not be able to win a majority. Even if you get all of the college educated voters, which is impossible. But even if you got 100% of them, you would not be able to win a majority. Even if you got all of the cities, you would never be able to get a Senate majority. So if you're interested in swaying the balance of power in this country, which we'll admit is a totally screwed up federal system, but it's the system we have. If you're trying to sway the balance of power in that system, you need to win these voters.

You need to be able to win a majority of them if you want to govern. I would also submit if you had a coalition of just college educated voters, you'd get some really shitty politics out of that. It would also be cringe, which is probably the most important. It would also be cringe. Dustin, thank you so much for bringing down these results. It's really fascinating. Everybody should go check out the longer read because there was a lot that I got out of this. Really appreciate your time. I'm going to have a link in the description. Appreciate it, Dustin. Thank you.

Thanks, guys. Our pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. We've got awesome upgrades here. You guys all loved the new color and the new production results. We had a little bit of a hiccups and all that, but bear with us. It's all made possible because of your support,

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They've always got their eye on the ball there. No pun intended. Wait. I forgot to say happy Veterans Day to all of those who served. And we specifically shouted out to the U.S. Marines who watched the show, happy Veterans Day to all of those who served. And we specifically shouted out to the U.S. Marines who watched the show, happy Marine Corps birthday to those who celebrate. That's right. Absolutely, guys. Enjoy the weekend. We got lots of great content for you posting this weekend, and we will see you back here with a full show on Monday. See you Monday. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

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