Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/18/21: Biden Fitness, Opioid Deaths, Inflation Profiteering, The View, Peng Shuai Missing, Buttigieg Doc, Fauci Insanity, Unvaccinated Working Class, and More!

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

Krystal and Saagar talk about Biden's fitness to serve, a surge in opioid deaths, companies profiting off inflation, The View drama, a missing Chinese tennis star, Fauci's madness on covid, the Amazon Mayor Pete documentary, unvaccinated working class with Chris Arnade, 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/Chris Arnade’s Substack: https://intellectualinting.substack.com/ Chris Arnade’s Book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566661/dignity-by-chris-arnade/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Thank you. I'm glad to be back here, I can promise you. So, a lot to get to this morning. Some truly stunning and very troubling numbers coming out about record-breaking opioid deaths last year. It's disturbing. It's very revealing where this is happening, why this is happening. So we'll get into all of that. Some new indications about just why we're facing inflation that's a little bit different than the corporate media narrative that you've been hearing. Also, a moment on The View that you just have to see where co-hosts get into it about, or former co-hosts gets into it about vaccinations. Very explosive moment.

We'll talk about that. Top tennis star has gone missing after accusing a high-level Chinese official of sexual assault. No one has seen or heard from her since. It has been weeks now. We'll give you the very latest there. But we wanted to start with some pretty interesting numbers, poll numbers, about just how people feel

about Joe Biden personally. And something that we've been talking about for a while now, Sagar, going back to the Democratic primary, is that Joe Biden's greatest strength, people didn't really love his policy positions. They certainly didn't love his past record, but they felt a lot of personal affection for him. That's right. They saw in him a lot of leadership characteristics that they felt like contrasted very well with former President Trump. Well, on every single one of those metrics, things like, you know, do you care about me personally? Are you a good leader? Are you a clear communicator? Biden has fallen off a cliff in terms of how voters see him. Let's go ahead and throw this Politico tear sheet up on the screen.

They've got the headline, voters' doubts rising about Biden's health and mental fitness. Let me give you a few of the details here so you can see what a dramatic decline this has been. So only 40% of voters surveyed now agree with the statement that Biden is, quote, in good health, while 50% disagreed. That 10 percentage point gap, which is outside the poll's margin of error, represents a massive 29 point shift since October of 2020. So a year ago, he was doing well on that metric about whether he's in good health. Now he is dramatically underwater. Asked whether Biden is mentally fit. Voters are almost evenly split now. 46% say he is, 48% disagree. But that negative two-point margin stands in stark contrast to, again, Biden's numbers last October when voters did think he was mentally fit by a margin of 21 points.

There's a lot to get into here. So across the board, they sort of focused on the health and mental fitness one, which I do think is important. And by the way, guys, something that we were talking about all the way along. Yes, and brutally attacked for come COVID times. Like, oh, you're not allowed to talk about that one. Right. No, I mean, it was amazing to watch the sort of evolution of how people felt about this. Because at the beginning of the Democratic primary, when it was a free-for-all, you had Julian Castro, you had mainstream MSNBC commentators talking about whether he was up to the job at this point, which isn't to be mean. It's just literally to look with your eyes and listen with your ears and say, is this man really up to what the nation would ask of him at this point? The second that it basically was down to him and Bernie, you no longer could say anything about this or you are a horrible person. You were ableist. You were attacking him for the about this or you are a horrible person. You were

ableist. You were attacking him for the fact that he stuttered as a kid. I mean, all of this insanity. And within this story, this also blew my mind. They quote a prominent Democratic pollster, Celinda Lake, one of the best known out there. And she doesn't say, you know, oh, well, I understand why voters and he had these mistakes and maybe that's why they feel like maybe he's not what he was before. She says that the right wing is, quote, running a very aggressive campaign on this and it's bleeding over into the mainstream a little. By and large, the people who believe this are Trump supporters anyway, or they've been exposed to the right wing disinformation machine. OK, listen, no doubt about it. Right-wing media is going to take whatever they can, deceptively edit, play it on loop, all of that. But also, voters have eyes and they have ears.

They're not stupid. They can see with their own self that Biden is not what he used to be. And it is not just Trump voters that are feeling that way. In fact, independents are also feeling, seeing a massive decline in how they rate these sort of personal traits. And they even reference a focus group of black voters in a southern state where one of the, a lot of things. I'm not sure if it is because of his age or if he's still going after 30 decades ago. Asked if she would support Biden in 2024, the woman said, if he's alive, I'm just saying. There you go. I mean, look, people have eyes. They have ears. During COVID, it was comforting. He was not, you know, for a lot of people because he was not really in the spotlight. Every once in a while, he had a decent moment. The debate whenever it came with Bernie, the debate whenever it it is that it strips you down and exposes you to the American people. And what it means by that is that when you're on the road and on camera every single day for two years, we're going to find out pretty much everything about you. That's just the deal in terms of interactions with reporters. And we all remember right before COVID, his interactions with voters and reporters every now and then

just seemed completely off the rails. And now when you're president of the United States, we see you in a very similar fashion. That's why they do their best not to allow him to do interviews. That's why they do their best not to have him out in the press or out in the public. And, you know, he does that weird thing where he's like, I'm not allowed to take questions, which, again, is extraordinarily strange. And when people see that, they go, oh, I'm seeing you really for who you are in the real American presidency where you're on the camera, or at least should be every single day. Look at the graphic we have up on the screen in terms of the reduction overall and how people saw him in the past as opposed to people see him now. Knowledgeable, 60%, now 49.

Compassionate, 61%, now 47. Mentally fit, 53, now 46. Trustworthy, 54, now 43. Too liberal is actually the only place where he's increased from 42 to 43. Reckless, 32 to 42. So he's doing well, at least on that. Thin-skinned as well. Capable of leading. In good health. Motivates his party. That's where there's a 58 to now 39% drop. Here's the other bad one. Cares about people like me. This is often one of the most important in all of politics. 53 to 39. Strong leader, 51 to 39. Keeps his promises, 50 to 39. Clear communicator, get this one, 53 to 37. And worst of all, energetic, 46% to 34. Now look, every single one of those are on a personal metric in which people assess how they feel after now having observed him

for the better part of a couple of years on the highest stage in the world. And it doesn't take a genius in order to figure it out. As you said, the gaslighting in those early days was driving us nuts where they were like, oh, he has a stutter, a childhood stutter. And so it's actually like a heroic tale. Listen, I watched Joe Biden since before, you know, basically since I was born on television. He ran for president before I was born. That's how old this man is. And I even attended once a speech that he gave. I think it was 2011. So yeah, it was before the 2012 midterm elections. And he was good. Like, you know, he had an aviator jacket on and he had sunglasses and he was like putting his foot up on his stool. It was in Philadelphia too. It was like a majority black crowd. He was great.

He lit the crowd on fire. And then I saw him, you know, later on and I was like, oh, yeah, this is just not the man that he once was. I was there at that Paul Ryan debate. There you go. The Republicans were all psyched up for that thing because Paul Ryan was the golden child and they thought he was going to wipe the floor with Uncle Joe.

And it was not even close. No, he did a good job. Joe handled him. I, you know, so it's just clear to voters, to everyone. And the truth of the matter is, I actually don't think that people would care that much about the fact that he's lost a step. He's not quite the man. He doesn't have it all together the way that he used to. He doesn't have that quick on his feet, that energy, that charisma that he used to bring to the table.

I actually don't think people would care that much. If they felt like his priorities are my priorities, he really cares about people like me. He's fighting for people like me. And so that was always the real strength for him is that people just had these warm fuzzies about him. That like, he's a good man. He's not perfect. He makes these mistakes. I mean, that made him sort of more relatable. But he really is in there fighting for me and he cares about, he gets the middle class or the working class experience. He's got my priorities in mind. That was always his greatest strength. And so the fact that he has fallen off so dramatically on a metric like cares about

people like me, that if I was the Biden camp, that would be the thing I was most worried about because that is a core strength. I do want to note, you alluded to it. It's funny to me that on he's too liberal, like that was basically the best metric that he had in there. And it didn't budge at all. It moved from 43 to 42, which statistically means it didn't change at all. So just a note for all of you out there doing the like, he's AOC, you know, he's Bernie Sanders is running the administration. He's a socialist, big government, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That particular talking point, y'all have been trying it for years now and it is still not working and it is not going to work.

So, you know, you've got some other things that you might want to work with here because that one is just not landing. Yeah, no, I think that is particularly hilarious. And just to, you know, put a cap on this, if you have eyes, the president has had some strange moments over the last couple of months, not even months, last couple of weeks. We put together three moments literally just from the last like six weeks that were captured once again on camera that everybody can see for their eyes as to how exactly he's faring. Let's take a listen. You know, I've adopted the attitude of the great Negro at the time pitcher in the Negro leagues went on to become a great pitcher in the pros into the major league baseball after Jackie Robinson. His name was Satchel Paige. I was able to go to the private portion with 40 percent of all products coming into the United

States of America on the West Coast, go through Los Angeles and and what am I doing here? The Long Beach. Long Beach. Thank you. This is a magnificent planet. This conference is one of the most important meetings in history. You have the chance to make decisions and reach agreements which will affect the lives of generations to come. You are in a position of extraordinary power. You can change forever the trajectory we are on. You can make a world that is once again full of hope, not fear. This is my message from Earth

to COP. On behalf of we, the 15. But for those who were just listening, that last clip, Biden was actually asleep in public at the climate change meeting. And we cut it right whenever one of his aides came over in order to wake him up. Relatable. I probably would have fallen asleep there, too. I probably would have fallen asleep, too. I'm also not the president. And whenever it comes to this, it's just one of these. I mean, I even vividly remember, even though we very much praised his speech on Afghanistan, you know, the defiant one. But whenever, after it was done, he did that very strange thing where he put his elbows on the podium in order to take questions and was taking a lot of pausing and was clearly like

unsure, on his foot. And that's what I mean by has good times and bad times, which is, and look, we're not insinuating anything. All we're saying is that old people, when they age, that's a general feature of it. Anybody who's interacted with somebody over the age of 77, 78, and the president is now 79, knows exactly what I'm talking about. And they're trying to gaslight us into thinking otherwise. So this is the problem. Americans have eyes. They have ears. They know what's going on. Maybe they were willing to forgive it whenever it was versus Donald Trump, but now that they see it very vividly as their president, they're not happy about it. Yeah. And again, I think it would actually be overcomable if they felt like the administration is being run well. His aides have this. I mean, you think back to the Reagan era. There were a lot of questions then about him and they were turned out. They were very justified questions about how much he was understanding what was going on and

how much he was with it, et cetera, et cetera. And listen, I'm not a big Ronald Reagan fan here, but because he had people around him that gave the nation confidence, he was able to get reelected. The question about his age, all of that stuff was sort of pushed to the side. With Biden, you don't get the sense that he's on top of it. You don't get the sense that his administration is on top of it. He's lost that warm feeling that people had towards him about, like, he gets me and he sees me and he's got the right priorities in mind. We covered that poll before about people saying that he doesn't have the right priorities in terms of what he's up to and what he's accomplishing. There's not a lot you could take from this that is positive. So, yeah, like I said, I think if I was the Biden people, the ones I would be most concerned about is that people no longer feel like he cares about people

like them. For a politician, that is absolutely devastating, especially, especially for a guy like Joe Biden, who has never been a policy guy or a vision guy or any of that. The whole thing he brought to the table is that sense of middle class, working class solidarity. And if that is gone, it's hard to see that there's much else left. Yeah, I think that's right. At the same time, we want to bring you some truly dire news. This is something we've tracked for a very long time, you know, really since we started working together on this show, which is the opioid epidemic and how many lives it has destroyed in this country. And we've just hit a truly horrific milestone in that fight against that deadly addiction. 100,000 people died of overdoses last year.

Let's go ahead and put that first element up on the screen. So this is a chart that Washington Post did a good write-up of this. The number of people who died, this is the most in history in this country, 275 every day, people who died. It would fill the stadium where the University of Alabama plays football. There are now more overdose deaths from the illegal synthetic opioid fentanyl than there were overdose deaths from any drug in 2016. And I want to pause on that stat. This was a 28% increase from last year. So even as we've been tracking the horrors of this epidemic for years now, it jumped up 28% in one year. There are a few things that they cite here as potential factors,

and we can talk a little bit more about this. One of the things that they cite here as potential factors. And we can talk a little bit more about this. One of the things that they said is because of the pandemic, people were more likely to be using alone. So if you get into trouble, then you don't have someone there to call 911, to administer naloxone, to help you out of that situation. You just die. So that's one of the things that is going on here. But going back to that stat about now, just fentanyl deaths account for more overdose deaths than everything put together in 2016. If you guys recall back to that 2016 presidential campaign, opioid addiction was a huge part of that campaign. It was actually a huge part of how Trump started to gain traction because he talked about it. In some of the biggest swing counties that we saw back in 2016, if you look

at some correlative factors, one of the things that stuck out the most was drug overdose. The other one was actually vets killed abroad in foreign wars. I always think about those two particular ones. And job loss. I mean, obviously job loss. That was with Bernie Sanders and with Donald Trump. The swing on amount of jobs lost to China after the WTO entrance in 2000 was like directly in line with how much votes they got, both in the primary and eventually for Trump in the general election. And I think the second part of this, which is really stark, put the map up there because it's not just that the deaths have surpassed 100,000. It's that it's very unevenly distributed. So you can actually see there, which is that West Virginia is coming in at over 90,

90 deaths per 100,000 from a drug overdose. And the distribution is, it's very hard to like pin down, right? So obviously you see the less populated states that aren't getting hit as hard, and South Dakota and all of that. But it's not one thing that's just in one particular place, even though, yes, the industrial Midwest and Appalachia get harder than everybody. You see hotspots in Florida. You see hotspot in New Mexico, even up in, you know, the high, like in the Northeast, like Maine, Vermont, Connecticut also not doing well. So yes, I mean, things are very, very bad in West Virginia and

in Appalachia generally. But if you look at the whole country, I mean, things are very, very bad in West Virginia and in Appalachia generally. But if you look at the whole country, I mean, the whole country is not doing so well in terms of where we see the deaths per 100,000 there on the map. West Virginia is just so, I mean, that's the real challenge. And you have a lot of experience. Maybe you can tell us about it. Like in terms of those counties you were saying, what is it in the South, which have particularly been hardest hit because they've lost coal jobs and they have no economic opportunity. That's where you see some of the most deaths in the country. That's correct.

I would actually like to see this map on a county-by-county basis because I think what you would see is even within the state of West Virginia, which has a problem overall, deaths would certainly be most concentrated. I mean, the numbers that you would see coming out of southern West Virginia, it's horrible. And it's not a surprise when you consider how exploited these people have been, how jobs, you know, have completely disintegrated. And also just the amount of physical pain that workers are in in Appalachia because they've, you know, literally used their bodies underground in very difficult jobs in order to survive. This is one of the things, a fantastic author, Beth Macy, she wrote such a great book called Dope Sick on the origins of this crisis. She's based down in southwestern Virginia around Roanoke, so right next door to West Virginia. And that whole area has been hit so incredibly hard, as has Kentucky. All of Appalachia has been hit so incredibly hard. And she really traces it back to people who were doing hard

physical labor, and they had terrible chronic pain. And so you get a prescription for Oxy. And then once that is, once the doctor will no longer prescribe, well, in any significant quantity at all. And so, you know, you look at these numbers, and actually there's a chart in here in this Washington Post graphic that shows oxyprescriptions have dramatically declined. Yes. And as they've declined, the death rate has actually gone up. Right, because people turn to the street. Because people turn to the street. People turn to the street. And so, look, I mean, clearly what we're doing with the war on drugs is an utter and complete failure. Most people, the overwhelming majority of these users, they don't want fentanyl. Fentanyl is so concentrated

that it's easy for traffickers to smuggle. You can carry a lot more fentanyl, a lot more doses of fentanyl in a small space that weighs a lot less and it's a lot easier to traffic and carry than an equivalent amount of heroin and certainly than an equivalent amount of oxy. That's what happens when you have prohibition is people turn to the most concentrated, traffickers turn to the most concentrated form of the drug. So that's why you end up with fentanyl now across the country causing this much havoc in this much death. And by the way, you know, one of the things that people I think rightly have discussed, and I think this is a part of the story, is pandemic policies and lockdowns. And I was saying, you know, people were then alone and we know the way

that people's mental health suffered. But we also have to acknowledge if we put this last graphic up on the screen of how we compare to other countries, this is the U.S. at the bottom dramatically. I mean, not even close, higher number of deaths from overdoses from any country in the EU. They also threw in here Turkey and Norway. I mean, this is a horrific picture. And the comment here is not the sign of a healthy society at all. Well, all of these countries that we're looking at, I mean, many of them had stricter lockdown procedures in place than the United States. So to just say, oh, well, what's going on here is just a year of lockdowns. I think there's a lot more going on.

It's a lot more complicated picture because then how do you explain these countries that had much more stringent lockdowns than we did not having this same horrific toll in terms of overdose deaths? Yeah, there's a couple of things. Number one, obviously, is the traffickers. But number two is actually we have a different type of trafficker than what Europe has to deal with. Not all those countries have legalized drugs, or even actually many of them even have as strict drug laws as we have. And we have Mexico, and we have China as well, in terms of supplying industrial fentanyl to Mexico, which brings up here through our porous border. It's much easier in order to get that type of quantity. But the second thing is actually the prescription. And that's where you point to, you see the drop in subscription, but it went from 250 million to 140 million.

So we still have a lot of opioid subscriptions here in the country. That's the other part of the story, which I think is really just tragic. But look, I mean, I think the real thing is that in America, we do everything a little bit bigger, a little bit worse. And we have a little bit more of a consumptive society. We also have much more disconnection from our healthcare system. That's a huge part of the story too, which is that, you know, I've been doing some reading, Michael Schellenberger, who wrote this very interesting new book on San Francisco. He's very pro actually legalizing drugs. So this is why I think it's interesting from his perspective as he points to in Portugal and in many of these other places, the amount of connection that the state has with you

whenever you're going through this stuff is totally out of this world. So Portugal, for example, if you are addicted to heroin in Portugal and you're sitting on a park bench and you shoot heroin in broad daylight, you're getting arrested, even though it's illegal. But when you go to court, you're not going to go thrown to jail. They're like, you're going to mandatory, it's kind of a paternalistic treatment where they're like, you're going to treatment like now. And I mean, you can go to jail if you want, but most people opt for treatment. And this is what I really get scared of. And this is actually inside of the Washington Post story is the American sufferings of substance from disorder from drugs. 18.4 million with substance use, but by age, 3.3 million are

between the ages of 21 and 25. So this is actually a crisis which is skewed down on the age scale, which means, and we've seen this, when you have aging addicts and you have a system like this, it's just going to continue to get worse. You actually see an age distribution where it's higher amongst people who are younger and then drops off as you go to the older people. I'm not saying that older people aren't addicted to the drugs in millions. I'm saying the highest percentage-wise of the age group is actually amongst people between 21 and 25. So in terms of if we have to revamp, the treatment option is actually going to be one of the number one things that we have to do. I've been looking a lot into it around how exactly

Portugal, the Netherlands, and many of these other places, which do even have legalized drug systems, have much more paternalistic policies whenever it comes to, hey, like if you're addicted to drugs, like we're going to take you off the street, you're going to go to treatment. You have the option to go to prison if you want, but you know but most people don't want to. And there's like several interventions that happen all along the way. It's insane. You and I obviously have a disagreement about what we should do in terms of legalizing drugs, but I think we could both agree. It's insane that if you have a doctor who sees this person's having trouble, they have an addiction now on this Oxy prescription I'm giving them. And your solution is just, I'm going to cut them off. I mean, that's insane.

Yeah, it's nuts. Yeah, it's nuts. Right, without referring to, and then, you know, I don't want to put this like it's not just the doctor's fault here. They, obviously, the entire healthcare system is totally screwed. But let's say that they recommend a person to treatment. Well, is it going to get paid for by their insurance? Probably not. Probably not. No, it's not. Do we have enough treatment or rehab beds even in the country for people?

No, we don't. I mean, if you – I used to know the stats in West Virginia, which, again, hardest hit place in the entire country. The number of beds is pathetically small. So even if you refer someone to treat, like the resources just literally are not there, which is abhorrent. And then, you know, I think the other thing that we've talked about a lot with overdose deaths is there's a direct connection between all of these deaths of despair that we see. I mean, people are dying of cirrhosis of the liver, people who are dying of suicide, the amount of people on various prescription drugs to deal with

dramatic mental health issues, anxiety, depression. All of these things are a horrific epidemic in this country that has led to people dying younger. And for a developed country to be headed in the wrong direction in terms of mortality, the most basic failure that you could possibly have in a society. And other countries aren't, it's not like this is a developed world problem. No, other countries aren't facing us this. It's us alone. So you have to look at the roots of that. I think a lot of that is a sort of disconnection, a sort of loss of any greater purpose, a sense of meaning. And, you know, you never want to oversimplify things because every story is different of how people end up in a tragic situation. But ultimately, there's something going on society-wide that is

a deep sickness and a deep rot that is leaving people totally despondent and utterly rudderless. I mean, you think about the number of jobs that have been lost to automation shipped overseas, the fact that we've told men that your only worth is basically what your market worth is, and then we strip away your ability to be able to earn and provide for yourself or to be able to have a family, yeah, that's going to leave a lot of people really devastated. So it's an incredibly grim milestone. There aren't easy solutions, although, you know, there is a lot to learn from what other countries around the world are doing, both with regards to drugs, but also with regards

to that just human connection and basic supports and connectivity with the healthcare system and all of those sorts of things. Yeah, I completely agree. And that's the other problem, that we don't take rehab very seriously enough. You know, the recidivism rate on heroin is something like 80% or something like that. And when you add fentanyl into that, it's even higher. And part of the reason why is a lot of our inpatient facilities are only 90 days. 90 days is not long enough in order to rewire your brain neurons. And we don't fund it. A lot of these people, you can talk to parents who've put their, I personally know some people who've had to, you know,

go through this stuff and 90 days is just not long enough. And part of the reason why so many people OD right after they get out is because it's just they immediately go and then they shoot up

on what they used to get high on before they went into rehab and that's immediately going to make you OD. And many times, you know, if they're alone or something, it could be too late. If you're just going back into the exact same environment that you left,

nothing's going to be different. Nothing's going to be different. There's so much that needs to be changed. We could do many, many hours on this, but it's such a terrible situation. That was one of the things I most appreciated about the Andrew Yang campaign is the most basic metric of how are you doing. People live in it and how are they dying? Are they dying sooner?

What's going on? And you see that all consistently across the board, all across the middle parts of this country, which were completely hollowed out, like you said, economics. And I was reading an essay this weekend that just came out, Yuval Levin. This is a very, very thought-provoking essay.

Maybe we'll put it in the description. And what they talk about is that the problems of the 1800s and earlier, like the social problems, were problems of people acting out in excess. And then the social problems of today are more like listness. And to the extent that they have excess, it's like excess drugs while alone. Excess drugs while participating or taking something which is sedative, which makes you not social, which makes you even ODing. And just the picture that we're pointing here, somebody alone by themselves. Whereas in the past, it would be like drinking too much and going out and doing something to another person or like social pathologies of too much action. The ones today are the opposite. And it just shows you what the problems of the 21st century with the internet, sitting

on the couch, obesity, you know, all these types of things. They're all downstream of a new consumerism and more, which we're still wrapping our heads around. I think that's what this is. That's why when I say like America, like we do it, you know, better than everybody else. Yeah, well. In some ways, like we invented it. And the last point is a media point, which is that, you know, last time I talked to Bernie, he was pointing out, which I didn't even know because it got zero media coverage.

They did an entire hearing on decline in mortality rates. Why? Where? New numbers. Which demographics has it hit? Which places in the country? What's going on here? Really important. knew which demographics is it hit which places in the country what's going on here really important

I mean the most important thing you could possibly talk about zero media interest zero media interest they would rather talk about

you know whatever the stupid culture war outrage Steve Bannon or like Big Bird or whatever insanity

is going on that day they would rather talk about than you know the things that are most talk about than, you know, the things that are most impactful to your lives. You know, Sesame Street should actually, unironically, do an opioid thing. That actually would probably be better off for the country. Full support of that.

There you go. Okay, let's move on to this inflation. You actually found this. I love this story. We've been talking a lot about inflation, about the debates around inflation. We obviously see higher gas price, higher food price, higher prices, especially in the crazy sectors like used cars, rental cars, hotels. The debate is obviously over government spending or about supply. Obviously, you guys know we fall much more on the supply chain and how exactly

the screw-ups in that system fall. But another part of that story, which nobody has been discussing, is the individual actors who are the corporations themselves. So let's put this up there on the screen from the Wall Street Journal, who actually did a great investigation. What does inflation mean for American businesses? For some, bigger profits. So get this. Nearly two out of three of the biggest US publicly traded companies reported fatter profit margins than they did before the pandemic in a very unprecedented environment. Now that doesn't make a lot of sense because what you hear from the corporations whenever they raise prices is this, hey, our supply went up, so we have to charge you more. Basic supply and demand. We're

not making any more money. We're just passing on the cost to the consumer. Well, what we're seeing here is that when the two-thirds of the companies are raising the prices, sometimes they say, well, everybody's used to raising higher prices right now. This is the best excuse that we've ever had. And so then maybe they just jack it up a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. And then next thing you know, you got two thirds of the entire Fortune 500 with higher profit margins than ever before. Now, it is true that profit margins sometimes rise with inflation. But what they are seeing is that the companies are skewing much more to the side of as high a price as they can possibly justify because they know that the consumer paradoxically is now used to it. They will not, you know, consumers will usually are pretty price conscious. They'll go and see their grocery stores. Maybe

they'll compare across the board. But in this type of a crazy environment, they go, ah, man, it's just inflation, right? Ah, I used to pay this. Now I pay this. And you're not asking as many questions about the proportion in that rise of increase. And look, there's no other word for this. They're bilking us. That's what this is, using it as an excuse in order to charge you and us more money. That's the bottom line. And how do we know? Because their CEOs are bragging about it on investor calls. That's how we know, okay? They go through in the Wall Street Journal,

numerous CEOs who are telling their investors, oh, we've been able to price up, so that's why we're getting these fat profit margins. We can throw the Business Insider tear sheet up on the screen as well, which talks about Walmart, which announced third quarter financial results this morning, able to post better than expected earnings, in part by offering fewer discounts to shoppers. But a lot of large firms have spent their recent quarterly calls bragging to investors about their ability to hike prices with relative impunity. Here's the CEO of Colgate-Palmolive saying, what we are very good at is pricing, whether it's foreign exchange

inflation or raw and packing material inflation. We have found ways over time to recover that in our margin line. You have the Kroger CFO saying, we've been very comfortable with our ability to pass on the increases that we've seen at this point, and we would expect that to continue to be the case. So these companies are literally bragging about the fact that they're able to use inflation as a way to start either giving fewer discounts or upping their price overall to not just overcome that inflation, but post the largest earnings and the fattest profits that they have ever had in many cases. And the other piece of this story is monopolies. Because if you had actual competitive markets, then what would happen? You might try to hike your prices super high. Your competitor would say, you know what? I can undercut them and still make a profit margin. So I'm going to do that and win consumers over that way. But when you have a monopoly, well, that function doesn't happen.

Correct. So these companies just get to continue to increase prices, knowing you have few other options, and knowing that there are very few other competitors out there who can undercut them and pose a real threat ultimately to their bottom line that would force the prices to come back down. And by the way, when these companies are playing this game

of increasing prices even more than they have to, that fuels inflation. That is part of the inflation story. So they benefit from inflation because they get this excuse. They increase their prices beyond inflation, and that further fuels inflation, giving them an even more excuse to increase prices. Yes, this is even more of a feedback loop here. And this is the problem, which is that when

you're in such a crazy environment, the pricing, like I said, it's not logical. They can try and push it as far as they can, and you only need a couple of hundred of you to come together and do the exact same thing, now prices are even higher, then those prices get reported as inflation, and now you get to push it up even higher and higher and higher, and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is part of the problem, too, whenever we don't see a lot of regulation, or at least threat of regulation, on these companies. The Biden administration over the weekend actually sent a letter to the FTC chairwoman Lina Khan. And what they're pointing to is that oil and gas companies, there's an audit actually

right now of how much these oil and gas companies, since there's not very many of them, like three major ones here in the United States, well, are they actually pricing relative to demand? Are they actually making more money than ever? And it seems that the answer to those questions could be yes. And maybe the Federal Trade Commission should look into how much exactly of the supply shock and more is getting passed on to the consumer. Is it exactly one to one? Or is it maybe 1.5 to one, 1.7? And is that 0.7 just going straight back into Exxon stock? That's the problem right now, which is that whenever we don't have a real insight into the real-time conditions in this

crazy type of environment, they can charge you whatever they want. And they are making money hand over fist while doing so. I was seeing in that BI article that over 50% of them actually making more money right now than in 2019. So what does that tell you? Are you doing better off than you were in 2019? No, you're not. But they are at the expense of you. That's the problem. And then they'll go out there and have the nerve to whine about like, oh, workers won't work for us for these low wages anymore. It's like, y'all have plenty of money. You could be giving people a raise. Make sure that you have plenty of workers to do whatever you need them to do. You could give them health healthcare. You know, you could make it actually worth their while to work at whatever your company is

because you all are making higher profits than, I mean, a lot of these companies made record-breaking profits during the pandemic. And now they're making even higher profits because they're- Because of inflation. Because they're gaming inflation and, you know, using it as an excuse

to raise their prices even higher than they need to. And again, I just have to emphasize, and I know if Stoller was here, he would back us up. Monopoly is a big, big part of this story. That's how they're able to get away with it because they know you have no other choice. No, I think that's the biggest problem in that don't fall for convenient explanations. And, you know, that's what we try to do here. It's not all supply. Some of it is demand. But part of the thing is that why is that demand there? If you ask the

people who think it's all government spending, well, it's kind of interesting that inflation is at its worst now, like nine months after, you know, $2,000 checks hit people's bank accounts and not, you know, immediately in that time or at the height of unemployment, which was what, like October of 2020. We didn't see massive demand. Massive demand hits right now because stuff is opening and people are moving on from COVID and using the savings that they would have spent at another time to now. It actually makes complete and total sense. And people are falling for very convenient explanations in order to demonize one policy or the other. The truth is, is in all things economy, it's complicated. Well, but here's the other thing is, okay, so if you stipulate that it's both that people were able to save a little and they've got a little more money and it's these supply chain issues, like which thing would you rather deal with?

You want to deal with like, oh, people have too much money. I want to cut their wages. I want to take the money away from them. Like, no, of course not. And also, by the way, if you wanted to take money out of, you know, if you want to take money on a circular, the way to do that, there's a much larger pool of money from the wealthiest among us. But for some reason, their money is not a target here. I mean, they're the ones who got wildly rich during the pandemic. But that's not a problem for inflation. It's only the people who got their $1,200 stimmy checks. They're the real issue here. So again, even if you think that the government

spending that went out to people is part of the issue here, just ask yourself, which side would you rather deal with? Personally, I would rather get the supply chain issues worked out, fix the fact that we have such a fragile economy in the first place, than be like, oh, people's wages got too high. They got a little bit too much in their bank account. We can't possibly have that. So that's the other piece of this here. Really incredible. Okay, all right, let's move on to this remarkable segment on The View.

So I don't consider myself a View connoisseur, so I don't know the revolving cast of characters. Jedediah Bila, is that how I say her name? I think it's Bila. Bila, okay. Jedediah Bila, former conservative co-host on The View, appeared recently back on her old show in order to promote her book. Now, during the course of that, she was not allowed on The View set because she's not vaccinated. According to her, she has a medical exemption. There's no verification or whatever on that.

But there was an exchange between her and her former co-workers on the view around vaccination and around COVID. really disturbed me was that even the people who are trying to make the pro-vax case aka sunny and whoopie and joy do not know any idea of what they're talking about and in many ways are spreading misinformation whenever talking with jedediah in this debate we have the full segment here there's no cut let's take a listen okay jed so let's discuss let's address the elephant in the room because you were supposed to because you were supposed to join us in the studios weeks ago, but you couldn't because ABC has a very strict policy. You can't get into this building unless you're fully vaccinated. Everybody in this room knows that and is vaccinated.

But you made a conscious decision not to get the vaccine. Now, the CDC says a person is 10 times less likely to be hospitalized from COVID and 11 times less likely to die if they've gotten the vaccine. Okay, so why didn't you get it? Yeah, so my story is a little bit unique. I'll share that first before I get into those CDC numbers. But remember, we have a certain amount of time, Jed, if you want to get everything in. So I want to let people know why I'm not there. I have a medical exemption to the vaccine that's been written by my infectious disease vaccinated specialist in New York City that's been co-signed by three other doctors. I'm not a candidate for this vaccine.

I also have sky high, multi-tiered, multifaceted natural immunity, very, very high. That has also been proven. It has been shown and it is substantiated by letters from these doctors. So for me personally, this vaccine poses a greater risk than a benefit. I'm also not a risk to any of you. I know there's been a lot of debate about that, but I have these doctors who've gone on record with that as well. So my point about all of this is that I am not anti-vax. What I really want is for people to make these decisions for themselves.

I want every one of you to sit with your family members, to sit with your trusted doctors, and to say, what is the best decision for me? However, I do oppose mandates. I oppose them on the fact that, let's look at the science.

This is a vaccine that was created to prevent severity of disease and to prevent hospitalizations. Now, we can have a whole debate on that in itself, but the vaccine does not prevent you from getting COVID and does not prevent you from transmitting COVID. My goodness. Come on, you've been at Fox TV too long. You don't have to enjoy, you don't have to listen to me on that. You don't have to listen to me, you can listen to the director of the CDC. You can look at the CDC's website.

That is why masks were reinstated for people who were vaccinated. Because they said, and they admitted, they came out and said, for this Delta variant, transmission is going to be a thing for vaccinated and unvaccinated people. I'm not opposed to the vaccine, but I am opposed to the mandate 100% on the grounds of science. 762,000 people have died from COVID, including Manny's in-laws. And I just, we've been friends a long time, but I just, Manny's parents, I just don't understand why you would choose to prioritize your personal freedom over health and safety of others.

And I just really don't think that we should allow this kind of misinformation on our website. Again, Sonny, I am prioritizing. We've had the United States Surgeon General debunk everything that you've just said. And I just don't think we should allow this kind of misinformation on our air. I'm really sorry, my friend.

First of all, I'm really sorry, my friend. First of all, I would say to you as a friend, what I just said to you is I am prioritizing my health and people talk about the common good. Over the health and safety

of other people. You're not going to have a common good if you're not prioritizing your own health. You have the health and safety of other people you're not prioritizing your own health you have a surgeon this should sound very familiar to you this should sound very familiar to you we got to go to break and so i have to say thanks to jen you can buy jen's bookley, starting today. And everyone in the audience, you're each going home with a copy of it. Pretty remarkable segment there, Crystal. There's a lot going on. There's a lot to unpack.

Yeah, no, I'm curious for your thoughts. Okay, so here's the thing. First of all, I would say overall, did anyone learn anything? Did anyone change their minds? Because, I mean, listen, you have to think about these conversations. I think we try to think about this on our show

and, you know, respect other people who approach things as like, what do we actually want to get out of this? Yeah, that's right. Sometimes there is a goal of, I just want to expose this person.

Right? That's a legitimate thing. But, you know, for me at this point in the conversation about vaccinations, it's much more useful to do like what Sanjay Gupta did

and go on with Rogan and have an exchange that doesn't just shut down into like, you're risking people's lives and how dare you? And this is misinformation. So that's number one. Did the VIEW audience get anything out of that exchange? No. Anybody who came and watched that,

their priors were confirmed, right? Whichever side of this debate that you're ultimately on. Now, I think that the View hosts did a very poor job ultimately because of how they treated Jedediah in that moment of effectively debunking what I think were some very selective things that she was ultimately saying. Because she wanted to say, look, it's true. You are vaccinated and you got sick with COVID. Yes. It's true.

Breakthrough infections are definitely a thing. She says Jedediah wants to point to that. But she doesn't want to tell you that severe cases, hospitalization and death, dramatically reduced by the vaccine. And, and, and this is the part that I think is really disingenuous from her talking points, you are also much less likely to get and spread the disease if you're vaccinated. It can still happen. Yes. But you are much less. We don't know what that figure is, but it is there. We are much less, you are much less likely to get and spread the disease if you have the vaccine. She just wants to say it's still possible, right? Yeah, it's still possible. But just wanting to sort of shut her up,

shame her, and shut down the segment, I think is what made it a very ineffective moment all the way around. Right. And that was what bothered me. I mean, if you look on balance, the people who were spreading more misinformation was the view there. I mean, look, like you said, Jedediah can be selective in what she's saying, but she's not saying anything which is incorrect, whereas what they're saying is straight up not true. I mean, they're saying like the Surgeon General has debunked that. No, they haven't. As actually she points to, the reason why masks came back, wrongly, in my opinion, was because there was a view that, oh, we're still going to spread COVID and that vaccine doesn't reduce it all the way to zero. I'm doing my entire monologue about this. And what Dr. Fauci says is the new

target. But the lack of honesty there from the people who are pro-vax is actually going to harden people who are going to look at that and say, no matter what you bring them, they're just going to sit there and tell you that you're a complete idiot. Shut up. We're not even going to air that other side. And I also thought this was the real point, too. How can you have a real conversation around vaccine? That was a what, three minute, 30 second clip? Forget about it. How can you do that? It's not possible. You cannot bring somebody on and, you know, for a sparring session and then cut them off most of the way through saying ridiculous things and emotional blackmail, like, oh, my in-laws, listen, God bless your in-laws. I'm really sorry. It's a terrible thing that people died from COVID.

But we're also not in summer 2020 right now. We live in a totally new era. That's, again, what I'm talking about in terms of my monologue. So whenever we're discussing vaccine, COVID policy, and more, we need to, number one, update our priors. Number two, talk to some people with some actual respect here. Presumably, Crystal, they were colleagues, so I would assume that they think that she's acting in better faith than, you know, maybe a random guest, but that's just not what you saw. I mean, I didn't really think anybody in that segment was acting in

good faith because I do think Jedediah was effectively propaganda. I mean, he's incredibly selective to the point of being propaganda. But here's what I would say. There is a view among a wide swath of liberals, and especially liberal elites, that effectively you can't acknowledge anything that might be inconvenient for your narrative or else you lose, right? So acknowledging that you can still get breakthrough infections with the vaccine, or acknowledging that, you know, there are treatments that are more effective now, or acknowledging that children are much less at risk than the elderly. Like talking about just the facts and the science of this thing, if it happens to be a fact that's inconvenient for what you want people to do, which is to get vaccinated, then rather than engaging with that, they just

want to shut it down, not acknowledge it. And to your point, I don't think that that's been helpful. I mean, I think that that ultimately has made people feel like you're being dishonest. All you want is this end result. You're willing to lie, ignore, and be selective in what you're doing in order to achieve that end result. And so you end up with exchanges like this, which again, ultimately, I just think are profoundly unhelpful. Move no one. Persuade no one. Change the conversation. If anything, it just muddies things and makes people even more confused than they were going in. And we've seen this from the beginning, you know, from the very top with Fauci trying to manipulate people on what he thinks they can hear at that moment with regard to herd immunity or with regard to masks.

It's more of an interest in controlling the information than actually being upfront, even if there are facts that might be mitigating that might be inconvenient ultimately for your argument. By the way, this is not just a coronavirus thing. I mean, we see this all the time in terms of Democrats and Republicans who they don't want to allow anything. They don't want to give any talking, quote unquote, talking points to the other side. And that just ends up making them into like propaganda filled liars ultimately, if you're never willing to acknowledge where the other side has even a tiny sliver of a point. Yep. That's the biggest problem we have.

Let's move on to this segment. Really found it stunning. I found out about it as quick as as good as possible, because I think that public attention on this could actually mean a life or death. So Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, I'm sorry, anybody who is Chinese that I'm saying that incorrectly. The timeline on this begins on November 3rd. So let's put this up there on the screen. She posted on Chinese version of social him that she did not want to. Now, this isn't just any high-ranking communist official. His 75-year-old Zhang Zhaoli, he was the former vice premier of China and by many accounts is well into the multi-billion dollar territory

of the oligarchs there within the CCP. One of the most powerful men in China. There is really just no, there's no disputing that. Not on the political bureau. Exactly. It was on the Politburo, the seven-member standing committee of the political bureau within the CCP, and household name in China.

Now, you put that all together, and again, we were pointing to her like, oh, is she really good? Yeah, she's 14th in the world in global standing and one of the top- Number one ranked in the world in doubles. Right. Number one ranked in the world in doubles. So after she posted that, overnight, she was disappeared from the Chinese social media. It was completely gone. We have a screenshot in that Daily Mail article that we put up, which had the allegation in a lengthy social media post on Weibo. Quickly deleted before her account Communist Party official, and then that her account was deleted and she hasn't been seen. Now, increasingly, there have been calls from Naomi Osaka and Novak Djokovic who have been posting about this saying, hey, where is Peng Shuai? What's happening?

Has she been arrested? Why has she not been seen in public? Yesterday, the story got even more bizarre. And let's put this on the screen. This is from CGTN official. For those of you who don't know what CGTN is, the international media arm of the CCP's television network. Here's what she says. Well, not she. This is what a statement purporting to her says. Hello, everyone. This is Peng Shuai. Regarding the recent news on the official website of the WTA, the content has no confirmed or verified by myself. It was released without my consent. The news in that release, including an allegation of sexual assault, is not true. I'm not missing, nor am I unsafe.

I've just been resting at home, and everything is fine. Thank you again for caring about me. If the WTA publishes any more news about me, please verify it with me and release it with my consent. As a professional tennis player, I thank you all for your companionship and consideration. I hope to promote Chinese tennis with you all if I have the chance in the future. Now, for those of you who are wondering, like, what exactly is going on, the WTA, what they're pointing to, is the Tennis Association said that the statement they're reacting to that only raises their concerns as to her safety and her whereabouts. So they have repeatedly tried to reach her now on numerous forms of communication to no avail. So what you're seeing there is that after she put out that statement, they're basically saying, no, no, no, no, the WTA did it. And don't believe anything that they say.

And maybe you'll see me in the future. I'm just quietly resting at home. By the way, I love China. No one believes that this message came from China. Nobody believes that. And I want to say WTA to their credit. I mean, they put on a really strong statement. They're sticking by her. And they said that the statement released today by Chinese state media only raises our concerns. I have a hard time believing Peng Shuai actually wrote the email we received or believes what is being attributed to her. She displayed incredible courage in describing an allegation of sexual assault against a former top official in the Chinese government. The WTA and the rest of the world needs independent and verifiable proof that she is safe. And as you said, they have repeatedly tried to reach her via numerous forms of communications to no avail.

Peng Shuai must be allowed to speak freely without coercion or intimidation from any source. Now, just so you understand how dire this is, it was November 2nd when she posted this. So it's been 16 days. To social media. So this has been weeks now that she has not been heard from. And she's, you know, a big tennis star on that national stage. In China, she is a household name.

I mean, she's a rock star because she's the best Chinese tennis player that has ever lived. She's the highest ranked in terms of doubles. And so she is extraordinarily famous and well-known in China. And no one has seen or heard from her since this happened. They locked her account. If you, reports are, that if you even post about her or about this official or even say things like tennis on, is it Weibo? Is that what it's called? On Weibo, it's like their version of Twitter. Then that will be censored and blocked. You can't post comments to her account, which is completely locked. You can search for and find her account, but you can't post your comment or anything on it. And of course,

that initial post alleging sexual harassment was taken down within 30 minutes. So this is just a terrible situation and, you know, terrifying. And I think also obviously reveals how threatened they are by any sort of challenge to their authority or any questions about their morals or ethics or any of that. And, you know, I don't know what to say other than this is just incredibly dire. As you said, some top stars, Djokovic and Naomi Osaka, have been speaking out, you know, asking people to pay attention to this, calling for her, you know, for her to be free or whatever's going on here. But this is very, very troubling developments here. And at this point, we have no idea what's going on.

But obviously that statement that was released that was allegedly from her, there is no way that that came from her. No one believes that came from her. Nobody believes that whatsoever. It also shows you how stupid and terrible they are, even pretending to put out propaganda. Yeah, very well said. Yeah, but we're only three months away from the Beijing Winter Olympics.

That's another thing which is on top of this. And I, if I had to guess, she thought that she might be able to get away with it because the entire world would be watching what was happening ahead of the Winter Olympics. And right now there's a big diplomatic showdown. The U.S. allegedly is not, or reportedly is not going to be sending any diplomats to the Beijing games, including the president or anyone else kind of as a diplomatic boycott of Beijing about what's happening there. But it's a big deal. It is a big deal. It's very rare, actually, you know, almost akin to a total boycott. They said they didn't want to do that because obviously it would

punish the athletes and that's ultimately not what you want to do. But the world of sport is watching exactly what's happening in Beijing very closely. And if I was Naomi Osaka or Djokovic, this is not a joke. There will be punished for what they did. The CCP does not forget if Djokovic or Naomi Osaka have deals with certain types of brands or posters or anything, they will be disappeared in China. I can guarantee you that ahead of what happens. And for any of our Olympians who speak out on this, maybe if you watch this show, watch out, okay? Watch out whenever you're headed there. They will spy on you.

They will maybe come into your room or intimidation tactics. They're absolutely not above that whatsoever. Well, what they're most likely to do is hit you in the pocketbook. Yes. I mean, that's what's going to happen. That's their go-to move. I mean, contrast the NBA's handling of situations with regard to China. In that respect, thank you, Women's Tennis Association.

With the WTA. Right. I mean, this is a potentially massive lucrative market for them. They're very well aware of this. Oh, they could lose big. Yes. I mean, this is a potentially massive lucrative market for them. They're very well aware of this. Oh, they could lose big, yes. I mean, they could lose. And they're, you know, totally unequivocal in their support and continuing to shine a light on this and seem to be totally unafraid of what it might mean from a, you know, money capitalistic market perspective. So I do want to give them a lot of credit here because we've seen it shouldn't take

that much courage to call for the release of someone we haven't seen in weeks and who may be in incredibly dire trouble. But what we've seen before is that it apparently does take that kind of courage when people's money is at stake. That's right. I hope we see her in the future sometime soon. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, I love y'all so much that this week I faced down something extraordinarily difficult and painful just so you would not have to do the same. That's right, everyone.

I watched the Mayor Pete documentary so that you do not have to. Now, the first thing you should know about the Mayor Pete movie is that it is not a good movie at all. Listen, say what you will about Game Change, the Halpern-Heilman blockbuster, about the rise of Obama, about Sarah Palin. That thing was a fascinating read and made for a great movie, or perhaps a more apt comparison here. The documentary Mitt, about Mitt a more apt comparison here, the documentary Mitt about Mitt Romney's presidential run was actually really interesting and quite revelatory in spite of the fact that the subject, much like Pete, was a kind of odd introvert not known for expressing

a lot of emotion. In Mayor Pete, the filmmaker takes an emotionally inaccessible character in Pete Buttigieg and leaves the viewer right where they started with him, wondering if a real-life human being could possibly go through their entire life so calculated and so utterly detached. Pete doesn't warm to the filmmaker or his campaign staff or even seemingly his own husband, Chastin, leading to brutally impersonal, supposedly personal moments like this one. Cheers. Can we eat the ice cream before the chicken gets cold?

We'll do whatever you want. Ain't that... Well... Take that. For sheer cold indifference, though, I actually prefer another restaurant moment we can take a look at here. So after a long campaign day, Pete walks up to a table where Chasten is sitting with his head down on the table, totally despondent. Pete sits down, and rather than offer Chasten a kind word or the comfort of some gesture, maybe physical touch, he instead just picks up his glass of water and cinnamon bun and gets to work eating with barely a look in his dejected

husband's direction. And I swear I am not cherry-picking here either. Pete's emotional distance from the action flummoxes his campaign staff as well. At one point, his comms director Liz Smith proclaims, he's coming across like the effing tin man. At another, she reminds him that when he's talking about overcoming adversity as a gay man, he's not supposed to be cataloging societal tendencies like, quote, a effing anthropologist, but that, quote, this is like a thing that you feel. Now, this is another theme throughout the movie, which leans a lot on Pete's identity as a gay man. You see in real time the way that Pete and his staff set about crafting a biographical identity that might hold appeal for voters and that he might be able to pull off as authentic. Let me just say, I think this personal branding

exercise type stuff is extremely common for most politicians. That doesn't make it any less gross, though. Early on in the film, Liz Smith suggests his campaign should be as much as possible about his personal bio. Quote, I really, really do think it's as much about his style and as about as much of who he is as a person as it is about, like, policy and all that stuff. And indeed, policy and all of that stuff doesn't figure into this film whatsoever. The stakes for voters on health care or college debt or really anything else, they're completely invisible in this film. Instead, Liz's analysis either proves prescient or she is able to manifest a purely biographical contest of identities through her

impressive sheer force of will. Nearly every media clip obsesses over whether the nation is ready for a gay man or what it would mean for Pete to be the first gay man. Pete's failures with the Black community is either because that community is just too homophobic to fairly judge Pete, or possibly the result of Pete's identity being essentially trumped by the oppression faced by the Black community. I guess it does make a kind of sense that if you argue that the main reason to vote for you is that people in your identity group have faced X levels of oppression, it does leave the door open for someone else to come in and say, well, my identity group faced X plus one levels of oppression. Of course, none of that explains why in the end, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden were the most appealing candidates to voters in general and minority voters in particular. You also get the sense that for all the talk in the film of

how important it is for Pete to be authentically Pete, this leaning into identity and biography, it actually isn't authentically Pete at all. I think he was probably much more comfortable at McKinsey pouring over spreadsheets of how to eke out an extra cent for the corporate bottom line, regardless of what human beings might suffer as a result, than he is trying to pretend that he has something emotionally compelling personally to offer to the nation. He lacked experience. His policy platform was anodyne at best and a laughable afterthought at worst, Medicare for those who want it comes to mind. So identity and biography,

that was basically all they really had to work with. But Pete's heart is only half in it the entire time. When Chastin wants to know why he's the only spouse not on stage with the candidate after Iowa, for example, he's met with uncomfortable silence. You're going to be the only campaign that didn't have a spouse on stage. after Iowa, for example, he's met with uncomfortable silence. Let me begin by stating that I imagine... Yeah, coming at the end, but everyone has had their spouse standing next to them. ...the results will be announced. I think something was back among the... Right, he was on stage the whole time. Yeah.

So was Joe. I have a good feeling we're going to be doing very, very well here in Hollywood. Also, when Chaston suggests that Pete add language into his speech about how gay kids can look at this campaign and know that the door is open for them too, he's once again met with uncomfortable silence. At one point, Pete actually directly says to Chaston that this stuff, meaning gay identity and homophobia, seems to bother you a lot more than it bothers me. Now, if you were a Bernie supporter, there was also plenty to enrage you in this film. You watch the moment when Pete decides to shamelessly declare victory in Iowa in spite of there being

basically no votes in to speak of. By the way, I had always suspected it was Liz Smith, who is an impressive operative with a killer instinct, who made that particular call. But even Liz was a little leery of Pete going out and claiming a win based on basically nothing. That call, it was all Pete. But by far the most disgusting part is when Pete makes his dropout decision, post-South Carolina. Here's how he explained it, quote, We have a chance to do some good now. If it's true that too many candidates in this race are cluttering it, there's two things you can do. One of them is win, and the other is to get out. Now think about that. His idea of, quote,

doing some good is to play his part to kneecap Bernie Sanders because, God forbid, the guy who wants everybody to get health care has a shot at winning. It's revealing, isn't it? The logic is never spelled out in the documentary. It's just assumed that everyone will understand it to be an inherent good to help the corrupt ghouls who run the Democratic Party remain at their posts. Now, Pete was smart enough to realize that if he wanted to keep his future safe in that party, he better fall in line sooner rather than later. Given that top Democratic donors are now holding secret meetings to plot how to push Pete ahead of Kamala in the line of

succession, it would seem that that decision is being heavily rewarded. Bottom line, I'd say this film feels like a failed hagiography. To revere someone, you first have to care about them. There just isn't enough here to really care whether Pete succeeds or fails or becomes Secretary of Transportation. Just another unsuccessful media attempt to convince the public to embrace a political candidate, not because of what they might do for you, but because of what you might do for them. And Sagar, after watching Pete, I had never watched that MIT documentary. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at?

Well, America is moving on from COVID. Even the hellish District of Columbia I find myself in is getting rid of its second indoor mask mandate next week. Our political discourse today has everything to do with problems caused by the COVID pandemic, but not COVID itself. Vaccine mandate debates are the last remnants, and the courts have made clear that at least that's going to take a little while before we know either way. Everyone, it seems, is over it, planning and wanting the future. Everyone, that is, except for Dr. Anthony Fauci, who in an extraordinary interview said the quiet part out loud. He revealed not only his internal thinking, but the type of neurotic and crazy mindset that dominates our White House today.

Fauci, in an interview at the 2021 State Summit, said that COVID cases may need to fall to below 10,000 a day nationally before we can resume normal life. But that was just the high estimate. The lower was, and what he seemed to prefer, was 3,300. Just so you wrap your heads around how completely nuts that is, we have not had below 10,000 since the beginning of COVID in March. To get the measure that Fauci is talking about, it would mean one in every 33,000 people were testing positive. And Fauci says we need to be below that number. As James Sirqueque at The New Yorker put it, even in places with extremely high vaccination rates,

that is not realistic because we will be talking here about 0.003% of the U.S. population. Fauci's comment is especially dumb because if the current testing regime remains in place, there is almost no chance that we are going to reach that figure. He is setting America up for failure and paradoxically actually fulfilling one of Trump's dumbest axioms during the pandemic that we should just test less in order to get our numbers down. He actually would be incentivizing people to do that in different states. But furthermore, why does the case count matter at all? No, it's November 2021. We have a widely available and free vaccine that prevents serious hospitalization and death.

You can go out and you can get it right now if you want. If you don't and you still contract COVID, I've got good news for you. Pfizer and Merck have now applied for FDA approval of their COVID pill, which is seriously efficacious at preventing serious illness and death in those that have contracted COVID. On top of that, we have monoclonal antibodies and a host of other therapeutics that doctors have now learned to use in the two years that COVID has been around. In other words, the case count doesn't matter at all. Would it matter if the case count for a disease is if we had a statistically significant cure for it for the entire US

population, which is also free? No, of course not. That's precisely the problem with the Fauci formulation. He's not dumb enough to say COVID zero is his policy because that would be ridiculed. But he essentially laid out a path for the pandemic to literally never end, when we have the tools right now to just move on if we wanted to. And make no mistake, this matters a lot. Joe Biden's White House are some of the most neurotic COVID obsessives I've ever seen. Even in our city, Washington, D.C., which has a very high vaccination rate and is basically required to have a vaccine to get into the White House itself, even under those conditions, in this testing regime around the

president of the United States, the White House announced yesterday it will still keep its mask mandate. Still keep it. That's crazy town. When our idiotic mayor who brought back masks says that we need to move on from COVID and considered it an endemic disease, and you're behind her, then it's a problem. It's an even bigger problem when you're the most powerful man in the entire world. What Biden and his people around him don't seem to understand is that for most people, the pandemic is over. The people who want to mask up forever, you people are welcome to. Be my guests. The rest of us have been done and have been for a long time. What they're really finding out is that the COVID excuse is just not going to cut it anymore. White House advisor Brian Deese, he was on CNN this weekend. When he was asked about inflation, he correctly

ascribed the problems to the COVID pandemic. But when he was asked about solutions, he had nothing. He kept repeating, if we end the pandemic, we end the supply chain crisis. That's actually the most stupid thing I've ever heard. The pandemic has nothing to do with truckers who are being mistreated right now at our ports, the policies that have caused a backlash of shipping containers, or, you know, construction of a 40-year just-in-time delivery supply chain. Sure, the pandemic gummed up the works, but we could go COVID zero tomorrow. Nothing would change in terms of disruptions in the supply chain for months. The same is said for the oil market, the same for food, and for every other disruption in American life.

They have clung to the pandemic as an excuse for so long. They've stopped thinking about how to move forward, and the American people have taken notice. Biden's strength for the longest time was that people had COVID as their top priority, and they really trusted him to deal with it. But now, for the first time, even Biden has dropped below 50% in his handling of the pandemic, and he remains in the mid-30s on the economy as a whole. It is time to move on. Honestly, the best thing he could do for the country and for himself would be to fire Fauci and declare victory and say, okay, let's go. It's time to get going. Bring America back. Doesn't, and he probably doesn't have the capacity for that. It's a tragedy, honestly, because all of us are going to suffer for at least three more years under this type of thinking. I mean, Crystal, 10,000 cases a day

nationally, that's nuts. You know, Gibraltar, this came out. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. We have a fantastic guest joining us now, Chris Arnott, a longtime friend. He's the author of Dignity. He's somebody who came to our attention back in 2016, really walking and spending time with people. Now he's launched actually his own substack, which we have a preview of. Let's put that up there on the screen, where he describes his walking journeys in different parts of America. And Chris, one of the things that

Crystal and I most appreciate about your work is that you just simply talk to people and you don't judge them. You talk to them as they are, and you just print exactly what they say. One of the latest ones that you wrote in your sub stack was about among the unvaccinated. Just tell us about what you found amongst working class people who are out there who don't feel like they want to get the vaccine. Yeah, well, thank you, both of you. Yeah, you know, I just spend time hanging out in places where, I mean, I guess you call normies. I call them the back row people without a lot of education like us. And I just found what really struck me was how much people want to tell me they're unvaccinated.

It's kind of like a process of, you know, like they tell me their name or where they're from. It's just like an introduction. It's like, I'm Crystal, you know, or I'm Sagar. And, oh, by the way, I'm unvaccinated, you know, and it's just, it's a very core to their identity. And, you know, and I don't, my method is just to hang out. I don't really, you know, I'm not a pro-B person. I don't, I just try to be a normal dude hanging out at a McDonald's or a bar or bus stops or, you know, cheap motels. And, you know, over the course of time, people just talk to me like normal people do.

And it was just really striking to me how central, first of all, how many people I met who are unvaccinated. And I'm talking about people, I'm only talking here about people over the age of 50 or 55 who, you know, aren't in particularly good shape, have had rough lives and are unvaccinated and, you know, aren't in particularly good shape, have had rough lives and are unvaccinated and, you know, are proudly unvaccinated. And, you know, I think there's a lot going on there when someone makes it that, you know, what I think is a reckless decision, I think most people would say

is probably a reckless decision. It makes it a core to their identity, makes it, you know, feel like something they're proud of. There's something I've written about indignity, also about addiction and other such things, what I call – when you feel stigmatized, when you feel the world is against you, you tend to make reckless decisions, partly to kind of – out of a way of kind of like owning the stigma. Like you're going to call me a deplorable, I'll be a deplorable. You're going to call me a deplorable, I'll be a deplorable. You're going to call me a dirty addict, I'll be a dirty addict.

You're going to call me someone who makes reckless decisions, a loser, then I'll do that, you know. But also it comes from a, you know, look, I'm very sympathetic in my book and I've been sympathetic a lot about the idea of owning the smug elites, you know. Like I get the fact that

if the elites tell you to do something, there's a tendency to say, well, everything else they've ever told me has been wrong, they don't like me, they think I'm icky, then I'll just do the opposite, and I think there's some of that going on here, this is just a really bad way of, of kind of trying to do that, you know, you know, it's, it's, it goes against a lot of, you know, you know, a lot of clear, you know, in this case, you know, this is the one time the kind of establishment has gotten it right. And so consequently, it's a really bad place to fight them on. And so, you know, it's frustrating, but also it's understandable, you know, where they've gotten here. You know, so much of the COVID policy has been, you know, one of the things I try to emphasize in my writings is how we elites talk about politics, how we talk about issues.

It's entirely 180 degrees different from how normal people do. I mean, it's a detachment that, you know, comes out of necessity. But COVID policy is one of those rare things that actually you can't hide from. You can't just move on with your life. It affects everybody, literally. So people have strong opinions on COVID policy, and the elites haven't done well by what I call the back row, by people, the working class around COVID policy. The bulk of the policy has fallen hardest on them. You know, we can all Zoom, we can all Skype, we can all kind of escape to our country homes. For working class, you know,

you're telling them, you got to work and, you know, but you can't have a barbecue with your friends. And that was the original iteration. And then just, you know, again, people have a kind of good common sense, you know, and so much of COVID policy was just so contrary to common sense. It's like we can't talk about the origins. I mean, what do you mean? It came from a city that has a COVID lab in it. Right. You know. One second, Chris. Yeah, one second.

I mean, that was one of the things that struck me in reading your latest post is a couple of things. So first of all, you don't just have working class people who are forming an identity around being unvaccinated and their sort of opposition to covid lockdown policies and other policies. You also have an identity that's more of an elite identity around those vaccinations and COVID policies that are mirror images of one another. And so one of my questions reading your post was, do you think it was inevitable that our orientation towards COVID policies and vaccinations would become incredibly tribal and incredibly politicized? Or do you think it stemmed from the way that public health officials and political elites talked about these different policies? Do you think it was inevitable? Or do you think that this could have unfolded a different way?

I think it could have unfolded a different way. But I think there's a certain amount of it that was inevitable. I mean, you know, I think the anvil that broke the camel's back, to use a turn of phrase, is, you know, we went from basically you can't – I remember they filled like skate park in with dirt, right? You know, like you can't – and then they pivoted when the riots came, when the protests came, you know, the protest, um, that, you know, you can actually now congregate because of protests. Now I'm not, I don't want to adjudicate whether that was the right thing for them to do, but, but it was 180 degree move that threw a lot of people off. Um, and it was really confusing. Like, you know, I can't have a barbecue, but you can, you can, you can protest. Um, you know, I think the whole, the whole policy has been very, and then, you know, after my piece, a lot of people pointed out, and I wish I had pointed out my piece, is like, yes, you're right. It's also – being vaccinated is also an identity for a lot of elites who's turned it into this kind of, you know, this big issue.

You know, one of the small things I do to gain trust with people is I don't wear a mask when I go into Walmart or McDonald's or bars. Because if I wear a mask, immediately they are not going to trust me. They're going to just assume that everything is wrong with me. And so that kind of tribalism down to the symbolic mask wearing is just so ingrained, and I think it is a product of – we're a highly politicized society. We join camps. But again, I think a lot of the policy fell really hard on the working class. from a reader who talks about how core community, you know, getting together at the bar, getting together at the gym, getting together at the basketball court, getting together at the,

you know, barbershop is to the working class. You know, one-on-one interactions, being social, is much more physically social, in a real physical way, is much more central to people without high school educations or without college educations. It's just, you know, kind of community, transcendent community and physical community is just very core to who they are. And to take that away has really created a real, you know, a real cynicism and kind of anger in a lot of the working classes being channeled through not getting the vaccine. Right. You know, Chris, it's interesting. If you read your work in 2016, Trump was not a surprise whatsoever. So you're out there once

again, walking the streets, writing about it. What are the political wins and what are the political outcomes that you foresee a year, maybe two years, three years from now that are being ignored by the mainstream here in Washington? I mean the Democrats are toast in 22. I mean a lot of that's the COVID policy. I mean Biden said he was going to return things to normal. He campaigned on return to normal, and it's not normal. You can go – even in red states that people say, well, they don't have lockdowns. They don't have masking policies. It's still not normal. Things just aren't operating right. Everything is off. And so I think to a large degree, Biden is suffering from that. And I think the Democrats are just become, I mean, it's very frustrating for me to talk about politics on shows like this. I mean, you guys get it, but so many people don't get it, you know, to be on the road, to be talking to people, to just hang out in Applebee's or, you know,

spend whatever, and then go on Twitter. It's just so frustrating because the political dialogue that we have amongst ourselves, us at least, is just so detached from reality. Just, I mean, it's two different languages. I can't, it's just, it's really hard to describe. You know, I mean, people, you know, I talk a lot about non-voters and it's very similar to the unvaccinated, the non-voting and the unvaccinated crowd are very similar group of people. There's this kind of this cynicism of, I call it kind of justified cynicism, not necessarily for the vaccine, but for the non-voting of just like,

this whole system is broken. It doesn't change. You guys don't care about me. Why am I going to participate? Why am I going to play your game? Like, you know, you just don't care about me. Like, and, you know, except for every four years you come in and you try to get me to vote for you. But in general, you know, you don't care about me. And so that kind of, you know, justified cynicism permeates how much how they view politics. And again, you know, how politics filters down to these communities is, you know, is what matters for voting. And so, you know, they turn on their TV and, you know, the COVID policy has been entirely wrong to them. It's just been completely confusion. And then, you know, they see the debates going on online

that are just about things that don't really touch them. And so there's a tendency just to throw whoever is in out. And should they want to vote? But I mean, the Democrats are on the wrong side so much right now. You know, one of the things that I've been saying so much is how, you know, my whole thesis has been about the education gap. And that's where politics are going. And, you know, the Democratic Party is going to become the party of highly educated whites and African-Americans. And the Republicans are going to be everybody else, you know, and you don't want to be the party of highly educated whites. You just don't, because that's just not demographically who represents the country. Yeah, I would also argue that you're going to end up with really crappy politics if you become the party. There's some bad politics going on in general among that group. But, Chris, I also wanted to get your reaction, too. We covered on the show today, the numbers just came out about the number of overdose deaths in the past year.

We saw almost a 30% spike year over year. Fentanyl deaths alone now account for more overdose deaths than all overdose deaths altogether in 2016. This is very geographically concentrated. It tends to predominantly be, you know, the worst problems are in industrial Midwest and certainly in Appalachia, places that have lost their community center in terms of jobs, places where people work with their body and put a heavy physical toll on their body. You know, there's been some debate about why why this problem, not just in the past year but over the past decade, has been such a dramatic issue in the types of places and with the type of people that you're visiting with. I mean it's core to the whole – everything I write about, which is the lack of community. It's like what we, the elite, the educated class, have done is we made everything about secular materialism. We've taken away anything that's transcendent.

We've taken away faith, place, and community. Anything, family, anything that kind of like, you know, that gives people a sense of meaning beyond a resume, we've kind of devalued. And so we have this big meaning gap in these communities where people, you know, are taking, you know, transcendent meaning, faith, family, place. Those things are just, those things aren't just, you know, window dressing. Those are core to who they are. That's the hat they hang their, that's the hook they hang their hat on. That's how they define themselves. And we've devalued those. And it's left a big hole. And moving jobs away has also left a big hole because it's left the ability to build a stable life with only a high school degree. And it's just, you know, it's just really

frustrating for me to go to hear the dialogue that takes place in elite spaces when these communities, you know, people are killing themselves. You know, addiction really is a form of suicide. And, you know, when you think about why does somebody kill themselves? I mean, that's a really, you know, for someone to kill themselves, to actively choose to kill themselves, it's just such a, such a, you know, it's the canary in the coal mine of a very broken society, and that people are doing it in spades. You know, I mean, and so one of the things that I try to try to communicate in my work is that, you know, drug traps, you know, I spend a lot of time in them, are community centers. You know, I mean, I don't think people want to know that, and I don't encourage people to find their community in a drug trap.

But it's a place where, you know, people who've been stigmatized as losers all their life or dummies can find other people like them who get them, you know, who don't judge them for being a failure. And, you know And it's unfortunate. So we've kind of taken away so many – we've become so transient and so material that we've taken away so many sources of community. All right. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. For those of you who are watching this after the 15-minute clip, if you want to become a premium subscriber, we give lengthy interviews just like that one, extended ones for our premium people all the time. We've got all sorts of other benefits.

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Have a fantastic weekend. We'll have that segment with the Daily Poster that we're doing weekly now as part of a partnership with them. Tomorrow, we'll have more great content for you over the weekend, and we will see you back here on Monday. We'll be money back. Hold up, they could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

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Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also theard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process.

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