Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/1/22: Biden Rail Strike, Interest Rates, Twitter/EU, Gay Marriage, Kanye, SBF Interview, Urban Doom Loop, Liver King & More!

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

Krystal and Saagar bring the news about Biden Rail strike, Fed Interest Rates, Twitter/EU, Gay Marriage, Trump/Kanye Dinner, SBF NYT Interview, Urban Doom Loop, Liver King and more!Breaking Points is doing live shows in NYC and Boston!CODE: BREAKINGPOINTS for both venues!NYC: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/03005D6A3318087FBOSTON: https://thewilbur.com/artist/breaking-points/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/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it means the absolute world to have your support. What are you waiting for? Become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. A lot of big stuff actually happening here domestically. So first of all, we have the very latest on that utter betrayal of President, big, you know, union guy Joe Biden, who is now a union buster, strike breaker, all of the rest. So some legislative action there. We will break that down for you. We also have new indications from the Fed on exactly what they are doing. Markets are happy, but those who earn wages may not be. We also have more moves with regards to Twitter. European regulators indicating they may crack down, may block the app if they don't change what they are doing and how they are approaching things under Elon Musk. We also have gay marriage now codified, passed through the Senate. We've got the details of which Republicans

voted for it and which ones did not. So that's also very interesting. And we have some new inside details about the now infamous meeting with Trump and Kanye West and Milo Yiannopoulos and Nick Fuentes and questions over whether this may have been all a setup, which is pretty interesting to get to. And then we had to add this into the show. This was crazy. Sam Bankman Freed sat for an hour-long interview with The New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin. He got asked about everything. How much money do you have left?

Hey, what happened? Were you lying? How much money did you steal? All of the rest. So we have that for you as well that we added into the show last minute. We also have Ross Barkin back to talk about moves that Mayor Eric Adams is making to have police involuntarily commit more mentally ill homeless people. Obviously, that is extraordinary controversial. So all of that is in the show. But before we get to that, live show. Live show. Put it up there on the screen. New

York and Boston. Next week, guys. This is coming down the wire. December 6th, December 7th. Go ahead and buy tickets, guys. It's going to be a hell of a lot of fun. We've got a fun show planned for all of you.

We've got the meet and greet with the VIPs for our Lifetime members who we will be reimbursing the tickets just as a reminder to all of them. And I just want to say

thank you again to everybody who's bought tickets so far. If you can, we would really like to have a sold out show and it'll be a hell of a lot of fun. So links down there in the description. With that, let's get to the real stuff. And by the way, guys, these are the last dates we have on the calendar for a while.

Yeah, that's right. So we've been excited. It's been fun doing these live shows. Super excited to come back to New York and to come to Boston for the first time. So if you're able to join us, we would absolutely love that. All right. Let's get to the rail strike that the Biden administration is attempting to avert. We've had legislative action now in the House, and there were a couple of things that happened here. So I've gone through the backstory here 15 different times, but essentially, railway labor relations are governed by a separate set of law that enables Congress to intervene and cram down whatever deal they want on labor and on the rail industry. So you had a tentative deal that was put forward by the Biden administration working with the railroad bosses and also with the union leaders. And you had a significant percentage of workers,

rank and file workers, who looked at that deal, saw that they were only getting one paid day of sick leave, which is insane, and said, no, this is not good enough. Well, the Biden administration, Joe Biden himself, came in and said, OK, well, we don't care. I'm going to ask Congress to go ahead and force this deal on you, even though many of you voted this down. Nancy Pelosi jumping right in and going along with it. But you had two things that were interesting that happened that made things a little bit more complicated. You had progressives led by Jamal Bowman saying this is unacceptable. We must also pass paid sick leave.

Bernie Sanders leading that side on the Senate. And you also and I think this mattered in terms of how this is all going down, you also had a few Republicans led by Marco Rubio also saying this is unfair to workers. So sort of putting some pressure on Democrats to cut a better deal for workers than what was in that original tentative agreement. So instead of doing what would have made all the sense in the world, which is to just add some paid sick days into the tentative agreement, they decided to do this complicated thing of having one vote on the tentative agreement as it stands and a separate vote on adding seven paid sick days into the deal. So that has now passed the House. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. The headline here is House votes

to avert rail strike, impose deal on unions. You have statements here from the screen, the headline here is House votes to avert rail strike, imposed deal on unions. You have statements here from the railroad, like the Corporate Association. They say, unless Congress wants to become the de facto endgame for future negotiations, any effort to put its thumb on the bargaining scale to artificially advantage either party or otherwise obstruct a swift resolution would be wholly irresponsible. So they're pissed off about the paid sick leave vote that occurred as well and also passed, although by a more narrow margin. On the other hand, you have the Labor Coalition. They are also upset. They say that they praised the vote to add sick time. They told lawmakers who voted against it that they had, quote, abandoned your working class constituents.

Just as a reminder here, as things stand right now, most rail workers do not get any, any paid sick time. And this whole thing, just to put it in context and step back for a second, this whole thing is because the railroad bosses do not want to cut even a percentage point into their extraordinary profit margins to make sure that their workers,

when they get sick, can take a little bit of time off. That's it. That's what the whole thing is about. And at this point, Biden is basically having his, you know, Patco moment. Air traffic controllers famously back Reagan busted that strike. He is having a very similar moment here and attempting to bust this potential railroad worker strike, taking away all of their leverage after they've been through all of the paces and siding at the end of the day. He wrings his hands and he's reluctant, but at the end of the day, he is sided with the railroad bosses here. In terms of who voted what way, let's go ahead and put this more perfect union tweet up on the screen. They say breaking House passes legislation guaranteeing seven days of paid sick leave as part of a mandated rail labor agreement. The vote was 221 to 207. All of the

Democrats backed the measure. OK, that's good. All Republicans opposed it except for three. The Senate is expected to vote on the rail labor contract tomorrow. We are actually not sure exactly when the Senate is expected to take up these two pieces. But Sagar, it seems pretty clear here that, you know, the bottom line is the administration, Biden administration, really didn't care about the paid sick leave. All they really care about is cramming down this core tentative agreement. And so by keeping these two votes divided makes it very possible, if not likely, that in the Senate you get the tentative agreement passed and the paid sick leave, if not likely, that in the Senate you get the tentative agreement passed and the paid sick leave, which is the part that's really important

to workers, goes down in flames. Yeah, ironically, and we'll get to this, it may be the Republicans who sink the deal. And I'll talk more about their political motivations later on. But I actually think it's very, again, important to understand something I laid out before. The seven railway companies had a combined net income of $27 billion. That is up from $15 billion a decade earlier. Over the past decade, six of the seven publicly traded railway stocks have paid out $146 billion in stock buybacks and dividends, $30 billion more in cash than they invested in their own businesses. On top of that, their stock is up by 300%

in the last decade. On top of that, they've actually shrunk their workforce, which is part of the reason why these guys are being worked so hard on the railroads. And they did not negotiate their deal in good faith with the government because, and I think it's becoming very clear, Crystal, the rail companies basically told Biden, they're like, this is as far as we're going to go. And Biden was like, okay, well, if the unions don't go for it, I'll just force Congress to ram it down their throats. And that appears to be exactly what's happening. I also am seeing a lot of media malpractice in this story. There is absolutely- From the beginning.

There's really no coverage about the demands. I've even spoken privately with some people and they're like, well, why are these guys going on strike in the first place? And I'll explain. I'll be like, they don't have any paid sick time. They work like 30 days on. If they get even a cold, like they can't take any time off and they don't get paid. And they're like, oh, that sounds kind of crazy. I was like, yeah, yeah, thank you. Right.

Right. And this is their basically only shot to improve that deal. I mean, I can tell you what's going to happen. Like this deal, if what we expect to happen ultimately happens and the tentative agreement is crammed down their throat, there is some talk online of a wildcat strike, of going ahead with the strike, even though, you know, it would be technically illegal. More likely what's going to happen is you just have a mass exodus of workers and the railroads. And this is where, you know, this is about so much more than just what these individual workers deserve, even though that is such an important part of it that

we never want to lose sight of, because it also is kind of a seminal moment in labor history. You have this burgeoning grassroots labor movement. These things are very dependent on momentum. They're very dependent on the mood and the tone that is struck from the very top. We saw what happened with Ronald Reagan back in the day when he broke that air traffic controller strike. That really put a chill through the labor movement for decades. And especially because transit workers are so visible

and so central to the economy, these things can really, really set the tone. So you got this dude who claims to be, oh, I'm going to be the most pro-union president in history. And listen, I have given him a lot of credit for some of the personnel he's put in place in particular that has, in fact, enabled this grassroots labor movement. Now, on the other hand, he, you know, the pro-acts, he floated it, he dropped it almost immediately, didn't really fight for it. He had workers to the White House as this sort of like virtue signal deal with Christian Smalls of Amazon Labor Union. But he never actually used the power of his office to do what he said he would do, which is to deny federal contracts to any union buster.

So he's fallen short every step of the way. Let's be really clear. But this is an extraordinary betrayal. And it's not just railroad workers who are taking notice. And that's why this is so extraordinarily significant. On that betrayal, just to underscore it here, Jonah Furman, who, of course, has been a phenomenal labor reporter, has been tracking this from the very beginning. If you don't follow, make sure that you do. He says, after the House votes to include seven paid sick days for rail workers, the White House comes out with a statement that doesn't even mention those paid sick days. So they were given another chance to support paid sick days for rail workers. And Biden clearly chooses not to.

Let me read a little bit of Biden's statement because this was kind of revealing. He said in part in this latest statement, without the certainty of a final vote to avoid a shutdown this week, railroads will begin to halt the movement of critical materials like chemicals to clean our drinking water as soon as this weekend. Let me say that again, without action this week, disruptions to our auto supply chains, our ability to move food to tables, and our ability to remove hazardous waste from gasoline refineries will begin. So there's two things to note there. Number one, he's not talking about the needs of the workers. He's talking about the potential economic threat.

So he's focused on like, oh, you can't have this disruption of a potential strike. So that is a very corporate-friendly narrative that he's putting up there. Number two, as Jonah says, doesn't even mention the paid sick leave that just passed through the House. He could be urging the Senate to pass that as well. And I said there were two things. There's actually a third thing, which is that he says without the certainty of the final vote, railroads will begin to halt the movement of critical materials. So that's actually the way he says that. It's not actually a strike action he's worried about. He's worried about a lockout, which is what we saw last time around when before the deadline actually came up, the railroad bosses decided to scale back their activity as a sort of an economic threat to

heighten their own leverage. So a lot that's very revealing. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think this is about political motivation more than anything, which is he doesn't believe that there is any real benefit to standing with the workforce more so than here. Look, let's also be honest. If this happens, gas price would probably go up by two or three dollars a gallon. Out West, an extraordinary amount of their gas comes by a railway on top of goods. There's a lot of other perishable goods and other things that also move by rail. And so they're like, well, the economic disruption that would cause political problems for us is just simply not worth it. But look, you have the authority to force a deal. You can force actually whatever deal you want. You could endorse that. And they're just choosing not to do it,

Crystal. I think that is, again, if the media had done a better job of explaining this to people, I don't think that they would really comprehend how little the demand on the railway workers actually are and the extent to which the rail companies are willing to effectively crash the economy if they want to just to keep on their grubby profits and continue stock buybacks. There's not even any provision in the deal, which Congress would happily do, be like, okay, we'll accept this deal, but then you can't buy it back. No more stock buybacks. They don't even put that in there. We even put that in the COVID bailout. Like, not even in this one. Stock buybacks used to be illegal,

and they should be illegal again because it really is just like financial fakery and rigging and more profits to the people who don't need it, to the very, very rich and executive class. And this also, you know, if this deal without the paid sick leave goes through, this is very likely to have deleterious impacts on the rail freight industry,

because already through the poor business decision making of the rail bosses, already they are stretched extraordinarily thin. And this was a trend that started before the COVID pandemic. Then the pandemic exacerbates everything. They've laid off so much of their workforce. And then when they say, hey, guys, come back, well, guess what? People have moved on and they aren't too excited to go back to an industry where they get zero paid sick leave. So you're likely to see a continued exodus. They're very likely to continue to struggle to fill those holes. And so ultimately, what have we experienced in terms of the inflation and the supply chain disruptions? Like when we down the road a year from now are saying, geez, why isn't this working well? Remember this moment right here where these bosses were so greedy that they

wouldn't even agree to give their workers a few days of paid sick leave. And, you know, the workers, many of whom voted for Joe Biden, some of whom didn't, but many of whom did feel extraordinarily betrayed. Credit to The New York Times for actually talking to a few workers about this. Let's go and put this up on the screen. They highlight one legislative representative for his local union, a guy named Gabe Christensen, a longtime freight railroad conductor. He worked hard to help elect Joe Biden for as president in 2020. He says, yeah, I have shirts from me campaigning, blue collar Biden shirts. I knocked on door for doors for him for weeks and weeks and weeks. But since Monday, when President Biden urged Congress to impose a labor

agreement that his union had voted down, Mr. Christensen has been besieged by text from Fury's co-workers whom he had encouraged to support the president. I am trying to calm them down, he said. You know, it's just heartbreaking to think of what sense of betrayal these workers are facing right now. And they also quote someone else who works for the railroads who says exactly what we were talking about. You're likely to see an exodus. He says it's going to be like having a strike without having a strike because you're going to have so many workers ultimately leave this industry. And, you know, rail freight is incredibly critical to everything we do in this country. So if you have a massive labor shortage there, it's going to be a big problem in Sagar. I think in a lot of ways with

Biden, the original sin was the presidential board that he put together. That was like the first step in this process. So he gets together this group, they negotiate amongst themselves, they come out with this potential deal that did not, that sided with the bosses like 100%, did not even expand a single day of paid sick leave. And so that was the starting point. I mean, these workers have been saying the whole time, this really isn't about wages. Of course, more wages are nice, but this is about standard quality of living. This is about standard of living concerns and specifically around paid sick leave. And so his original board doesn't even deal with that issue at all. And I really think from there, that's where things start going

sideways in terms of these workers' demands. No, I think you're right. And I think what's very important, again, to understand on this is that these guys did not negotiate in good faith. I just don't think any of us could expect that this outcome would have happened if the Railway Labor Act didn't exist. And that's the point, which is, actually, I'll get to this when I'm talking about the Republicans, but I think there's an important almost quasi-libertarian aspect to this. We're like, hold on a second. You have a democratic, non-governmental institution, the union, of the actual workers themselves who are like, this is not going to work for us. And then the government just gets to come in and say, no, actually, that's not it.

Since when do they get to set the basic conditions of your employment? In a free market capitalist system, at least the way we have it, we're supposed to set the floor and then everybody can go do whatever they want from there. Like this takes freedom really out of the equation in terms of the ability for you and collectively to determine the conditions of your own working. I think it's actually really crazy. the Railway Labor Act. And that's the, you know, the law that governs how all of this has ultimately unfolded and that gives Congress the authority to cram down whatever deal on workers that they ultimately want. Because that recognizes, yeah, rail is really critical to our economy. So that's why they put this in place ultimately to, you know, avoid the economic fallout. But if you're recognizing it's so critical to the economy, you can't also then just leave it up to the whims of whatever is going to make the most money for

this handful of railroad bosses. So I think that is a really important piece of this. Let's get to what's going to happen next in the Senate, which is it's pretty up in the air as to how this is all ultimately going to go down. Bernie Sanders has been leading the charge to add paid sick days to this in the Senate. Let's take a listen to what he had to say to Chris Hayes. Put up or shut up. If you can't vote for this to give workers today who really have hard jobs, dangerous jobs, if you can't give them, you can't guarantee them paid sick leave, don't tell anybody that you stand with working families. So again, I think it really sucks that they separated these two pieces out, that you have separate votes on the tentative agreement and then on the paid sick leave. It should have been put into one and, you know, have that put up or shut up moment. But, you know, as it stands,

those two votes are separate. So it's pretty clear the tentative agreement that piece will go through in the House. Of course, you had, you know, all the almost all the Democrats and some Republicans also voting for that. The paid sick leave passed by a much more narrow margin. You part of this story, though, is you had progressives agitating from one side, and like I said, Jamal Bowman and Bernie Sanders really leading the charge there. But I think also what put Democrats, put some pressure on them to at least have this, what may end up being a show vote on paid sick leave, is that you did have a few Republican senators in particular who made some noise about this being unfair to workers. So you have basically

Marco Rubio, I think, was the first out to get to the left of Joe Biden on labor relations, which is just pathetic. He says here, the railways and workers should go back and negotiate a deal that the workers, not just the union bosses, will accept. But if Congress is forced to do it, I will not vote to impose a deal that does not have the support of rail workers. Okay, that's interesting. Then you have Politico reporter Burgess Everett here reporting on what minority whip John Thune said. This is just underscoring the uncertainty of how this will all go. He says, I don't know at this point where the votes are on either the base agreement or the paid leave piece. Josh Hawley eventually came out and also sort of

getting to the left of Joe Biden on this particular labor issue. Let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. He says he will vote in favor of the seven days of paid sick leave for rail workers, but does not support the underlying bill. And he put out his own tweet. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. He says, Mr. Pro worker Joe Biden wants to use the federal government to force railroad workers in Missouri, which, of course, state Josh Hawley represents and around the nation to accept contract terms they rejected. Not with my support. unions with the rail deal. As he makes the case, the GOP should ditch the, quote, old National Chamber of Commerce Republican mindset that if unions won it, we're against it. We are the party of working men and women. So you at least have three here who seem to indicate they'll vote for the paid sick leave. I mean, Ted Cruz, we'll see. He's a lot more ambiguous. That's the most surprising one to me. I agree. But I've been thinking about it. I really think

there is like almost a libertarian aspect to this where you're like, how can you have the government force you to accept a deal that you don't want to, which is not illegal. Like this is outside of minimum, you know, like somebody's not being paid wages. Like they're outright bigfooting you and being like, no, what you want is trumped by national interest. So it's like, okay, then pay us. If you want that, then the, okay, then the Fed should pony it up or they should come to some agreement there. I really believe that this is a potent and interesting one. I also do want to say it's a savvy move because you both get to be pro-labor and also if it doesn't pass and the economy is bad, it's going to be bad for Joe Biden. So it's one of those things. That's the other part of this. There's clearly like, there's a partisan motivation here.

There's no doubt about it. I mean, I'm of two minds about it. First of all, we do have to note, in the modern era, in my entire life, to have a national Republican figure saying anything that is remotely pro-labor, siding with labor in any way, is an extraordinary event. I mean, it just hasn't happened. And even previously when Marco Rubio put out that op-ed about the Amazon down in Bessemer, the Union Drive, and it was very like, I miss one limited instance.

Maybe I support the workers because of the woke HR department made it very specific to like the Amazon executives. But this is more broad. And look, they have, these three have taken a better position on this issue than Joe Biden, Mr. Pro-Worker, as Josh Hawley says. And I do think the fact that they came out so quickly is part of why we're even having a vote on paid sick leave. So that matters. Just keep in mind, though, that in the House, every Democrat voted for the paid sick leave, and three Republicans voted for it. So before we get ahead of ourselves in terms of like a new era in the Republican Party or whatever, but, you know, these little things do make a difference and help to shift what is

possible. If you had a bipartisan pro-labor coalition, my God, that would be an extraordinary thing in America. If I was a Republican, like I said, politically savvy, I would want the economy to be bad under Biden. I'm not saying this is moral, but I'm saying that this is what politically that you would want to do. And also you get to say like, well, I'm standing with the workforce. What are you doing? We have to put yourself on a bad side of politics. Unions are more popular than ever in the year 2022. So look, I mean, my thing is, is you take cynicism and you just take it where you can get it. And it's, I don't care. Why? It's a cynical move, but they ended up in the right place.

So whatever. I'm hoping that they do crush the deal. Because, I mean, from what I have heard, there have been ongoing discussions on the GOP caucus side. And part of the reason that John Thune is out there is because, look, if they had only three people who were dissenting, then they would come out and they would have had the vote last night. They held the floor open actually quite late. They were not able to get to cloture. Now there's a lot of bargaining and all that going on right now. So maybe there is a secret, not even a caucus, maybe there is a sizable contingent of the GOP, which is coming

out and be like, hmm, you know, politically, this is not so bad for us. Also, as far as I know, I have not seen McConnell make a major statement on this yet. I also did reach out to the Trump campaign to ask for a position on this. We haven't heard anything yet. So I'm also curious, like, if I were Trump, this is one of those things that I would come out to

and to try and make a deal. He's too busy, like, retweeting, like, QAnon nonsense and hanging out with Nick Fuentes. This would be a very, very savvy move on his part, too.

Yeah, a 2016 Trump, he would do it. He would do it. This dude today, he's lost, I don't know, He's lost the plot on basically everything. But yeah, I mean, it's an interesting moment. I guess the other thing that I just want to point out is in terms of the House, I think the right move for progressives who wanted to force the hand of the White House and really make a statement here and be as pro-labor as possible, would have been to vote down, to vote against the tentative agreement. Now, I think even without them, it probably still would have passed. But the correct move was to vote down that agreement and vote for the paid sick leave.

If you had progressives in the Senate who were staking out that position of like, we are not going to vote for the tentative agreement. We will vote for the paid sick leave. Possibly you could have enough votes against the tentative agreement to actually vote it down. But since the Democrats have almost all decided just to go along with the Biden administration on the tentative agreement and then, you know, go for this separate vote on the paid sick leave, which is probably doomed to fail, I think that's very unlikely to happen. So the way things stand this morning, it looks very much like these workers are going to end up getting the short end of the stick, getting screwed over once again, betrayed by the very man who claimed that he was going to be their champion. It's a sad state of affairs. It will have reverberating impacts across the labor movement. It will have

reverberating impacts across our supply chain and the rail industry for years to come. And it did not have to be this way, did not have to be this way whatsoever. Biden had many other choices. If he wanted to take the moderate position, he could have gone for the deal, but added the paid sick leave in. That would have been a totally, a much better state of affairs than what we're ultimately likely to end up with here. Very true. All right, more economic news for you, because we did get some comments from Jerome Powell about exactly what the Fed is likely to do the next time that they meet. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. Jerome Powell, Federal Reserve Chair, says that they could slow rate hikes at the next meeting.

So we're looking then at a 0.5 percent increase versus the 0.75 percent increase that we have been looking at in previous months. You know, this has been an extraordinary period of fiscal tightening to try to get inflation under control. And there are some disturbing comments here from Powell that I will get into for a moment. But basically what he says is the time for moderating the pace of rate increases may come as soon as the December meeting. That meeting happens December 13th and 14th, so it's just around the corner. Still, he said that ongoing increases will be appropriate and that what matters most is the

level rates ultimately rise to and how long they remain elevated rather than the rate of change. The stock market loved these comments, exultant, you might say, upon the news. Let's go and put this up on the screens from yesterday. The Dow jumped 700 points after Powell signals smaller rate hikes. So they are hoping that this will be the end of the super aggressive hikes, although, you know, 0.5 percent is still significant. And what really bothered me, though, Sagar, about his comments yesterday is he continues to talk about how we basically got to crush workers' wages and spike unemployment to get inflation under control. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. As part of his comments, Powell cites a top barrier to taming inflation, workers' wages. So he says, to be clear, strong wage growth is a good thing, but for wage growth

to be sustainable, that will require reducing demand for labor by slowing the economy. So that's Fed speak for saying that we haven't done enough to screw workers yet, and we are going to continue on that path until we see workers in more pain and suffering than they're already in. Yeah, it's a complicated one because on the one hand, we are looking at this, and we're very clearly seeing that a major recession is very much possible. And even major business leaders – I actually saw Elon Musk yesterday tweeting that. He's like, I don't understand what the Fed is doing. He's like, I think they're going to trigger a major recession. And a lot of big business leaders, a lot of business environmental decisions are all starting to make sense. You are watching

like Google cut jobs for the first time ever. Amazon even not even going as big as normal in the holiday season. Facebook, Meta, you know, so at the major tech company level, but also even in industry. So while wages not necessarily have gone down as much as Mr. Powell would like, like new hiring, new investment, and all of that is really bad. Finally, we cannot ignore the housing market. The housing market is such a catastrophe. I was reading Annie Lowry at The Atlantic wrote a piece yesterday, which was like eight reasons why buying a home right now is the worst time ever.

It is genuinely the worst time in almost 40 years to buy a new house. It's like 8% interest rate, but also nobody is willing to sell their house right now and then buy a new one. So housing inventory is at an all-time low. Then you also have the fact that the price has not dropped commiserate to the rise of interest rate.

Because everybody's staying in their homes. Everybody's like, oh, but it'll drop eventually. Will it? I'm not so sure. I don't actually know if that's true. I don't think so. Even if it does drop by, let's say, 10%, that's still not enough to make up for the increase in your overall mortgage payment, which has gone up by, let's say, 100%. So you're still getting 90% screwed on that transaction. There is so much that is happening at the housing level and turmoil for our society that I don't see. It's like a mess of glue. I don't know how we're going to get out of this in the next decade or so. I really, I really don't. And eventually like

something will give, but that will be a hell of a, I think it could be more chaotic than 2008. I keep saying housing is such a sleeper issue. It is. Because it is so central to, I mean, it's so central to our economy. That's why, I mean, the Fed is explicitly targeted. The housing market, they wanted the mortgage rates to go up. They wanted the housing market to ultimately cool. But it is a worst of all worlds because on the one hand, you know, if you are a homeowner, you're not in a good situation because you can't leave if you wanted to move. And meanwhile, if you want to buy in, obviously it's a complete disaster because prices haven't come down at all and mortgage rates going up means it is wildly unaffordable. And it's also not only so critical for the economy as a whole, obviously it is for that, but it's also so

critical for people's sense of self, for our conception as a nation. Home ownership is the predominant way that people build wealth in this country, and it has just been put out of reach practically for two generations now. So I really think this is going to be central to our politics for the foreseeable future. But yeah, I mean, you continue to have Powell making these noises about basically like workers have it too good. And I just want to say this is completely bunk. Workers' wages overall have not kept up with inflation. The idea that it's workers that are the problem here, that they're the ones that are, you know, they're getting higher pay increases and that's what's triggering inflation. That is just wildly, wildly incorrect. In fact, we have a tear sheet I'm going to show you later. Corporate profits are at an all-time

high. So even as, you know, you've had the markets down and you've had inflation and all of this, they continue to reap more and more profits. Why? Because they're taking advantage of their oftentimes monopolistic position. They're taking advantage of the expectations that consumers have, the prices are going to go up and up to gouge consumers and to continue to contribute to inflation. There are signs, though, that we may have seen the sort of peak in terms of inflation, not just here, but there are actually some encouraging signs around the world as well that I wanted to bring to you guys. And it's a big question mark where we ultimately go from here. Economists are saying it's very, very uncertain. And I think we should all be very

cautious in any kind of predictions. But Eurozone inflation actually eased in November. Let's put this up on the screen. They say further rate rises are still likely. The annual rate of inflation in the Eurozone fell in November for the first time since mid-2021 as energy prices dropped. So that means that while prices continue to rise rapidly, they're no longer rising as rapidly as they were. That's a long way from inflation being under control or price stabilizing. Doesn't guarantee the inflation rate won't pick up again, but at least we're seeing an easing of the pace of rising inflation. They also go on to talk about, and this is really interesting to me and gets to a point we've been making, which is that the toolkit of the Fed and other central banks is not really well suited to deal

with the economic problems that we have right now. The reason they say inflation rates around the Eurozone have been coming down has nothing to do with central bank activity. Instead, it's been heavily influenced by government measures to protect households from surging energy prices. So, for example, in November, the Netherlands saw the largest fall in their annual rate of inflation, which plummeted to 11.2% as government caps on energy prices came into effect. So it's not their central bank that is really causing the slowdown in inflation. It's government legislative policy, which is what we have always said here is the toolkit you really need to deploy if you want to ease price pressures and make things easier for consumers.

Yeah, exactly. This is why even discussing inflation is so important. What inflation, what's contributing to it, and all of that. Let's put this next one up there on the screen, which is part of the reason why it feels like things are getting better here is gas. So much of inflation and the way that we experience it and discuss it in America is gas prices. Right now, gas prices are continuing to fall. It's $3.47 a gallon on the national. And actually, California, for the very first time this morning in a long time, has dropped to $4.90 a gallon. I'm not going to cheer that. It's better than $6 a gallon than what it was earlier. The reason why that matters is

just a year ago, we are almost normalizing to pre-Russian invasion levels of Ukraine. A year ago, it was $3.38. Now, that was higher for the national average than when Biden took office. It was actually a pretty precipitous rise. But because of COVID and the boom and all of that, getting back to $3 gas would be a massive achievement for the Biden—well, I wouldn't say achievement because I don't think they have that much to do with it, but it would be a massively good thing politically for them. Because especially on the heels of the midterm elections to get back to three, can you imagine if he's heading into the presidential election at $3 gas or maybe even lower, maybe 290, something like that, you should consider with regional differences, like that could even mean almost $2 gas in the state of Texas, $3.50 or something in California.

If you do that, I mean, that's tremendously beneficial, especially because people in their minds would remember where it all came to. So look, it's one of those things where actually politically and for normal consumers, leaning on the central bank, not always the best choice. You really can use legislation to affect change and to stop the amount that people are paying, both at the pump and even at the supply chain level. There's a lot of stuff the Biden administration can and should have done. Right. And would have been—look, look at the midterms. Imagine if he had actually declared full-scale war on the supply chain crisis. Yeah.

Over a year and a half ago. Yeah. He would have—you could have kept the house. They could have kept the house. Easily. Yeah. Over a year and a half ago. Yeah. You could have kept the House. They could have kept the House. Easily. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. I mean, they obviously wildly outperformed.

They bucked history, all of that. But it's still pathetic that you're like, this was a win, and you're like, but you just lost the House. And you lost the national popular vote. And you lost the popular vote by two percentage points. So, you know, and it was really based on the fact that they nominated a bunch of really like out there people.

And how long are you going to be able to rely on that? Meanwhile, any Republican who even had a semblance of normality like the Brian Kemp's of the world romped to reelection. We'll put that aside for a minute. I mean, as one example of the type of action at the federal government level that matters in terms of inflation, the supply chain might go back to the rail strike. You're going to have the freight rail industry hobbled by a loss of workers if they ultimately force this deal through. So it would be much better if we had a functioning government that was actually tackling the supply chain issues that have caused this situation, that were actually going after the price gouging corporations that have caused this situation rather than just continuing to lead on the Fed. But, you know, economically, it's a very mixed picture right now. I think we are in a very,

very uncertain time. There was another, this is sort of a technical thing, but there was another technical indication that inflation may be slowing as well. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. They say the Fed is set to get some help in pausing as inflation gauge gap shrinks. So the difference between these two different price gauges, you can see there's a chart here up on the screen. You've got like a yellowish orange price gauge and you've got the like the black line price gauge and you see they mostly hang out together, but they've kind of split. And the idea is that the one that is continuing to be high is going to revert back down to closer to where the one that is lower, the black line, is ultimately going to be. It's complicated,

the reasons for this. They say that health care, housing weights, and impact will shift and reduce the gap. And the one that is set to sort of like to lessen and paint a better picture of where we are with regards to inflation is the preferred index of the Fed. So again, it's a little bit technical, but basically the idea is there are some signs on the horizon that another one of the inflation gauges could be cooling as well. And finally, just to underscore something I mentioned earlier, while this is all going on, and supposedly, you know, corporations are being squeezed and they're just having to pass the cost, additional costs on to consumers. Oh, they're so sorry about it. It's a bunch of nonsense. Their profits have never been higher. Put this up on the screen from

the Hill. Corporate profits hit record high of 2.08 trillion in the non-financial sector in the third quarter, even as 40 year high inflation continues to squeeze American consumers. And you've got an economist that they quote here, the chief economist of global wealth management at UBS, so no like anti-establishment figure here, saying the Fed should make clear that rising profit margins are spurring inflation. And, you know, I think that's part that a lot of mainstream economists have been trying to downplay. The Biden administration has occasionally made some nods towards it, but really done nothing about it. And it's disgraceful. It's another sign of how much monopolistic pricing power so many corporations have in our economy.

Absolutely. Yeah. The corporate profit angle on that, it's weird. This whole economy, I don't think there's another word other than weird, because it's like you have high inflation. Fake would be a good one. Corporate profits are high, but the stock market is down, but people are getting laid off, but also wages are decent. So you're like, well, what's going on here? But also you can't afford food. So is it good? Is it bad? It's one of those where part of the reason that the Fed is reaching for this is because in their toolkit, in their very, very narrow view of the economy, this is why we should have interest rates. But when you look at quality of life, living, and more, it's very clear that that's not the instrument that you should be reaching for. You should be reaching legislatively. I'm not even ruling out some interest rates,

but I'm saying the precipitous increase is clearly having a deleterious effect on the overall economy, something that major business leaders and entrepreneurs are also saying. So at that point, when even the high institutions of business are like, hey, hold on a second, what are you doing? It's like a horseshoe, really, for workers and for the people who actually do some of the employment. Very true. Very true. Twitter, speaking of Elon and what we discussed, this is probably one of the most significant actions that we've seen against Twitter yet and actually sets the tone for how a lot of this is going to go. Let's put this up there on the screen.

Something that we forget is that our American social media companies are not really American. They are global companies. A huge portion, in some cases, the majority of their user base is that our American social media companies are not really American. They are global companies. A huge portion, in some cases, the majority of their user base is not even American. So the European Union is actually now turning up the heat on Elon Musk over Twitter. The EU commissioner actually warned Elon in a meeting that he must adhere to the rules of content moderation as consistent with their standards as decided by the European Union, or they will risk a ban within the entire EU. So here's the details. There was a conference call between Elon Musk and the EU commissioner in charge of digital rules. So they have kind of a manifesto within the EU, which is, and I always say this here, much to the chagrin of the Europeans,

they don't have freedom of speech. They don't have constitutions. Everything there is based upon precedent that can be easily taken away. It is not enshrined in the bedrock of like the Bill of Rights like we have here. They are very malleable as to what they go for, even within their data privacy protections, which are some limited way I do kind of support. But on the other hand, their rules over content moderation, hate speech, and all that is not consistent with any understanding of free speech that we would recognize here in the United States. Now, that means that Twitter and their content moderation standards have to abide by global, not just domestic regulation, or you'd have to live in some very weird environment where there's like a US Twitter and a European Twitter, which kind of

does exist, I guess, on some social media platforms. The point is, though, is that this is probably the most serious threat that we have seen yet. And that actually has been a longstanding concern for free speech advocates over US tech companies is that the Europeans have very different standards and wants of what they have in their domestic society. So something that they- And they're allowed to. Look, you can do whatever you want. I don't really care. Like they actually like have legislation that regulates it in the way that they want it regulated.

They just don't like the way they regulate it. Yeah, but that's fine. We're not Europeans. Like they're, you know, they're allowed to have a different approach to it than what we have or what we think is ideal, etc. And so, Musk came in. He said he was going to abide by all relevant rules. And in particular, the problem that they're running into is your decisions over who is going to be banned are supposed to be transparent and consistent. And the like sort of chaotic, like, ah, I'm going to unban this one and I'm going to ban this one. And let's take a Twitter poll and see like what we're going to do with President Trump. That hardly matches up with the standards and regulations that, you know, Europe has set for themselves. So I don't blame them for looking at that and being like, this does not work with what we have passed and with the consistent standards we're trying to apply across social media spaces. Yeah, I will say, though, I mean, the idea that the previous

Twitter regime was consistently enforcing regulation is, let's just say, BS. Just say it kindly. And the fact is that the Euros actually liked that regime quite a bit. They had a little bit more of this, like, under wraps, though. I mean, that's honestly why I'm sort of enjoying the Elon regime is because it's really unmasked how capricious all this decision-making ultimately is. I agree with you. Actually, that's true. Yeah. And so, you know, I mean, Tim Cook's decision-making.

They were more polite about it. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's sort of like the difference, like, Trump, like, band-aid of the decorum off and you see like the brazen corruption whenever. And you're like, well, this was a lot of it going on before. It just had a layer of civility and like niceness and sort of bureaucratic protocol around it. He now is just out in the open that it's chaotic case by case based on the whims of one billionaire. So they no longer have plausible deniability, I guess is what I would ultimately say here. Right. And look, I still want them to release

those Twitter files. That also comes on the heels of some important comments yesterday from Janet Yellen. Let's put this up there on the screen. The Treasury Secretary actually said she, quote, misspoke when she said that there was no basis for the government to review the Elon Musk Twitter buy because people, I've spoken about this before, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is a part of the Treasury Department. CFIUS, for short, here in Washington speak, has the ability to scrutinize deals over a national security concern. Although, I am going to reiterate, if they go after Elon on a CFIUS complaint for Tesla's business dealings in China, of which I have laid out major concerns about on this show, but they still allow TikTok US to operate, I'm going to lose my

mind, Crystal, because that will be one of the most inconsistent and obvious political retributions in modern history for the use of CFIUS. If they ban both, I'm good with it. I'm totally cool with it. That said, I have not seen any current indication that TikTok US is being properly scrutinized by CFIUS. And if anything, the Biden administration is currently working on a potential deal with TikTok to actually circumvent CFIUS and reach some sort of fake operating agreement,

which allows Chinese control over the app. So look, anyway, I support the CFIUS process, but if it's used this way, that's bullshit. Isn't the thing they're concerned about with Twitter specifically, though, the Saudi ownership is not the part that they're... Once again... We don't really know, right? On the Saudi ownership on this, then CFIUS should ban Uber. Uber has a larger Saudi stake in it than Twitter. I can list off five public companies that all have massive Saudi

investment from the Saudi royal whatever group. So I actually support very, very stringent standards on foreign investment in the United States, but it's not been consistently applied. So then if it's politically used in this way, I would have a major, major problem with that, especially given how many examples we can list off. Actually, you know, Ken Klippenstein just did an entire thing about Arizona water rights being sold. Yeah, you guys should check that out. That's the type of thing that should be banned on CFIUS. That is a crazy story. Everyone go watch it. It's on our channel. We posted it yesterday. This dude who is a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia just got elected to like a critical board in Maricopa County that oversees water rights.

And already, yeah, the Saudi government is basically, like, buying up the water rights in the state of Arizona. It's a bad situation. So, anyway, yeah, definitely go check that out. But, yeah, I mean, I think asking for, like, across the board consistent treatment is—that's just, like, baseline what you should expect. Correct. Let's go to the next part. Elon actually said something very interesting, of which I will personally be paying a lot of attention to. He was replying to a tweet where he says, the obvious reality as longtime users know is that Twitter has failed in trust and safety for a very long time and has, quote,

interfered in elections. Twitter 2.0 will be far more effective, transparent, and even-handed. Now I have a lot of questions about what interfered in election means. There's a lot of different ways to read that. You could read it as colloquial, as banning the Hunter Biden laptop story has implications under elections most likely. That's what he means. However, what I'm really interested in is DHS and specifically state government cooperation with Twitter's teams that we may not even know of. Yeah. What is banned? What is not? What is considered misinformation?

After Ken's great scoop, which he broke and talked about here on our show the day of, the amount of cooperation happening between the national security agencies and the major social media companies on what's considered misinformation or not is far deeper than any of us even know. So while I am very sympathetic to the argument about banning the Hunter Biden laptop story is election interference, I actually do think it's true. How you regulate and all of that is a much bigger question. It could go a lot deeper than that in terms of what the Twitter files could show us. Look, it's probably hopium on my part,

but I would really like to see what exactly that entails. Yeah, same. It also comes on the heels of a new blog post published by Twitter, which I think is very interesting because this has to remain consistent, again, what we talked about with both European, US, and other country standards. Put it up there. It says, Twitter 2.0, our continued commitment to the public conversation. Twitter's mission is to promote and protect the public conversation, to be the town square of the internet. We have always understood to reach this goal, we must give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers. Today, we are a new company embarking on a new chapter. Our steadfast commitment to

that mission has not changed. We have always understood that our business and revenue are interconnected with our mission. Brand safety is only possible when human safety is the top priority. All of this remains true today. This is the interesting part. What has changed, however, is our approach to experimentation. As you have seen, Twitter is embracing public testing. We believe this will open a transparent approach to innovation that is healthy. We believe that as a service of this importance, we will benefit from feedback at scale. We do this work to improve Twitter for our customers, partners, and the people who use it across the world. So the reason why this is important is it's trying to balance, Crystal, the free speech element. But when you continue to read, it's actually more of a message to advertisers. It says, we want to assure you, none of our

policies have changed. Our troughed and safety team continues this diligent work to keep a platform safe from hateful conduct. When urgent events manifest on the platform, we ensure all 10 content moderators have the guidance they need to address violative content. As we improve, bad actors will also develop new methods. They're like, we're working on this. Finally, we will make mistakes. We will learn. So I think this is both trying to balance as an official statement of company policy, free speech, but also to the advertisers being like, no, we do have some of this under control. The fundamental tension. I read this also as a memo to European regulators because, like we were saying before, one of the things that the European regulators are apparently concerned about is the sort of haphazard approach to who's banned and who's unbanned.

And so what he's trying to say here is like, nothing's really changed. They do throw in this line. I thought this was the most significant line where they say, what has changed is our approach to experimentation. As you've seen, towards embracing public testing, we believe this open and transparent approach to innovation is healthy, blah, blah, blah. So they're trying to say like, oh, the Twitter polls and the various things that we try, this is just a little bit of experimentation. But overall, our policies are consistent with what you have allowed in the past. European regulators was how I read that anyway. Yeah, I think you're probably correct. There's also another interesting point that came out last night.

Let's put it up there on the screen. There was a meeting between Tim Cook and Elon yesterday. Elon actually tweeted out a video of getting a tour of the Apple campus. He says, quote, good conversation amongst other things. We resolved the misunderstanding about Twitter potentially being removed from the App Store. Tim was very clear. Apple never considered doing so. So a little personal diplomacy on the part of Tim Cook.

It's kind of interesting. I talked previously about that book, Super Pumped, that I read. Tim was actually very involved and does actually get involved at the app store level with major companies. He actually called Travis Kalanick in when he was the CEO of Uber to have him explain himself on how Uber could remain on the platform. But clearly, Tim Cook saw it as one of those things that has to be really nipped in the bud. I will say this about Tim Cook. As a diplomat, he is one of the best to ever have a job. Really? Oh, absolutely. There's a book I read, blanking on the name, by a guy from the New York Times called Apple After Steve Jobs. It's kind of a sad story because the point is that Apple really stopped innovating at the very highest level with

new products, but they quadrupled their stock price and revenue because they started looking at it as a platform, as a service on which you can continue to upsell customers and lock people into the ecosystem. Tim Cook is like that business manager, squeezing value out of the value that's been created, but also as a diplomat, his personal diplomacy with Xi Jinping, with Trump, he played Trump like a complete fiddle to make sure that Apple was not impacted by any Chinese tariffs. And also, you know, at a business level, anytime he sees a potential threat to the brand, like about being censorship and all that, he always skates in. Well, I'm disappointed by this outcome because personally, again, I found it useful. It is useful.

I found it useful on being at war with Apple because, remember, we had a great conversation about, like, this is a monopoly. That's why a monopoly is bad. And here's the exorbitant fees that they're charging and, like, the sort of capricious decision-making that's totally non-transparent. They put these companies through the paces, and nobody should have this much control. So I'm a little disappointed at this resolution. Personally, I liked the two of them being at war. The point is that he's a good diplomat because he doesn't want anybody to know what's going on. He doesn't want to have that conversation, does he?

He didn't like those news stories, so he's found a way to move beyond it. Correct. All right, let's move on now to the gay marriage vote, which we previewed and talked about a lot here on Breaking Points. It actually happened. So let's put this up there on the screen. On Tuesday night, 12 Senate Republicans joined the entire Democratic caucus to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, offering federal protections for same-sex and interracial marriages. So I actually wanted to make sure that we showed that, that the interracial part was included in the Respect for Marriage Act. The 12 Republicans

who joined, we have their names there up on the right, Roy Blunt, Richard Burr, Shelley Moore Capito, Susan Collins, Joni Ernst, Cynthia Loomis, Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman, Mitt Romney, Dan Sullivan, Tom Tillis, and Todd Young from Indiana. What I find so interesting is how this is a real amalgam of a lot of different people. So you have Indiana, actually a very conservative Catholic and Protestant population there. Joni Ernst, also from Iowa, big Catholic population in Iowa. But also Cynthia Loomis. I mean, she has absolutely nothing to gain from this vote. Mitt Romney representing the state of Utah. I mean, the Mormon church had,

we're on kind of interesting sides on this issue. Also Dan Sullivan from Alaska. I mean, Utah though is arguably the most conservative state in the entire country. Yeah, by some metrics. Yeah, it is the most conservative state in the entire country. And also Shelley Moore Capito and,

well, Richard Burr is retiring and so is Roy Blunt. So I think it might be a little bit different on their end. It's not a surprise to see Susan Collins and Murkowski, but I do think some of the names on here do kind of surprise me in terms of what they are going for and whatnot. So I think, look, in general, part of the reason why a lot of it matters is it shows you how much the country has changed. Let's put this on the screen about US approval even. I can't even believe that this graph actually exists. But it does show you just how much social change can happen in a relatively short period of time. This is US approval of marriage between black and whites from 1958 to 2021. So in 1958, the overall wording on the

question was 4% approval is now 94% today in 2021. Or sorry, in 2021, when the last time this was on gay marriage, actually, you're now at overall nearly 70% approval, even with a majority of Republicans, including actually even boomer Republicans who support gay marriage. So it's a landmark moment for the country, which we're all kind of moving past because it does feel so far gone. But it just got passed through the U.S. Senate with almost no consternation, like no, what, like demonstrations or anything. Everyone just kind of was, OK, great. And then they moved on. Which in and of itself, if you had told me that in 1995, you know, if I'd been an adult then, I would have been like, wow, that's crazy. I would not have expected that.

I mean, Ben Shapiro had some consternation. So there was some consternation out there. But, you know, looking at that graph of approval of marriage between black people and white people. When I was born, only 40% of Americans. That's pretty wild. That is crazy. That is crazy to me. And now, I mean, you know, 6% say no, some like racist friend freaks out there. But it is in a way a like disconcerting graph, but also hopeful in the pace of social change there. It is incredible to think back, President Obama not supporting gay marriage. I mean, actually Biden kind of forcing his hand there in the second, in the second term, that was a big deal. He won the sort of like,

you know, lifetime loyalty of a good chunk of the LGBTQ community, at least like the activist leaders for forcing Obama's hand on that. So it has been a remarkable pace of change. On the other hand, you know, you look at, okay, you got 12 Republicans, they're able to get it through. That is extraordinary. On the other hand, you're like, what are you other people doing? Because you're now out of step with your own base on this issue. And that's a testament to the power that the religious, organized religious right still has within the Republican Party. And so it'll be interesting to see if this ends up being a kind of a litmus test issue going forward in terms of primaries,

or do they just kind of like realize they're on losing ground here once again and drop it and move on? Yeah, I really don't know how it will go. I think, like I said, the only person who politically it would make sense for was Ted Cruz because he is the bastion of the evangelicals in the Republican primary or was at that time. What do you think about Rubio's positioning on this? I don't know. Yeah, that's an interesting one. I mean, he is devout Catholic. So, like, he's like, well, I mean, but his excuse was just like, oh, this is a waste of time.

This is stupid. But we talked about that here. Yeah. But yeah. But when you have to vote, like, how are you going to vote? That's why I actually found it interesting. What they're all saying, and again, I don't actually know if this is true or not. What they're saying is that there's not enough protections for like Catholic charities and it institutes like some sort of legal regime under which like Catholic charities and other

Christian organizations could be sued. Maybe that's possible. I did see Senator Romney and the other Republicans who did vote for it say that their concerns about, because there were some initial ones that weren't getting 60. They got modifications to the bill to reflect whatever their religious liberty concerns were. Right, exactly. So I don't know what their exact concern is or not. I think it's one of those where maybe they just voted how they believe and don't believe that they'll pay any costs because he also just won reelection and he's going to be in the Senate for the next six years and he won by 20 points. I think I read it more as apparently there was news he's like putting out a book and it looks like he may also

be thinking about being like number, you know, 24. Everybody give it up. Please. Do us a favor. So anyway, I read it more as he's concerned that it could be a vulnerability in a Republican primary, which it may well be. Very possible. It may well be. Very possible. Yes. All right. Final one. Let's go to Trump. This is a hilarious story. So this is an NBC News article, which forgive the source, but this journalist did a good job. Mark Caputo. He previously worked over at Politico. I followed him for a long time. He reconstructed the Trump, Kanye, Fuentes, Milo dinner by just talking, imagine this, to Nick Fuentes and to Milo and to Kanye about what happened. Put this up there on the screen.

Mark says it's the inside story of the Trump's explosive dinner with Ye and with Nick Fuentes. But one of the things that he points is that effectively, the entire dinner was choreographed and stage managed by Milo. And Milo has long felt that Trump threw him under the bus and for various reasons has beefs and grievances with Milo, he effectively tricked a 2016 former Trump operative to drive the three of them from the airport to Mar-a-Lago as some sort of quasi-advisor and orchestrated the dinner in broad public view between Nick Fuentes and with Kanye, knowing, Crystal, that it was going to leak, the dinner was going to leak, and did so specifically to actually wound the Trump campaign. So it does seem to be that there were several useful idiots throughout

this entire process, of which Milo himself appears to have known exactly what was going to happen, got Fuentes at the dinner, brought Fuentes with Kanye, then using some Trump operatives that he knew, getting them all into Mar-a-Lago, forcing the dinner in itself, and then getting Fuentes there, also having the dinner in public view, knowing that the dinner guests themselves were going to leak, all as part of a process to damage Trump, which just shows you that's how easy Trump is to fool, which is hilarious. I buy the conspiracy. I buy it too. I absolutely buy it.

Yeah, it seems like, I mean, not that I know Milo or have really followed him even that closely, but it seems like the sort of devious and underhanded plot that he might be able to pull off. It doesn't seem that hard to pull off. Right. I mean, and this is not to let Trump off the hook here because ultimately it relied on Trump taking a look at this group and being like, yes, I want to have dinner with you. And yes, I want to have dinner. Apparently, he intentionally sat them in like a very prominent place because he was very proud to be there with Kanye and thought that it'd be fun for the guests

of Mar-a-Lago to see Kanye there. And so, yeah, there's this kind of like, I mean, it's interesting to who knows how accurate this reporting ultimately is because it's based on the account of like, you know. Well, see, kind of the three people involved. I know, but they're very untrustworthy people. Right. So you can't really take their word for it. But anyway, there's this sort of fateful moment where they're standing there and the former Trump aide lady is like, Mr. President, I understand you were supposed to have dinner. Just you and Mr. West, you know, we're happy to go over to the bar and like hang out until you

guys are done. And he's like, well, I'll let Kanye decide what he wants to do. And Kanye's like, let's all eat. He's like, let's all eat together. Let's all eat. So they all sit down and ultimately eat. So it looks like he was, looks like he may have been set up here, but he also walked right into the trap.

They exploited exactly his like weaknesses for attention and flattery and carelessness and all that stuff. Yeah, I just thought it was funny because this shows the other angle of it. Outside of the outrage about the dinner and all that, just how easy it was to play. And also Milo's feliciousness in orchestrating this entire thing. I haven't seen anybody really talk about it. Apparently, he's been saying for a while that he wanted to get revenge on Trump. You know, we didn't cover it here, but I'm sure you guys saw like the whole Tim Pool has the three of them on, and then within like 10 minutes, Kanye gets up and storms down, the slightest bit of pushback

on his anti-Semitic nonsense. They, in the after discussion, were sort of floating this. And I didn't really know what they were referring to, but I think Tim said something about like Milo had said that he wanted to get revenge on Trump. So they kind of had it in mind that maybe this was what ultimately unfolded. Yeah. What a weird situation. Okay. Let's move on to SBF. We had to add this in later on in the show after it was all happening last night, an extraordinary interview. One hour, SBF, possible criminal, sitting down against the advice of his own lawyers, as he own admitted during that interview, in which he was faced with probing and very difficult questions. I want to say props to Andrew Ross Sorkin. I actually didn't think he did a fantastic

job throughout this. He did a very good job. Ross Sorkin. I actually didn't think he did a fantastic job throughout this. He did a very good job. SBF is going to have some real problems should he ever go on trial, either in a civil or criminal setting, because he put himself in a timeline denying specific knowledge of certain things. But my personal favorite moment came near the beginning. I watched the entire thing. When Andrew Ross Sorkin reads him a letter from somebody who lost their life savings on FTX and SBF, all he can really say is, yeah, I guess I'm sorry that happened. On top of denying that he ever committed any criminal fraud.

Let's take a listen. One of the letters I got, I want to read to you, Sam, because it's from a gentleman who said that he lost his life savings. And the subject line is Sam Bankman Freed stole two million dollars from me. Says Andrew, can you please ask SBF why he decided to steal my life savings? And the ten billion dollars more from customers to give to his hedge fund, Alameda. Please ask him if he thinks what happened was fraud. These are the kinds of letters that I've been getting repeatedly over the past several days. What do you tell this man? Yeah. I mean, I'm deeply sorry about what happened. I'm deeply sorry about what happened. I'm deeply sorry about what happened.

Oopsie, I stole billions of dollars. My bad. The rest of the interview is also nuts on several levels. At one point, he's like offering financial advice about how and what to know, which crypto exchange is a fraud. He also basically downplays any chance that he had any criminal liability. But one of the ones that actually bothered me the most is whenever he was asked about his own criminal liability, and he was basically saying that he wasn't thinking about that because all he wants to do is help right now. He's really trying to cast himself- We've had enough of your help. Thank you. He's trying to cast himself as sort of his hero figure. So we have some of that that our

producers cut. Let's take a listen. How concerned are you about criminal liability at this point? So I don't think that, I mean, obviously, I don't personally think that I have, you know, but I think the real answer is that's not, it sounds weird to say, but I think the real answer is that's not what I'm focusing on. It's, there's going to be a time and a place for me to sort of think about myself and my own future but I don't think this is it right now I've had a bad month

this has not been any fun for me that's not what matters here what matters here is the millions of customers, what matters here is all the stakeholders in FTX who got hurt given what you know about compliance or the lack of it in What matters here is all the stakeholders in FTX who got hurt. Given what you know about compliance or the lack of it in this business, in this industry, I think there are a lot of people who are holding crypto today, perhaps on exchanges like Binance

and other places. What should they think, given what you do know, and to the extent that you can tell us the truth about what you know? What should they think? And I presume you're asking what should they think about the safety of their assets going forward and... Correct. Yeah. So look, I don't, I obviously don't know exactly what's going on at other exchanges. I can tell you what I would think as a customer, you know, if I were a customer here, which is look for the things that I wish FTX had been able to supply.

Things like, you know, proof of reserves is helpful. Look for as rigorous of that as you can. Look for regulatory reporting. You look at what the JFSA had in place in Japan. You look at what FTX US derivatives had with frequent reporting to regulators of exactly what customer assets, balances, liabilities, distributions are.

I feel like I was going to lose my mind whenever he's telling people what they should be with their money. But on the criminal liability question, just, again, he's trying to set himself up like some hero. I actually thought Chris- So selfless. I know.

I'm not even worried about myself. I just want to help. If that's true, get on a plane. Get on a plane and come to the United States, and we'll see how true that is. Look, the whole thing, it's extraordinary. I encourage you all to go watch it. Yes.

I think that where Andrew Ross Sorkin really nailed him is that on November 7th, Sam sent out a tweet basically saying that they were going to be able to cover all customer withdrawals. Eventually deleted it. And per his own mind and thinking, he claimed to know sometime on November 7th that the entire thing was going to crash. Yes. Look, we'll see. He eventually deleted that tweet, too. That was the timeline that may come back to bite him in terms of any criminal liability. I mean, listen, the guy is in some deep, deep issues here.

And he claimed not to know all sorts of things. He didn't really know what was going on. He was unaware of how exposed they were. He didn't know what a big position they had. All of this stuff. I mean, it was like, come on. To the point that there was reporting that Andrew Ross Organ asked him about

that they had paid, FTX had paid for like a beach house for his parents. And he's like, I don't really know. How could you not know? Come on, dude. Obviously, you know if your parents have a beach house in the country where you are also. It was like $50 million. Right.

It wasn't just some standard beach house. It wasn't just like a little shack on the beach in the Bahamas. This is, yeah, $50 million. Oh, and you don't have any idea what's going on there? Come on. I mean, there were so many moments here, too, where he was just sort of, like, backed into a corner and just trying to con man his way out of it. Like, that's really what it seemed like. The go-to move was just to say, I don't know.

I didn't know what was going on. You know, to try to appear, like, selfless and noble. And as to why he even did this interview, which was really ill-advised. His lawyers are clearly correct about that. This is a guy who clearly is used to, like his way on anything and thinks, you know, he's classic narcissist, thinks he can get in front of a camera and charm everyone and make them think like, oh, it's just all a big misunderstanding and just like unfortunate circumstance. And he's really sorry. Bunch of nonsense, bunch of nonsense. It was pretty remarkable. And he'd say things like,

I wish we'd had that person who was just focused on the risk and the downside. That was you. You were supposed to be that person. He's like, I just wish we had that guy. You were supposed to be that guy. And Andrew Ross Sorkin asked him about, okay, what do you think your future is? Future is a prison cell, dude.

That's what you're staring down right now. And I think he's still in denial about that. I think you might be right. I mean, look, I was actually talking with some of my friends this morning. Wire fraud is like the equivalent of mail fraud. It's one of those things where if the feds want to get you on wire fraud, they pretty easily can. They just got Elizabeth Holmes on seven counts of wire fraud at trial. So all they really have to prove is that he committed fraud in at least like one instance and they've got you, or at least knew about something. He caught himself in a lot of problems about his knowledge of Alameda, the sister hedge fund. And also what I think is going to really complicate things is we shouldn't forget, he enriched himself

extraordinarily. He was pulling hundreds of millions of dollars out of the company. He claimed in that interview to what, have only $100,000? Yeah, one credit card that's still working. Right, he said he has one. Okay, we'll see. I've got a lot of questions also about that. Also, how much money does your parents have? Because clearly you were transferring it over to them too.

Yeah, to me, the most telling part was at the end, Andrew Russorkin asked him, like, did you tell the truth? Yeah. And he can't give a direct answer. Well, he's like, to the best of my knowledge. He's like, to the best of my knowledge as I know it, yes. Yes, exactly. But it's like, if you were really being upfront here, a simple yes or no would do.

And he gets confronted, too, with, like, those text messages he exchanged with the Vox reporter. Yes. And has a real hard time wiggling out of that one, too. He's like, well, you know, I was just talking about what I was doing when I was in promotional mode for FTX. It's like, classic, classic con man. There's still a lot to say. I actually saw an interesting analysis from a guy who ran, who covered Madoff. And he was like, you know, there are so many similarities. Like Madoff, he was a genius up until the end. And really what doomed the two of them is they thought they could trade their way out of it. They're like, well, we can do this or, you know, get this bailout and maybe we can make a trade.

And based on that trade, like we'd be able to cover all of it. It's a classic like narcissist, like Ponzi scheme mindset. Well, I also want people to understand that the ball bounces a little bit differently. And this guy continues to be, you know, billionaire, esteemed, globally renowned figure holding his crypto conference with, you know, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton there and all of this stuff. So, I mean, the line between you're a criminal and you're in prison and you're a world-renowned philanthropist, very narrow, ultimately. Thin. All right, Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, are America's cities

in a deadly doom loop? That is the provocative question asked in a New York Times op-ed by Thomas Edsel, and it's based on a groundbreaking analysis of research that was compiled by the National Bureau of Economic Research. So the theory here, it's pretty simple to understand. After years of an urban renaissance in which superstar cities generated high-paying jobs, which attracted affluent professionals, which attracted appealing amenities, which attracted even more affluent professionals in a virtuous circle, the pandemic triggered a spiral in the opposite direction. Those affluent professionals were sent home to work remotely, and many with the means to do so fled the confines of their city dwellings entirely. Temporary rentals in the suburbs turned into home purchases in the suburbs. Temporary remote work schedules turned into permanent remote work schedules, or more often hybrid work schedules, which still eased the burden of a long suburban commute. So those affluent professionals fleeing to the burbs took their tax revenue and

their shopping dollars with them and tanked the commercial real estate market while they were at it. Let me give you a little bit of data to back all of this up. First, on the big migration, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, Manhattan alone lost 200,000 households since the pandemic began. Chicago lost 75,000. San Francisco lost 67,000. And D.C. lost 33,000, just to give a few examples here. A wide variety of small cities and suburbs, they were the beneficiaries of these net migration flows as places like Naples, Florida, Sun City, Arizona, and Collin, Texas gained population. Now, as far as the permanence of remote work goes, according to the most recent data from September of this year, only 9% of

Manhattan office workers are actually at their desk five days a week now. Most of these workers are actually on a hybrid schedule, and on any given day, only 49% of workers are in the office. This migration and new work patterns has had a predictable impact on retail and on restaurants. The restaurant sector in New York City has lost 78,000 workers. As of August, restaurant visits are down 37% in New York City and 41% in San Francisco as compared to the pre-pandemic period. At the same time, as affluent professionals have fled to their home Zoom offices in their new suburban homes, crime and visible homelessness in cities has spiked, lowering the quality of urban life. Now, this is a challenging issue that politicians of all ideologies are really struggling to handle without the social safety nets that other developed nations can rely on. It also bodes poorly for the future, because as ill-equipped as major cities are to deal with these issues today, their situation

is only going to become tougher as pandemic programs dry up, as the new infusion from the Inflation Reduction Act goes away, and as tax revenue continues to decline. And that brings us to the aforementioned doom loop. The affluent professionals move out, the tax revenue drops, the amenities and quality of city government declines, causing more affluent professionals to move out. A cycle of decline and decay sets in, much like what we saw in the 70s and the 80s, until it can be reversed by some new, as of yet unseen, social phenomenon. to move out. A cycle of decline and decay sets in, much like what we saw in the 70s and the 80s, until it can be reversed by some new, as of yet unseen, social phenomenon. Now, fears of this death spiral can be seen in the policy choices of New York Mayor Eric Adams. You see an attempt to arrest the decline in urban quality of living in his decision to abruptly clear out homeless camps and to instruct police to take people who appear too mentally ill to care for themselves to mental

hospitals for involuntary commitment. You see an attempt to staunch the bleeding of the commercial real estate sector, retail and restaurant industries in his push to force workers back into the office. Just take a listen to a presser that he gave last January. There's a large number of businesses, you should speak to some of the businesses, that the employees are saying, we no longer want to come back in the office. Now, that's fine if we weren't connected. But as I said earlier, that accountant, I need him to go to the cleaners. I need him to go down to Dunkin' Donuts. I need him to go to the restaurant. I need him to bring in a business traveler. And if we say that, well, I don't have to come in, I'm still getting my salary, then you are not helping those New Yorkers that need us to come in.

So I want I want my businesses in this city to come up with a closer deadline and say we're going to start placing our toe back in the water, come in for two days, for three days, and then let's get the city back up and operating. Whatever you think of these policy choices, and by the way, we're talking to Ross Barkin about some of this today, they are unlikely to halt a mass social phenomenon which is already well underway. Just consider the attempts to get workers back in the office as one example. White-collar workers tell surveyors they are willing to take a pay cut to keep their remote and hybrid work schedules. So if their company says, get your butt back in the office, they will likely do what a large chunk of the Twitter workforce did when Elon made similar demands of them and say, okay, good luck, I'm out of here. Now, the national impact of all of this is going to be far-reaching and it's going to be very unpredictable. One element

is already showing up, though, in our politics. One of the fascinating aspects of these midterms was how Republicans, seemingly in one cycle, went from having a structural advantage in the House to a structural disadvantage. So let me explain this. It used to be that thanks to gerrymandering and heavy concentration of Democratic voters in cities, Republicans could actually win control of the House, even as they lost the overall popular vote for the House. That dynamic has now flipped. Republicans actually did win the popular vote for the House by about two points, but they underperformed in terms of the net number of seats that they ultimately picked up. Decision Desk HQ has an analysis of this dynamic, which has everything to do with the COVID migration trends of blue voters out to the

suburbs, along with Democrats increasing dominance with this group. So essentially, they show that most of the nation's swing districts are in the suburbs. So as Democratic city dwellers have moved out to the burbs, they have brought Democratic political power to the most important districts in the entire country. At the same time, Republicans are gaining ground in two areas that really don't help them all that much. They are racking up giant margins in rural areas. But look, if you go from winning by 60 points to winning by 70 points in a deep red district, that really doesn't help you all that much in terms of the House. And they are actually gaining ground in the urban areas with black and brown working class voters. But these areas are already so blue,

it doesn't really help them to go from losing by 40 to now only losing by 30. So you are now facing a political dynamic where the Senate is structurally tilted towards the Republicans, while the House is increasingly structurally tilted towards the Democrats. Now, this is just one example

of the massive national changes we are in for as our migration, work, and shopping habits all shift. The housing and rental markets are seeing massive swings and shifts as well, and an era of incredible urban affluence and inequality may be coming to a close. And I thought it was really interesting to think about, Sagar. I mean, we've sort of taken for granted... 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, I know it can seem obnoxious and preachy when someone gets into health and fitness and

never shuts up about it. So I genuinely do try not to inundate everyone here. That said, it is probably my number one primary interest outside of work that I do here on the show. I follow the world very closely. Just try and stay up to date as possible on the latest scientific consensus around hormones, hypertrophy, sleep quality, diet, exercise, how to live a full, energetic, and healthy life. So like anyone in 2022, what do you do? You follow a bunch of podcasters, you have influencers, you have others to figure out how can you become healthy. And of course, inevitably, like millions of other men interested in improving their lives, you eventually come across the Liver King.

If you're not familiar with Liver King, it's almost comical to try and describe to you who he is. He is a freakishly looking ripped man with a beard who eats raw meat, especially liver, hence the name. He performs outlandish stunts on TikTok, on Instagram, and preaches a doctrine which we'll get to. If you don't know who he is, here's just a small taste. All right, let's see what this is. This one tastes like strength, courage, mastery, honor. There's some kingship right here.

This is liver because liver is king. Yeah, that's basically it. You're probably thinking, okay, Sagar, so what? Why should we care? Well, liver king, to me, for more than a year, has now represented everything that is wrong with our current fitness influencer culture, which is ensnaring millions of vulnerable young men, including and especially teenagers,

who are genuinely seeking to better their lives but are taken in by outright charlatans. If you listen to the liver king beyond his outlandish short TikToks or Instagram videos, his philosophy is actually very simple. He teaches something called the nine ancestral tenets, sleep, eat, move, shield, connect, cold, sun, fight, and bond. Now, there's nothing wrong with any of these, per se, but the problem comes in the preaching. Per Liver King and the copious amounts of raw liver that he eats, he has preached his dogmatic dietary view that if one desires a top-tier

physique like he has, you should eat only raw meat, no vegetables. You should live exactly as he does. Of course, to live as he does, it's not just about the meat, it's about buying his supplements, which he hawks relentlessly, including desiccated animal organ supplements, protein shakes, and a hell of a lot more. This in and of itself, again, is not bad, much of the Liver King message I actually agree with completely. You should avoid processed foods. You should prioritize your sleep. You should go for a walk. You should spend a lot of time in the sun. You should desire to look and to feel better. The issue has now been, though, over the last year that Liver King tells millions of

people that all you need to do is take his supplements and eat and live as he does, and you too can look exactly like him, when it doesn't take a genius to see that he is using a copious amount of PEDs. Now, I don't even have a problem with steroid use. It doesn't negate his obvious rigid dietary adherence or his hard work. It still takes a lot of work to grow that type of muscle. The problem is his denial. Over and over and over again, he denies taking steroids, reiterating that you can look exactly like he does if you just buy his supplements. It's not an exaggeration to say he has lied about this now repeatedly. Let's take a listen to a montage which was put together from Derek from More Plates, More Dates, whose broader expose of him that we will spend some time on later in the show.

Let's get to it. I'm not going to do this stuff. What stuff? The ass full of steroids that he talks about. You've never taken steroids? Never taken steroids. I've never done PEDs other than prioritize, execute, and dominate in life. A bunch of primals keep asking if Liver King is natty or not.

I decided to really face this head on and show you my stack. I stack liver and bone marrow every day. I stack the sun and the earth every day. I stack blood burning workouts twice a day, every day. And if you stack the nine ancestral tenants, you too can express your most dominant form. And by the way, this was my camera's man idea. So tip of the hat to him. I don the way, this was my cameraman idea, so tip of the hat to him. I don't even know where to get this stuff. But I will tell you this,

this is filled with maple syrup. There's nothing better than that. Letter King out. It's unambiguous. Again and again and again. He says he doesn't take steroids, despite his freakish physique. He says all people need to do

is follow the nine ancestral tenets and take his supplements, and they can look like he. Well, as now leaked emails to Derek from More Plays, More Dates show, that is all a complete farce. Liver King, by his own admission, is taking a drug stack that puts professional bodybuilders to shame, including steroids, testosterone, IGF-1, peptides, and several other substances, spending some $12,000 a month on PEDs. It's not a surprise. Look at the guy. But I come back to the lies he has told now over and over again

on some of the biggest podcasts in the world, included but not limited to Logan Paul's show, Barstool, so many self-help and fitness podcasts, all of which reveled in his antics and his diet for views, shock value, while promoting a lie which was making him millions of dollars. By his own admission, he made $100 million last year on various supplement brands, making him perhaps one of the single most influential people in the entire world of online health and fitness. All of it was built on a deceitful lie.

I want to say again why I care. Because if Liver King had been around, honestly, if he had been honest, I really don't think it would have hurt him. He could have said he lives this way, and yes, he also takes PEDs to enhance his experience. Take the supplements, you can get a dose of what the Liver King does. Very few would have held it against him. He can do whatever he wants, after all. His message still would have resonated. But it's the lies, the denials pushed specifically to sell his supplements. That's what bothers me. I'm a guy a decade ago. I might have fallen for it. I was fat. I was pudgy. I was inactive. I was miserable. Like all Americans, I wanted an easy way out. I didn't want to count my macros or drag my

ass to the gym to pursue progressive overload and get results over time. I wanted instant gratification. That's something a lot of people want. I probably would have bought some liver king supplements if I was 18 years old today. Clearly, a lot of people were doing it too. Maybe that's an indictment of me, but it's also a symptom of how deep the problem is. A lot of people today, especially men, are miserable. They're more obese than ever. Testosterone levels are dropping precipitously from where they were just 30 years ago. Masculinity itself has been relegated to discussions on YouTube, discarded by mainstream culture

as something to be actively discouraged. In that vacuum arises the liver king. He's a liar, but he's a mirror to our own broader failings. In a society where proper discussion about health, fitness, masculinity, diet, and more are not properly celebrated, charlatans like him arise to fill the vacuum. It is not a surprise that he became popular when he did,

and that he was venerated, especially today, by teenage boys who feel completely lost in our society, and who have not yet learned the rewards of discipline and hard work that can give you in the long term in life. In my opinion, we should look at the Liver King story as a very cautionary tale. We can look at it as an opportunity to have more conversations, at least on a mass level, about what it actually means to be healthy, and how to get there, and what someone can realistically look, about what it actually means to be healthy and how to get there

and what someone can realistically look like. What does it mean to be a man? As Richard Reeves laid out so eloquently on our show before, boys and men are in crisis across America and in the broader West. Their attraction to people like Livercring is a cry for help that we must and need to fill. Otherwise, there will just be another person

to take his place. So, I mean, I went a little meta there, but he's one of the most popular people. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Hey guys, we're having some technical difficulties. We're going to connect with Ross, and we'll post the interview later on on the channel.

Just want to say thank you once again to all of our premium subscribers and others. And also, don't forget, live show. We are coming. New York, Boston. Put them up there on the screen there, people. We've got December 6th and December 7th. It's going to be a fantastic show.

As you said, it's also probably the last chance to see us for quite a while, just the way that the calendar and all of that is shaking out. So if you're on the fence, this is one reason to come. It's going to be a fun holiday environment. We're going to have a great time with all of our friends, and we hope to see you there. Maybe we'll humiliate ourselves by singing Christmas carols or something. Oh, God, yeah. You won't know until you show up.

You don't know. Well, I can assure you that is not ever getting out to the rest of the world. But for the people on stage, maybe. We'll see. All right. Love y'all. Enjoy Counterpoints tomorrow. We'll see you next right. Love y'all. Enjoy CounterPoints tomorrow. We'll see you next week.

See you later. This is an iHeart Podcast.