Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/19/24: United Whistleblower Reveals Denial Quotas, Affirmative Action For The Rich, Theo Von And Chalamet Gush Over Bernie

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss United whistleblower reveals denial quotas, lawsuit exposes wealthy affirmative action, Chalamet and Theo gush over Bernie.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. All right, let's go ahead and move on to this whistleblower who spoke to Jordan Sheridan over at Status Coup, who used to work at UnitedHealthcare.

Of course, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare was shot and killed in New York City, sparking a whole national conversation about the health insurance industry and health care and this vigilante killing, etc. So I want to be careful about characterizing her claims. And you can listen here. She worked there. She did not work directly in the process of denying claims, but she claims that she knew multiple, she worked closely with multiple employees who did, and that they felt like they had come under pressure to deny a certain number of claims, so denying people care that, you know, their doctors are saying that they need, in order to meet some sort of effectively,

like, monthly quota system. So let's take a listen to what she had to say. I would hear people, you know, on break time or whatever, when we would all kind of come together in this kitchen clutch and people would be talking about what they were told to do their job. It wasn't my job. So I can't say a hundred percent. Yes, we have to deny so many claims per month to meet our shareholders expectations but i do know that people were complaining because you know they had to meet a certain amount of claim denial so people were telling you that there was a quota for how many denials yep which is kind of like less deadly but you, you know, cops towards the end of the month, you have a quota. How many tickets you have to give out? Right. So, you know, this is a claim that needs more reporting, more verification. But I think worth putting out there because this is someone who used to work at the company has no reason we know of, at least to lie about what she heard that was going on there. There was also let's put this up on the screen. There was someone online who said, listen, I've heard the same thing.

My mom used to work for a different insurance company. I remember her coming home crying because she got in trouble for not denying enough claims. She got fired for not meeting quota after a couple of months. I would also say Wendell Potter, who was a former health insurance executive who left the industry and has become a whistleblower, has also spoken to this type of behavior and just, pressure that exists throughout these companies, where if you're going to make as much profit as possible, you are inherently incentivized to deny as many claims as possible. So you're having to pay out less, but of course, still taking in the same amount in terms of premiums. We also know, Sagar, based on the data that's been reported out,

that UnitedHealthCare was particularly bad about the number of claims that they would deny. They had the highest rate among the major insurers. We also know they were being sued for implementing this AI algorithm to deny claims that had, according to the claims in the lawsuit, a 90% error rate. So like I said, this is a claim that needs more reporting and more verification, but it would not be shocking to learn that there was some either official or unofficial quota type system within this insurance industry. No, yeah, definitely not. And look, I don't know. I mean, in terms of the insurance industry, things are very much up in the air right now just because of the Trump administration that's coming in and which direction that they decide to take things. And you could foresee a situation where

they try to mess with pre-existing conditions or the healthcare marketplace. The individual mandate is already gone. So that's not the big change that they might want to do. But there's a lot of things on the edges that they could change in terms of how the insurance marketplace themselves would work. Literally going through this right now, shout out to open enrollment. It's a pain in the ass. It's terrible. Every American. It's just unbelievably expensive. It's unbelievable. I remember I had a deductible of like $8,000. I think this was like eight years ago. And everyone thought I was crazy. I was like, I'm a young guy. Now, when you go and you shop for insurance, you see deductibles that are 15 grand, like $15,000. And you're still paying

hundreds of dollars per month. Add kids onto that, good luck, man. And you can just see how nightmarish it is. And this is what I was talking about with the healthcare system. Most people like their healthcare in terms of employer-based. They don't like the health insurance companies, but they like their healthcare, like employee-provided healthcare. But there are 30 to 40 million people, including the self-employed, like yours truly and you, where we have to go out there and shop in the marketplace. And that is where the nightmare situation really starts to happen. Yeah. Because you don't get the benefit of employer subsidies or usually get a lower deductible plan in those situations like that, too.

And that's when people really get screwed. Yeah, absolutely. It's also been, you know, the political response here has also been really interesting. We mentioned with Jeff Stein, I just want to repeat this again, that in the CR, there actually is one good provision that it's not going to solve our health care woes, but it would modestly improve them, which is to rein in these pharmacy benefit managers, which they are these totally, as far as I can tell, totally unnecessary middlemen that control what prescription drugs are covered by health insurance agencies. And so they strike these deals in between the pharmacies and the health insurers, and they take a cut of these rebates for themselves. Again, it's just a sort of unnecessary middleman that helps to drive up the cost of your prescription drugs. And so there is a provision in the CR that would rein them in. This is something that has bipartisan support, something Josh Hawley and Elizabeth Warren have worked together on in the context of the Senate. So there are some small reforms

that have the potential to move forward. The other thing, Sagar, that's in here that is funny and telling is that the previously members of Congress were, they are right now required by law to shop for their health insurance on the same health insurance exchanges, the Obamacare exchanges that you and I have to shop for health insurance on. Yes, that's right. And have no other options, by the way. They stuck a little provision into the CR to get them out of having to do that and be able to participate in whatever the federal government employee system is, et cetera. So, you know, they are well aware of some of the problems in the current system in spite of the fact that they apparently don't want to fix that for everyone, just for themselves.

They want to better their own situation here, but not necessarily yours or ours. You don't need Congress enough, you know, and everyone, I mean, there's been a lot of discourse right now because they tried to put a pay raise in there, the cost of living pay raise. And everyone was like, well, we got to pay our members of Congress enough. And like, theoretically, like maybe I could get there. But you know, in the current interim, no, like no, not in a time when you guys are most, the vast majority of you, what, 90% have a net worth of over a million. I mean, they're making most of their money on insider trading. That's what I mean. Over 90% of these people are net worth over $1 million.

You know, a lot of them are extraordinarily wealthy in their own right. It's like, no, we shouldn't pay you more. Well, here's my thing. You're trying to exhibit yourself from Obamacare and all this other stuff?

No, no, no, no, no. Not happening. Here's my thing, is I am totally willing to strike a deal with Congress. You ban stock trading. Yeah, exactly. And we will give you a giant, a big raise.

Not just this was going to be like a few thousand dollars or whatever. We'll give you a big raise if you just ban your insider stock trading, your stock trading at all. But I'm not going to hold my breath on that one. The other political response, you'll put this up on the screen, Ken Klippenstein, who continues to do great work on reporting out this story. Kathy Hochul, governor of New York, incredibly like she's like the definition of, you know, middling this woman.

She wants to create a crisis hotline for CEOs. So her response isn't, hey, you know, clearly there's a problem with the health insurance industry based on the way that people are reacting to this cold blooded murder in the streets of New York City. No, no, no. Let me make sure that CEOs have a special hotline exclusively for them to report perceived threats. This is the same woman that Ken reported on, and we brought you this information here as well, who convened 175 CEOs and other corporate representatives, as well as Homeland Security and counterterror officials to discuss how to share intelligence with corporate security. So, you know, you see whose priority, who she prioritizes in terms of making sure their lives

are smooth and that they feel total comfort and, you know, are fully protected by the state. And then, you know, the other thing that Ken notes here, and Ryan and Emily covered, the fact that they charged Luigi Mangione with terrorism, which was not unexpected. And listen, I mean, I think he did intend to cause terror. So on that, from that perspective, I understand the charge. But I'm also concerned because between that, between the arrest of this woman in Florida for just like saying something mean to a health insurance representative, and Seb Gorka, who's the incoming terror czar, is out now comparing people who have been, you know, expressing their upset at the health insurance industry and some going so far as to sort of lionize Luigi Mangione as some sort of folk hero, characterizing them as a sort of domestic terrorist akin to the weather underground in comments government to use to surveil and violate civil liberties and, you know, have a whole new group of, quote unquote, anti-corporate extremists that they are using to quash free speech and censor and surveil, et cetera.

So that's something to keep an eye on. Terrorism laws are mostly unnecessary. They're like hate crime statues. They're just like socially acceptable ways to smack even more years onto people when we have perfectly good laws on the books already. Like murder.

They're completely political and arbitrary. No, that's what I mean. And then also you get to enforcement. It's like, well, if you kill somebody because they're white

and not because they're black, it's like, do you still hit them with the hate crime statue? That's literally happened before, by the way. And of course, there's always a big debate.

It's prosecutorial discretion, et cetera. That's why I just think it's stupid because it becomes political and we just use them as enhancements instead of we have perfectly good laws on the books in every state against murder. That's all you need to lock somebody up. If you want to consider all that other stuff, you can take it in for sentencing or for probation or whatever. But yeah, I just think it's crazy because they do this to circumvent going around a normal murder charge and hit somebody with even more mandatory time. I don't know the exact in and outs, but this was all passed usually in the post 9-11 hysteria era. And we have enough now to know that this stuff is just grossly unconstitutional, deprives people of civil liberties, and it's just a socially acceptable way of just hitting people with political charges, none of which you even need.

And this is not a defense of Louisian Mangione. Prosecute him for murder, okay? First-degree murder. You can easily do that. Yeah, exactly. You'll probably still spend life in prison. So what's the point? Because here's the thing. You could make the case that basically any murder is terrorism. And, you know, they have really stretched these definitions in the past. So you're absolutely correct.

It's unnecessary to have these laws on the books whatsoever. And, you know, we've seen the way that these panics over, quote unquote, domestic extremism have been used against the American public and to gravely violate people's civil liberties. We certainly saw it during the war on terror. We've covered some of those cases here where, you know, basically, if you didn't have the FBI, the deep state in there actively radicalizing people, leading them up to the, hey, let's do this plot together. Here's the money to be able to effect. Why don't you buy a ticket to, you know, go fight the jihad in Syria? And then so they radicalize these people, they set them up and then they swoop in. Oh, look, we've disrupted this grand plot. So you saw that during the war

on terror. And then we saw some really crazy stuff like with that Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping, quote unquote, kidnapping plot, which also, you know, similarly, the feds were deeply involved in trying to facilitate and radicalize and set up these individuals. Oh, you know, the Jan 6 people got hit with terrorism. Remember that? No, no. That's actually one of the things people have been pointing out is none of them have been hit with terrorism. Whereas these, you know, whereas Luigi Mangione is. So again, it just shows you it's very, you can just sort of pick and choose who and what you consider to be quote unquote terrorism versus, you know, the January 6th people were charged with other things that were laws on the books that dealt with them. Oh, it was illegal entry. That's what it was.

Illegal entry, yeah. No, that's right. There was a debate. I just, because I thought that they had. Yeah, no. Because there had been some person. Because that's one of the things people are pointing out is like, oh, you're going to charge Luigi, but you didn't charge any of the January Sixers. And, you know, clearly, like, whatever you think of them, that was clearly their political aims that were very clear in their goals of what they were doing that day. So, in any case, that's a little bit of what's going on there.

The last thing that people were taking note of, and I don't want to overstate this, but I do think it's interesting. So The Economist has a running tracker of what Americans say their top issues are. And in the wake of this debate after Luigi Mangione allegedly shot and killed Brian Thompson, although, you know, Mac and Ryan say actually he was here in the studio during those hours. So and Mac actually said that while he was back in the control room, he told him that he's allergic to McDonald's. So there's a lot of pieces here that don't matter. But in any case, in the wake of that murder, health care has shot up to be the number two issue, surpassing immigration in The Economist's ongoing tracker, inflation still number one. I don't want to overstate the case because it actually already

was a pretty significant issue. So it only spiked up a little bit. We could put the chart up on the screen. You can see for yourself. This is the three-month tracking. And this is a little bit difficult to see. The top line is inflation. OK, inflation and prices, 23.5% say this is my most important issue. And this is the type of poll where you can only pick one. Some polls are like you can pick multiple. Okay. So 23.5% of people say that is my number one issue. You now have healthcare jumping up. It's that purple line to be just above immigration and jobs in the economy as the second most important issue. So clearly the conversation around this

has sparked a lot of interest in the American people in some reform. And this is a ball that the Democratic Party has completely dropped. There was almost no talk of significant health care reform in this last presidential election, really from either side. But historically, it's been Democrats who have been trying to push this issue side. But, you know, historically, it's been Democrats who have been trying to push this issue forward. Far, far fall from back when Bernie Sanders put Medicare for All on the table and made it a national debate and where this was an ongoing conversation. Kamala Harris backed Medicare for All, allegedly, back in the 2020 primary before donors got mad at her and she ran away from that position, full steam, never to be, you know,

embraced again. So in any case, that's where the political debate is. There it is. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover,

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This is delicious. Yeah, both of us were interested in this one. So obviously Supreme Court struck down affirmative action. We've got new numbers. I'll show you that in a minute of minority enrollment, especially into elite law schools like Harvard Law. But some of these elite universities have been embroiled in a lawsuit alleging that they have basically ripped off their students to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, and that they have violated an agreement that they had with the federal government that allowed them to, like, legally violate antitrust law. And without getting too deep in the weeds of this, effectively, they had to agree that their admissions would be 100% need-blind, meaning that they would not factor in a student's wealth income, family

wealth income at all in their admissions. And in exchange for that agreement, they would then not be subject to federal antitrust regulation. So this has been an ongoing lawsuit. As part of this discovery process and in one of the new filings, we are learning some very interesting details about how not need-blind these universities were and how much they privileged the admissions of high net worth families, the students coming from high net worth families who were well-connected to, let's say, the president of the university or other influential people or given massive gifts to the school. And let me just go ahead and put this article up on the screen. And I want to read

you some of this because the details here, listen, this is not a shock to any of us, but seeing the details of it really is something else. So the headline is, sued accuses Georgetown, Penn, and MIT of admissions based on wealth. The schools were accused of giving special treatment to wealthy students who might not otherwise have been admitted. So they say, for years, Georgetown University's longtime president flagged 80 students to be added to a special admissions list, but not, apparently, for their academic or athletic prowess, documents in a new lawsuit claim. Those on the president's list were virtually assured of admissions simply because of their family's wealth and donation potential, according to a motion, and in a deposition, the school's director of admissions said the two children who appeared on a, quote, cases of interest list were among those who, quote, we would really have not otherwise admitted. At the University of Pennsylvania,

some students designated BSI, or bona fide special interest, have a dramatically higher rate of admission than other applicants, according to expert testimony. Penn's former associate dean of admissions, Sarah Harbison, testified last year in a deposition that a BSI tag meant the student's family was a big donor or had connections to the board. Those students, quote, were untouchable, and they would get in almost 100 percent of the time, according to this former associate dean of admissions. She also said the admissions office was powerless to deny the student, even if the student was incredibly weak, even if the student had undoubtedly continued even in the wake of race-based affirmative action being overturned at the Supreme Court, where if you come from money, if your parents are well-connected to the board, well-connected to the president, if they've made big donations to the school or the school even thinks that they can make big donations in the future, you are put on one of these special lists in some instances, and you are on a glide path to get into these elite institutions that help to set you up for life, regardless of whether or not you actually merit being there. And seeing it put plain like this

is really quite extraordinary. Oh, it's amazing. I love it. It's just like the original affirmative action lawsuit. I'm so happy to actually... And by the way, I met plenty of these folks in school. I remember them well. Some of them, the daughters of kings and queens. We won't mention any exact countries, shall we? But let's just say their academic prowess was never particularly noted. Impressive. Or impressive when they did show up to class. What's funny is that when you pair it, you can see a complete freak out now of modern academia because these people, they don't bring in a million, two million. We're talking hundreds of millions. Like one of the things that you learn from the Varsity Blues case is that being worth a cool 20, 30, 50 million, they're like, that's a joke. That's nothing. You can't buy your way into Harvard

with that. That's why they needed the varsity coach to get them in. The way you buy your way in and the kids that they're talking about here, we're talking about 10, 50, 20, 50, you know, $100 million donations to some of these universities. That's why they do it. Now, it's an existential threat to the universities, which is why they've been protecting this stuff for all time, because we're talking about millions per year in annum that many alumni will donate just to increase their chance of admission for their kids by, what, 5%, 6%, something like that? So you see that together combined with now the affirmative action hit that these places are taking, already of which the DEI freak out on this

is huge. So let's put this up there on the screen. This is the new admissions data from Harvard Law, but it includes MIT, Pennsylvania, and a few others. And it says black student enrollment at Harvard Law drops by more than half to the number not seen since the 1960s. Not just so happens when affirmative action was invented, by the way. Just 3.4% of the class. But what's astonishing is, lo and behold, the Asian number skyrockets, which is exactly what the people for the Students for Fair Admission lawsuits were able to prove at the time, which is this was a systematic racial discrimination campaign in the face of all of this talk about DEI and others. So, and of course, the Ferris critique was, well, what about, you know, what was it, legacy admissions? It's like, well, great, let's get rid of them both. So now if we have a five year time span to get rid of racial based affirmative action and legacy admissions,

we will have one of the most meritocratic higher education systems that we've, that probably in the history of the United States, because even in the early 60s, you had all that crazy stuff with anti-Semitism and racism, et cetera. So this is a very, very positive outcome. Another reason why it matters is because as this starts to trickle down and already we have race-based admissions that's been nuked on the admissions level for universities, is as we have this filter down to state colleges that are publicly funded, it becomes even more important. And you have it so that the actual public-funded universities, the best single way to go from middle class to upper middle class or from lower class to middle class, and you remove some of these admissions practices, then we actually can really set things straight. Next, we have to do tuition, but we'll get there. I mean, my feelings about this are a little more complicated than

yours because when I see like, oh, the number of black students in Harvard dropped to levels of the 60s, I'm not like, yay. But my opposition to affirmative action has been that this is it's fundamentally a neoliberal policy that says we're not going to change the distribution of wealth. like mass inequality within those groups and primarily affirmative action that has benefited like upper middle class or wealthier individuals within those minority groups. So we're not going to change the distribution of wealth. We're just going to diversify this rarefied few and not deal with these larger structural issues and make it so that, you know, even if you don't go to Harvard and you don't go to the top school, even if you don't go to college at all, you're going to be able to have a stable middle class or working class life. You're going to be able to have a home. You're going to be able to have a car. You're going to be able to afford a family. You're

going to have health insurance or health care and not have to have health insurance, but actually just get the care that you need. And so rather than dealing with this, this is sort of like, you know, a Band-Aid on white liberals' concerns about the racial inequity that genuinely exists that they see in the world. So, you know, that's why I've been, I haven't been a supporter of affirmative action, but I think it does underscore, you know, our education system starting at pre-K is wildly unequal, very much dependent in spite of it being a public school system, very much dependent on what zip code you happen to be born into. What is the wealth of that zip code determines how much funding goes into that education system. We have some really great public schools.

In fact, there's one, you know, just a few miles down the road here in Alexandria, that's one of the top high schools in the entire country, where you're sure to get a fantastic education. And you have some that are completely and utterly failing, not to mention, you know, the more that we have this mass class inequality. And I think we truly are in a second Gilded Age now, even if you look at, you know, Elon Musk and him basically taking over the government and the way that the rewards are just constantly rigged to flow to the top, you know, you have to deal with that structure in order to, you can't jerry-rig it at the end and say, all right, well, we screwed you all the way up here, but we're going to give you a few token goodies here once you get to the top of the food chain and make us all feel better about the fact that you have more black first-year law students at Harvard.

The one other thing I wanted to note is, you know, this didn't just look at Harvard Law. It did look at other law schools. It was not a universal trend across the board. There were a few schools where black first-year law students actually did increase. I think Stanford maybe was one of those. But most of them saw somewhat of a decline. Harvard and UNC were two that saw the most severe decline because they were specifically named in the lawsuit. So I think they felt particularly like they needed to really aggressively go in the opposite direction. So, you know, the differences in the data here are also worth noting. Right.

So, I mean, look, I'm not saying yay. I'm saying yay to the idea that you have more merit-based admission. That's what I would say is good. And so if things drop dramatically, that tells you something about how things used to operate there. And it gives, look, there was also a lack of trust. It was unfair to discriminate against Asian students in particular, you know, is another piece of this. They're literally penalized for being, like for having higher test scores and for having higher GPAs. That's insane in the profession of law, especially in medicine or at

MIT, any of these other places, which there was also significant problems that are there. You know, the other thing that you see here is actually black student and Hispanic enrollment went up at the state college level, which tells you what, which is, that's a very good thing, isn't it? Because you can see that having access and having a merit-based administration, merit-based admission system to more accessible quote unquote colleges and others means that everybody can have a fair shot, which is allegedly what the country was founded on and what we want. So it's very important for what you just said to understand about the wealth gap and return to it. We've talked a lot about

this a lot, but everyone talks about, oh, if you look at the white black wealth gap, those statistics are bullshit and completely fake. The vast majority of the quote unquote wealth gap between whites and blacks is in the top 10% of whites and the top 10% of blacks because there are way more hundred billionaires, people like Elon and others, as opposed to, you know,

I don't even, Oprah and a few others. If you take the median, the wealth gap is not nearly as pronounced as what it is. People use the aggregate data. This is something, Matt Brunig has talked quite a bit about this. He has some decent charts from a few years ago that I remember cribbing a lot of these stats from. The point on this is that if you focus on median

and middle class equality, then you actually come much better or much closer to restoring the quote unquote wealth gap that actually matters. And that's the one of between rich and between poor. But of course, that's very inconvenient. And it's much easier, as you said, is to diversify the top echelons. I mean, my favorite example is the NASDAQ, where you're not allowed to go public unless you have a person of color on your board. Nothing to do with your business practices or any of these others. You literally have to have a woman and a person of color. It's like that's what we've decided to change at the highest echelons.

So the white families on average hold around eight times more wealth than black families. So if you are comparing on a racial basis, there is a significant difference. My point is that what we really need to do is there needs to be a better sharing of the pie. You should not have it be so concentrated at the top where the only goal is to just diversify the highest heights and keep everybody scrapping amongst themselves for who can make it into the upper middle class, the wealthy and the top. That is my point, because I don't want to deny that there continues to be discrimination, that historic discrimination, especially in housing, which is

such a key building block of wealth, continues to haunt this country and continues to drive a significant wealth gap between black and white. So it's not my goal to deny that. What I was pointing out is if you look within any particular racial group, you see a similar distribution of wealth in terms of the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Yes, that's true. That's what I want to close. That's what I'm committed to. And, you know, there is no indication that affirmative action was a part of helping to close that wealth gap between, you know, the top 1%,

the top 0.1% and everyone else. And those are the policies that I'm interested in. Absolutely. I don't disagree with that. I would just say the average, remember, the average includes people like Elon. You have to look at income quintile of the median quintile. Okay, but should they just be thrown out? No, well, yes, actually, because it's ridiculous, you know, to skew things by including people who are worth hundreds of millions,

hundreds of billions of dollars in the overall thing. Well, but I mean, that's kind of a core part of the problem, though. I agree with you. You have people that have hundreds of billions of dollars that are part of the system.

But when you separate out the top 10%, it's not even close to eight times. It's complicated in terms of what it actually is. And I'm not going to deny that the gap isn't there, but it's not eight times for what it is. I'm trying to find the Matt Brunick statistics that I was cribbing this from a few years ago, but the point stands that that's part of the reason why average is actually not a good statistic. The median wealth for a white family was $285,000 in 2022. The median wealth for a black family was $45,000. So that's what, five times, right? It's a large gap. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. That's definitely true. A lot of that also comes back to housing, like you just said. But the part of the problem too

is even in terms of housing is there is that big skew for working class, for within whites, in terms of generational access to housing. Obviously, that was a big problem with redlining, et cetera. And that's one thing I will give them. It's true. In terms of denying wealth. There's also, though, there was a big problem after 2008. Matt Stoller has talked a lot about this in terms of where bailout disparity happened with a lot of people's access to housing because it was specifically black and Hispanic households who lost access to a lot of those loans that were most susceptible to the subprime crisis, lost access to their houses. And then after the real estate explosion of 2010 forward, that increased the widening of the gap as well. So that gets to

a lot of Barack Obama discourse, etc., which I know that he's been excellent on. So anyway, it's an interesting conversation in terms of how we actually move forward in the country. And it's one where a lot of the people who were posting about affirmative action always were very conveniently ignoring. I was always one of those who was like, yeah, let's ban it. Get rid of it. You know, I think getting rid of legacy admissions is extraordinarily important to make sure that there's not a continued aristocracy in the country. Because everybody knows that if you just have somebody write your letter or whatever at one of these universities, you go from a 5% admissions rate to 50. And then if you donate some money, you go up to like 75. Yeah.

Which is as sweet as it gets. It's a good deal. I'm seeing the details here of like, oh, if you're on this list, you just get in. Period. Whether you deserve to be there or not. Must be nice. Let's really focus on ending that type of affirmative action. Have you ever thought about going voiceover?

I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups

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Actor Timothee Chalamet recently went on the TheoVon podcast, and they both had fawning praise for Senator Bernie Sanders, which, of course, I love to see. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. Yeah, we had Bernie Sanders on, and he was saying that, he said Pete Seeger was one of his favorite musicians. Scoot McNary could play Bernie Sanders in a biopic. Oh, he could. Right?

Yeah. Totally could. Bernie hasn't aged. Nah, Bernie still looks the same. He's the best. He's looked the same in the last— Yeah. He's like a real folk hero.

Great point. Yeah, Bernie is— He is a folk hero. Yeah, he's folk music. Mitchell Lama. You know about Mitchell Lama? Oh, yeah, the restaurant stars or whatever? No, no, no, no, no.

Mitchell Llama is like... There's like two... To my understanding, there's two versions of good arts housing. You got Section 8. That means you're paying under $800. Mitchell Llama. Yep. Oh, that damn Mitchell Llama, brother.

Absolutely. Oh. That's me, baby. Moderate. Mitchell Llama program provides affordable rental and cooperative housing and moderate and middle income families. Also gave you a little taste there of them busting out the housing policy discourse. Yes. Mitchell Lama, which apparently Chalamet, I think he was raised in. That's what he talked about there on the podcast. I don't know. I've seen this passed around this whole like, oh, so I saw somebody respond to this and they're like, this shows that Bernie Sanders would have won. And I was like, because Chalamet likes Bernie Sanders? I mean, Kamala had

plenty of celebrity endorsements last time I checked. Also, if I remember, there were a bunch of celebs who backed Bernie in 2020 or even in 2016. What's her name? The supermodel, Radikowsky, Emily Radikkowski, if I recall. There were definitely a few others. I think Cardi B was in there as well.

I think it wasn't so much about, obviously it's too simplistic to be like, this proves Bernie 101. Okay, I'm just saying, I saw it very viral. They're like,

show us Chalamet backing Bernie. But no, no, I don't think it's about Chalamet backing him. I think it's about Bernie was capable of going on

the Theo Vaughn podcast and Theo Vaughn being being like i love this guy yeah but he's a folk hero too he still didn't win yeah he got screwed yeah and it was but it's not the only reason but we're also talking about you know a general election versus a primary election obviously one of the big learnings out of this election was oh that like bro podcast, that whole sphere turned out to be really important. And, you know, there's a whole, I think, important conversation about number one, Kamala, even if, okay, I never bought that she should have gone on Rogan because I just don't think she would have done well there. So there's number one, the problem of just like having a candidate that you would want to see in any one of these venues. But it

recalls the fact that back in 2016 and in 2020, but I think especially in 2016, Bernie had huge support among the bros, among the Latinos, among the working class, all the groups that have fled the Democratic Party the fastest were his strongest bases of support. And he was smeared for that. You know, he was the whole Bernie bro was meant as a smear and they were derided as being toxic, et cetera, et cetera. Now it was always inaccurate to paint his support as being completely male. In fact, there were, you know, young women, young men overwhelmingly supported Bernie Sanders both in 2016 and 2020. But I think it was more the point here was that he's someone who Joe Rogan did support, that this ecosystem did support, even though his politics are obviously very different from Trump. He taps into that similar

desire for something different and a challenge to the establishment. I think Trump's challenge to the establishment is fake, blah, blah, blah. But there's no doubt that that is how he is perceived and has successfully positioned himself as being this sort of anti-system politician. And Bernie Sanders fits that same model. And, you know, if Democrats are losing the bros, here you got a couple of bros who are like, oh, my God, I love that guy. He's a folk hero.

Yeah, I'm just, I still am not so sure I buy that analysis. Just because with Bernie, it was fundamentally irreconcilable to the Democratic coalition. Like, you had rich white people who was obsessed with race in 2016 who, yes, you know, smeared Bernie. Look, I agree. The Bernie Sanders bro thing was bullshit. But people ate it up, right? That was kind of in the midst of Russiagate and all this other crap. They drove him out of the coalition

because they hate them. So if you looked at the polling 2020, we covered this extensively. In every primary, including the ones that he lost, got blown out by Joe Biden, like in Mississippi. If you ask people about his policy platform and about their

personal feelings about him, he won on the policies. He won on, like, his approval rating. People were convinced he couldn't beat Trump. They were convinced about that in 2016. They were convinced about that in 2020. You know, we saw – have seen how that ultimately worked out. But they bought into the narrative that was fed to them by MSNBC and other places that you can't vote. You may like this guy, but you can't vote for him

because he's not the right person to go up against Donald Trump. Now, listen, ultimately, we'll never know what would have happened if he had been the nominee in 2016 or in 2020 and how that ultimately would have gone. But I would submit, based on history, based on the fact that he sort of has a modern version of the New Deal left populist approach to combating what I, you wouldn't, but I would characterize as a fascist appeal, that is what has been successful in the past. And I think given the groups

that he had the most traction with, there's certainly a good case to be made that he would have been a much better candidate to go up directly against Trumpism than this like lukewarm Dover milquetoast neoliberalism that just promises to protect a system that people hate and is fundamentally unjust. Yeah, the problem with that is that Bernie himself then decides to go along with it. He goes into Russiagate. He goes into the wokeism. He runs on, adopts a lot of this stuff in his campaign in 2020. He shifts a lot of his own positions, moves away from what made him so independent on war, on so much stuff, right? He's been a huge disappointment, if anything,

to a lot of the people who originally joined his movement in 2016. And so I just think that that shows where the power lies in the Democratic Party. It's with these DEI academics. Now, maybe it's broken now. I don't think so, though, because what I think is that now the only people who remain committed Democrats in this country are rich white people. That's basically it. The good news for, I guess, for you is that you can convince these people of anything as long as they think they'll win. That's all they really care about. But which direction of all of that will come from the pages of The New York Times, the pages of people like Jon Favreau and others for what they think and continue to be told. You've got to give people some agency.

Sure, it's MSNBC's fault, But they trusted them in the first place, right? Like, they're the ones who bought their stuff and decided to vote against them. So at a certain point, like, it's not MSNBC's fault. They have a bunch of people who are brainwashed enough or whatever to be able to want to listen to them. But who's doing the brainwashing here? I mean, I think you had a lot of earnest people who were deeply troubled by the threat that Trump posed. And, you know, we're looking for answers. And this was the network that they, you know, had been sort of primed to trust and think that was not going to lead them astray. And, you know, I do think that

there's a moment now of reckoning among that liberal base, which is fleeing MSNBC in droves, which has lost a lot of trust in the Washington Post, another place that saw a huge subscriber exodus. You see a huge surge in a lot of like left populist, me and my husband's in particular, online where I think there are a lot of liberal refugees who were like, this did not work. Like this line that we were fed about how we had to abandon caring about any issues in order to defeat Trump. Like this was bullshit. This failed. And we were led astray and we were lied to and we were manipulated. So there is an opening there. Now, I have been very upfront about I think it's much more likely the Democratic Party just does like a Trumpism light, that they

pull a Bill Clinton, that they, you know, sort of rather than having a direct rebuttal to Trumpism, instead they go in the direction of we'll just like be a kinder, gentler version of that. I think that's the most likely outcome. But there is a possibility here that didn't exist before. Another thing that I would say is, you know, it would be a mistake to think that these political coalitions, and this is the mistake Democrats made in the past, are immovable and unchangeable and locked into place. There is a lot of, I think one thing we've learned is people are continually adjusting, evaluating, shifting loyalties, even in this election. Like, you know, it's not like

Trump didn't even get 50 percent of the vote and plenty of swing state Democrats did win. You saw candidates who outperformed, like Sherrod Brown, he loses, but he outperformed the top of the ticket by 12 points. You see candidates who are able to stitch together a somewhat different coalition hold on to more of that historic Democratic working class base. So I wouldn't treat people as like, well, they're just, this is how they are now and that's it. And the coalitions are never going to change again, because that obviously over some period of time is not going to be the case. My theory is that if Democrats win, it will have nothing to do with Democrats in the next two to four years because of what's, what's the shit that's happening right now? Government shutdown,

you try and cut Social Security. Okay, in 2018, do you think that the 2018 Democratic victories were because of Democrats or because of Trump's trying to repeal Obamacare? I think it's because of Obamacare. I don't think it had a damn thing to do with the Democratic Party. Same thing here. I think 2020, I would say the same thing. I don't think that Joe Biden's victory had anything to do with Joe Biden. People hate Joe Biden. Look at him. It was because people didn't hate him then. They felt fondly towards him. Even now, I think they feel more fondly towards him than is really justified. He's got a 31% approval rating, which is the lowest of all time.

But he, you know, I think he is able to barely eke out a win because of Trump's fault. I think you're 100% correct about that. But yeah, look, Elon is like running the government now. He's an austerity-minded, like, you know, Ayn Randian, Javier Malay type who wants to slash social services. So they go in that direction. And there's tons of ambient chaos. And the Middle East is still a disaster. And all of these things going on in the world. And, you know, you could imagine Democrats running like a union leader, like a Sean Fain. And if Trump has sort of abandoned his pledges on leaving Social Security in place, leaving Medicare in place, he has not created the, you know, the utopia that he promised to people. Yeah, you could see those coalitions shifting

again. It's not impossible to imagine. Again, I think it's an uphill climb, and I think you're right. Probably Democratic success is most likely to come just because Trump is a disaster, but nothing is written in stone. You never know. You have seen some interesting people like David Brooks and others be like, you know, maybe Bernie Sanders had a point.

I just think it's too late at this point. But, hey, listen, you know, could be wrong. What do you mean it's too late, though? It's too late. You can't abandon all of that. Like these people are just Republicans in terms, not even Republicans, they're anti-left. That just is like, that's just to me as foolhardy a statement as when Democrats said, these people are just, they voted for Barack Obama. They're just Democrats now. Young people are always going to be Democrats. Latinos are just going to continue to fall more and more into the Democratic camp. Black people are always going to vote like close to a hundred percent for Democrats.

People change their minds. So I'm talking about time. And Trump is a very unique figure too. Yeah. I, what I mean by that is a time horizon picture. So I think, are we talking about 12 years or are we talking about four years? I would say in the next four years, I would say they're pretty solidly Republicans. So the so-called Reagan Democrats, right? The Reagan Democrats who eventually then voted for Bill Clinton 12 years ago. Yeah, it takes a while. But with the Obama people, it took eight years. It took 12 years, actually, for some of these people to flip around. I'm not saying they're set in stone, but I don't think they're rapidly going to shift right back aesthetically, especially with where the Democratic Party is today. So do I think that all of them are going to rapidly shift their vote in four years?

No, I don't think so, especially the so-called bro coalition and all of that. They have too much, there's too much appeal, there's too much lack of institutional trust that just doesn't mesh with where Democrats are. I mean, they're still the party of institutions, still the party of the New York Times and all these others. Yes, they can turn off MSNBC.

I think they'll be back. They always are. I think that they'll come back to some bullshit Russiagate or whatever. Immigration will be a great test. We'll right back to AOC crying at the gates and all these other things. So I predict that actually that will make people more hardened, especially when the next media reaction is. But I could be totally wrong. You know, you could have the so-called asterity and all these other folks. But, you know, Theo Vaughn, look, he may say he likes Bernie. He loves RFK Jr. You know, he's the first person who had Trump on. Anti-system politicians. Yeah. And I mean, the other thing is Trump is assuming that they don't try to pull some whatever is not going to be running again. And I do think he is this sort of very unique figure. And there is no proven ability. In this

way, he is like Obama. There is no proven track record of another Republican really being able to position themselves the way that he has. So, you know, whoever runs next, very likely J.D., is going to be coming off of this sort of, who knows how the next four years is going to go, but probably people are going to be dissatisfied because people are really dissatisfied. And you're going to have to own that. You're going to be in the position of having to defend an unpopular four years administration. Now you are going to be the system, pro-system politician. And so, yeah, if Democrats want to not just be able to coast off of,

okay, those guys are unpopular now. If they want to be able to actually win and hold on to power and build durable and sustainable majorities, they're going to have to do something different. Am I particularly hopeful they're going to do that? No, but there is an opening. There's a possibility.

And at least some people in the party are grappling with that. And I think most importantly, large chunks of the Democratic base have been shaken out of this view that they've just got to line up behind Pete or Kamala or Gavin or whoever the hell they line up and tell them next is like, you must vote for this person because that's the only way to win. I don't think the most hopeful thing is that the MSNBCs of the world are never going to have the power over the Democratic base that they did in 2016 and in 2020. And that's the only thing that really creates like a different possibility, a different outcome. I don't know. I still think the Pete Siop is strong. I don't like saying that, but I think that the Pete, the Buttigieg PSYOP, imagine his Senate run in two years.

You could see it. You know, you can see in Michigan, he's already working. Him and Chasten have moved there allegedly for child care purposes. I think we all know that that's fake. It's a nice swing state. He can get the veneer of a swing state politician. He's got, what was that place where he raised money in California? The Wine Cave?

Wine Cave. Wine Cave, Pete. He never left. Oh, it's very, don't get me wrong, very possible. I really think so. I love him going

on Fox News and whatever, so maybe. And he's making the rounds. I'm not sure if you've seen it. Breakfast Club. He's everywhere right now. Yeah.

Talking about, actually, here's why he was the greatest transportation secretary in history as we all have sky-high airfare and all this other bullshit that we have to deal with. Listen, I think that is the most likely outcome. I don't deny that some Pete, Gavin, whoever is the next Democratic nominee, that is the most likely outcome.

But the fact that you don't have that iron grip of the liberal institutions helps create a little bit of possibility. Hopefully. Inshallah, as they would say. Okay, everybody, thank you so much for watching our last show of the year. We love you guys so much. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. I guess, well, maybe we'll be around if there's something crazy, crazy breaking. I mean, I'm going to keep my eye on whatever happens with the government shutdown in particular. I'll be around more so than you, so I can do some updates you guys will have to put up with me.

Sorry, everyone. I'm on strict orders. I'm on strict orders. We also, though, want to give our producers and our team, you know, a break, and so we're going to try to, you know, just lay off the content.

But that doesn't mean there's not going to be anything that is posting. I'm actually going to have a conversation with Matt Bruning today that's going to go up on the channel about health care that should be. He was name-checked in this very show. Ask him about that wealth thing. Tell him to send me that post because I can't find it.

Okay. So we'll have that up. But then also we've put together some of the segments and crazy moments throughout the year that you guys responded most to. And we've done a little, you know, some introductions to those. And it's just a crazy, when we were recording, it was just a crazy trip down memory lane. Like the Biden drop-down and the RFK brainworms and all of these wild things that unfolded.

So that will also be going up on the channel so you can do a little trip down memory lane with us as well. That's right. We'll have Best Of segments and a few others. Special thank you to our crew, to Mac, to Griffin, to everybody back there in the control room who makes all this stuff work.

Thanks to Steve for these delicious cookies. Steve, our audio man, genius who baked these cookies, to the graphics team, to all of the other people who work on this show, but perhaps most importantly

to our premium subscribers who literally, we could not do any of this stuff without. We love you guys so much. You guys have helped us build this incredible thing. It's going to be a great year. I'm really excited. Already today, we get a whole show about CRs and policy.

I mean, this is really what I think makes this show tick and gives it a lot of strength in the next couple of years, which I think will be really interesting. So we will see you all in the new year, maybe some interim updates or whatever in the future, but excited for this. And please enjoy your time with families and often others, and we'll see you all in the new year, maybe some interim updates or whatever in the future, but excited for this. And please enjoy your time with families and often others, and we'll see you later. Indeed. Happy holidays, everybody. See you in the new year.

Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy. But to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of times, big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways.

Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. Small but important ways. From tech billionaires to the bond market to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chastain. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take

care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. This is an iHeart Podcast.