Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/21/21: BBB Fallout, Omicron Messaging, Trump's Vaccination, Labor Coalition, Louis CK, Fauci, Chile Election, Coal Miners Strike, and More!

Episode Date: December 21, 2021

Krystal and Saagar talk about the fallout from BBB, Biden's Omicron address, Trump touting the vaccine, right and left labor support, Louis CK's new comedy special, masking on airplanes forever, leftist victory in Chile, Warrior Met coal miner strike, and more!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Warrior Met Fund: https://umwa.org/umwa2021strikefund/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Previewing President Biden's big Omicron address. We're getting a few details this morning about exactly what he is doing, what his plans are, as Omicron has now really quickly become the dominant strain in America. Actually, much more quickly even than scientists had predicted. So we'll give you all of those details. Also, surprise, surprise, former President Trump saying something

actually really useful and genuinely good. We'll tell you about that. Some interesting labor horseshoe politics with Marco Rubio and Sherrod Brown pushing back on Amazon, writing a joint letter to Marty Walsh, who's the labor secretary about Amazon's abusive labor practices. Louis C.K., he was already kind of back. Yeah. Well, in the underground. Yeah, he'd done shows. Now, though, he is out with his first special since all of his horrific behavior was revealed.

There's been a big conversation, big discourse on that. We're also talking today to the wife of one of the miners who is on strike down in Alabama. That's with Warrior Met Coal. They've been trying to get back to what their wages were in 2016. That's right. In the process, they've taken on not only the coal company itself, but the coal company is mostly backed at this point by BlackRock. So they've taken these extraordinary trips up to New York City, all of these minors and their supporters protesting out front of the BlackRock headquarters,

which has been incredible to see. We're going to talk to Hayden today. We also have told you guys that, you know, as part of us trying to give back during the holiday season, we decided here at Breaking Points to contribute $25,000 to their strike fund. They have been out of work for so long. They have bills piling up. Over a year, yeah. Holiday season, all of that stuff. And, you know, we're encouraging you guys, if you're able, to also give to that strike fund.

And we're going to have the link in the description. That's right. We'll have links in the description to everything that we talk about today. But we wanted to start with the continued fallout over Joe Manchin killing the Build Back Better bill. One of the big questions, and a lot of finger pointing going on here, but one of the big questions is, number one, why did progressives, outside of a few lonely voices, why did they go along with the Biden administration's assurances, promises that the corporatists in the party would all be on board. Clearly, that was incorrect. Clearly, that was a lie. And then also Jen Psaki getting pushed from a reporter yesterday about, hey, what are you going to say to progressives who did trust you guys and ended up getting really burned? Let's take a listen to that. What would be his message to progressives who he asked to hang with him as things moved over to the

Senate now that what many of them warned has happened well I would say one his message would be we need to work together to get this done and he's gonna work like hell to get it done and that would be his message and and January is an opportunity to do exactly that January yes great opportunity this is gonna happen sorry and I did see a lot of takes yesterday that were like, maybe it's not really dead. Do you think there's any chance

that any of this could be resurrected? No, absolutely not. I mean, look, didn't you say, and we have this mansion, let's put this up there on the screen. He explained actually in that interview yesterday

in a West Virginia radio station where he was like, basically said that from the a West Virginia radio station where he was like, basically said that from the very beginning, he knew exactly where he was and that he probably wasn't going to vote for it. Yeah. So the quote he has here, this is Hoppy Kerchival, he's like, big deal in West Virginia radio. He's sort of like, you know, the lion of West Virginia radio, political radio or whatever. Anyway, Manchin said to him, I think I made it very clear at that time, which is like right after the COVID relief, I won't continue to do major policy changes through reconciliation. It needs to go through a process.

So if you were never going to do reconciliation from the beginning, which I remember him saying at the time. He said it a lot. Well, this isn't going to happen. If you were never even down with the process that this was all going through, like what have we been doing here? But also, I mean, it's extraordinarily disingenuous for him because clearly he engaged enough to get the pieces of it that he wanted through and then played and strung everyone along until he could come up with enough excuses

to ultimately kill the piece that he didn't want and that the business community didn't want. Yeah, I think there's a lot of liars that were involved here. I mean, Manchin, certainly. Cinema, I also want to say one thing that really annoyed me about that interview is that Manchin said that one of the reasons why he didn't like the bill was that because it did not do enough to address prescription drug prices. Now, we may all recall his counterpart, Kyrsten Sinema, is the one who actually killed all the prescription drug parts of the bill. And speaking with some people around this, a deep part of the frustration is Manchin is like, look, I want this thing to be deficit neutral. And Sinema, his counterpart, is like, and also you're not going to raise taxes on anyone or anything. It's not possible to have a deficit neutral bill if you can't raise taxes on anything. It's not possible to lower prescription

drug prices if you're not allowed to negotiate as Medicare and lower the price for everybody who's old. So they're actually, you know, in two different and opposite ways, equally pernicious forces killing it. That's actually a great point because Stephen talked in that interview with Hoppe about like, oh, one thing I was interested in was tax reform to tax like the wealthiest people in corporations. And of course, you know, he's not going to be where I am on taxation. But then you had Sinema killing that piece. It's almost like they were working together to make sure that it was impossible for this thing ultimately to happen. So that's, you know, one set of liars. Then you had the progressives, Pramila Jayapal, who's the leader of the

progressive caucus. I mean, I don't know if they were lying to us or they were lying to themselves, but anyone with a brain could see what direction this was ultimately going and could see that they were giving up their leverage when they agreed to go along with the Josh Gottheimer, Joe Manchin, Nancy Pelosi plan of voting through the infrastructure and then hoping and praying that everybody got on board with Build Back Better. The very latest from Pramila Jayapal, let's put this up on the screen, this tweet from Aida Chavez. She says, it's abundantly clear that Manchin can't be trusted. Oh, really? Oh my gosh.

Wow, you are so insightful to finally realize that. And you will remember that I have not said anything against him all these months because I believed he was negotiating in good faith. I do not know why

you ever would have thought that. Next tweet up on the screen. She also says she does not regret decoupling the bipartisan infrastructure bill from the Build Back Better package, which was, in fact, the death knell, the beginning of the end for this whole thing. She says, quote, had we not passed the infrastructure bill, that would have been the day that the senator said BBB is done. We would have still ended up in the same place. If that's the case, that would actually be a better situation. If they killed it then, rather than dragging this all out for months. Wasting all of our time for six months. Exactly. Wasting all of our time all of these months when, hey, maybe they could have moved on to something else.

Maybe they could have considered executive orders to do. Maybe something else could have happened. So it is an astonishing, an astonishing justification here of what ended up being a completely foolish move on the part of progressives that they effectively, you know, I keep saying it. After Virginia and the loss there, the media started to turn their blame on the progressives and say, why are you guys holding up, getting something through? Yeah, as if the bill had anything to do with it. Exactly. Had nothing to do with the fact that, you know, Terry McAuliffe's campaign went down in flames. But after two days of feeling a tiny bit of heat from the media, they completely collapsed.

Pathetic. It's a total joke. And I just do think it really reveals the utter emptiness of a lot of the political movements that we have right now in the country. I mean, you know, we covered literally on the right, the only litmus test that exists right now is whether you agree with Trump on whether the election was stolen by Venezuelan dominions and bamboo ballots. Then in the centrist kind of Biden position, I'm not entirely sure what their ideology is, but they felt affirmed because they won the White House.

But then obviously we know that when you combine that with an 80-something-year-old man who inspires zero confidence, combined with a massive supply chain crisis, which is leading to inflation, combined with skyrocketing Omicron and the inability to take control of all that, you have rock bottom approval rating.

The other side of that, and with the progressive left kind of painting themselves as the ones who are principled and the ones who are really going to push things in a different direction and having their commitment to the principle and their commitment to action with a razor thin minority within the House of Representatives, all of that ultimately collapsed. So I do actually think it's very sad. And I'm curious for your thoughts on this, the one floated yesterday that we wanted to make sure we put in the show. Let's put it up there from Alex Thompson,

which is that progressive anger building with some entertaining, even a Biden 24 primary challenge. Bernie ally Nina Turner, quote, I think the movement is going to cry out for that. We played nice in 2021. What did we get for it? Would she do it? She declined to comment. I mean, look, we'll see. I don't know if Nina Turner would even be necessarily the best person. Crystal, you had said in the past that Bernie, you know, obviously considered running against Obama in 2012, just in order to try and push him in the right direction.

Who would be the right person? Would this even work? I mean, could it turn into a media joke? Like, what is it? I mean, I don't know who the right person would be. Obviously, I'm personally extremely biased in favor of Nina Turner. But the idea of a primary challenge in 2024, I mean, I don't think that's a bad one at all. Number one, we don't know that Joe Biden is running again. So the and the D.C. political class has already turned on Kamala Harris. So I thought I still think she'll be very difficult to, you know, remove as the next in line, especially if she's the vice president. You have to contend with people saying, oh, why are you going against the black woman? All of that. So I do think that that will be difficult. But especially

if Biden doesn't run again, that field is going to be relatively wide open. I mean, you might have other people jump in the race, Pete Buttigieg. It would be it would be a total like open, just like 2016. Right. And so, you know, in in that sense, you're sort of protected a little bit from that narrative of like, how dare you try to supplant this historic black woman? And so, yeah, I absolutely think progressives should 100 percent be thinking about that. Even if you're not able to win, you can put pressure on the people who are in office now on Joe Biden right now. And you can put pressure on whoever the eventual nominee ends up being. And, you know, ultimately, things go well. You got a shot at being the nominee and being the president.

So to me, that's all, you know, all to the better and a risk worth taking. I personally, you know, there's all these voices during primaries. Oh, we can't have a divisive primary. I think that is all total. How did that work out for you all? There has never been a more divisive primary than either Obama and Hillary. I mean, that was- Likeable enough. Nasty. But then the 2016 Republican primary, I mean, that thing was a raucous brawl. And Trump still managed to win the White House. So I'm not afraid of a little, you know, mixing it up and a little actual democracy in the primary,

which is where, you know, in terms of actually achieving power and being able to achieve your political objectives, that's actually where a lot of the action happens. So, listen, I'm beyond open to it. Who the right candidate is, I think we'll see how things shake out over the next couple of years. It's really going to be interesting. I mean, the takeaway from this is that what you are seeing is the utter collapse of the Biden agenda, perhaps even of the presidency. I mean, it's just gotten such to a low level. Look, theoretically and historically, yes, there are presidents who have pulled it out and have been able to run again. But given his age, given his

just general inability to rise to the moment, letting the crises in the country kind of sweep him by so quickly, a primary challenge could also push him to try and maybe do better while he was president. So really, it's like, who knows? Exactly. Exactly right. The other thing I do want to say is I think Democrats are beyond doomed for the midterms. I think it's going to be a bloodbath. I think Democrats are beyond doomed for the midterms. Like, I think it's going to be a bloodbath. I think 2024 is still totally up in the air. I think that's true. Because there is a set of circumstances in which through no real action of Joe Biden,

the pandemic gets under control. People are feeling better. The economy, you know, the kinks are worked on in terms of the supply chain and inflation gets under control and people are feeling a lot more optimistic about the personal circumstances. And in that instance, especially if Biden does run again, look, it's very hard to unseat an incumbent president, especially if things are sort of generally going well in the country. And it is possible that that is what the landscape will look like in 2024. Totally could be. Very plausible.

It really all depends on COVID, on whether we're going to have restrictions, which I'll be talking about in my monologue. So, yeah, I think that's where it just depends. Yeah. One last piece on this, because this really, really pissed me off. Another reason why Joe Manchin decided to tank Build Back Better was apparently his opposition to the child tax credit, which is kind of wild because there are a lot of conservatives who support the child tax credit, including Mitt Romney, whose plan is actually more generous than what the Democrats were. I put out a tweet yesterday, actually. Yeah, he did. He's like, let's work together. All right. We'll see. Anyway, let's put this Huffington Post information up on the screen. So Manchin reportedly privately told colleagues he didn't like the child tax credit because parents use the money on drugs. This is such a condescending, classist attitude, especially, especially coming from the senator of one of the poorest states in the nation, which shows you just what

contempt he has for his own constituents. And let me also say that we've covered the studies on universal basic income, which are very analogous here where people are getting, you know, they're getting a monthly check. The conservative sort of, and there are, by the way, there are a lot of people on the right who support universal basic income, just like there are a lot of people on the right who support a child tax credit. The obviously conservative caricature of that position is like a welfare queen. Oh, they're just going to use it for drugs and alcohol, et cetera. None of the research shows that whatsoever.

What people overwhelmingly use the extra money for are things that better themselves and their families situation. And especially with the child tax credit, what they have found is that just because it has the label child on it, people really genuinely tend to use the money to benefit their kids, whether it's enrichment activities or sports or a better schooling situation, whatever it is, they do genuinely tend to use the money to benefit their children. So not only is this like a condescending classist attitude, it is also belied and debunked by every relevant study that we have seen in this regard. There you go. Okay, let's move on here to Omicron and to where and how the Biden administration can take a handle of this. Some breaking news actually this morning, so we don't even have an element, so I will read some of it to you. The Biden administration, after you'll recall, which we reminded you yesterday,

mocking a reporter who suggested that we mail every American a free test from Jen Psaki, is going to announce this morning a plan to mail 500 million free rapid tests to Americans next month. So they're like, what are we supposed to do? Mail every American a free test? Two weeks later, yeah, we're going to mail everyone American a free test, which means they always had the capability, and it's only now they're trying the break glass moment, which really disturbs me because other countries have this infrastructure in place whenever they needed it during Omicron. We are already at what possibly could be the height of the wave. How long is it going to take the government to actually get it out? Could be months. At that point, it might even be too late. So particularly pissed off about that. But that

being said, it still may be needed. Yeah. So I guess better late than never. Let's put this up there on the screen. The Omicron and what it compromises of all new cases, there's been some confusion around this, is now 73% of new coronavirus cases in the United States. This is according to the CDC. Just two weeks ago, it was 1%. And then weeks ago, obviously, it was, yeah, sorry, just two weeks ago, it was 1%. So from 1% to 73% of all new cases, just indicating the vast array there of transmissibility. Very important. I had my head around that. The good thing is, Crystal, is that despite the fact that Omicron very obviously does jump the booster vaccine,

all of that is that anecdotally and in terms of the data, hospitalization and deaths remain very, very low because of the efficacy of the vaccine as well. And that actually even severity amongst the people who have it doesn't seem to be as bad. We'll see. As you said yesterday and warned, just because the transmissibility factor is so much more in a sheer number of hospitalizations and death, it is likely to go up. But it's all about proportionality, folks. So don't worry too much there. Now, the important thing here to remember about Biden's speech, let's put it up there on the screen, is that he is going to be pairing the 500 million free rapid tests there with a, quote, stark warning around the vaccination and generally for the future. So what he's combining, Crystal, with the speech, and this is, again, just broke this morning, so we don't have 100% of the details,

is he's also going to be using 1,000 members of the U.S. military. It's unclear exactly what that means, but it's military medical professionals to help at overburdened hospitals set up new federal testing sites, deploying hundreds of federal vaccinators, and buying 500 million rapid tests to distribute free to the public. To all of this, I say, great. And to all of this, I say what we were saying at the top of this block. Why did it take so long? This should have been in place six, seven months ago. And I just think it's a total disgrace that it took this long. I don't

want to be a bad faith critic. These are all good moves. But if the reason he is so down in the polls is because you don't see this type of action six months ago on COVID. You don't see it on the supply chain. You don't see it on gas prices. You don't see it on anything. You know, no actual action. Also, from a pure media perspective, why the hell is the president giving a speech of this importance at 2.30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time? Is it, like, what? You know, people have jobs, Mr. President.

Post-nap. Yeah, like, literally, post-nap. Is the man not capable of staying up until 9 p.m.? I mean, address. I can relate to that. Look, me too, but that's because we get up early in order to do the show. But I mean, most people, 9 p.m. EST, that's the standard presidential address behind the oval of major national importance. Biden is actually ensuring that his message will be chopped up by the news networks and that those clips are what the

predominant delivery will be to most Americans. I honestly don't know that that's a bad strategy just because of how the news cycle does work. Maybe you're right. Like having those bite-sized clips chopped up. Then you have an entire day and the entire prime time where your message is propagated versus just it getting picked up then in the morning on the morning cable news shows. So we'll see in terms of the timing of the speech. I mean, COVID response has been one of the better areas for Biden in terms of public support. Yeah, that's right. It's one of the metrics where, yeah, he's had a significant fall off, but he still tends to garner somewhere around 50 percent support for his COVID response, which is, you know, better than how he's doing on certainly things like inflation or things like

immigration and other issues that have surged to the top of voters' minds right now. So, you know, this is a chance for him to try to assert that presidential, I got this energy that has been so sorely lacking. I mean, how many days have we gone? Say, where is the president on any of this? He's also doing an interview, I think with Stephanopoulos again, or David Meir, I don't know. What is this, like 1987? He's doing a big sit-down interview on Wednesday. So clearly, they have realized that he needs to be more out front. They need to be more proactive.

One other thing I wanted to say on this is we talked about when we first learned about Omicron and we were covering what is it, how fast does it spread, how bad is the disease, et cetera. The very first action that the administration took was to shut down travel from South Africa and a lot of other surrounding nations to buy some time. Clearly that didn't work. Actually, we now have- It didn't work at all. There are more cases in the city of New York than the country of South Africa. Yeah. So, I mean, we predicted at the time that that was nothing more than sort of theater and political messaging.

And I think that like we were far from, you know, the only ones who were saying that. A lot of liberals were also saying the same thing. And I think that that analysis has certainly been borne out just as a little like note and reminder for if there's another wave and there's another variant that that particular intervention is not effective at all. It didn't bias any time. It didn't do absolutely anything. But you can see there's some reporting this from CNN about the way that they are trying to change their messaging. This is, you know, inside the Biden admin eyes,

a potentially stark shift in messaging around ending the pandemic. They really want to shift from talking about cases to talking about hospitalization and death, I think that is the right way to think about this. If you get a case and it's mild, we can all live with that. That's okay. It's not great. No one wants to be sick. And we don't want to spread it any more

than it was absolutely unavoidable. But the thing that we really need to be concerned about is hospitalization and death. So belatedly, I think they're shifting their messaging on that. The other piece was, you know, they really want this stark dichotomy between if you're vaccinated and you've taken the steps you need to protect yourself and your family, you're going to be fine. It's okay. It's only if you're unvaccinated that this is really going to be an issue. Now, I know that messaging has been controversial and you didn't particularly like it. Personally, I think that's the way they should have been framing it from the beginning, because the muddled messaging making everybody like,

oh, no matter what you've done, then you're afraid. Well, that kind of downplays the efficacy of the vaccine. And it also panics, frankly, a bunch of liberals who are vaccinated and boosted who don't need to be so concerned. I hadn't considered it from that aspect. And actually, if on balance, I do think that perhaps it could be positive. And I do once again think that the six, it's just so little too late, like this around hospitalization and death. This should have been the message six months ago. Yeah, the height of the Delta wave. Because should always have been the message on Wednesday. Because the psycho mind disease is inside all of them now. Masks are right back here in Washington, folks.

We literally lasted, I think, five weeks. No, a couple weeks before the mask mandate went back into effect. The state of California back into a mask mandate. The PG County and other Maryland schools going online. Other schools considering doing so. I mean, the soft lockdown and those type of restrictions already creeping in. And they're doing so because of the lack of ability for Biden and them to actually assure people about the true efficacy of the vaccine. And I continue, one thing that really just pisses me off and I'll continue

to hammer home. Why does public discourse not reflect the fact that 85% of Americans have had, adult Americans have had a single dose of the vaccine? You would think there's like 50% of the country unvaccinated. Not even true. The real divide is between what? People who want more restriction or who are comfortable with a lot more restriction and a lot more disruption to day-to-day life and people who want to be completely free. Some of that is compromised if people were unvaccinated, probably disproportionately, but a lot of it are folks like me who are double vaccinated or had COVID or, you know, whatever, and are like, look, I did it, you know, I feel safe now, now let's move on. That's where the actual dichotomy is. Biden now leaning more towards that. Question is, is it too little

too late? I mean, I was a little bit heartened. And once again, I would try to give credit where it is due to see the White House press secretary try and underscore that cases are not what they'll be focusing on now. And they'll try to be looking more towards hospitalization and death. Take a listen. Does the president still feel like COVID can be ended? His objective is to continue to make vaccines available, reduce cases around the country, reduce hospitalizations and deaths across the country, and do that through making vaccines, testing, and a range of utilities available. See, that was very important, where she said reduce hospitalizations that she caught herself, corrected herself around the cases.

And look, for those of you who are skeptical and hate, listen, I totally get it. But I think that the one aspect of this is that if Biden can turn the temperature down on the psycho mind disease of the people of New York City, D.C., California, the big city folks who want more of these, we actually probably will all be better off. And it will turn the temperature in terms of the calls for more restrictions, some of the culture war around it, and more. And then we can actually move towards a more sustainable message.

Because the sustainable message, which crosses from Ron DeSantis, Governor Abbott, to now Joe Biden, is, look, it's about hospitalizations and deaths. Yeah. Which embraces a strategy, yes, of vaccination, also monoclonal antibodies if needed, therapeutics, making it so that at-home COVID has some sort of protocol, which you're unable to have,

and you turn it more into the cold and to the flu. If that's the ultimate end result of this, which I truly hope so, and I'm begging the Biden people, it is to move us in that direction and avoid the horrific regime which we have had to live under now. He also needs to bring Fauci to heel. Oh, he needs to. You're going to be talking about that in your monologue. He needs to slap him and turn him off. I mean, remember, it was very recently that Fauci just made up this number of, oh, we want to get down to 10,000 cases, which is very much at odds with what the White House is saying now, that basically the case number doesn't really matter. What really matters, and this has been the case ever since we really got vaccines,

this has been the case. What actually matters is severe illness, hospitalization, and death. So they got to get him on board with this new messaging too because liberals love this guy. I mean, he really has a lot of cultural power among liberals. So the things that he said, they literally take as gospel. It's like a church. I mean, it is like a religious zeal for this guy. So what he says really, really matters.

I showed you those prayer candles I found in Burlington, Vermont of Fauci's literal face on them. Listen, I don't want to make fun of liberals too much because we all have our things that we're into

and we have put a lot of faith in. But they have a lot of faith in Dr. Fauci. All I'm saying is what he says really, really matters. The other thing

I'll say here is I think your point about him trying to reassure the liberal base is really important because Biden's instinct he's been totally flat-footed on the response you know behind the eight ball in terms of getting the testing capacity up and all of those things there's a lot of legitimate criticism criticism there his instinct on things like lockdowns has been pretty good. He's been kind of, you know, he's sort of established himself as like a COVID centrist. And his own personal instincts have been in line with where the majority of people are, frankly, which is get vaccinated and then, you know, try to go about your life.

And I think that's where the majority of the population is. I think that's where things should be. And that's the right lane to take. The problem is places like New York, places like San Francisco, the places like D.C. and the pressure on politicians in those places to institute new mask measures, close schools, lockdowns, those sorts of things that all comes from their voting base. I mean, that doesn't come out of nowhere. So reassuring the liberal base in the country who are a minority but are disproportionately vocal on these issues, that would do a lot in terms of sort of, like you said, calming the waters and politically it would be the best thing that he could possibly do. Couldn't agree more. Just an update on Biden himself. Let's put it up on the screen.

Oh, yeah. That's right. Biden was actually in close contact with a mid-level White House staffer who actually tested positive yesterday. So they actually spent 30 minutes, that person, around Biden on Air Force One, according to Jen Psaki. He took a PCR test. That tested negative. We'll see. We wish him the best. Yeah, look, wish him the best. Absolutely. He's an old man. I really hope he's okay. This is one of those things where, you know, from what I have heard, Crystal, is that people who are getting tested with Omicron and more in the earlier days, it's actually not been detected. This is purely anecdotal, I'm just saying. So it's still possible

he's not necessarily out of the woods yet. I mean, there's an incubation period with any of the COVID variants, so it can take some time for it to actually be there and show up in a test. So we'll see, as you said, the fact that he's vaccinated, he's boosted, that's great. He is an old man, so that puts him at a somewhat higher risk. He's our president. God bless him. I really hope he's okay. Let's move on. Trump making some shocking comments where, you know, before I play this clip for everyone, you know, I've been thinking that one of the downsides of not having Trump on social media is we may actually have been missing out on pro-vaccine type messaging that Trump gave yesterday in an appearance with Bill

O'Reilly, of all people. But he implored his audience there to actually take back the message of vaccines, saying the vaccine was a Trump invention. Don't let them take it away from us. He revealed he himself had a booster shot. And even more so, he actually shushed people who were booing him for saying that he got a booster. He's like, look, you shouldn't be forced to take it. But I did. And this vaccine is a big, you know, measure of our movement. So let's take a listen. But look, we did something that was historic. We saved tens of millions of lives worldwide. We, together, all of us, not me, we, we got a vaccine done, three vaccines done,

and tremendous therapeutics like Regeneron and other things that have saved a lot of lives. We got a vaccine done in less than nine months that was supposed to take from five to 12 years. Because of that vaccine, because of that vaccine, because of that vaccine, millions and millions of people. I think this would have been the Spanish flu of 1917, where up to 100 million people died. This was going to ravage the country far beyond what it is right now. Take credit for it. Take credit for it. It's a great what we've done is

historic. Don't let them take away. Don't take it. It's a great, what we've done is historic. Don't let them take it away. Don't take it away from ourselves. You're playing that, you're playing right into their hands when you sort of like, oh, the vaccine. If you don't want to take it, you shouldn't be forced to take it. No mandates, but take credit

because we saved tens of millions of lives. Take credit. Don't let them take that away from you. Okay, so the president made news... You agree with that? Both the president and I are vaxxed. Did you get the booster? Yes. I got it too. That's a very tiny group of...

See? Amazing. I don't know where this guy's been. My heart watching that. Yeah, me too. I mean, look, like I said, honestly, if he'd been on Twitter, maybe he could have been pushing that. I mean, it's not an exaggeration to say that that message could actually save people's lives, especially the people who are older, more disproportionately obese, diabetic, whatever,

who have not been vaccinated. Those are the people who are most likely to die from this thing. And actually, you know, from what we've seen in the hospital data, those are mostly the people who are showing up. So to have that there, it was stunning, Crystal. Maybe the bar is low. Like, I don't know. But watching that, I just thought that, A, incredibly responsible and a good message.

Yeah. And, B, it actually, you know, does show, and I don't think that we, I don't think people have given enough credit, and we certainly did, was that Operation Warp Speed was a fantastic achievement. It was a testament, actually, to what government can do in the best of times when you throw everything at the problem. You did a monologue, I think it was at Rising, detailing all the specifics of that thing. It was incredible what happened. And I think he deserves a tremendous amount of credit for that. He's right to be proud of it. And clearly, I mean, I think that's where this comes from.

He's like, don't take this away from me. Like, I did this thing and it was good and you all should be happy about that. The funny thing, there's a lot that's interesting here. I mean, number one, I think people have, because he hasn't said a lot recently about vaccines and go out and get the booster, he hasn't, you know, gone out of his way to message in that way. People just sort of assumed that he was exactly where his base was. Yeah, that's right. Now, the reality is, he says there when, you know, there's some booing when he says, I got the booster. The reality is, if you look at the

country, again, 85% of American adults have had at least one shot. Yes. So even among the Republican base. Yeah, that's most Republicans. Majority has had a vaccine. So he actually is in step. Especially 65 plus. Yes. That is very true. He actually is in step with the majority of the Republican base, just not the super vocal ones. So I think that's an important note. But people had projected on him this assumption that he was going to be in line with the most like strident MAGA anti-vax type sentiment. Even though there wasn't actually any evidence of that, he has, again, he has not done all that he should and could have taken a lot more opportunities to push this message. But he's never called into question the efficacy of the vaccine, to my knowledge. I mean,

you can correct me if I'm wrong. No, no, no. Actually, remember, he was attacking Kamala Harris for, at the time, saying that she was calling into question the Trump FDA and the vaccine. Well, and that's a really good point because the other thing that I was thinking about here is the big lockdowns were under Trump. Oh, yeah. I mean, the vaccine is created under Trump. The big lockdowns happen under Trump. And so there's this disconnect between what Trump did, what clearly based on, you know, his what he's his comments there and the fact that he himself is boosted, how he feels about the efficacy of the vaccine and where the most strident members of the base

are. There's actually a big divergence there, which I think is pretty interesting. I think it's not only interesting, I think it's important. As so many people have said, just take that clip, cut it as an ad. The single best thing you could do for vaccine uptake in this country is probably play that on Fox News as an ad. I honestly don't know if it would matter that much. Because remember at the beginning,

remember, you don't want to put too much stock in these anecdotal whatever. But there was a focus group where they asked people in red brawler America who are very vaccine skeptical. Like, you know, what if Trump said that the vaccine is good and you should get it? They're like, we don't care. They're like, no politician is going to persuade me. Just 15 percent, though, would be a huge uptick, right?

Yes. Look, if you can get people to believe that Venezuelan dominions stole an election, like, I don't know. You can get them to believe that. You can perhaps believe in the efficacy of the vaccine. Getting vaxxed to own the libs. Do it, guys. If that's what it takes, I don't know. You can get them to believe that. You can perhaps believe in the efficacy of that. Getting vaxxed to own the libs. Yeah, yeah. Do it, guys. If that's what it takes,

I don't really care. I do think it's also, you know, I don't know why the censorship argument is sticking in my head, but it is, which is that

whenever you, yes, like removing Trump, look, on balance, like personally, yeah, it's been kind of funny because it's like, oh, things feel a lot more calm. You know,

things have been in return. But this is some of the stuff we may have been missing out on. And I think it also, you know, shows you that removing people has consequences, I think, in both directions. And that we have considered the people on Twitter and everybody in the liberal discourse had considered all the good things from their perspective that might come from not having Trump or whatever in the public square. But what about this? I mean, we did empirically miss out on this. If he wasn't there tweeting every day about the vaccine efficacy and saying, actually, you guys should, I just got a booster. I mean, that's tremendously effective. People were very

upset. You'll remember when Trump didn't reveal whether he'd gotten the vaccine or not in the past around before he left office. That was another one which would have been, I think, very impactful, especially at that time, to appear on camera or at least to say, I got this vaccine. You all should too. He did it a few months later in one of his very first appearances. But I do think that the country did lose something by not having that message in the public. And I think it would have been tremendously important in the February and March months. Yeah, and obviously, I mean, the principle of it

is the most important thing because we can't know. And who knows, maybe him being on Twitter and seeing all that discourse would have made him, you know, lean into more of like a vaccine hazard or anti-vax message. There's no way to know. But number one, sometimes it's important to actually see the rot, like just burying it, pretending like, oh, Trump, let's just ignore him

and pretend he's gone away. I don't know that that's really ultimately going to be helpful, healthy, and good for the direction of society, number one. But look, number two, this is obviously a former president of the United States, incredibly significant, important figure no matter what way you cut it. The standards that were applied to him haven't been applied consistently across the board. And those sorts of things ultimately really matter, even if on balance, which I suspect is the case, we would have gotten a lot more bad out of Trump on Twitter than good. Yeah, well, you know, we'll never know. We'll never know.

Okay, let's move on. This is a really important story, something that we always want to try and highlight here. Marco Rubio and Sherrod Brown, so Republican from Florida and then Democrat from Ohio, sent a joint letter to Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, let's put that up there on the screen, calling for an immediate investigation of Amazon's labor practices. And, you know, this is something where, look, there's a lot of rhetoric around right, left, can they work together, et cetera. In many cases, the answer is no, and there's irreconcilable differences. But we do want to try and highlight any sort of bipartisan push in order to benefit organized labor, or not even just organized labor, just labor generally. And that actually,

I found in this letter a little bit of a glimmer of hope. Because what we saw here, Crystal, is that Rubio and Sherrod Brown, they write about, we write to urge you, and this is to the labor secretary, to investigate Amazon Inc.'s labor practices. You oversee and investigate enforcement authorities, and we ask you to ensure these authorities that Amazon is treating its workers fairly with dignity in accordance with the law. And then they list out in December 2020, the NLRB upheld claims Amazon had wrongfully terminated an employee protesting working conditions. In February, March 2021, NLRB conducted a mail ballot election around what we're talking about in Bessemer, Alabama. So Rubio here is specifically citing with the NLRB finding that Amazon did tamper with the union election, which

will lead to another one. 2021, April, violating labor laws, firing two workers who criticize employee practices. There's a litany of other complaints there within. I think what's important though, is that these both focus on unions, organized labor, the conditions of the workers themselves, and it's signed by a Republican senator. And look, the bar can be low, but that is important in terms of its salience for when a labor secretary himself will be like, wow, maybe I'll get some bipartisan street cred by doing something about this. It sends a message to Biden, but the most important, it sends a message to Amazon. You know, it's really interesting because when Rubio came out in favor of the union election

in Bessemer. That's right. It was like seven months ago. We gave him some credit for doing it. Yes. But his op-ed about it was extremely cringe. Yeah, it was cringe. It was like, in general, I don't think that unions are good. It was like, unions are bad, the product is bad, organized labor is bad, but I hate Amazon because they're woke, so. Right, but woke HR department, so I'm in favor. In this one very limited instance of the union. This looks like genuine. Yeah, this is real stuff.

Right, right, right. And I wonder, I mean, listen, it's too much to really hope, but I wonder if he heard some of that criticism and feedback genuine yeah this is real stuff right and i wonder i mean listen it's too much to really hope but i wonder if he heard some of that criticism and feedback and ultimately took it in because this does seem like you know a growth trajectory which i am delighted to see um and i read carefully through this letter that they sent looking and waiting for the cringe and it's not there it's not that every single thing that they itemize are things we've covered on this show yes almost every single element we've covered all of show. Yes, almost every single element.

I think we've covered all of them on the show, in fact. Like Chris Smalls, they talk about the union election. They talk about what happened with the tornadoes in Kentucky. All of those things. So that is genuinely significant. And there's a couple other things that I'll say about this. I mean, listen, Rubio now effectively has the lane of this type of potentially pro-labor politics to himself because, frankly, people on the Democratic Party are not going to want to work with Josh Hawley after his whole, you know, insurrectionists. The fifth, like, he's made himself so toxic that any leadership that he could have potentially had in these types of areas is off the table. Now, I also want to say Josh Hawley has been bad on unions. Like he supported right

to work in Missouri and he has not had a good track record there. So I'm not saying he would have been interested in doing this anyway. But if he ever was interested in doing this sort of like, you know, horseshoe economic politics with people like Bernie again, like he did before with the checks. It's going to be a lot, a lot more difficult. And I have tried to point this out. I'm like, look, you make yourself politically toxic whenever you embrace this nonsense and you actually make it so that any bipartisan ability to get anything done is less. That being said, I don't think that a lot of them care because they want to be president and they want juice with the Republican base. So look, we'll see. Yeah, exactly. You made your choice. But the other instances where we also wanted to highlight this, this is from a congressional candidate named Joe

Kent in Washington. He's been making some waves. I heard a little bit about him here in DC. Let's put it up there in the screen. He actually, quote, tweeted Bernie Sanders talking about Kellogg's workers who are being replaced because they were on strike. He says, quote, Bernie is right. We must protect U.S. workers from having their jobs taken from them. If Kellogg's wants to make cereal in Mexico, they shouldn't get to sell it in America. We must strive to be a nation that cares about our people, not just an economy. I mean, look, you would be hard-pressed to find a Republican candidate who is running against a person who voted for Trump's impeachment, who is then endorsing a labor message and strike message from Bernie Sanders to Kellogg workers. I'm not saying this is the mainstream of the Republican Party. Joe Kent is very much in the minority in talking about this, but it's significant because he does

have his cultural base covered because he's pro-stop the steal, basically. Right, and Trump endorsed him. Trump endorsed him, key, because he's running against somebody who voted for his impeachment. And it's interesting to me because it's like, you can sneak in a lot of stuff if you're willing to play the culture war on the other flank. As we pointed out, though, with Holly, it can also make it so that it cancels any ability to actually do anything about it. Yeah, because ultimately the culture war is the center. The culture war controls.

Right. And so if you can occasionally sneak in one or two heterodox economic positions, that's all well and good. But those are the first things to drop. The culture war is the thing that will always be there. This is ubiquitous. J.D. Vance, full disclosure, a personal friend of mine, so take that also. With a grain of salt, put it up there on the screen saying, quote, allowing companies to use overseas slaves to undercut the wages of American workers is a political decision. We can make differences and protect the livelihoods of our people.

He was quote tweeting there the quote tweet of Bernie. But again, tacitly endorsing the message, not necessarily of unions, but of standing as Bernie was with the Kellogg workers themselves who are protesting, outsourcing both of their jobs and the full replacement of them because they had the audacity to strike for better wages. Am I saying that some great right-left alliance will come? No. But these are significant developments in the field of labor politics. And I just want to see people get help and people done so you can welcome it to a certain extent and be realistic about what it represents. There are major divergents from the lockstep uniformity of the National Republican Party since the Reagan era. That's right. I mean, that's what it is, is there little teeny sparks and glimmers of something different. And that is, I mean, that is extraordinary because the Republican Party has been just totally unified on a union-busting approach.

And right to work. For decades now, right to work was a major, hugely well-financed— You know, let me just say this story, which is that I personally know that voters don't give a damn either way. It was purely Koch funded. These abilities top down from the billionaires, from the donors, straight to the candidates saying right to work is our top priority. So they shove it into the legislature and actually make sure. And that's how you end up, I mean, backing Scott Walker and all those fights, you know, that were happening during the Obama years. But yeah, that was an extraordinarily

organized, concerted, well-financed effort to push right to work across the country. The idea for the Kochs was very ideological. It was also about political power because labor unions would fund and support democratic causes. And so the Democrats stupidly, not understanding power, decided to abandon the labor unions by and large. I mean, you had plenty of Democrats who decided they would jump on the bandwagon with right to work and people like Mark Warner and others who thought that was the way of the future. And they wanted to align themselves instead with the sort of white collar professional class. Really stupid decision on the Democrats part, very smart political power decision on the Republican part because they saw, OK, this is where a bulk of the money is coming for Democratic politicians.

So we're going to try to try to kill this whole movement off. So that's why, even though these are really small signs, they do represent something really different. I also have to say, take the time to watch that Bernie Kellogg's video. It's a great video. Because it's really good. They did a really good job. One of the things he says, which I think is part of why, like, his rhetoric was very well calibrated. He's one of the only people on the left, elected politicians, who knows how to do this well.

He says in this thing, if you love America, you love the workers. And if you love American workers, you don't ship their jobs to desperate people in Mexico and pay them 90 cents an hour. I mean, that's— You'd be hard-pressed to find a single person in this country who disagrees, who don't ship their jobs to desperate people in Mexico and pay them 90 cents an hour. I mean, that's— You'd be hard-pressed to find a single person in this country who disagrees, who isn't worth 10 million dollars. That's a great message. Yeah. You know, that, like, okay, Democrats, leftists, like, take that sort of language and messaging that connects with— like you said, you get 80% agreement on that.

90%. Like, lean into that. Right. 80% agreement on that. 90%. Like lean into that. And that's why Bernie came as close and did as well as he did is because he almost uniquely knows how to message in that way. So the last thing I'll say on this is even though at the national level, Republicans have been lockstep anti-labor, that hasn't been true at the local level, especially in states like West Virginia and Kentucky. You have some Republicans who continue to be labor Republicans and continue to support things like, you know, union rights and to push back against some of the ways that labor power was cut back in states, and especially in some of these sort of like populist Appalachian

states. So it's not crazy to think that you could have some contingent of the Republican Party nationally that is also at least somewhat supportive of labor rights. And it matters if you do, because it makes labor unions more powerful. Because right now, since it's only Democrats that support them, it makes it very easy to caricature them as just like another tool of the hated Democratic Party. So if you have some bipartisan support, suddenly they become a much more relevant and potent cultural powerhouse. You can see this in a state like West Virginia. This is something we forgot to mention about Manchin, where the coal miners, because they have such cultural cachet and because they have political cred between Democrats and Republicans, they have a lot of influence.

Yeah, they run the table. They still have a lot of influence in the state. And oh, by the way, the thing I forgot to mention with the Build Back Better fallout is they have come out against Manchin's position on Build Back Better. Why? Because there was money in Build Back Better to support coal miners who are stricken with black lungs. So just an interesting example of how bipartisanship within the labor movement is actually really important for strengthening the labor movement. 100%. Yeah. And we're going to try and highlight any example of that that we can find. So if you see one, please let us know. Yeah. All right.

Possibly a less, much less important story. It's the fun segment. It's the fun segment. Nonetheless, okay. Louis C.K. He has been since his, let me back up. The things he did were really terrible, okay? He has admitted to, you know, masturbating in front of people who really didn't want him to do that, masturbating on the phone while he's talking to someone. It was really gross. And I'm not talking about like one or two instances. There were at least five documented instances. And you get the sense this was a pattern of behavior and probably a lot more.

He apologized. He said the stories are true. He said, I'll just read a little bit just so you guys have the history of this so we can, you know can start from the same place. He says, at the time, I said to myself that what I did was okay because I never showed a woman my dick without asking first, which is also true. But what I learned later in life, too late, is that when you have power over another person, asking them to look at your dick is not a question. It's a predicament for them. The power I had over these women is that they admired me and I wielded that power irresponsibly. He talks about the genuine hurt and pain that he

caused these women, some of whom, you know, their careers as comedians were really negatively impacted. They were traumatized by this, all of that. So he did a lot of bad things. He apologized for it. That was several years ago. And he went away for years. Then he came back and he did some sort of like underground, you know, he'd come out and he'd do a set. He's sort of been like building himself back into the mainstream. And now he just announced his first special since all of that happened. Let's go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen. This has, of course, led to very heated conversations on Twitter about cancel culture.

Here's Mediaite's take. They say, Louis C.K.'s surprise special, it's called Sorry, sparks Twitter debate on cancel culture proves he hasn't learned anything. Some of the commentary here, just to give, you know, the perspective of those Twitterers who were upset. Here's one who says, if anyone actually thinks someone can be canceled, just tell them Louis C.K. advertises new stand-up special during the first commercial break of SNL. You have, you know, people who are echoing that Louis C.K. is back despite having admitted to committing heinous acts of sexual misconduct. Jeffrey Toobin is regularly back on CNN after masturbating in front of several colleagues on a Zoom call. And they have a little, like, gif from,

what is it called? White Lotus, is that what it's called? Yes. Of the girl saying, like, Such a good show. Straight white men are doing just fine, don't worry. So anyway, that was kind of the general take. Sagar, I'm curious for your views.

Yeah, I mean, look, the guy apologized. And this is extremely controversial. I get it. But the guy apologized. How long is he going to be excised from polite society? Also, the idea that he wasn't quote unquote canceled is ludicrous because he's been almost absent from the public square for five years, unable and too afraid to appear on major platforms and more, has not booked a major special at play. I mean, look, I once, you know, bought tickets to see Louis C.K. in Madison Square Garden.

I mean, he's not coming back there anytime soon. Also, viciously attacked whenever a part of his joke set around Parkland was leaked, which, look, you can attack me if you want. I thought it was funny. Oh, God. I didn't hear that part. I distanced myself. It was in 2018.

I have no idea what he said, so I don't want to collate myself with what I said about that. It was controversial. It was funny. I mean, look, that's a comedian's job. They're supposed to be funny. They make jokes about things that are in the public square, and they ridicule it for popular effect.

There's nothing wrong with it, as Joe Rogan and them would say it all the time. They don't actually mean it, people. They're just trying to make you laugh. So I think you can separate that out from his own personal conduct, and I think the idea that because he was able to return to, he didn't even get a real special, by the way,

with Netflix, Amazon, or whatever. I don't know. I have no inside information on whether he even tried. He has actually in the past pioneered the direct, you know, just buy your special, which I am going to purchase. I've always loved Louis C.K.'s comedy. I do think that there's a sociopathic kind of want in order to destroy his entire career. He did lose his show. He essentially has been banished from polite society. And I think, honestly, that if this had come out at any other time than when it did, he would have been fine. And that seems really gross to me because I don't think that Louis C.K. is considered within the context of his actual actions.

Remember, whenever it dropped, it was at the height of Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer, and that's why the special dropped on him so much. And it's also part of his set. He's like, do you guys know what it's like to lose, like, $30 million? He's like, I did it in one night, a single night. This is part of his old set, so I hope I'm not ruining it. I don't know if it's in the new special or not.

So, look, cancel culture is obviously nuanced. It's an overused, annoying term. I do think that he was treated incredibly unfairly especially because it's not like he defended it. I don't think he was treated unfairly

because he was a predator. I mean, there's just no way around acknowledging that what he did repeatedly, consistently as a pattern was really, really bad. Is it Harvey Weinstein bad? Is it Bill Cosby? No. Look, these things exist on a spectrum. Is it way worse than what, say, Al Franken did and lost his seat in the Senate, you know, resigned from the Senate for? Yes. Way worse than, you know, whatever the sort of like loose allegations against Franken ultimately were. Also, which was done in the context of him being a comedian in certain ways. So,

do I think that it was unfair that he was pushed out of the public square for a time? No, I don't think that was unfair. Well, five years? The thing I have a problem with is that the desire for that retribution and that penance, it never ends. This is something Liz Bruning talks a lot about, which I think comes from her faith tradition, which is that we have to have some kind of process for forgiveness and rehabilitation. That's a concept that the left understands very, very well when it comes to criminal justice reform. And that's a good thing. And that's a beautiful thing. But we have to have that piece in, you know, these conversations, especially about sexual assault, about rape, about sexual improprieties, all of these things, this whole spectrum of, you know, bad behavior that it's all comes together within the Me Too movement. And for a lot of people, you know, in this sort of liberal left, there is no duration of punishment, no sentence severe

enough or long enough for them to be satisfied whenever the person makes a comeback, it's always that. We told you cancel culture isn't ultimately real. Now, the other thing that I want to say that I think is legitimate is I would totally buy the idea that someone who, you know, maybe a black man who did the same thing, that he may be pushed out of the public square forever, that the, you know, the sort of punishment, the ability to make a comeback is not the same based on some of your identity characters, certainly based on your prominence and your class. I think that's the other thing, that the fact that Louis C.K. can make a comeback when he's so rich and so famous doesn't say a lot about what other people who are a lot less rich

and a lot less famous, what their life trajectory is ultimately going to be. That's an excellent point. I forget who has done the list. It could be, I remember Jesse Singal talking about it on the Joe Rogan podcast, so somebody else can go out and find it. But it's a list of people who actually were subject to these types of attacks and cancellations, not necessarily as high profile, but there ain't no comeback for them.

They're gone. They lose their job. And it's not like Louis, where he has millions of bucks, I assume, stowed away. He can put on his own special. Yeah, like he can just put on his own special. He's got a fan base, people like me, who will pay for it. These are people who like lost everything,

lost livelihood, lost ability to pay mortgage. And yeah, I mean, look, at the end of the day, that will always concern me 10 times more than Louis C.K. And the reason why I look at it, and I do say I do think he was treated unfairly, is because I don't think it was within the context of what he actually did. He was punished much more for the actions and treated commiserate with somebody who was an actual rapist as opposed to a freaking creep. And look, I think we should be able to acknowledge that. And as you said, we can also say like, look, we should have a space in our society for people who were creeps in order to say, hey, man, you were a real creep. Now stop

being creep. And if you stop being it and you can have a proven record of doing so, as far as I know, that has been held to by Mr. CK, then yeah, you should be able to come back. That's, listen, I think that some sort of, you know, public square penalty was appropriate. But also, he's the one who pulled himself out of the public square. I mean, part of his apology was, I'm going to go and be by myself for a while and think about all of this and try to be, you know, try to perform and be a better person. Anyway, I think the part that we share is that after, you know, years of being outside of the public square, like what, you're going to exile him forever for his entire life? That's not commensurate with, you know, the horrible behavior that he did commit and, you know, admitted to committing. I 100% agree with that.

All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, the longer that we go into this pandemic, the more it's been exposed that public health authorities are much more concerned with the authority they have over than actual public health. You know, yesterday I detailed how the CDC deliberately used a bunk scientific report to justify masks in schools for tens of millions of children, harming their development, robbing them of some of their most meaningful parts of their lives. While I believe that children should always be our number one priority, there's also plenty of unscientific pandemic theater in our daily lives too. Like people who still think COVID is spread by surfaces, those who still abide by six feet apart even when there's no evidence to support it. But worse, the absolute worst of it all is wearing a mask on a plane. As someone who has flown now several times throughout the pandemic, I have witnessed parents hold masks to the faces of their screaming children in desperate

fear that they will get kicked off the plane. I've witnessed people whose masks have fallen below their noses while sleeping get woken up and sternly reminded. And yet when the snacks get distributed and it's like, oh, okay, it's fine to take off. Obviously it doesn't make any damn sense, but you leave it to the chief villain of this pandemic to not only defend the current policy, say it will never go away. Take a listen. Several of the top, you know, the CEOs of the top airlines said that on an airplane, you are actually safer than you are in an ICU. The protection with the filtration system they have, they were suggesting there really isn't much of a need for a mask on an airplane. Are we going to get to the point where we won't have to wear masks on airplanes?

I don't think so. I think when you're dealing with a closed space, even though the filtration is good, that you want to go that extra step. In plain English, no matter what happens, the masks are not coming off. That's Dr. Fauci, if he has his way. This is crazy. And it also shows you once again, his so-called recommendation is not rooted in science. As the host Jonathan Karl alluded to, research from the Pentagon, United Airlines, and Delta Airlines all suggest transmission of coronavirus on board an airplane remains low, with the Pentagon study finding that you would have to sit next to an infectious passenger

for 54 hours before you got an infectious dose of the virus through the air. Don't trust the Pentagon? Look, I don't blame you. Okay, let's take a look at Harvard University. It conducted a study at the height of the pandemic in October 2020, reported there is low risk of COVID transmission on board an aircraft due to the high efficiency particulate air filtration systems on board, which remove 99% of the particles containing the virus from cabin air. In fact, per the Harvard study, the risk of transmission on board an aircraft is lower than grocery stores or indoor mass. Guess what? All of these were done before people were

vaccinated. So we have low risk of transmission, a vaccine that has turned COVID unironically into the flu for most people? They should just come off now, right? Hell, they should have come off six months ago. But theater is going to theater. And it's actually because it is so nonsensical that it's infuriating to see Mr. Science himself stand by something which he feels, simply feels should be in place despite no evidence. All of this constitutes a war on normal people. The vast majority of people in this country got a vaccine. They did it so restrictions would end. And then

restrictions never ended. And they turned on Biden, delivering for not some of his worst presidential approvals so far. Now, you would think, looking at data, that the Biden administration would conclude they need to fire Fauci for cause and change their tone if they ever even hope of winning an election again. But now, they have decided to side with the mentally ill bureaucrats and their pandemic-forever, upper-middle-class white disciples. And I guess let them, because it is going to be a bloodbath out there. As Ross Douthat observes somewhat tongue-in-cheek, the first executive order of the second Trump administration will be removing the airplane mask mandate.

Can you imagine the resonance of the chant of Make America Great Again after years of public health psycho rule is going to have? I say this as someone who thinks Trump was a mostly terrible president. But Biden is paving the path to a second Trump administration. Trump won't even have to fake promise anything this time. He can just say, screw Fauci and these crazy people. I'll actually just make stuff normal again. It's why Biden is actually president. It was so easy. Give people stimulus checks and a vaccine. Take the mask off. Let's party. We could have had the roaring 20s and we got the 1970s instead.

It's all his fault. Friend of the show Matt Stoller tweeted in an alternative history of the Biden presidency in which Biden came in, declared COVID endemic, expanded treatment, goes after hospitals and healthcare companies, price gouging people, accelerates at-home COVID tests for everyone, including unlocking competition and not letting the FDA block development, encourage vaccine uptake, and finally, declare victory. Attack any bureaucracy, blue or red, that is restricting people unnecessarily, and most important, lock Fauci up in his office and don't let him do any media. Imagine that universe. The guy would have had a 65% approval rating. I had very low expectations for Biden. And even I did not expect him to do something so colossally dumb. But he has, and that's it. There is almost no return from the place that we are at right now. Biden has abandoned us to be ruled by the Fauci's and the psychos of the world,

and he has ensured both his own and the Democratic Party's destruction. And they deserve it, honestly. It was one of the easiest layups in history of the American presidency, and he blew it beyond comprehension. What depresses me most is that I have watched two presidents in the last two years fail miserably at what needs to be done on COVID. We can't even get what we actually need. Maybe we're just getting what we deserve. I don't know, Crystal. I've just become incredibly cynical about it. Yes, I know this morning Biden 500 million... And if you want to hear my reaction to Saagr's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at?

The birthplace and test lab of neoliberalism just decisively rejected neoliberalism. So this week, voters in Chile were given a direct choice between two very different candidates. On one side was Jose Antonio Cast. You could think of him as a Trump or maybe a Bolsonaro-style candidate. His cultural rhetoric was right-wing populist with calls for law and order and great replacement-style fear-mongering about immigrants. In terms of economics, he actually framed his campaign as a battle to preserve, quote, sacred property rights. And he also went all in on Red Scare anti-communist rhetoric. On the other side was Gabriel Boric,

who you might think of as a kind of a Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn-style social democrat. Boric gained prominence as the leader of a 2011 student protest movement dedicated to fighting high education costs. And like Sanders, he maintains a revolutionary affect, even as his actual agenda is really pretty moderate. He campaigned on some modest tax increases for the rich, reducing the work week from 45 hours to 40 hours,

and reforming the country's health care and pension systems. Fidel Castro, he is not. Yet, with his campaign pledge to, quote, bury neoliberalism, he has also a significant break from the handmaidens to business and wealth which have governed that country for many long decades. Now, why should you care about what voters in Chile are up to? Well, first of all, as I alluded to before, Chile's history is really significant. As many of you know, the last leftist leader of the nation was toppled by the U.S. government in the name of making sure companies would be able to profit off of their substantial natural resources. We installed the brutal military dictator Pinochet, who we propped up with money and loans while he and his goons were throwing

dissidents out of helicopters and murdering them by the thousands. But U.S. influence has been just as significant in the post-Pinochet era as well. Chile was where we and our affiliated global institutions tested out all of the so-called market reforms which we came to call neoliberalism. This started under Pinochet with a group of Milton Friedman-trained free market ideologues known as the Chicago Boys, but they continued even after the dictatorship was overthrown. Chile is only now, after mass social upheaval, rewriting their dictator-era constitution. So while the free market radicalism was touted by its adherents as creating an economic miracle, the reality for ordinary Chileans was one of high prices, low wages, and some of the worst inequality in the entire world. In Chile, 80% of people live

paycheck to paycheck, getting by on credit and installment payments to purchase basic necessities. It is a remarkable indictment of neoliberalism that even in the country hailed as its greatest success, it has immiserated so many people that they just rejected it wholesale. Another reason you should care, though, is because there are some ways that Chilean politics seem to be mirroring U.S. politics. Look, you always want to be careful about making these comparisons. They have an electoral system that's different from ours, a past and culture that's very different, social and economic conditions which are also very different. Cass is not literally Donald Trump and Borch is not literally Bernie Sanders. But sometimes international politics do end up being a kind of canary in the coal mine for our own politics.

You can think about Trump and Brexit. You can think about the realignments that have moved working class voters to the right and educated elites to the left in nearly every single developed country. There's more domestic parallels, though, than just the prominence of a populist left and rhetorically populist right figure. As in the U.S., Chile recently experienced a mass historic protest movement, which was brutally suppressed by a militarized police state. So for us, the spark was obviously the brutal murder of George Floyd by a police officer in broad daylight. For Chile, the spark was a hike in the price of public transportation in the capital city of Santiago. And those protests in Chile in October 2019, they were truly extraordinary. What started as a social media-driven phenomenon of high schoolers hopping turnstiles quickly morphed into the largest protest in the history of that nation. 1.2 million people marched through the streets of Santiago. Keep in mind,

Chile is only a country of 18 million people, so a huge chunk of the population actually joined the action. And like the George Floyd protests, some of those involved went from protesting to rioting, burning metro stations and blocking streets. The state responded with a brutal police and military crackdown that saw tanks rolling through the streets of Santiago, recalling chilling memories of the Pinochet dictatorship. Just as here, though, the disorder and chaos of the protests opened up a real lane for the right wing to promise a return to law and order and to demonize all protesters as illegitimate actors. That appeal worked really well for the right-wing candidate Kast, up to a point. He surged in the polls and actually led in the first round of

voting. But he failed to security a majority, and that forced a second head-to-head matchup against Boric. In that second round, a million more voters turned down, and Boric made huge gains on his original coalition. Kast, meanwhile, was unable to expand behind his first-round base, leading to a surprisingly lopsided victory for the leftist Boric. In other words, Boric built a broad coalition while Cass' aggressive cultural war politics limited his appeal. There could be some lessons here for a Republican right wing that is enamored with a similar sort of cultural backlash reactionary politics. In Chile, at least, those politics hit a hard ceiling beyond which they struggled to expand. Now, here in the U.S., it may work well for, say,

the low turnout midterms, but may be less effective when a much larger share of the population turns out in the next presidential year. A final reason why you should pay close attention to what happens in Chile is to see if the U.S. is going to actually let them be for once. As the former Spanish content director for Bernie put it, time for the Biden don't coup Gabriel Boric challenge. It's funny because it's kind of true. For the deep state and the wealthy elites who go into a murderous panic the minute that they might not be able to fully exploit every single corner of the world, the Cold War never ended. Just look what they did to Evo Morales in Bolivia, using a fraudulent report about voter fraud to push him out of office, or consider the disgraceful failed attempt to install Juan Guaido in Venezuela. Now listen, you do not have to like Maduro to object to Trump's touting of a U.S. military option for Venezuela.

The U.S. government's admitted direct coup talks with rebel officers and their rush to recognize Guaido based on his extraordinarily dubious claim to the presidency. Chile is one more sign that the world is totally done with neoliberalism. But is neoliberalism done with the world? New leaders like Boric, they could help experiment and chart the course if he is actually allowed to even modestly stray from the prescribed path. Pretty fascinating here because actually this is an instance where the polls ended up, the ultimate vote ended up being a lot more... And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,

become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, guys, we've been tracking now for months the coal miners who are on strike down in Alabama. Those are Warrior Met miners who have been trying just to get back to what they had before that company declared bankruptcy. In their struggle, they have taken on everyone from the company directly to BlackRock that, you know, basically owns the company at this point, taking trips up to New York that were quite incredible to see. Joining us now to give us an update on the strike and the strikers

themselves is Hayden Wright. She is UMWA auxiliary president for Locals 2245 and 2368. It is so great to see you, Hayden. It's so great to meet you. It's wonderful to be here this morning. We're actually out at the Strach Pantry. We're getting ready to hand out Christmas bags, pantry bags, and Christmas turkeys for our families here on strike. So we'll be giving about 350 bags out today and turkeys out today. So we're really excited for that. We just wrapped up a Solidarity Santa and Christmas event that was only possible thanks to other workers and the labor movement and all of you amplifying our strike and our message. Because it really has been a media blackout here in Alabama. So it's only thanks to people like all of you.

That's one of the things that, you know, has made us try to pay so much attention to what is going on down there. Listen, we give coverage to all the strikes that are cropping up across America, and it's encouraging to see how many workers are taking power into their own hands. But you all have been out for months now. I mean, I think this might be the longest going strike in the country right now. How is everybody holding up? Yeah, so we've been on strike since April 1st. So we're actually into the ninth month and it's the holidays, which always makes things a little bit more difficult and a little bit more stressful. We're holding really strong. We have had very few members cross when you look at how long we've been out on strike.

Because being on strike is not easy. It's not an easy thing that you do, and it's not easy for your families. And especially when we are in a right-to-work state. So we have seen since the beginning the company being allowed to bust in scabs. And even more of a slap in the face is seeing the state troopers that are paid for a lot of times by taxpayer dollars that we're paying into, escorting them in to work, to take union jobs, to take our jobs. So I think it's really kind of strengthened our resolve that we're ready to fight for as long as it takes. Just let's remind people here of just the very bare minimum of what you and your families are asking for here. It's not a lot

in terms of what these workers are on strike for. Just outline that for the audience. Okay, so we're on an unfair labor practices strike. And we went on strike April 1st against a bankruptcy contract. So when Walter Energy filed for bankruptcy and rebranded itself as Warrior Metco, we took massive concessions. Over $6 an hour in pay was cut. We lost our 100% health care coverage and went to an 80-20 plan with about a $750 deductible per person. When you factor that in to the lost income, that's huge for families. We went from being able to spend holidays with our families to we have three physical holidays off a year under this last contract. Our families were together on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and

Christmas Day, and that was it. The rest of the time, the guys were giving like a floating holiday that they were paid for where they were home by themselves while the rest of us were back at work, the kids were back at school. So all we're wanting is for them to address those issues that we want to be able to actually not only earn a livelihood, but have a life with our families. So we're just asking to get back what we lost five years ago. So we're not even asking for anything more than that. We all know that inflation and everything else has increased. We're just wanting close to what we had five years ago. I don't like too much to ask whatsoever, especially when Warrior Matt is backed by some really big pockets. One of the things that we have found so inspiring about the action that you all have taken is you've taken your fight all the way

up to New York City, protesting outside of the headquarters of BlackRock. They are, you know, part owners now of Warrior Met. Cole, let's take a look at what that looked like on the streets. They're not just you. They stole from you. They stole from the health care system. They stole to the mom and pop shops that we're supposed to be supporting. Now I'm a patriotic American. And I think that we hear things like that all the time. Hayden, our producer here yesterday said that whatever those politics are of coal miners protesting outside of BlackRock, that is the political ideology he affiliates with. And I think that we feel the same. Yes.

Talk about what that experience was like and why it was so important to go and take the fight to BlackRock. I mean, so myself and my husband actually went. Amy, that's actually another auxiliary member. She she actually went her husband wasn't able to go she went with us as well and she's actually here with me in the pantry so it was incredible to go and actually rally with our other union brothers and sisters across the country to show people that unions aren't just divided by your abbreviations. Unions are going to stand and fight together every time one of our membership is in trouble. And as we've been fighting here in Alabama with the UMWA, it's been all of our other unions, all of our other supporters that have been there every step of the way, providing aid.

What can we do to help? Actually, right outside the door right now, I'm looking at usw workers that are coming in and they've brought turkeys for families they're unloading a couple more toy donations for ones that couldn't make it to the event this past sunday that's what solidarity is and that's what people who decide to stab that's what people that aren't familiar with unions i've never been a part of that type of organization, don't understand is that it's not just your union that's standing behind you and protecting you. It's not just about your wind garden rods that protect you from the boss being able to fire you

because they don't like you. It's giving you this entire community that's ready to fight for you and protect you and they care about you and your family. It's amazing. It's really amazing. Hayden, why do you think it is that the media has paid so little attention to this strike? Because look, we've followed the polling with regards to the American people standing alongside workers who are striking, Kellogg's, John Deere, and some of the other large strikes that have gotten more media attention. So the American people are on your side. Why do you think that there has been so little media interest in what's going on for you? I really believe it's because the mainstream media and the people that own it.

Most mainstream media is owned by these big corporations, the same ones that backs all of these other places. And it's kind of scary sometimes when you see workers of all different races, ethnicities, political affiliations, religions standing together and they're fighting for a common purpose and they're fighting for the greater good of everyone. And that's something that can make people stop and think and they're like, look, they're not divided at all. They're standing together and they're completely solid and they're making a difference. And that's something that can make people question what they're told and what they see. So I think for us here in Alabama,

it's been disheartening to see the lack of support from places that maybe most people thought we would see it, like from Trump and KIV and some of the Republican leadership that haven't come out. And then we have gotten a lot of support from like Alabama Democrats that have come and give donations. They've been to rallies.

It's been kind of eye-opening. And there's a misconception of Warrior Med, like people having sympathy for this multimillion dollar company. And then for BlackRock, that is a billion dollar empire that has their hands in everything. That oh well the green deal and clean energy they're probably afraid to give y'all a

good contract. That's completely irrelevant here because we mine metallurgical coal. We mine zero thermal coal that's used for energy. The coal that we mine here in Alabama is used to produce steel. You have to have it in the production of steel. So when you're talking about infrastructure and building back better and doing all of these things, creating solar panels, creating windmills,

green energy, you have to have our product. They're highly profitable at over $400 a ton right now. So the company isn't hurting. They're just wanting to exploit workers. That is so well said. And thank you for educating all of us and our audience on that point. We've been encouraging people to give to your strike fund. We're going to make a contribution as well.

And Hayden, please keep us in the loop of what's going on so we can continue to highlight the really courageous struggle that you all are engaged in down there in Alabama and also in New York City and across the country, too. That's right. Thank you so much, Hayden. We appreciate you so much. Merry Christmas, Hayden. Thank you so much. Do you want a quick view of the country? Yes. Oh, my goodness. Wow.

You guys have been busy. Hey, guys. Actually, Hayden, one last question. What's community support been like? I know the labor movement support has been really strong. What, you know, Alabama, obviously conservative state. So you said right to work state. How have local people been reacting though? It really depends on the area.

So when you think about Brookwood, Alabama, Brookwood, Alabama, this is where mostly the bosses live. Like when we're in the heart of Brookwood, most of our miners and stuff live in our surrounding communities, like West Blockton. UMWA took first place with their float in the West Blockton Christmas Parade. They were very supportive. They were cheering them on. They were like, keep fighting. When we've been out like in Hoover and places shopping for the stuff for our kids, and they've seen us in our camo. When we were with a group of USW workers that came down from East Chicago

to go with us to get stuff for Christmas. People were coming up and asking. They're like, thank y'all for what you're doing. We support you. So we have had a lot of support. And locally, people giving clothing donations, that's where that's come from. But a lot of our support has been from our other unions and other workers really across the country. It hasn't just been a localized, isolated thank you for us. Well, Hayden, thank you again. We'll support you in whatever way that we can.

And please keep us updated with everything that's going on. We're with you. Thank you, Hayden. Thank you guys so much for watching. As you can see, that's the most important thing that's on our mind right now.

We're supporting them. We're giving them $25,000. If you guys can support them in any way that you possibly can, we're going to have a link down there in the description. You can see what they're up against. They're giving them $25,000. If you guys can support them in any way that you possibly can, we're going to have a link down there in the description. You can see what they're up against. They're not asking for a lot. They're asking for what they were owed in 2016.

Just think about that in the holiday season. And, you know, if you could support us so we can support them and bring you news, we welcome that as well. Link's in the description. We love you all. Happy holidays. Hayden is amazing. Yeah, she's awesome. Blown away by that. Thank you, guys. We appreciate you so much. holidays. Hayden is amazing. Yeah, she's awesome. Blown away by that. Thank you, guys.

We appreciate you so much. We'll see you again soon. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband.

The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. High key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Audley. We got a lot of things to get into.

We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org

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