Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/2/26: Zohran Touts COLLECTIVISM, Gavin MOGS JD, Ro Triggers Billionaire MELTDOWN

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

The team ushers in the new year with a look at Zohran's inauguration in NYC, male influencer Clavicular telling Michale Knowles JD Vance is too ugly to vote for in 2028, conservative influencer Nick Shirley's viral video on Minnesota daycares getting fact checked, and Ro Khanna triggers a Tech Billionaire meltdown over a proposed wealth tax.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to the girlfriends, untouchable, on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I got you. Good morning, everybody. Happy Friday. And more importantly, happy new year, 26. That's kind of, I can't really wrap my head around that, to be honest with you. Also, you clearly can't wrap your head around the dress code, which was baseball hat today, Crystal. Man, I fucked up.

I'm already just days into the new year, already screwing everything up. Your hair looks way too good for a baseball hat. So that's the bright side. You know, to be honest, I am a fan of a baseball hat. I'm also a fan, though. I'm a fan of visors, which I feel like are more of like maybe early 2000s coated. But my head is very small. And usually I have to wear child-sized baseball hats.

So the visor kind of solves that for me. I saw we were like planning a show in the group a few weeks ago. And I saw you wearing a visor. And I was like, damn, Crystal's bringing the visor back. Oh, yeah. Big fan of the visor. Amazing. So, lots of things going on.

We're going to do a little bit. It's going to be not a full on show here. I don't think we're going to try to keep it a little bit brief. And I was telling me. Yeah, right. I feel, yeah, we're going to try. Yeah. I feel sort of like, I feel rusty, you know.

Just taking this little bit of time off has been nice. And I think good for me to mentally reset and hopefully for you guys and for the crew as well. but I'm also like, do I still know how to do this? You're doing great, Crystal. Never better. In the comments, you decide. Is she still ready to do this? That's right.

Should I just hang it up, give up? That's it. It's over. Any big resolutions this year, y'all, before we begin? I haven't, you know, I haven't really been a big resolution person. Usually what I do is during this time period, I try to think about, like what are going to be the big, not just stories, but consequential events of the year. And, you know, last year I really was thinking a lot about AI.

And I would say this year I'm still thinking a lot about AI. So I've kind of, I guess, recommitted myself to, I was also just talking to Grovet about this to see if I can have less of just a doomer view of it and more of an aspirational. Like, okay, if this is coming, because I think it's very difficult to. halt completely. What could we do that would make sure that the benefits are shared and that this isn't the end of democracy, that this isn't, you know, the start of a truly authoritarian like power consolidated in the hands of a handful of people and people tossed down of jobs and just this utterly dystopian future. Like, what is another envisioning of that? And I think it does make sense

like what Bernie's proposing to sort of slow things down while people wrap their heads around and while that democratic process plays out, while that, you know, inspiration and and ideas are percolating, but I'm trying to, you know, to try on less of a dumer mentality and more of like, okay, well, if this is coming, what could we do that would, if they want to rewrite the social contract, like, what does that look like in a way that's actually beneficial? And what about you? What's your resolution this year? This is like very hard to follow. Crystal's thoughtful point there. I don't really make resolution. I try not to think about the new year in terms of like opening or like opening another

chapter or anything like that. It's hard not to. But I don't really have any anything to say. I do remember Crystal saying this last year and immediately I feel like your coverage became super, super helpful because you were literally doing the reading and going deep on it and brought that lens to the kind of news of the day stories. So maybe I should take a page out of your book. Emilyne's resolved to mug on more bitches this new year. Yeah, it's all about the physiognomy. Yeah.

And like, you know what? I lacked a scientific understanding of Sydney Sweeney's facial symmetry. And that I've realized that's a serious error on my part. And I pleasure to do better. You know, even as a Sydney Sweeney critic, I really hadn't explored the ways in which she's, quote, unquote, malformed. See, you didn't get to the orbital. Yeah, you didn't say any of that, which was neglectful. Griffin, do you have a resolution?

My resolution was to investigate more fraud into podcasts, like breaking points. So expect a camera crew knocking on your door. Start showing up at places and demanding to see their children. We tape in the mornings here at breaking point, so I'm going to show up in the afternoons with the camera crew being like, where's Crystal? Where's Saga? They're not here? No show job. Let's look to the future. Let's get to the news, folks. It's a brand new year. And let's turn our eyes to New York City where Zora and Mamdani has been sworn in as mayor. Let's take a quick listen to a clip that's been getting some action. Long, these communities have existed as distinct from one another. We will draw this city closer to. together. We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of

collectivism. If our campaign demonstrated that the people of New York yearn for solidarity, then let this government foster it. Because no matter what you eat, how you pray, or where you come from, the words

that most define us are the two we all share. New Yorkers. All right. That was a taste from the inauguration. Crystal was so amazed by that. She ran to New York City to take a moment to adjust that and also to let the cat in. Hop on the anthrax. But Big Day, Bernie was part of the inaugural ceremony.

Zoron was sworn in in the old subway underneath New York City with his wife. And what do we make this, guys? I mean, to me, it's extremely hopeful. Like that line is so funny because I think it was very intentionally put in to spark a whole like, oh my God, collectivism, like what's going on and Sharia law and communism and whatever, which is kind of a funny, you know, it's kind of the sort of thing that the right has been pulling lately. Like, let me intentionally touch the hot stove and make people react to it. And he certainly got that. He certainly got that reaction. But, you know, there's a few things. There's just the portrait of Bernie. They're swearing him in. in the official ceremony. AOC there as well. So Bernie, this is amazing photo. Bernie just like delighted the mouth and cape with Eric Adams

looking very stern above him. Great. It was a new mittens and blanket photo, but this time a happy one. But this time delighted, yeah. And so to see him kind of in a sense like passing the torch, both to Zoron and AOC, who may be a contender in 2028 presidential, or at least maybe running for the Senate against Chuck Schumer, was, to me, very poignant. And I think Zoran not only, he really has a lot of intentionality around the symbols that he chooses.

So you mentioned the initial swearing in happened in this sort of iconic subway, shuttered subway stop under City Hall that is really beautiful. And, you know, came from a time period when it was like. we're going to invest in public goods and we're going to make them really beautiful and really nice and we're going to put thought and care into it. So that was a very thoughtful choice. Immediately after his swearing in, he goes to a rent-stabilized apartment building where the landlord has completely neglected. It's falling apart. Roaches are coming in. Pipes are rusted. Tiles are falling apart, et cetera. That's where he chooses to not only tour the facility and to champion their cause and put official resources towards it, but also to

signed his initial executive orders. I know he arrived at the inauguration in a cab that was driven by a taxi cab driver who had previously done a hunger protest alongside Zoran. So he just, he's thought a lot about how to signal this is a different administration and it's being run for a different group of people. He also made sure in his speech to say like, look, I was advised that now's the time to lower expectations to do the like, you know, campaign and what's the thing, campaign in poetry, governing prose or whatever. But anyway, to set the expectations smaller. He's like, I'm not going to do that. We are going to get out there and try and we may not always succeed, but we're going to think big and we're going to dream big. So, you know, now the proof is going to be in the pudding. And I think

he's well aware that the eyes of not just New York City, but the eyes of the nation of the nation are really on him, whether this is fair or not, because this is the test now. He will be held up as the example of like, can the left govern or are these just sort of like these utopian pie in the sky ideals? And what comes for when the rubber meets the road, they can't really deliver on any of these promises and everyone just leaves with further nihilistic and with their hopes dashed. I'll add that it feels like an evolution for democratic socialism and to Crystal's point about Bernie elated. on stage, sort of watching the torch being passed, or that's too passive, passing the torch, as Crystal said. This, I think the, the flavor of Mayor Mom Donnie's administration that we've seen over the last

24 hours looks like the growth into a more mature political operation of democratic socialism. And I don't mean uppercase DSA necessarily. I mean Bernie-style democratic socialism. And I think we all saw with AOC, she would probably say this. And there's a lot of this in Ryan's book, by the way. There was a surprise among DSA types and AOC about the response. I mean, about beating Joe Crawley. Like, that was very surprising.

When Mamdani beat Cuomo in the primary, very, very surprising. But then I think with Zoran, the office is so big. And he had so many months to, campaign after the primary against the guy he beat in the primary and that so many resources poured in. It's not just like a congressional seat. This is the mayor of New York City. And I think there's there's just been this deluge of concerted strategic thought that's gone into what this looks like. And we've seen that over the last 24 hours. We're getting, I think, a glimpse that this is going to be. I mean, it sounds obvious to say it, but it's another thing to

see it. This is going to be the future of the lowercase DS Democratic Socialist movement. And just a couple of quick kind of newsy points. I liked this Jill Philippovich tweet because I sent this in our DMs. But there were

a couple of lines where I was like, oh, this one, for example, was, for too long, those fluent in the good grammar of civility have deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty. And Joe Filipovich said, listen, I am as excited for the Zoron era as the next person, but I'm begging, begging, begging, begging his speechwriters to allow him to talk like a

normal person and not an Oberlin freshman writing a persuasive essay. I thought that was interesting because he doesn't normally talk like an Oberlin freshman writing a persuasive essay. And so it was, you know, the collectivism line I thought, it was not my favorite as a conservative. It gives me chills as a conservative, but I see what Crystal's saying that it's like, this is he wants you to know that he is touching the third rail that he is doing something completely different he whipped out he whipped out like the ein rann villain mode on this speech like collectivism we're gonna so here for take it from the owners if you're a villain in an iron rand novel you're probably doing something right you know true true i you know i thought

about um i thought about that jill philippovich tweet as well and here's what i'll say If he, it really depends. If he delivers on his promises or people feel like he is delivering, they feel like life is getting better, they feel like he's fighting for them, then I think it's fine to lean into this very like intellectual level, you know, grown up level of campaign rhetoric. And I sort of disagree that this is different than his normal mode. He certainly has the ability to just like talk to people and come off as a normal. person, which is really good and kind of unusual for a Democrat of any flavor, any flavor. But when he does prepared speeches, he uses this kind of elevated rhetoric. I didn't see this as the first time. Now, what I did note is the tone was like, oh, now that I've won,

like I'm letting my like socialist freak flag fly. Like I'm letting it all out. Like this is how it's going to be and you guys are going to eat it up and you're going to see what we're going to deliver. That I did see. But in terms of the sort of like, you know, elevated rhetoric and his approach to that, that to me felt consistent with other prepared speeches he gives. And even, you know, when he speaks on, in TV news interviews, et cetera, he does reach for sort of more, more flowery language. And like I said, I think it just matters if he can deliver, then people are going to love him and love all the aspects of him. And if he can't, and if, you know, the administration is a shambles and he can't deliver on any of the key promises, it doesn't feel like he's fighting for those key promises,

then I think it's going to land very hollow and overwrought. Yeah, it sounds, I know, I think that's true. But it's, but that to me is interesting as the, this is one thing that I think AOC did well and poorly when she first entered the scene. It was that it was like, sometimes it did sound like the Oberlin freshman and then sometimes she was really good at talking like just the bartender and well the part yeah I was just going to say where I distinguish is she used a lot of the academic language around like intersectionality and that sort of stuff whereas Zoran's I you know I watched this whole speech and I read the transcript again this morning it's very grounded in class politics so in that way just not in a substantive level it's different from

some of the critiques I also had of AOC's language at a certain time, although now I think that she is also a pretty effective communicator. The other thing that people are freaking out about is this is kind of clever in a way. So Zoran rescinded all of the Eric Adams executive orders from after he was indicted for fraud because he said, look, this is when he lost the trust in New York City. So anything after that time is being swept down. And a number of those executive orders had to do with, like, pro-Israel stuff. So one was, like, some sort of a ban on BDS. And the other one was the codifying of this definition of anti-Semitism that conflates

anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. And so rather than just, like, targeting those specific pro-Israel executive orders, he's like, no, no, no, all this stuff that was done after he was indicted for corruption, all of that is being tossed aside. And, of course, the, like, you know, the more like right-wing Zionist types are freaking out about these particular executive orders and so, oh, look, see, Dorot's already coming for the Jews or whatever. But, but, you know, I think anyone who listened to how he campaigned would say he certainly has a mandate to make the government of New York more neutral to Israel than, you know,

certainly then Eric Adams and other New York City mayors have positioned the government in the past. And we've got some polling here. Mamdani is up five in national net favorability in this New York politics poll. was negative 14 in September. We've got AOC plus one here as well. Hocal down six, Trump down 20, Adams down 23, and Cuomo at the bottom here, negative 32. Eric Adams is more popular than Cuomo. That's so funny.

They should have run him again. They should have run, Eric Adams. Yeah, me and Emily have been saying this for so long. He was still going to lose, though. I mean, he had the lowest favorability rating of any mayor in New York City's history. So I don't think there was any stop in the zoment. No, there was no stopping this momentum. But that's, I mean, I think just the point that you made crystal is when you look at how democratic socialism surged in America's populist moment around 10 years ago now, this is 2026. So 2016, that's crazy. We're exactly a decade out from Bernie surge. It has clearly gone back to something that looks a lot more like what Bernie would have had it look like. Had those, I mean, there's this moment where Bernie's campaign. in 2016, an activist sees the microphone from him and he sort of seeds the spot. And it's a very

academic jargony type language. And so I do think that what we're seeing right now is a smarter, more mature, you know, 10-year-in project. And if you're somebody who believes in the Democratic Socialist project, you should be enormously, enormously hopeful about what you saw in the last 24 hours, which was, again, a professional, political, concerted operation with a mature strategy as to, like, bringing in people on a class basis. Yeah. And I think, you know, some people on the left already have been upset with the decisions that are kind of, you know, sort of like hard-nosed political tactics, like deciding not to endorse Chiosay against Takeem Jeffries, pushing him not to run in that race, some of the administration choices. So, you know, some of those things, I think as governing reality sets in, I think are going to be difficult for a lot of people on the left to swallow myself included. But, you know, I think he is trying to approach it from a, I think. on the prize, I need to do what I got to do to deliver. And that's the, you know, the number one first and foremost priority. And then the last thing I'll say here, which will set us up for our segment on Gavin Newsom and J.D. Vance, maugging and clavicular and all of that is as we look forward to the future of our politics, we are going to get a lot of answers in this year in 2026 about what the future of the Democratic Party is going to look like. Because there are so many primary challenges across the country, some of them high profile that we've spoken about, some of them under the radar that we haven't spoken about and that we don't even know about. There are so many contests which are

being set up right now just in the Democratic primaries that are really going to set the tone for what the future of this party is. Are they going to hang on to the neoliberal, let's try to preserve the institutions, let's try to cling to the status quo and modestly improve it? Or are we going in a more radical direction. I think the base is going to send some very strong messages on that point this year, which is one of the things that I'm very excited for us to be able to track together. So that's going to be something to watch. And then, of course, in the general election to see, you know, do these, the swing that we saw in 2025 towards Democrats and that we've seen in these special elections where, you know, people are flipping 20 points towards Democrats,

does that sustain? And do we have something, you know, really quite consequential in terms of a wave election, or, you know, do we get a surprise as we have in the past when we expected wave elections and they didn't arrive? Hmm. Well, to that point, let's mog on over to clavicular in the 2028 race. Now, do you guys know who clavicular is? Well, I do now. You do now?

Emily, are you aware now? I recorded an interview for KKF with Taylor Lorenz, who, you know, I mean, it's her job to know about these characters. and she said she went deep on him maybe like four months ago. And she just posted something on her channel. So I have been educated now in the clavicular full lore and origin story. So for those listeners who aren't on the algorithm I would describe as evil TikTok, there is a man named clavicular. He's kind of in some ways like the new young Andrew Tate in that he is sort of a male icon for younger men.

But this guy, for this group, enough people that we're talking about him now and that he's on shows. He is a looks maxer, which means he would take rocks or pebbles and hit them on his jaw to bruise his bones to make them stronger to, I guess he believes give him a stronger jaw line to become more of an alpha chad. He also does a medley of drugs to keep his figure, including, like, low-grade amounts of meth. He does, obviously, all the other gender-affirming care, TRT. He is, in a lot of ways, trans. So he's male to male. He's male to male. Yeah, he's male to alpha male.

Yeah. So there's this guy. And we should say, and actually, this is just to help people understand how. extreme the things that he does are he's been taking some form of like steroids from the time he was 14 and he's actually sterile now because of what he has taken um so yeah his yeah i mean he talks about this publicly this isn't news and so his whole his whole thing is this very nihilistic sort of in cell pickup artist adjacent philosophy of the world is screwed it's very hard to get ahead the deck is stacked against you and the best thing that you could do to be able to get women and have some sort of success is to look smacks to take these extreme like the the ethos of the bodybuilding world and apply that not just to your body but also to your face with a heavy American psycho garnish on top yeah yeah I was going to say it's very it's very niche and that's the like underpinning of American Psycho this idea that you can be the the Superman and

And Rod Dreher has been talking about how we're in Weimar America. But this is actually, and his has a totally different take on, well, actually maybe not that different, but on anti-Semitism and all of that. But when he's talking about Weimar America, he particularly zeroed in the other day on clavicular and was like, this is so dangerous because you're getting into a place where the fringes are now proud or impresses. about reducing people to their physical worth and it's very eugenicsy it's extraordinarily eugenicsy and he this was like last year the rights viral fight was over h1b's this year it was michael knolls having clavicular on and just like dead ass asking him about jd vance and that's where griffin which we got a clip which we got a clip right here let's take a look Yeah, but I mean, like this next election cycle, who's going to win?

It's going to be Gavin Newsom against J.D. Vance because J.D. Vance is subhuman and Gavin Newsomog. He's getting J.D. Vance is subhuman? Yeah. What makes you say that? He's got a very short total facial width to height ratio. He's a very recess side profile, whereas Newsom is like 6-3, Chad. So your, J-D is very tall. J-D. has got to be. Well, still, I mean. Gavin Newsom, obviously, mocks him to death. So you prefer Newsom to the vice president.

I'm just telling you who's going to win. Do you prefer him, though? Honestly, it's hard to say, but Newsom being that much more of a maugger. And, like, having a president who's, like, fat, and especially that young. I don't think he's fat. I would say he's a bigger guy, for sure. It's just, like, it's just embarrassing. saying, like, how are you fat and you expect to, like, lead a country?

You can't even be in shape, you know? So you, like, you got, let's say you got to vote. It's 2028. I'm voting for Gavin Newsom. You're voting for Gavin Newsom. You can't be that. You can't be that subhuman. So you, hold on, you got, all right, well, this actually is of a thread with the whole

conversation, because you look at these two candidates, you have Gavin Newsom, worst governor in the country, I think we would all agree, destroyed his state, let its main city burn to the ground because of his incompetence, is a person. personal, complete, derelict, liar, degenerate. But he is good-looking. I'll grant you that he's good-looking. And it kind of looks like Patrick Bateman, American Psycho. And then you have this vice president,

President Trump, the transformative right-wing president in our lifetimes, who you support Trump or no? Yeah. Okay. And you've got this vice president, a hand-picked by Trump, who is extremely intelligent, very right-wing. I think he's a pretty good-looking guy. I don't know.

Maybe I guess you disagree. But he's all these things, checks all these boxes, would have all these great policies. And regardless, you're going to pick the pro mass migrant, pro trans, pro murder the babies, pro burn the cities to the ground, pro BLM Democrat because he's skinnier than the conservative vice president. One hundred times over. I'm so mad at Sager. I tried to get Sager to do this interview and he was like, no, I don't know if we should do it. That could have been our interview.

They could have been Sogger getting mocked on. Does Sog or Mogger? There you go. There's, okay, so there's a lot that's interesting about this. First of all, Michael Knowles doing this interview to start with DailyWire's not doing well. You know, they're losing subscribers and because people are going bored to these type of characters. So the choice to do this interview, I think, is in a sense, like an attempt to maintain relevance to be like, look, I'm down with these, you know, characters. these new kids streamers, like, I'm good with this.

And then... NOLS is pretty good at that, in particular, on the Daily Wire. Like, Shapiro's not really evolving, but NOLS is kind of getting out there. But, yeah, so, I mean, but then, you know, this conversation doesn't, like, go that well for him. And it's funny because I watched most of the whole thing. And it's like, clavicular is sort of taking to the logical extreme some of the arguments that people like Michael Noles has been making. So there's been this whole thing on the ride about, like, beauty and beauty is not subjective.

It's not an eye of the holder. It is a, like, established fact. And also, like, playing with these sort of, like, eugenics-type ideas. And so, yeah, for clavicular to go to the logical extreme of, like, yeah, Gavin Newsom looks like AI slop of the Aryan Chad with the perfect Aryan family. That's my guy. And we should also say clavicular owes in some sense his rise to Nick Fuentes, like, They're also very, like, adjacent and friendly creators. Fuentes and the Groyper's also hate J.D. Vance because he's a race trader, because he married an Indian woman and because he has biracial kids.

And those things sort of, like these things sort of fit together as well. But the other thing I noted just specifically about that clip is when Knowles first asked him, like, so do you prefer Gavin Newsom? He's like, yeah, I guess so. But then by the end of it, when he realizes, like, oh, this is getting a rise on him. Yeah. Like, he's like, losing his mind over this. By the end, he's like, I'd vote for him 100 times over, you know, just completely, like, all in on it. And I've seen another interview clip with him since then where he's sort of like, oh, I was trolling.

So giving himself some wiggle room to kind of like back out of this. But Newsom is leaning into it hard. You know, there's other creators online who are also like, you know, people I don't even know who they are, but other right wing creators who were like, you know, uh, Janey Vance is. chunky and fat. It's a no for me. And posting the Gavin Newsom, Chad photos. Gavin Newsom is posting those photos, posting like ugly picks of J.D. Vans from when he was younger and pudgyer and like didn't have the beard and whatever. So that's, that's where we are. That's the state of our politics today. Maybe clavicular should go do Marines boot camp and then have words for J.D.

versus Gavin Newsom. I think the conversation about, like, beauty is an interesting invocation here because a lot of what I see, including for myself on the right, is this question about nature and how when we're in such a antiseptic, like, high-tech world, we do lose natural, some degree of natural beauty because everything is artifice. Everything is being constructed in less and less natural ways, not everything. But, you know, the metaverse was. all we were talking about the new year, what, like five years ago, something, yeah, five years ago, something like that. But with that in mind, clavicular is totally, I think, making the point, and Gavin Newsom as well, about how natural looks. You can't, like, replicate natural, this is so stupid, but like, you can't replicate natural good looks by hammering your jaw and injecting your face with fillers. You can do something that looks like X, Y, or Z, right?

You could create an artifice of the natural, but you can't actually, it's not natural. So it doesn't look natural. And you get into that uncanny valley. I obviously watch a lot of Real Housewives. I'm incredibly familiar with these efforts. But in all seriousness. With the looks maxing efforts.

Yeah, with the looks maxing. From the women. From women, right. But, like, you can't, it's not natural. And at the same time, the people like clavicular are trying to frame it as totally natural as like this is, it is the Nietzschean perspective that what we have is power and strength. And he will stop at no ends to construct power and strength, even if it means taking all of these high-tech medications, hammering his jaw, like whatever it is. And it's not attractive. And honestly, I think the same thing about Gavin Newsom.

Like, he just, he looks like Patrick Bateman. Well, that's the thing, is none of these, even Jimbrough trend or this looks maxing trend or even, like, Gavin Newsom as this, you know, undisputed Chad, none of these things are for the female gays. No, they're also the male gays. So well said. Yeah, I mean, and that's a hundred percent. And so it's like. It's working. It's interesting.

I mean, it feels very sort of like homoerotic because I'm like you actually, number one, you hate women, right? I mean, not all looks maxers, but many. have this total antipathy towards women and, you know, talk about women are horrors and, you know, ruining our lives and all this stuff, right? This stuff is very adjacent to, like, in-cell ideology, pickup artist ideology, like Manosphere stuff. Like, it's all very similar, right? So they hate women.

And then the ideal Chad male that they're trying to craft is much more based on what a man's idea of aspirational male beauty would be. So, I don't know. They're literally, and they're literally sterile. I love that. And to this point, Emily, about like, yeah, they hate women so much that they're sterile. I watched this clip, Emily, and I was like, Republicans are so screwed. Like, they were relying on, like, the spirit of Trump to carry them for, like, 30 more years.

And then the Epstein thing happened, and now people are already looking into what's next. And no one likes any of the, any of the lineup behind that, which is like this JD Gavin thing. They're okay with Gavin. And then this is dark maha. And not just the Trump stuff and sort of like the future of the leaders, but this core sense of Republican conservatism was always about family, right? Protecting the family. And this new generation seems to be transcending the need for family or like feeling like, well, and if I can't own a house or have a family, why not reject the entire concept? And something I've been seen with conservatives is, you know, either it's clavicle saying he's sterile and he doesn't.

And he's actually doing it for men, not women. I'm seeing people like Asben Gold, another big conservative YouTuber say, I will never have a girlfriend again, like, as a positive thing. And I still see Andrew Tate, who's been for years saying it's gay to have a girlfriend. So it seems like these like influencers. Quint has similar stuff too. Yeah, that it's literally gay to have sex with women. And so it's like all these influencers are sitting to like carve and guide out a path that's like,

post women and like post even having any children or you know continuing the human race and that's because I think it's important like Tate particularly frames it as about power and strength and again like these are ideas that are relegated to the fringe I mean there's for now there's a reason we're laughing at that interview between knolls and clavicular because clavicular it's like fun to us right that people mistake the size of the their audience for the size of people's endorsement of their, right, yeah, right, right, right. It's like entertainment versus like believing every word of their. They are extremely entertaining. Right. And the reason that they're extremely entertaining is because there were all of these taboos created.

And those taboos were getting pinned, I think rightfully, to the left for the last 10 years. And it made a lot of young men totally miserable and vulnerable to this kind of thing and wanting to just reject. the what they felt like was the tightening of the strictures and the status quo and the cultural centers of power that they felt like we're emasculating them and to some extent there's truth to that but on the other hand it when you're unmoored you are much more easily like blown by the wind in one direction or the other and it's all about power that's what that's what these guys are talking about at the end of day is like what you should value is power And that's really not funny because that can go to a very, very dangerous place very, very quickly. Well, and it's all about power because they are powerless. I mean, this is to me less about, you know, backlash to left or whatever, although I'm not saying that there's none of that in here. But this is about where we are in late stage capitalism, where men have been told by society that their entire worth comes from being able to provide, being able to make money and provide for a household and a wife and, you know, kids and all of that. And then they've been robbed of the ability to do that.

And so out of that, you know, extreme place that our society has come to with extreme wealth inequality where there is very little hope that people would be able to, you know, obtain the, even the life that their parents had, even though some of that's viewed through Rhodes colored glasses, that's how you end up with this very nihilistic, a series of extremely nihilistic viewpoints. I mean, that's, you know, that's Fuentazism, which is, you know, effectively neo-nobes. Naziism. It's race nihilism of this is just how the world is. We can't fix it. We can't make it better. We just have to deal with it. It's looks nihilism where it's like, listen, if you look better, you get ahead. And that's just the way the world is. And they create an exaggerated version, actually, of how bad the world is because there are obviously plenty of people. I mean, Donald Trump is not good looking and fat. And he's president of United States. But, you know, so it's a caricaturedish view of reality. But rather than having an aspiration of like, well, let's tackle that. Let's make it so that you don't just judge the book. by its cover. Let's make it so that there's better opportunity for people, regardless of, you know, how they look on the outside. It's, no, this is how it is. And so I am going to succeed by the rules of this system, no matter what it takes, because there are so few other roots left open to me. And with clavicular in particular, you know, he talks about how, first of all,

he says he is on the spectrum. He's neurodivergent. He talks about how in high school he had trouble fitting in, you know, had the sense of like, you know, people are getting dates, people are getting invited to parties on being left out. What's going on here? And then he goes to college and he gets kicked out in like three weeks time. Yeah, he's 19, by the way, right? Like he's 19 years old. Exactly. And he talks too about how he wishes he could just go to college and be a normal college kid. And it's after he gets kicked down in college, he starts being a bouncer at these nightclubs, I think, in Miami. And that's where he develops this sense of like, oh, the good looking guys, get the girls. That must be what life is completely about. And then applies this, you know,

in his view, like scientific and again, very eugenicsy, you know, assessment of what is beauty and how can I attain it? Because this must be the path forward. So he is a perfect, you know, he's a perfect emblem of the hopelessness that I think, you know, really faces not just men, everybody in the, you know, end stage capitalistic. like society that we face right now. So it's not to deny people agency, but it is to recognize that no one should be surprised that we have these weird nihilistic fringe viewpoints that are coming to the four. Yeah. I really think for the Washington Post recently about how this is a crazy stat. More young men say they want to get married than young women. And when young women are looking at young

men, it becomes a little bit clearer as to why young women are maybe saying, we are going to check out of this marriage thing. I'm good, thanks. Myriad reasons for that. And Griffin made a point I don't want to gloss over, which is for Republicans, is there a kind of rhyme to what happened, as we were talking about earlier in the show, back in 2016 and then beyond, especially 2020, for Democrats where some of these hyper-online meme-level. liberalism was being pinned to every Democratic candidate, you know, things that were going on

in classrooms. Like just think of the libs of TikTok account. Just think about that and how powerful that was, especially like around 2020. Does that then because of our totally fractured media landscape mean the claviculars of the world start to infect the way average voters perceive Republicans. And the answer to this is not, people are not prepared for this at the RNC, just as they weren't prepared for it at the DNC, because the answer is absolutely yes, absolutely yes. He has a big platform and he is speaking as somebody who is pro Donald Trump. He is not like a conservative influencer. He's not a conservative radio host, like a local radio host circa 1996. He's not a team player, right. You could call up Mike Pence when he was a local

radio host in Indiana in the 1990s and be like, hey, come to our retreat. You know, maybe he's getting a little chippy. Come to our retreat, be a speaker, whatever, and you can whine and dine a radio host. Like, you have more control if you're the RNC. You have no control anymore. These are all decentralized. But here's the other thing. Like, the DHS Twitter account is posting about deporting 100 million people.

That's every non-white person citizen and human. non in the entire country. That's a third of the population. They post like Nazi stuff on their main account all the time. Just overtly. I mean, Stephen Miller is every bit as extreme as Nick Fuentes or clavicular or whoever. So like, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Just way less entertaining. Here's one that they did over for New Year's. Homeland Security says the piece of a nation no longer besieged by the third world. And it's a car on the beach with a wave. It's actually a by the way. By the way, They stole this artwork from a Japanese artist, by the way. Whoops.

Also, this is not where you'd want to park a car. It says America after 100 million deportations. So again, that's not criminal or legal. That is a third of the population that is every non-white person in the country. So, like, of course people are going to associate these fringe ideologies with this administration because this administration has a fringe ideology that it puts out to the public every single day. Well, I think we're just going to see more political mainstream, quote unquote, mainstream. Like nothing is as mainstream now as it was when we had more monoculture. And so I think what I was

saying is like there's more, more fringe is going to be incorporated into the quote, mainstream in the future because of the total decentralization that you don't. I guess it's part of the good and bad of losing gatekeepers is that it's like on the one hand it's good because we benefit from the gatekeepers being gone, meaning that we can do. this. On the other hand, when the gatekeepers are gone, it means you have to contend with the bad actors in that space, too, and they do start to really change things. The last thing I will say on clavicular is that we laughed earlier at Zoron's collectivism line being, I saw this on X. Someone said the joke Griffin made. He sounds like an Ein Rand villain. And what's interesting

me about that is Ein Rand was a the took Nietzscheism to its extreme and this idea that power is what mattered did start to change the way, influence the way that the right approached capitalism and the right approached culture and Ein Rand was virulently anti-Christian, was anti-religious, which is the case with everyone who was downstream of Nietzsche in the 20th century, in that kind of stream of thought. And that's, again, extraordinarily dangerous because what you're starting to see physically as a symbol in ridiculous figures like clavicular trickles more and more into policy, too. If you think this is just people looking at themselves, looks maxing. It's not. It's going to be power maxing.

It's going to be, well, it's going to be polymarket maxing, which we're doing in different sectors of the economy right now, too. And so it's basically saying the only thing that matters is strength, the only thing that matters is power. And that's horrifying. Again, there's a real danger that migrates from the fringe. It's a very dark view of life. That's probably a good segue, Griffin, to the Nick Shirley talking about speaking of influencer culture. bad actors and all of that sort of stuff and how much power they have now.

Emily, we got to talk about Detective Shirley, the Gumshoe Reporter. What's going on here, Emily? There was a YouTuber named Nick Shirley who went around Minnesota, walked up to some daycare centers, and they didn't let him in. Break it down for us.

I don't know if we have like an element to put up on the screen. I'll pull something up, yeah. Over the last couple of weeks, this really broke right before, if I'm remembering correctly, it's hard to keep the day straight right now. But Nick Shirley, who's a pretty big, kind of right-coded influencer, you see the video on the screen of CNN going to talk to Nick Shirley in Minneapolis as he's investigating the massive fraud ring that, you know, it was like 78 people have been charged, something like that already. He goes and knocks on the door

daycare centers, places that are purporting to treat autism, those types of things, and posts a video that just in the last couple of weeks has gone mega viral. I think it has like 3 million views on YouTube as of the time that we're talking about this and many, many more views on other platforms. It's basically taken what everybody had heard about in the last month, which was the story people have been shouting for the rafters about in Minneapolis for a long time and not just people on the right,

by the way. The article that I've cited the most is a 2024 piece in the Minnesota reformer from a Somali former government official who was saying, this is a real problem, here's what's going on, X, Y, and Z. And so Shirley's tactics

made for very compelling viewership because you could see in some of the cases, like he's been re-investigated by CNN and NPR and different outlets, who've called all the places that he went to you can see very clearly in some of the cases that it's shady

and that they're kind of fronts but it's gonzo and in a way that... But most of them he got wrong like so the fraud is real. There is real fraud like hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud but the places that he went to were real. There's real fraud and he couldn't even get to the right ones

right? Like he fucked up. Not all of them but yeah some of them actually do turn out to have Because for one of them, he came early. So, like, one of them was a daycare that opens at 2, and he came there at, like, 11 a.m. That's what it sounds like. Yeah. And there were others where they were just, like, this man and a whole crew are pounding on our door and demanding to see our kids. No, thanks.

We're not opening the door for you, you know. In the best circumstances, you wouldn't let him in. I mean, listen, like, this guy is a propagandist. He had previously gone to Israel and did a whole propaganda piece for them. them about how moral they are and all the lies that the Palestinian joke, blah, blah, blah, like this is who he is. This is not journalism, is completely shoddy, intentional propaganda. You should see his Seacot videos.

Oh, boy. Yeah. We also, we got to hear his voice. We got to hear his voice. That's important, too. Let's just take a second of him, of CNN confronting him, Crystal, before you finish your point. Okay, yeah, great. ...doors and talk to people at various daycares.

He claims are frauds. Did you come during a normal operating hours when you came to visit? I came at 11 a.m., I believe, and I also came the following day later in the day. The point of it is not whether or not I came at the right time of their operation hours. The point is that blacked outdoors, they can't give you any information. You call that number, no one answers. I wasn't trying to go inside. There should be a way for somebody to actually be able to call that number and somebody to be able to answer.

These aren't real businesses. But surely you don't think a daycare should just be unlocked. You shouldn't be able to just walk into your reception. No, every daycare is locked. And so, okay, you bring them up to your point. Why can't be getting information how to enroll a child? Because you don't have a child. And then there's one more moment here.

That's really good. Yeah. All right, let's try this moment here. Do you think that federal law enforcement hasn't done enough? I mean, they would say, look, these fraud cases have been going on. But they've already done like 80 indictments. The cases have been going on, you know, for years. And why did I show up one day in Minnesota and go to all these daycares, no children?

They're receiving millions of dollars. We encourage you nearly $100 million, $110 million in fraud than one day. How do you know that all the allegations that you're making are true? How do I know that they're true? Well, we showed you guys the, we showed you guys what was happening. And then you guys can go ahead and make your own now. We're coming. So we can make our own analysis.

Are you 100% sure you're true? Yeah, I am 100% sure. The sweatshirt. Incredible. The sweatshirt is the infamous quality leering center, which is, uh, the name of one of the daycares with misspelled learning So what happens here

is he films this bullshit propaganda video which like okay the most you should do from this is then if you're genuinely concerned about fraud which they're not Trump is like spending every day pardoning a bunch of fraudsters like that's his whole administration is like a grift

and like stealing everything that's not nailed down and pardoning white collar criminals left and right so they don't actually give a shit about this but those are white those are white fraudsters though No, no, no, no, no, Hunder and president. You're right. George Santos. Okay, so also.

But in any case, so they, you know, if you actually care about this, okay, well, let's see if he's, you know, really on to something here. Let me call these daycare centers. Let me do some investigation. Let me press the state of government of Minnesota. Does that happen? No. J.D. Vance retweets it.

I don't know. Don Jr. bunch of other, like government officials. Just pick it up and run with it. Because they don't care whether it is true or not. In fact, I'm sure these are not. J.D. Vance is not a stupid person. I'm sure he is probably suspects that a lot of this is not actually true, but it serves their propaganda. So not only do they take it and run with it with zero checking, but they use it for official government policy. So now not only are all of the

child care payments of the state of Minnesota paused based on this absolute garbage propaganda bullshit, but they are now saying they're going to pause all child care subsidies to every state in the entire country. Like this is, I mean, this has genuine consequences. And this is administration, oh, we're supposed to be like pro family, blah, blah, blah. And also in favor of people being able to like go and work hard, how are you going to go out and hold a job if your daycare center is now shut down? A lot of these places are run very, you know, they don't have a lot of extra bandwidth.

So if you have your subsidies cut for a month or even a handful of weeks, that center may be closed. Your child care costs have just skyrocketed. So that's, I mean, it's just disgusting to me. But like I said, it serves their propaganda in terms of, you know, they want to make it about we hate immigrants. We hate black Muslim immigrants in particular. It also is like, oh, undercutting the social safety net and undercutting the just, oh, it's all just fraud. You know, they're not really doing anything beneficial. And it also is not lost on me in this point that others have made as well, that it comes at a time when Israel has taken a major beating with the right and with the public in general in terms of their perception. Their view is the best way to combat that is by stoking

Islamophobia. And now here you go with the guy who did, you know, propaganda for Israel coming in to do this anti-Somali, like fundamentally like anti-Islamophobic propaganda as well. So I think those things, you know, are worth noting that those are happening in parallel. There are, though, I think Ryan and I read from this, it was a Minnesota Reformer article that I just referenced by a Somali, I think worked at the in the AG office in Minnesota talking about how there were real cultural components of this. And actually this article was also saying some of the biggest victims of this were Somali, people who, you know, were being caught up in this massive effort. And that, listen, I think our federal subsidy. system is so like rife with fraud that there are plenty of white people who are out there defrauding taxpayers and the government. But there will even like there are Somalis who say there's a cultural component to this. So I don't think it's entirely just a question of like stoking Islamophobia. I think there were maybe we all agree on this that there were concerns

in Minnesota about. Yeah, which is why the Biden administration prosecuted some like 78 people or whatever, you know? I mean, that's, and that's the thing is like, it makes me sick to see Elon Musk jumping in on this, like, brother, you did Doge? How many people did you refer for criminal prosecution of fraud? Zero. Zero. Okay. So, yeah, sure. I agree. The subsidy, by the way, the biggest subsidy queens are the Elon Musk's of the world. Yes. Completely. Yes. And so, you know, like, if you're serious about, and I think that people on the, I agree with. Ryan, I agree with Rokana, that people on the left should be concerned about fraud in these programs because it does delegitimize them when it comes forward and on someone who believes in a social safety net and universalist programs. Like, I think a lot of what Minnesota did was really great and really important. So you have to be serious about fraud. This is not the way to do it.

Demonizing an entire group of people going off of some bullshit propaganda video, honestly, undercuts, you know, anyone who's serious about this, like, undercuts. cuts their position in seriously investigating this stuff. Instead, you do like what Rokana is doing in California where he said, look, there was a report that said there is a significant amount of fraud here. We need to have a commission. We need to root the sound. We need to figure out where these dollars are going so that taxpayers feel like their money is being well spent. Like there are real and serious ways to go about it. The idea that these people have any interest in this when at the very same time he's pardoning some, you know, white collar criminal who stole over with like a billion

and then denying people restitution that they're owed who were victimized by these crooks who like took them for all they were worth in Ponzi schemes, et cetera. Like, let's be serious. They don't care. They just care because it's useful of their political project. And Trump literally pumps and dumps the entire economy with his like crypto coins and stuff like that. Like he's the biggest fraudster in the world. I'm confused.

Do we like it or not? Like, is it based or not to do this? I'm confused because I think they're just following the great tradition of our president. True. Well, no, I mean, it's a, I think maybe the biggest, I don't know, one of the bigger takeaways from this is the, like, it's a media story in that the New York Times waiting into the Somali fraud case is what then elevated it into the national discourse. And in Minnesota, this has been a huge story for years, like years, years, years, like 2017, 2018, even before that. And when the New York Times.

covered it. My perspective as somebody on the right is this should have been a national story or more significant national story for a long time, just given the scale of the alleged fraud. It's so serious and significant. And the charges are insane that it was downplayed. And when the New York Times comes in, elevates the story, you still have a lot of people on the right who are frustrated with a lack of, I think understandably frustrated with a lack of media coverage prior to the New York Times coming in. And that happens so often, the New York Times comes in, elevates a story, Springfield, Ohio is a really good example. And then people on the right will go berserk in response to that. And it completely shifts the conversation to something different.

And that's what with Nick Shirley is because a YouTuber who went around with a DJI mic and an iPhone with a couple security dudes and was just like knocking on doors, didn't have, presumably didn't have like an editor or a fact checker or anything like that. He put out a 40-minute YouTube video that was like fairly entertaining and went like caught like wildfire. And that's now the tone setting in politics. Like that's how the conversation is getting set going forward. And there's just nothing that we can like that's how it is the way it goes. Yeah.

That's the last thing I'll say that it's been irritating me as well as I see all these posts that are like, where's the mainstream media coverage? I'm like, this literally all started because of a New York Times piece. Like, y'all weren't doing anything on this until the New York, like, the establishment outlet wrote this piece. And then I've also seen all these, oh, look at all these outlets that haven't covered it. And then you go and look and they have. And, you know, a bunch, like, there's a bunch of videos now, local news, even Barry Weiss's CBS. Local news is on it.

CNNPs, like a bunch of these outlets have gone. out now to be like, okay, well, what's really going on here? But because those outlets aren't feeding the narrative that they want, then they discount that. Like, that doesn't count because you're not just, you know, feeding into this, um, this smear campaign that we, we want to see here. Well, I think he's the Andrew Callahan, the right. I think it's incredible that they, the right now has an ugly guy doing man on the street stuff uncovering. Um, so I, I'm excited for the next investigation and the next national news story from Nick Shirley. Anything else that we need to cover in this in this hour here, Crystal, what, anything,

you're dying to get off your chest? Yeah, I am dying to get a little bit into this billionaire meltdown just because I've been somewhat involved with it. So if we, so, yeah, drama alert. Yeah, Dr. This is a billionaire. I'm not a billionaire and I'm a melting down. So David Sachs here says, as a result,

response to socialism, Miami will replace NYC as the finance capital. And Austin will replace SF as the tech capital. It's funny because Miami just elected a Democrat as mayor too. So that's L.O.L. And Austin is always democratic. But whatever. Anyway, this is all in response to, okay, there is a possibility that there may be a ballot proposal on the ballots in California about a 5% well-taxed to be paid over five years. And it's a coalition of unions who are pushing this. And so Rokana, who knows a lot of these guys, you know, David Sacks has actually hosted fundraisers for Rokana,

came out and was like, this is good. And I support it. Cue an absolute meltdown from these dudes. And I think it's because it's Roe and because he represents Silicon Valley And because, like I said, they know him. It feels like more of a betrayal. Like I think if AOC said something similar, I don't think they would really care. But because it's Roe, they're like losing their minds over it.

And then what you have up here, I think, is you now have a bunch of these tech billionaires who very Ackman style are coming out online to announce that they're going to put all this money together to try to unseat Roe. And they say primary him. I mean, California has a jungle primaries. They don't really have primates, whatever. They want to challenge him, right? This is going to be unsuccessful. But they're throwing a complete temper tantrum about it. And so, you know, there's threats that they're going to leave the state and they're going to go to Austin or they're going to go to Miami and the whole deal.

Here's an account saying, this guy's Martin Casado. He says, Roe has done a speed run alienating every moderate I know who has supported him, including myself. Beyond being totally out of touch with that faction of his base, he's devolved into an obnoxious jerk. At least that makes voting him the fuck out all the more gratifying. And the reply here says, time to primary him. Count me in, happy to be involved at any level.

Yeah. There was one of these, I can't remember who it was from, that was like, he's just acting like a full on Bernie bro now. And I'm like, my brother. My brother in Christ, he was literally co-chair of Bernie Sanders campaigned, like, what are we talking about here? And they're happy to, your point about David Sacks hosting fundraisers for Roe and then talking about Miami and Austin, relatively blue places, Austin in particular. They didn't care about that when they thought Democrats were on their side.

I mean, that is the case with so many of them. They believed that they could kind of co-op Democrats and then realized that basically Trump was much, much easier to co-op. was it Chumath who basically said that to who was a it was like Pete Buttigieg or somebody who was on All In he was like I would try to call the Biden administration and get them to work with me and they weren't taking my calls and it's just like it's not about even like left or right this goes this is like such a we're tying a bow on the whole episode here it's about who gives them power and how they can be like strong players in the economy and they believe in their core that this is like we're tying a bow on the whole episode here it's about who gives them power and how they can be like strong players in the economy and they believe in their core that they know what is best. And what's best is them having a ton of control in the marketplace. Yeah, they are deeply authoritarian people. I mean, they genuinely are. And that's what.

So they hated the Biden administration for regulating crypto. They hated the Biden administration's antitrust push. I mean, the Biden administration, like, there was very little in terms of AI regulation that was actually done. But the little bit that was done, they absolutely hated. They took it seriously. Yes. And then you also have these sort of series of personal grievances. I recommend you guys watch the interview I did with Jacob Silverman about his book, Gilded Rage,

because he did all the fantastic reporting about these guys. You also have these personal things where, like, you know, they were pissed off that their employees were woke. Or in Elon's case, the fact that his son transitions to being a, you know, a girl that really bothered him on a personal level. So you have, and then you have, I think it's Andresen who's upset because his. daughter goes to college and becomes a communist. So you have this sort of like upset over being regulated combined with these sort of like personal limitations on their power and domain over either their family members or their employees that leads to this absolute embrace of Trump.

And so in any case, to take it back to California and Roe here, you know, if you look at the polling on this, it's like 70% of the country that thinks billionaire should be to more, right? It is an overwhelming consensus, not just among Democrats, among the entire country that billionaires are not tax taxed enough and should be taxed more, especially as AI is coming and the circles back, you know what I was talking about early on and thinking about what is this going to mean for our society and what could a social contract look like that would actually work. The track we're on right now is to have a handful of trillionaires and everybody else basically like, you know, lamps of the slaughter, irrelevant, unneeded. That's where we're headed.

And democracy can't survive that situation. There's just no doubt about that whatsoever. So in any case, this in the grand scheme of all of that is a very modest proposal. Right. They don't, but the fact that it's even potentially on the table, again, this hasn't even made it on the ballot yet, but even potentially on the table. And that their representative in Silicon Valley would champion it has led to total meltdown. And so, you know, for me, it reminds me a little bit of why there was. a freak out about Zoran in New York. Not only is he confronting Capitol, but also on the,

you know, that he's an avowed anti-Zionist. And there's this sense like, oh, you could never hold that position in New York City of all places. And so for Roe to hold this position in Silicon Valley of all places has a similar, a similar character and similar flavor. And is why I think it's an important political, political battle that is brewing here. I mean, when the 2017 tax cut was passed. This is how serious the Republican Party is about actual, like, closing loopholes and, you know, actually having a fair taxation system. Paul Ryan was out there talking about the proposal. It's long circulated on the right to get your taxes onto a postcard and essentially a version of the flat tax, some type of version of the flat tax. And it all,

this obviously was not happening. It's all out the window. They have this generational opportunity to close loopholes. and create a more fair taxation system, they've then just repassed a version of that same bill and are expending no political capital to closing loopholes. There's a way, I mean, I'm a flat tax person, and we've talked about this before, but I think if these like libertarian business supermen

were serious about populism, which they're obviously not, but we're serious about opposing elites, then you can do taxation in a way that closes loopholes and is still to them free market friendly. But nobody has any appetite. They might say in the abstract, oh, that sounds good. But when push comes to shove and stuff's actually on the table, nobody ever, ever, ever wants to do it. So you could even see momentum from the right to do something like a flat tax if you have all of this generational political capital.

But we didn't. And I think that tells you what type of system people really prefer. Yeah. I mean, I paid a flat tax, but we can fight about that another day because it's regressive, whatever. But your point, I mean, your point stands it. Here's one thing I replied to one of these guys. I don't even remember which one with. But I was like, listen, in a sense, Rokana is like kind of trying to save your ass here.

Like he calls a wealth tax and anti-revolution tax. And he's absolutely right. Like, do you think people are just going to stand. by forever and watch you destroy their jobs, destroy their communities with your AI data centers, steal their water, hike their electric bills, and they're just going to take it forever? Like, no. I mean, this is, this was the new deal.

The deal in the new deal was that capital realized, okay, we're going to have to do something here or else we're going to end up with communists. Like, they're going to end up taking our shit. It's not going to be better for us. if we don't do some sort of, you know, smoothing the rough edges of capitalism. And it's crazy to me that none of these guys see this. I mean, it really is genuinely insane to me that they don't recognize that if they don't cut the public in on the deal and they don't, they already have more money they could ever

spend in a lifetime. Like, if you don't strike some sort of a balance here, it's going to be way worse for you in the long term. The public, and I'm not just talking about Democrats. Like, they hate you. They hate you. They think you are villains. Listen to, you know, listen to not only time ago.

Listen to Steve Bannon. Listen to Nick Fuentes. Like, there is a very broad. Tim Dylan, look, there is a very broad coalition of people who, by the way, rightly, see you as genuine villains and despise you. So in the grand scheme of things, like a 1% for five years wealth tax or 5% in. five years wealth tax is such small potatoes. And so for me, that's the other part of this that's important is like, it just shows you there is zero reckoning with that. Like even something that is a relatively in the grand scheme of things modest proposal, there's no like, oh, I don't think

this is the right way to do it. Let's do this instead. It's just absolutely no. We will give you nothing. We will take our toys and leave. We will go. Some of them are like, we'll go to a different country. Zero loyalty. I don't buy it. Yeah. I don't either, by the way. I don't buy it at all. Because look what's happening in New York. It's like Delano. Yeah. After Zoron got elected, there were more luxury real estate sales, right? Because there's reasons people want to be in New York.

There's reasons people want to be in Silicon Valley. Those things are going to persist. So while some of the, I mean, I don't. I got the Mundani effect here from the independent. Sales of luxury homes spike in the Big Apple. Maybe there will be a handful of like high profile people who very dramatically like take their toys and go the way Elon left for Texas or whatever. I don't put that. Yeah, I don't put that out of the question. But overall, is Miami going to give him the finance? Like, get out of town. Is Austin going to out to Silicon Valley in terms of tech investment and not, I mean, it's nowhere close to that. It's preposterous. It's a fantasy. So anyway, I think this is the, this is the fight that the Democratic Party needs to take on. And if if they want to win back the trust of the people, if they want to be able to deliver, like, meaningful change in the country and, you know, a genuine populism that's actually going to be

beneficial and help to bring the country back together. These are the types of fights that they're going to have to take on. And, you know, Gavin Newsom, by the way, is on the other side of this, just to go back to Gavin Newsom, takes money from these guys, is raising money to oppose this ballot proposition, like, you know, is definitely on the wrong side of which way you would want the Democratic Party to go. But he mogues. But he does mug. So what are you going to do, you know? Me and David Sacks, we're going to be in a Miami penthouse doing low-grade amounts of meth. Which is creating a new finance capital of the world.

Yeah. And while J.D. Vance gets a catastrophic amount of Ozempick shipped to his house. Like, he's, it's just going to be insane for J.D. the next couple of years. There's going to be another transformation. Well, folks, that's going to do it for our Friday episode. Oh, yeah. It's going to be, we're going to see something crazy before after. He's already had the transformation.

transformation. He grew a beard. Oh, the beard. The eye shadow. He grew a beard. He lost probably like 30 pounds. I don't know how much. He changed his name like five different times.

Yeah. I mean, I think with JD, it's going to be, it's going to be tough for him because they banked so much on the vibes, you know, and like he does it. The vibes are not with JD, but we'll see. Yeah. All right. Well, folks, the vibes are good here on. January 2nd, 2026. We're excited for a big year. Anything else that we need to mention before

we sign off and see you back in studio on Monday? Yeah, regular schedule next week, whether I'm prepared for that or not. That early wake-up call is going to be rough. So, you know, the real problems. These are the real problems that I'm facing in my life. You know who's ready for it? I bet Sagar is just waiting for his alarm to go off in the dark. You know, he's so excited. Well, you know what, now that he's a father, you start to, like, work becomes easy once you have kids because he's just like parenting is so much harder. So he probably is looking forward to like, can I get away from this baby for a little bit of time? Just like, let me go and be an adult for a little bit of time. I love it.

And to the audience, we're so grateful for you. We hope you're having a great start to the new year. And in the comments of this video, let us know what you want us to cover this year. Anything that you think that we haven't covered enough, things that you'd like us to look into, things on the horizon, we're interested to hear what you think as well. And that'll do it for us. We'll see you all Monday. Bye, bye. Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers? Who catfish is a city? Is it even safe to snort human remains? Is that the plot of footloose? I'm comedian Rory Scoville, and I'm here to tell you, Josh Dean, and I have a new podcast that celebrates the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals.

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