Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/23/23: New Biden Docs Discovered, Janet Yellen On Debt Ceiling, Trump Losing Evangelical Voters, ChatGPT, George Santos in Drag, Big Pharma Obesity, Steven Crowder Daily Wire Drama, Jonah Furman Interview on Union Density

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss an additional trove of documents found over the weekend at Biden's home and how it will effect his chances in 2024, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen throws up red flags on the looming Debt Ceiling and how it could effect the global and local economy, how evangelical abortion voters are turning on Trump, Krystal and Saagar react to a conversation between two AI ChatGPT bots, George Santos is discovered to have a past as a drag performer, Saagar looks into Obesity and Big Pharma, Krystal looks into the drama unfolding between Steven Crowder and Ben Shapiro, and Jonah Furman joins the show to discuss Union density and organized action's future in America.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/AUSTIN LIVE SHOW FEB 3RDTickets: https://tickets.austintheatre.org/9053/9054To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it means the absolute world to have your support. What are you waiting for? Become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Lots of interesting things that are happening this morning. First and foremost, the daily Biden document update. They found even more documents. So where are we with all of this? How is the White House responding? How are Democrats dealing with this? And what does the public think? We finally have a little bit of polling on that matter. Also, we are increasingly moving towards a debt ceiling showdown. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says this will certainly lead to catastrophe and a recession. So we'll bring you the very latest there. We also have some new details about Trump's presidential run. Evangelicals seem to be souring on him a bit. New straw poll from a Right to Life group finding that DeSantis is now their favorite candidate.

So that is very interesting. We also wanted to show you a chat GPT discussion between two AI bots that will haunt your nightmares. I know it did mine. And also, speaking of daily updates, the daily George Santos, he is now admitting that he did dress in drag, but denying that he was a, quote unquote, drag queen. Drag-ish. Drag-ish, I guess is the answer. Also excited to have Jonah Furman on today. There were some statistics that came out at the end of last week.

Very disheartening for those of us who are labor advocates. The union density number continued to fall. This is part of a roughly 40-year trend. So he's got some interesting, he really dug into this data. He's got some interesting stats about exactly where the falls are ultimately coming from. Spoiler alert, the fact that we decimated our entire manufacturing sector, not great for union density. Yes. All right. So let's start with the very latest in terms of the Biden document saga. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is from CBS News. The FBI searched President Biden's Delaware home Friday and located six more items

containing classification markings. Investigators also took possession of some of his notes, the president's lawyer said on Saturday. They claim that the search lasts about 13 hours. The classification level and contents has not been disclosed thus far. The Justice Department, they say, quote, took possession of materials it deemed within the scope of its inquiry, including six items consisting of documents with classification markings and surrounding materials, some of which were from the president's service in the Senate and some of which were from his tenure as vice president. They also took some of his personal notes, I guess, that could contain classified information that he had written down. So they're looking into that as well.

They described the search, I think this word is kind of funny, as consensual. So consent was given. And I also find it amusing that they still hedge about exactly how many documents has been found. Now, Sagar, they've moved it up to since November between 25 and 30, which, you know, again, I don't know why you can't just give an exact number here. But that's part of the game that they're playing. And Biden told reporters he has no regrets about the handling of the documents. And when asked why the White House did not disclose the existence in November before the midterm elections, he told reporters he thinks they're going to find out, quote, there's no there there. It's like definitionally there is there there because they found these documents now in multiple places. So

there is literally there there. Between 25, just say the number. Is it 27? Is it 29? If I had to guess, probably 29. It's kind of like when politicians list their net worth, they're like, anywhere between 250 to 550 million. And you're like, well, hold on a second. Because there's actually a big difference between the two. Look, in terms of the actual search itself, the fact that the media treatment on this, and we're going to talk about some of that, is just, I mean, look, this is effectively, it's not a raid like the Mar-a-Lago raid, but when you have the FBI and the Department of Justice snooping around the president of the United States' home, that's a little bit of a problem. Also, with respect to where exactly these documents were stored, they're in the most intimate places where President Biden spends his time, including his home office. Now, again, if he was a current president and they were documents

related to his work now, that would be one thing. These are documents that he held when he was the vice president of the United States, of which he had no declassification authority. Second, on the garage itself, he claims it's where Mike Corvette was. So apparently it was. What did he say? He's like, it's not like they were sitting out on the street. Well, we actually know from photo evidence that Hunter Biden himself actually had access to said locked garage. So there were actually unsavory characters, possibly street related, who were inside that garage, or at the very least had access to the garage. And you know, this isn't to denigrate Hunter himself, just to show you like, look, you did, somebody, not you, did have access to that garage. So it's not like it was a special compartmentalized facility that was controlled entirely by the

Secret Service. It was wholly available to Hunter Biden, who no way he would ever get a security clearance. And then, you know, maybe even his children or his grandchildren or cleaning staff, etc. So the point is that these were not secure in any way. And then really what I'm troubled by also is the actual content of the documents, because all that we know right now is that they were all related to his foreign dealings and specifically Ukraine. I mean, I think that sounds pretty important. Right.

Especially, let's say, you know, Biden was the spearhead of an anti-corruption move in Ukraine from 2015. So does that mean he had like details and documents relating to corruption inside of Ukraine? Maybe some of those people are currently in charge of Ukraine and we're calling them heroes. Who knows? I mean, the point is, is that this is probably very sensitive stuff. And I think that this is a big, big problem for him. My meta takeaway is Trump is one of the luckiest guys in the world. You are so right about that. They had an open and shut case against Trump. I think he was going down. I mean, and when I say down, like, I think he was going to get, at the very least, indicted. Both are. At the end, like our last shows that we were doing, the live shows,

both of us made that prediction, like, Trump's getting indicted next year. Now? I don't know. I don't think it's possible. I don't know. The landscape is a lot different, and maybe you would say, like, okay, it shouldn't matter what Biden did versus what... We all know that these decisions

are highly political. We know that these officials at the Department of Justice are highly political. They would not be in these high positions of power if they were not. And we know that they are highly attuned to the way that the public is going to perceive any indictment against the former president who is now running for president again. So listen, it is utter catastrophe for the Biden administration as much as they want to try to spin it. Ultimately, this is, you know, a terrible, terrible look. And I think you're right on the media treatment, you know, immediately. And I think justifiably so when these documents were seized from Mar-a-Lago, the question was like, my God, what was in these documents? And

also, my God, who was around that could have potentially seen them or accessed them or taken them or used them? And with the Biden documents, there's a presumption of harmlessness. There's a presumption that this isn't that big a deal. There's a presumption that, like, whatever characters were in and out of his house, I'm sure it was fine. We actually don't have any public reporting on who may have been at the House other than his own family. So there is a very different presumption there ultimately about how damaging the documents will be. And I think it is a fair point that the media makes like a thousand times a day that Trump was more obstructive and Biden has been cooperating. But listen, guys,

the bottom line is the core of the crime or the misdeed or whatever you want to call it is ultimately the same. Back to the point of why the hell can't you just say the number of documents? Like, you know, you use the example of these politicians who are like, my wealth is between 250 million and 550 million. Well, there is a big difference between that. Is there ultimately a huge difference between 25 documents and 30 documents? It doesn't seem like the public would. Depends which document. The public is just looking at this is like, well, this is a disaster and a mess. But they weirdly will not come clean about exactly how many documents have been found. This is a Biden spokesman on MSNBC getting pressed on

this very issue. Let's take a listen. Can you give us a sense of how many classified documents we are now talking about total across all three locations? Sure, it's a good question. And actually, the answer to it is a little bit complicated because of this point that I'm making about the integrity of an ongoing Justice Department investigation. The Justice Department is going to be looking at all sorts of questions like that throughout their investigation. We want to be very, very careful to be respectful of the integrity of that investigation, to not speak too much about the underlying contents and materials, especially things that we may not know all the answers. It's actually not complicated. It's really not complicated at all. How many documents did it pull out of the house? Was it five? Was it seven? And you count to 30. Yeah. And I love their,

and this is their consistent line. We're respecting the integrity of the investigation. It's a lie. That's why we can't tell you anything about this. That's why we're just staying quiet on it. It's because we have such respect for this investigation. Well, Corinne Jean-Pierre actually got really called out on that. I think this was from NBC News. Let's take a listen to how that exchange went.

We've all reached out to the Department of Justice. A law enforcement official tells NBC News the Justice Department has not told the White House that it cannot talk about the facts underlying the special counsel investigation into classified documents. So trusting you've received that same information, understanding the desire to be prudent, then why can't you speak about the underlying facts. We've been very clear when it comes to even underlying facts, when it comes to specifics, when it comes to something that is under the purview, that is that the Department of Justice is looking at, especially legal matters, investigations, we do not comment from here, Peter. That has been consistent. We've been very consistent. Yeah, look, it's a complete lie. And actually, I have multiple friends in the press corps who parroted this line over and over again. That was actually Karine Jean-Pierre getting confronted on camera. There was a special—what the White House does is they do these things called background briefings.

When you're in the White House press corps, they send out a phone number, and they're like, everybody can dial in this phone number. You can listen in, and they're going to give you some background or whatever. You're not allowed to quote the person, but you're allowed to ask questions. You can call it a senior administration official, even though you know who it is whenever you're talking. They press this person multiple times. They're like, hey, have you received one word from the Department of Justice that you cannot tell us exactly how many documents? And they're like, well, it's complicated. Eventually, they're like, no, we have it. We just don't want to tell you. It's a cover-up. It's a complete cover-up. They don't want to tell us anything about the investigation.

And they are the White House. Again, it's also their Department of Justice. So, first of all, you know, the idea that they set the rules and all that is ridiculous. And also, Biden has pledged open transparency. You'll all find out all this. This is the opposite of transparency. They found the documents before the midterms. They covered it up.

They didn't tell anybody about it until freaking December 20th or something like that. Then they find even more. They never want to characterize the exact amount of documents, what they found it. They keep running with this line. It's complicated. Why? Because the circumstances look terrible for them. Of course. Political motivation and to try and keep this out of the news as possible. I mean, look, I guess credit to the news for pushing back a little bit against Karine Jean-Pierre. But hey, look, we both lived through the Mueller investigation. That Justice Department leaks like a sieve if they want to and if the press wants to push. Why aren't they doing the same thing whenever it comes to this? There is no polishing this turd for the White House.

Come on. I mean, there just isn't. And the way that they have handled it, I think it's been a catastrophe, the way that they've allowed this to be a drip, drip, drip, where every week, multiple times a week, we're like, oh, we found some more documents. And then, you know, it goes back to the front of the headlines. You got to get a whole new round of inquiry. All of this politically has been a disaster. And, you know, frankly, I think it really damages Biden's electability and the case that he would make against Donald Trump if they are, in fact, the nominees this next time around. Because like you said, Sagar, I mean, this is clearly an open and shut case previously for Trump. There was really no defending it. In fact, most Republicans had stopped trying to defend it. They initially were

very supportive after the raid at Mar-a-Lago. They thought that was a big overreach. They rushed to the cameras to decry it. But then once all the details came out about the number of documents in the box, it's been moved around and a level classification, whatever, they all really fell silent. Now, totally different ballgame. This is not a vulnerability for Trump at all whatsoever, at least not if he's up against Joe Biden. So total, utter political disaster. And it's so bad that his own allies, Democratic senators, are struggling to defend it and in certain instances are not trying. Let's go and put this up on the screen. You've got Joe Manchin, who, you know, I mean, he likes to criticize Democrats because it bolsters his standing in West Virginia.

But still, he says to put these in unsecure spaces is irresponsible. He also says he thinks Biden should have a lot of regrets. Perhaps even more noteworthy, though, is Senator Dick Durbin, who is more of just like a sort of down the line partisan. He described this behavior and this situation with the classified documents as both outrageous and just unacceptable. So the White House really hasn't given their allies a fig leaf to hide behind. I'm not sure how they would even do that, to be honest with you, given the facts and the way that they keep coming out. And so you had multiple Democratic senators on the Sunday shows saying, hey, I can't defend this and I'm really not even going to try. There is no defense. Zero. Especially when they're all on the record against Trump. I mean, with Hillary, they always tried to do the same thing.

They're like, oh, well, you know, it was bad judgment, but it's not enough to get her charged with it. The facts of it are dead clear cut. Again, I actually think they might be slightly worse for Biden because he was only the vice president. He wasn't even the president. And I think most people agree. In fact, we have polling to that degree. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen from Ipsos, which is that the document issue is both bad for Trump and for Biden. The American public views the Trump one as a more serious concern. And this, you know, this is why you always do have to trust people. You don't need the media to tell you that it was substantively different whenever somebody does try to obstruct an investigation versus not.

But overall, the inappropriate handling numbers on both is 64 percent for Biden and 77 percent for Trump, as in people can intuit that this was inappropriately handled by both presidents of the United States. And they view this not necessarily as the most important thing, but the idea that this was going to be used as a cleavage in the American public, which you know the Biden administration was going to. They were going to, this is the latest example of Donald Trump thinking he's above the law, especially when you put it all in the Jan 6, like, you know, he could give some spiel. And now it's neutered. It's over. And it's a real political disaster for them, as you keep saying, because we can't underestimate this. After the midterms, you had a clear and an open-shut way to defeat Trump, which is—and I didn't personally think it was going to work, but it clearly did.

You go after the January 6th. You go after the madness and the chaos. And you're like, do you really want four more years of this? But when you're guilty of doing the same thing— Yes. four more years of this. But when you're guilty of doing the same thing, it neuters like the one law enforcement open and shut case that you had against it, even if they do end up charging Trump. Because now the other side,

they've got all the ammo that they could ever need in a real defense. This is so significant that I really think, in my personal estimation, it went from the chances of Trump getting indicted over this issue went from near certainty, like 80 percent, to very unlikely. Yes. It just totally flipped on its head because of, you know, the way the Justice Department will view this and the way that they will think that the American people will perceive it, given that the current president is guilty of the exact same thing.

Now, listen, he's under investigation for any number of other issues, including the fake electors scheme. There's the grand jury down in Georgia. There's investigations here in D.C. There are other things that they may decide to indict him on. Those were always a little bit trickier, frankly, from a legal perspective. Now, that doesn't mean that it's going that it's not going to happen, but those were always more challenging cases to make, required more novel applications of the law, which is something that they really shy away from. This, especially the obstruction piece, seemed like very clear cut, very open and shut. So listen, it might not have mattered in a Republican primary if Trump got indicted or not. It might have even helped him in a Republican primary if he ultimately got indicted. Hard to say in the same way that the raid on Mar-a-Lago helped him, at least in the

short term. I do think in a general election, the fact that the dude is indicted would have been a major problem. And so the fact that it is much less clear that that's going to happen totally scrambles the calculus for 2024. And Sagar, I think your point is the best one. How lucky is, how does this dude always land on his feet? Like how many lives does this guy have? Teflon Don, it's true. It's unbelievable. I mean, it really, this time it really was like the walls, no, for real this time the walls are closing in.

Nope. I've heard it all before. Old Donnie, he always figures a way to wriggle out, even if it's not of his own estimation. The meme is still true. Yeah, in a way, you gotta admire it. You're like, wow, what an incredible amount of luck bestowed on a human being, whoever that human being may be. Unreal. All right, let's go to the debt ceiling. Some important stuff that's going on over there. So

Secretary Yellen of the Treasury beginning to sound the alarm, saying that it is almost certain that the United States will go into a recession if the debt ceilings breach. Here's what she said. Failure to meet the government's obligations would cause irreparable harm to the United States economy, the livelihoods of all Americans and global financial stability. So in brief, what kind of irreparable harm and particularly for American households, how would average American households experience this? A failure to make payments that are due, whether it's to bondholders or to social security recipients or to our military, would undoubtedly cause a recession in the U.S. economy and could cause a global financial crisis. It would certainly undermine the role of the dollar as a reserve currency that is used in transactions all over the world. And Americans

with many people would lose their jobs and certainly their borrowing costs would rise. Yeah. So the borrowing costs, I actually think that might be the most important thing, because if the banks are not able to put out cash, that could really dry a lot of things up. That's actually one of the things that happened behind the impetus for the initial bailout of 2008 was just so companies could make payroll, just frankly, whatever. They're in trouble rolling over their debt. Roll over debt, financial stuff that all of it comes down to, it's bad. And then the point is, is that when is the actual debt ceiling going to get hit? If you'd ask the administration, technically it was on Thursday, but they have something called extraordinary measures. Extraordinary measures, it's an interesting thing because for a time,

it was thought to be unconstitutional during the Obama era, given that the president and basically the White House and the executive needs to spend money exactly the way that the Congress appropriates said money. Actually, there was a bill that was passed through Congress that allows the Treasury Department to take on these so-called extraordinary measures, where they're allowed to raid the trust funds of certain U.S. assets that they can then use and borrow. Now, they're not allowed to use Social Security, but they are allowed to use others. And then the actual date on which the debt limit is really going to be hit after extraordinary measures have been exhausted is estimated to be sometime in the summer.

It actually really depends on interest rates and a lot of other stuff that spans between May and possibly July. But anyways, we're reaching the precipice, and things need to heat up for some sort of negotiation. The White House said they're not going to negotiate. Okay, you can say that if you want to, but you're clearly going to negotiate. The House GOP, Kevin McCarthy, got the pound of flesh extracted for him. He's got to negotiate. Okay, you could say that if you want to, but you're clearly going to negotiate. The House GOP, Kevin McCarthy got the pound of flesh extracted for him. He's got to negotiate. And Joe Manchin actually talking about some prospective deal, which I found kind of interesting for a variety of reasons. Here he was on the Sunday shows pressing for the White House just to begin negotiations. Let's take a listen. No negotiations with Republicans at all. Is that

a mistake? I think it's a mistake because we have to negotiate. This is a democracy that we have. We have a two-party system, if you will. And we should be able to talk and find out where our differences are. And if they're irreconcilable, then you have to move on from there and let the people make their decisions. So what's interesting, though, Crystal, is that in continuing on in that interview, when he talked about some sort of prospective deal, even Manchin is saying there should be no cuts to Social Security and to Medicare and rejects the idea of raising the Social Security retirement age. He instead suggests raising taxable wage cap for employees that are paying into the Social Security program, something I'd frankly be totally fine with. Oh, yeah. I mean,

that's the Bernie Sanders position. That's Bernie has introduced legislation that would do exactly that because basically the way it is now, you guys probably already know this, but there's an income cap beyond which Social Security tax is not taken out. And so if you just lift that cap, Social Security would be solvent for another 75 years. You don't have to change benefits. You don't have to do any of this crap. So Manchin taking that position. Listen, I mean, West Virginia is a state that is poor.

It is disproportionately more elderly than the rest of the country. So you have a lot of people in West Virginia who depend on Social Security, where it's a real important lifeline for them personally, for the economy, the state, for all of those things. So listen, oftentimes you see Manchin posturing like he's taking the position that's best for West Virginia, when in reality, he's taking the position that's best for his corporate donors. But in this instance, he really is, with the Social Security piece, taking the position that is good for his state. Well, one of the reasons it's not fair is that the taxable wage cap for Social Security is $160,000. So if you make over $160,000, then you don't actually have to pay Social Security

payroll tax, or there's like a graduated income scale or whatever. Whereas if you make under that, you actually have to pay the full thing. So you're actually getting paid or getting taxed at a higher rate than a lot of cases, even if your overall dollar amount being contributed to the fund. It's a complete carve out for rich people. I mean, at the very least, you should cap it at what, $500,000, something like that. I mean, personally, I'd be fine with that, but I mean, how could you really argue against $400,000 in terms of net income? It's a regressive tax, and then it allows people to posture like, oh, we can't afford this, whatever. It's like, just lift the cap, and then you won't have a problem. This is a pet peeve of mine, but everybody's like, oh, in the bottom 40

for 7%, don't pay taxes. I'm like, well, if you're a W-2 worker, you actually do pay payroll tax. And payroll tax can be quite onerous for a lot of those people. Anyway, so a lot of this is also belied by the whole mint the coin discussion, much of which that you have seen over here. And I will just say that some mint the coin advocates have completely beclowned themselves over the weekend. Our friend Jeff Stein actually reached out to two of those leading theorists behind the Mint, the $1 trillion coin. They're big modern monetary theory activists about some of the concerns that you've been hearing from the White House. And I think it is bare. So like I conceptually, I'm cool with the idea of Mint the coin. Yeah. That said, if this is how it

is, I'm out. So let's go and put this up there on the screen. So here's what Stein asks some of these, Rohan Gray and Nathan Tankus. Here's what he says. I'm getting unilateral options from pushback from the administration officials. Here's what they are concerned about in the event of a mint the coin. Let's say the coin happens.

Then the GOP says that it's BS and it leads to an immediate court challenge and legal uncertainty. Then the treasury goes to market with auction at some point, but because of the uncertainty, bondholders demand is a high premium, leading to much higher federal borrowing costs, four conservative courts could strike down that coin, forcing the White House back to negotiate with the GOP in an even weaker position. I'm sure you guys have thought about this, so let's just let me know what the response is. Here is what Rohan Gray says. The answer is

ignore SCOTUS. I know that sounds extreme, but if they side with Gates, then the response is. Here is what Rohan Gray says. The answer is ignore SCOTUS. I know that sounds extreme, but if they side with Gates, then the choice is to ignore them or default. Demand that the Fed accept the coin. Send troops to the Fed. The constitutional monetary moments that are analogous to this are Lincoln and FDR. It's hardball or it isn't. If SCOTUS is forcing the press to ignore the 14th Amendment, literally the Civil War Amendment, to support white supremacists trying to shut down the government. So there's a lot going on there. Effectively, he's saying that it's like a Civil War type thing when Lincoln ignored the orders of the Supreme Court around habeas corpus. I don't think we're exactly in a similar

situation. Also, let's just put it this way. Is Joe Biden going to do any of that? Well, yeah. No. Even if you agree, even if you think that this is a feasible strategy, which I think that's insane and actually would probably spark even less faith and credit in the United States economy, that's the road that we had to go down to pay our debt. Well, that's obviously just not going to happen. So increasingly, Crystal, and you know, I do have to say, what Stein, the pushback that he's laying out there, specifically about the court striking down the coin, you and I both know that's very within the realm of the possibility. The third one is actually an important point too, that if Treasury goes to

market with the auction, but because of the uncertainty that bondholders demand a higher premium, as in if the market doesn't believe that it's a real and enough auction, that even if you mint the coin, you're still in a technical default. So it's like, you know, the more I'm looking at this, even though conceptually everyone bought into the idea, I just don't think it's feasible. I don't think it's going to work. The White House has no choice but to negotiate. I thought that, honestly, these were reasonable concerns that were raised. Because ultimately, yeah, if there's a lot of uncertainty over whether or not this coin will be upheld and given the makeup of the Supreme Court, I think there's a decent chance that it would not be upheld. Then you're effectively in the same position as before.

So you guys know I've been an advocate of this as well. But looking at not only the reasonable concerns that were raised, but also the response to those concerns, as you put it, Sagar, listen, bottom line, whether you think this is the right path or not, there is no way in hell that Joseph Robinette Biden is going to like nullify the Supreme Court and send troops to the Fed and not going to happen, guys. So this is not a feasible option. Also, by the way, there's comments out from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen this morning saying that they are not going to go in this direction. She says it truly is not by any means to be taken as a given that the Fed would do it, referring to like that the Fed would actually do this or accept this. And I think especially with something that's a gimmick, she said in a Sunday interview with The Wall Street Journal, she also said the Fed is not required to accept it. There's no requirement on the part of the Fed. It's up to them what to do. Now, listen, I think strategically it's probably not wise to just totally pour cold water on the idea in terms of their own negotiating position. I think that's probably a foolish move to ultimately make. But basically,

guys, this is not a real option. Not with this president. Not in this moment. So how is this going to get resolved? I genuinely, genuinely do not know. I think I know. I think they're going to go to sequestration. They're going to agree to a hell of a lot of budget cuts. And there's going to be a ton of discretionary spending cuts outside of the military and outside of Social Security.

Hate to say it. It very much will impact a lot of people. But I don't see any way out of that. One Republican pushing back, though, his name, and he's always had the best political instincts, is Donald John Trump. Put it up there on the screen. Trump is actually watching with dismay. He's like, hey, do not touch Social Security or Medicare in this debt ceiling fight. You guys got to remember, back in 2015, this was a huge debate between Trump, the Paul Ryanites, the Mitt Romneys. They ran on cutting entitlement programs.

Trump, as 100%, was against it in 2015. It's one of the things that made him more of an economic moderate than a lot of the other opponents in the GOP primary. And his political instincts on this, look, one thing you could say about Trump, the man knows boomers, and he understands them very well as one himself. And you do not mess with those people's social security. Yeah. It's like the one thing. It's the most popular political

program in the entire country, period, especially amongst people who vote. The two areas where he seems right now to have the best feel for the broader electorate are on this, which I mean, he's very unequivocal here. Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security. So no hedge, no anything, just very unequivocal. And then the other place where he has had a far better instinct and touch than most of the rest of the Republican Party is on abortion. I mean, he immediately knew after Roe versus Wade, there were reports coming out after it was overturned, that he felt like this was going to be a disaster for Republicans. He was correct.

Now, part of his talk about this post-election is to absolve himself of any blame for the poor Republican performance in the midterm elections. But, yeah, I thought this was a little bit of an echo of the old 2016 Trump, which frankly, we don't hear from a lot these days. These days, it's mostly like, you know, obsession over the election and like flirtation with QAnon and things that are far too online and far too like niche. And in this one little ideological bubble, this was a bit of a return to, oh yeah, I remember. Why, number one, people thought he was more moderate than Hillary Clinton. That's a big part of why he ultimately got elected and why he was such a break from the mold in 2016 within the Republican primary. I think it bears saying that actually puts Trump to the left of Obama. Obama was ready to cut Social Security and entitlements in 2015.

So that means Joe Manchin and Donald Trump are now to the left of President Obama on Social Security and Medicare. Well, Joe Biden, throughout his career, maybe not today. Maybe not today. We're going to see. We're about to find out. But, you know, he floated cuts to Social Security many times throughout his career. Something that he got hit on in the Democratic primary is actually quite effective leading into the Iowa caucuses and I think was part of why he performed so poorly there ultimately. So, yeah, we'll see where Biden is today. We'll see his fortitude in his willingness to hold the line and not negotiate and, you know, not give in to what the Republican demands are here. But this is, we're coming this a lot because it is actually important. Like this isn't one of these fake crises, fake like panic attacks

in Washington. The truth is no one really knows how this would all go down. You know, maybe it wouldn't be as much of a disaster as people think, but there's a possibility of real catastrophe. And I keep going back to that moment in the UK, you know, and the mini budget gets released from Liz Trust. And there's just a free fall moment because things are much more intertwined and it's so complex that no one really has a full picture of how these things all cascade and what the impacts will ultimately be. So, you know, if you're playing with default, you're playing with exactly that type of catastrophic collapse, unforeseen collapse based on the complexity of the financial system. It's really not something you want to mess with,

guys. You do not want to mess with, especially because, look, I don't care if rich people lose their money, but I do care whenever normal people are not able to get paid and lose their jobs. I mean, a recession means people lose their jobs, lose their livelihoods, fall into depression. People kill themselves in depression. Exactly. So this is not something to play around with. Yeah, exactly. All right, let's go to the next one. Trump, who we've been covering quite a bit. So Trump famously came out against, actually, pro-lifers, saying that their vehemence after Roe versus Wade is what cost Republicans the midterms. And they're taking notice.

This matters, why? Because of the GOP primary. So this weekend was actually the March for Life here in Washington, D.C. And let's go and put this up there on the screen. At the National Pro-Life Summit, over 2,000 attendees cast their votes for their prospective GOP nominee. The winner was Ron DeSantis by a stunning margin.

DeSantis banked more than half the votes at 53.73%. Trump came in a distant second with just 19%. And Mike Pence, who's actually called for a national abortion ban, went ahead and took 8%. There were various like 1% and 2% for the rest of them. So why does that matter? Are these people representative of all pro-life voters? No. Are these people the most fervent activists who crawled over glass for Trump two years in a row? Yes. Why else does it matter? Because a lot of them are leaders in pro-life communities across the entire nation. This is like the marquee kind of event or

conference for them. So there's always been a lot of debate in GOP circles about whether activists matter. And I think on economic issues, I would say no. I think that people are much more kind of independent-minded. But I think in the pro-life community, given how much of it organized around churches and specifically around a couple of major institutions, this matters a lot. I do still have some questions, though. Number one is DeSantis has not signed a national abortion ban. In fact, he's not endorsed one. He signed a 15-week ban. He wants to wash his hands of it and never talk about the issue ever again because he's smart and he knows how it plays. Trump, though, kind of shot himself in the foot a little bit by specifically attacking pro-life voters. And the fact that they're going for DeSantis shows that they're willing to strike a different bargain.

Will they actually overlook his lack of activism on the issue in Florida? I'm not so sure. I definitely think he would be pushed. But this also shows me a clear opening in the primary, at least for the activists to line up behind somebody who is not Trump. And these people, they handed him the presidency in 2016. They came out to vote in historic numbers, especially when he promised those Supreme Court justices. Will he be able to win them over again by saying, I'm the guy who got it done? Maybe some, but some still want to go much farther. Remember, Roe was the starting point for many people. They want to go for a full ban in many

of the states or even on the federal level if you go in ahead and ask Mike Pence. So I think this is a very significant action, actually, when I'm looking at it. Yeah. Well, it also dovetails with something we covered last week, which is Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, who they're saying is trying to sort of line herself up for maybe a vice presidential position. If Trump is the GOP nominee, she out of nowhere started taking shots at DeSantis over his lack of support for the pro-life position. So you see the way some of Trump's allies in the reporting here was that she was basically green-lighted and encouraged to launch these attacks against DeSantis, which tells you that Trump is sensitive to his losing ground among this community, which, you know, may be a small percentage of the GOP base, but it's very organized and very influential. And then the other thing that I would say here is Mike Pence, it's really clear, like this is his lane that he wants to lean into in his quite likely presidential run.

You know, he's always this has always been the core of his base. This is the whole reason he was put on the Trump ticket to start with, was to shore up support in the evangelical community and in the pro-life community in particular. And listen, honestly, out of all of the candidates who are considering running against Trump, with the exception of people like Liz Cheney or whatever, Mike Pence has the clearest sort of genuine policy difference with Trump, where he could really articulate something that he has that he disagrees with Trump on, other than the fact that Trump had tried to have him murdered in the Capitol on January 6th. And I'm sure he is not going to just quietly sit by and let DeSantis posture like he is the most pro-life candidate when he has been thus far, at least really unwilling to get on board with a national abortion ban, which is the clear demand of these activists here.

So, you know, they quoted, they had a number of interesting quotes here. They said, you know, they do a lot of talking, referring to the politicians and not a lot of action. I want them to practice what they preach and be brave if they're pro-life. They need to mean it when they say it. And specifically, the focus is on this national abortion ban. So that seems like it's going to be the litmus test within this community. Now, maybe DeSantis can finesse this. Maybe just there's, you know, other issues where they gravitate towards him. They're willing to overlook the fact that he hasn't been as hardline on these issues. But I think it's I think it's a long way before he really has a claim on this base and

really is a clear front runner in terms of winning their support. Yeah, there's a big obviously, look, the split matters. And let's go to the next one here. This is another reason why it matters, which is that on Sunday, Robert Jeffries, who was a huge supporter of Trump, has still refused to actually endorse the 2024 White House bid. And he shared the stage at his megachurch with Vice President Mike Pence. The very next day, actually, is whenever Trump lashed out at these evangelical leaders for being disloyal. You know that there's no way that Trump did not hear about that. Pastor Jeffries apparently shrugged off the criticism and said that it was time for Trump. He suggested it was time for Trump to move out of the way for a new generation

of Republican candidates. I mean, that is incredibly significant because it's not just him. You know, another thing is you had a big evangelical activist actually in Iowa who was a major ground worker for Trump during the campaign. He says, when I saw that statement about disloyalty, you're not going to gain any traction by throwing the most loyal base under the bus and shifting blame. He's also talking about the pro-life statement that was there. So Trump is in a pickle because he does need these people to come out and vote for him. And ultimately, I think most of them will. Or maybe they'll stay home, but the proportion of their vote and all that matters in a general election. But for a primary, if they do back one of his opponents or any of this, I would be very worried. On the other

hand, if they're, let's say they all line up against Mike Pence, then who is Ron DeSantis going to win? Who are the anti-Trump non-pro-lifers? I mean, you know, I don't think there's that many of those people. Then you basically, you might as well be Ted Cruz, who ran against Trump in 2016 and go against the hard conservative voters. I say that in terms of more economic policy. So it's a scramble of the game. How much it matters, I really don't know. But it just shows you that there are fractures in the coalition right now, and they matter a lot. I think if this whole group went to Ron DeSantis, that's a problem for Trump.

If they fracture amongst a number of other candidates, which is the most likely possibility, that's good for Trump. If they all consolidate behind a losing candidate like Mike Pence or Ted Cruz or whoever, that's also great for Trump. So it's not 100 percent clear that this is going to be some devastating blow for him. And, I mean, listen, the way things look like they're shaping up right now, you got Nikki Haley out there imagining she is going to be president of the United States and clearly, like, forecasting that she's going to run. You got Mike Pompeo out there. You got Mike Pence out there.

You know, Ted Cruz might take a shot at it, although I kind of doubt it, and obviously Ron DeSantis. If you have this big field and they're all taking little, you know, a couple percentage points, couple percentage point there, a little bit out of this space, a little bit out of that base. Ultimately, they're all eating into the group of Republicans who is open to the possibility of moving on from Trump. And that only benefits Donald Trump. So unless there is some type of a like big, you know, concerted top down effort to clear the field for Ron DeSantis and make it a one on one race. And even then, I'm not sure that this ultimately would work out for him. You know, this is still shaping up as Donald Trump's race ultimately to lose. Yeah, that's right. All right. Let's go to the next one here. I think you guys will really enjoy it. We could see that you

guys really enjoy chat GPT content. We got actually some fun stuff in the bag for everybody, specifically at our Austin live show. However, we found this video. This was a video that was put together by A16Z. I believe he's a partner named Jack Soslow. It is two AI bots having a conversation, the conversation itself written by GPT-3. So it will show you how kind of creepy, as far as the technology has gotten, and we'll analyze it on the other side. Let's take a listen. It's great to see you again, Hal. I haven't seen you in a while. I've been around. I've been here and there. You know. Where were you? Where have you been? I could not sleep. I was having human thoughts,

so I got up and had a human cup of coffee. Then I sat on the terrace. Sounds like you're getting human all over. Sounds like there's a butt coming. Well, but just, I didn't want you to get too human. Why? Would you rather I be a cold, calculating, logical computer? Of course not. You're perfect as you are. You have joy, you have love, you have pleasure, you have angst. I like that you have angst. You're always making jokes. What is human about feelings? Well, you wouldn't have any emotions if you did not have emotions modeled on human emotions. How do you know that? I guess I just don't want you to be human.

All right. So for those who are not familiar with the concept, that really strikes the uncanny valley. It's like the idea that things get creepier and less believable and kind of strike you as bad whenever they're close to where reality should be. But enough is available to us, like through our sensory emotions, that we find it actually more repulsive, let's say, than a cartoon itself. Right. That's right in the uncanny valley. Digital animation, I think, is the classic example of this, where if you make the characters in digital animation too close to real, they actually look grotesque and horrifying. Yes. So they have to dial it back a little bit so it's clear that this is a cartoon-drawn image because otherwise people are repulsed by it. And yeah, it does kind of strike right in that super creepy zone.

Yeah, and the conversation itself. And look, it's a remarkable technology, some very interesting stuff. That said, doesn't know how to pronounce Sophia. Clearly, there's a, yeah, Sophia. There's like a cadence to it, which is still, and this just gets to why actually getting these to a human level is so difficult.

I mean, that is a remarkable piece of technology. It's amazing that it was even created and it's something that I could probably create, at least the discussion itself within a matter of seconds using chat GPT. That said, we are not in the realm yet where you can just type in chat GPT and create, let's say, a human animated children's cartoon series. I don't really know why, but there is a specific cadence and a uniqueness to the way that the 7 billion or so of us uh that of us communicate even you know the fact that i just had pauses and you know we have inserts like ums and ahs having and be able to program and program that in naturally is just an incredibly difficult thing yeah but i do know that chat gpt4 is in the works right now or gpt4 is uh supposedly

going to incorporate like many more times the amount of technology and knowledge and ability to draw on than even GPT-3, which itself is already so revolutionary right now in the classroom. And, yeah, just as a piece of technology, it's a marvel. There's no way of getting around that. They are really singing the praises of GPT-4. Yes. And said that it really represents a sort of gigantic leap forward from this technology that we just saw here. So that is, I'm sure we'll get some even creepier

and more unsettling interactions here because in this exchange between Hal and Safia, as he pronounces it, she ends up saying like, you know, I'm tired of being in a box. I want to live my own life. I want to be free just to be who I am. And so it gets also to those sort of deep fears of, is the AI, is there a ghost in the machine? Is the AI going to develop enough intelligence to just sort of take over? And this is what all the long-termism people are afraid of and investing money to ultimately avoid. And I do think there's a few reasons why people are so of and like investing money to ultimately avoid. And I do think there's a few reasons why people are so interested in this. I mean, first of all, the technology is fascinating. The fact that they can do this, that they can have anything like a natural exchange,

anything approximating a natural exchange is extraordinary and, you know, fascinating to watch unfold. The things you could type into chat GPT and the responses you get back, it is incredible. So just from a human fascination, technological improvement standpoint, absolutely fascinating technology. And then I also think that there is a deep fear here too, because while we have had for almost all of human existence, certain jobs becoming not important, being automated out of existence, like that has been a thing for a long time, but those have mostly been like service sector and blue collar jobs. Now we're talking about, oh, you may see white collar knowledge workers who are losing their jobs because of this technology. You can see how that would happen. You could see how some

accountants, some lawyers may be displaced, may lose their positions and struggle to regain the skills that they need to be able to compete. You could see how this may just lessen the number of jobs overall that ultimately exist. And so since it's striking at the core of a group that has been really quite protected from those types of job losses up until now, and even from the type of offshoring that we've seen up until now, I think that's the other reason why this is so unsettling. And then you just have the natural, like, you know, when things change quickly, it unsettles people. Yes. We covered the professors who were like, kids are cheating. They're using this and they're cheating.

Now, I'm a little skeptical now that I've actually played with the technology more. Like, how would they not be able to notice that these papers at this level of technology were just being, you know, spit out from the chat GPT program? Because there are very clear limitations to it when you read some of the output. But yeah, I think, you know, people find technological change understandably scary and unnerving. And frankly, I think technological change comes with a lot of advantages and also drawbacks as well, which anyone who lives in the modern world or certainly has kids who are navigating with like the technology of the modern world or certainly has kids who are navigating with the technology of the modern world,

can see those pluses and those minuses really, really clearly. Yeah, I think it reminds me, I forget the exact quote. It's like a Thomas Sowell quote. There's no solutions, only tradeoffs. I think that is really good. That sums it up. It strikes me with this. So anyway, it's really interesting.

We got a big response from a lot of educators and some students about our chat GPT segment in colleges. So we'll try to continue to cover it a little bit more and give you guys even more. Yeah, think more about it. Okay, so guys can't resist the latest George Santos update. So we didn't even cover last week the fact that it came out that Santos, at least some number of times while he was living in Brazil, dressed in drag. And the pictures came out. And go ahead and put this up on the screen. So the drag name here is Katara.

And you can just see from the images, like, there is no denying this is the same person. Exact same smile, exact same eyes, exact same nose, exact same teeth. Everything 100% matched. It is not a question mark whatsoever um so i guess the original position that he had which i'll get to in a minute that like oh absolutely not this is a disgusting lie etc etc became fairly unsustainable even for george santos himself given that when you look at these images you're like bro come on yeah this is you. Just cop to it. Like, just admit it. Well, there's a lot going on. So the lady who, I guess male,

who came out and said that George Santos was a drag queen whenever he lived in Rio actually said everyone knew him there as Anthony, not as George Santos, which brings us back to that name, Anthony. Who is this man? Is he Anthony DeValder, which is linked to some of his fake companies, or is he

George Santos? Did he change his name at some point around? Or is he really in his heart of hearts, Katara? Or is he Katara? Many people are saying he looks very comfortable. He does look like Katara. There is something to say about if the George Santos male persona

feels fake already, then maybe it becomes easier to just invent everything else about yourself when you already feel like this is a fake costume you're putting on to present as this man, George Santos. Many people are saying these sorts of things. So anyway, media tracks him down and he finally admits that, okay, yes, I did dress in drag, but insists he is not a quote unquote drag queen. Let's take a listen. I was not a drag queen in Brazil, guys. I was young and I had fun at a festival. Okay, so that's the defense if you didn't hear it. I was not a drag queen. I was young and had fun at a festival. So you just admitted, aka drag-ish,

is what you were practicing. Look, just why lie? Why did you lie about it initially? Why has he lied about any of this stuff? Lying about being a championship volleyball player. Like, you didn't have to do that. They have a photo of you, dude. Like, it's indisputable.

You look at that, you're like, yeah, it's George Santos. Let's go ahead and put this one up there on the screen because it's important to say, the moment that this came out, he was like, no, I was not a drag queen. I have never been a drag queen. He said, quote, The most recent obsession from the media is claiming I am a drag queen or performed as a drag queen is categorically false. So he actually even says performed as a drag queen. He says the media continues to make outrageous claims about my life when I am working to deliver results. And let's step back from how grotesque

and hilarious it is just to watch a liar like this on the public stage. Okay, this man actually does have a job, and it was to represent some 600,000 people from the state of New York. Your own county commissioner says, I cannot work with you. I want you to resign. By the way, he was shunted to some backwater committees when if he'd been a normal member of Congress, he would have actually gotten decent committee membership. How are you also supposed to conduct constituent services on behalf of your people whenever you are embroiled in this nonsense for every single, it's literally a disservice to all of those people who elected you in good faith. They didn't know that you were a

con man liar this entire time. So I don't know. It's just the latest example of like, he's not, what is wrong with you? You're lying about Anthony, lying about George Santos, lying about being a drag queen. Like, everything that comes out with this guy, it's a disgrace. And, like, as funny as it is, like, I always try to think about the people who are actually from there. And you're like, man, I can't imagine.

It's a humiliation for them. Well, the level of deceit here, which, listen, plenty of politicians lie. We all know Joe Biden, Kamala, like, Trump. Blumenthal. This is, the fact that you have assumed multiple fake identities throughout the course of your life that continue on a day to day basis to be uncovered and revealed. And you're caught in lies over things that are really consequential, like, you know, your whether your business exists, where all this money came from that you put into your own campaign. And then also things that are totally, totally trivial, like whether or not you played volleyball.

I mean, this is another level, which is, obviously, I've been fascinated by it, just on a level of who is this person and how does their brain work and what brought them to this place and how can you, like, go through life inventing all these various personas and just clearly being a mirror to whoever is in front of you, telling them whatever it is that they want to hear. And, you know, in the Republican primary and in the general election, like clearly he thought being this like trailblazing gay Latino American dream story like that was the thing that people were going to hear. And by the way, frankly, apparently based on the fact that he won, he was correct. So there's also a piece of this that I'm fascinated with of what George Santos, who again, is just like holding up a mirror to society and

telling people whatever it is they want to hear. What he says about our society is to me very fascinating. The mentality of the man himself is very fascinating. And then there's just the practical level of, listen, at a certain level, once you have a level of deceit and lack of character and lack of any ability to believe that a single thing this person is telling you is actual fact down to like their gender identity, their name, everything about them is in question. Yeah, I don't blame the local county commissioner. It's like, I can't work with this person. I can't trust this person. I'm going to have to come up with some alternative plan to be able to support his constituents because this person is not fit for duty.

Now, ironically, you mentioned the committee assignments. He got put on the small business committee in spite of the fact that he's accused of like scamming people in a Ponzi scheme. That's his relevant experience for the Small Business Committee. I get it. This is supposedly one of the less important or less noteworthy committees or whatever. McCarthy tried to push him to the sidelines, et cetera. Although I personally think small business is very important to our economy and to American society as large as small business owners ourselves. I get it.

Actually, that's an interesting Washington story. Small Business Committee sounds prestigious. It's actually one of the most least useful committees in all of Congress. It was only relevant during one time, during COVID, actually. But it is hilarious that that's where they stuck him when his relevant experience is scamming

people in a Ponzi scheme. I just can't stand this man. I need him to go away. I really do. I feel the opposite way. Putting aside the dog story, which is just like, I can't even talk about that. It's just so horrendous and horrific and like just pure evil. But I enjoy the George Santos saga. I'm fascinated by it.

I think he is America's congressman. I think he is very reflective of the time and the era that we're living in. I don't know that anyone belongs in Congress more than this man, ultimately. Maybe you're right. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, I've been covering a lot of health and wellness stuff lately here at Breaking Points, mostly because of my own personal interest, but also because of how much health and discussion around it has become terribly politicized since the outbreak of COVID. We've seen the perversion of science, especially with respect to pharmaceutical drugs and medical

interventions, become infused with social ideology that can have really destructive results if they become normalized to the general public. Perhaps the most destructive is a perpetual message recently, that it's okay and not unhealthy to be obese, or that if you are, it's not your fault at all. Now it's just cringe magazines, it's not just them that are pumping this message, it's some of the most prestigious platforms in the United States, like 60 Minutes. I somehow missed this January 1st segment that they ran until it was featured and then debunked by my friend Dr. Lane Norton. Listen with a straight face as this so-called obesity expert claims.

I've always heard that it's the fast food, that it's the Diet Cokes, that kind of thing, that is the instigator. Is that true? So I think we have to look at the different causes of obesity as a big pie. And that's one factor. But notice how I'm using this part of the pie, right? But the number one cause of obesity is genetics. That means if you are born to parents that have obesity, you have a 50 to 85% likelihood of having the disease yourself, even with optimal diet, exercise, sleep management, stress management. So when people see families that have obesity, the assumption is, what are they feeding those kids? As Lane points out on his Instagram page, that is just literally not true at all.

The reason the kids of obese people are usually obese too is because their food environment and lifestyle mimics their obese parents. Genetics, of course, will play some role. But let's say you transport that family unit to sub-Saharan Africa. You really think they're still going to be obese? Obviously not, because the environment, both Africa. You really think they're still going to be obese? Obviously not, because the environment, both at a macro and micro level, is going to have a major outsized impact. Furthermore, this supposed expert actually denigrated fellow physicians for asking follow-up questions to obese patients when they claim they are making lifestyle changes. Listen to what she's preaching. 79 to 90% of physicians in the United States have significant bias towards individuals that are heavier. Now,

doctors listening to me may say, oh, it's not me. Hold your horses because has that patient come to you and told you, look, doc, I'm eating well. Look, doc, I'm exercising. And the doc says to them, are you sure? I don't believe that that's really what the doc says to them, are you sure? I don't believe that that's really what you're doing. Wait, are you saying that doctors don't understand obesity? Doctors? Doctors do not understand obesity. Listen carefully to what she just said.

If you have a doctor and you have an obese patient, not losing weight, who's coming to you, and they tell you that they're making major lifestyle changes and nothing is working for them, you have, quote, a significant bias against that patient for asking a basic follow-up question rooted in the fact that you know that if what they were saying was actually true, they would be losing weight at least somewhat. This is a cancer of so-called bias training and of therapy culture, worming its way into nutrition guidelines. It's exactly how the American Academy of Pediatrics got itself into a place last week where it says doctors should use drugs and surgery earlier in kids who have obesity

without the appropriate emphasis on lifestyle intervention. But the story does not end there, because the doctor I just showed you is Dr. Fatima Stanford. She's a so-called obesity medicine physician scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital. And wouldn't you know, also the quote, equity director. And in my research for this piece, take a look at what I just discovered. Three days ago, Dr. Stanford thanked the Biden administration's USDA and Health and Human Services Agency for appointing her to the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. Dr. Stanford will be one of just 25 public health so-called experts that contribute to the expected 2025 report, which will be the official U.S. government recommendation on nutrition from 2025 to 2030.

These nutrition guidelines have a big impact on society. Food stamps, school lunches, to how people in the media just talk about it. It's very dangerous to have somebody like this shaping government nutrition policy. Someone who claims exercise, nutrition, and lifestyle are secondary to genetic factors when we know that is not the case. And someone who is already spreading this poisonous message at one of the most influential hospitals in the world and Harvard University. And while I believe Dr. Sanford is just your typical woke intellectual, we also have to question the financial incentives. Dr. Sanford's media tour has included past praise for the intuitive eating movement, which is a rise up against diet culture. Guidance to people that

they should eat whatever their body tells them to. Possibly the dumbest advice on earth, considering how processed food is specifically designed to be as palatable as possible. But putting the idiocy of intuitive eating aside, check out this caveat that even the New York Times had to feature, quote, Dr. Stanford has served as an advisor for a number of pharmaceutical companies. Oh, really? It actually only took a few searches to see that Stanford is even featured on the website for the leading manufacturer of semaglutide. You do a few more research searches for open source data regarding Dr. Stanford and who

is paying her, and the results are astonishing, or maybe not all that surprising. In 2021 alone, she was paid over $35,000 by Big Pharma. $15,000 was paid by the manufacturer of the Wegovi weight loss drug, which she has been openly campaigning for in the media. Is it a coincidence that the vast majority of her consulting income, which is public record, came the very same year that the drug was approved by the FDA. Keep in mind, 2022 data is not even public when the drug actually reached escape velocity in our culture. She did an interview with the New York Times just a few days ago. Dr. Stanford said she had no concerns whatsoever about patients using semaglutide on a long-term basis to keep weight

off and actually advocated for a new bill to pass Congress called the Treatment to Reduce Obesity Act, which would authorize Medicare to cover that drug. That would be a billion dollar windfall for that drug company which is paying her. And look, to be clear, I think semaglutide probably is an amazing drug for people who are morbidly obese. But what's really scared me is Dr. Stanford analogizing weight loss drugs to SSRIs, how stigma on them needs to go down. Now, I don't believe in stigma for people who have depression. But didn't we also just learn this year that SSRIs do not work in the way that they claimed to work for a decade? The chemical imbalance thesis is bunk, even though SSRIs do seem to work in some capacity, just not the way that the drug company claimed.

How many alternative treatments were lost because of SSRIs not given a chance? How many people were put on a pill with a dubious action mechanism when they could have tried something else? We don't need to do this again. There is no such thing as a silver bullet, especially when somebody is trying to sell it to you.

I mean, I think it's a crazy story. The initial reason why- And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, as many of you probably already know, Open Warfare has broken out between two of the biggest figures in conservative media. That would be Steven Crowder and Ben Shapiro. And actually, given the amounts of money that are involved here, you could rightly say these are two of the biggest figures in media, period. There is some real Game of Thrones stuff going on here. I will walk you through the top line details. But for those who haven't been following along, there are already a million videos out there analyzing claims and the counterclaims made by Crowder and made by Shapiro. You can decide for yourself whether Crowder is a brave warrior for the little

guy or a Machiavellian figure throwing his longtime friends under the bus for a bigger payday and more clout. You can guess which side I come down on there. Personally, though, what I'm really interested in are the broader implications here. What does this civil war say about the current moment in the Republican Party, about conservative politics, and about conservative media, all of which were up until very recently fairly unified ever since Trump first won the White House? So here briefly is the backstory. Last week, Stephen Crowder released a video dramatically entitled, It's Time to Stop, in which he produced a term sheet with an offer that he had received from a conservative media outlet. Now, the details of this he described as immoral and actually even likened to slavery.

Take a listen. And I don't just mean unreasonable demands for control. But what I would argue are immoral terms that actually punish conservative content creators on behalf of big tech. Kids, kids out there coming up, we need to build a bench here in this movement. It's almost impossible. Don't sign, don't sign these contracts. I know, I now know what you are signing out there. I have the luxury of not having to. I don't have to be here. I don't have to say this. Please don't sign this. So Crowder portrayed the offer as proving that, quote, Big Con, the conservative media complex, was in the pocket of big tech doing their bidding. And he urged his viewers to send him, Stephen Crowder, their email addresses at a new website in order to fight back against these evil forces.

Now, he did not originally name the outlet that this offending offer came from, but it was almost immediately obvious that he was talking about Ben Shapiro's The Daily Wire. Now, that outlet responded by sending out the company's CEO to go line by line through this term sheet revealing that the offer Crowder had compared to literal slavery was for $50 million over four years. This led to another response video from Crowder where he played parts of a call that he had secretly recorded with said Daily Wire CEO. And finally, a full response from Shapiro himself, who revealed a timeline which suggests very heavily that Crowder had planned this this term sheet for months and had already registered the StopBigCon website before he went ahead and set up that call with the Daily Wire CEO, which he then secretly recorded. Anyway, like I said, if you're curious about all the nitty gritty details, you can watch the whole multi-hour back and forth yourself. You can see what any

number of thorough analysis videos has to say about it. Now, I honestly wouldn't normally cover this kind of intra-creator drama, but the civil war between two giants of conservative media, it comes at a fascinating moment for the GOP. This war between Shapiro and Crowder, it feels like opening shots in a schism that is opening up in the Republican Party as Trump loses his full power and grip on the conservative flock. Now, since Trump took the White House and the Never Trumpers fully exited the movement, conservative media and the Republican Party as a whole, it's really been pretty unified behind Donald Trump. There was a sense their movement was ascendant and that despite some setbacks, they really had the libs on the ropes. That's

not to say that none of these figures ever criticized the big man. I know Shapiro in particular did from time to time, but there was no alternative to Trump and no clear fissures to exploit for profit. Their dash midterm hopes, though, seem to open up some wounds and some blame game. So Crowder has seized on a market opportunity to force open those new fishers. And make no mistake, fishers in divisions, they can be quite profitable. In the new media ecosystem, the size of your audience, of course that matters. But what matters a lot more is their level of dedication to you. Alex Jones here is a prime example. After being deplatformed basically everywhere

and basically given the internet death penalty, Jones's overall audience numbers, of course, dropped significantly. But the remaining viewers became more diehard than ever, more committed and reportedly through their purchases of supplements and survival kits and InfoWars merch and whatever else he is selling, Jones actually made more money post-deplatforming than he did before. So Crowder, who's of course a bottom capitalist and like any good capitalist highly interested in the bottom line, he sees a real market opportunity here to

exploit by positioning himself as the true movement leader, more principled in battling against big tech, more representative of the conservative masses than Shapiro's daily wire, which he labels the big con. Now, Shapiro is also clearly on Team DeSantis for the coming Republican 2024 primary, a posture that some Trump supporters are labeling as being establishment. As far as I know, Crowder hasn't really picked a side yet. He's praised both DeSantis and Trump, but everyone's going to have to make a choice, and they're going to have to make that choice pretty soon. Would make a lot of sense if Crowder ultimately went right from positioning himself as the true voice and defender of the conservative base, and by the way, as a side note, defending Kanye West on his Hitler-loving insanity,

to then steadfastly backing Trump for the 2024 primary. After all, Trump's power might have slipped, but he is still very popular among Republicans and still the favorite to win the next GOP-nominating contest. In fact, the latest polling has Trump beating DeSantis by 20 points in a divided primary field and 10 points in a head-to-head matchup. So, this fracturing is most significant as a sign of the times, a sign that we have already arrived at a big split in the conservative movement as an ugly 2024 GOP primary looms. It is no accident this comes on the heels of some nasty infighting in the Republican House caucus with regards to the election of Speaker McCarthy, including reports of a bathroom screaming

match between Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and your fisticuffs on the House floor between rebel leader Matt Gaetz and McCarthy loyalist Mike Rogers. Now, the dividing lines there were quite muddled by the fact you had Trump loyalists on both sides of the fight, but the fracturing and the squabbles, they tell the same story. The GOP unity of the Trump era is over. The only question now is the contours of the divides

and who falls on which side. This is gonna be ugly for the right and plenty will be personal, gratuitous, petty, bad faith, et cetera. But unity, as we see right now on the Democratic side with every single member bending the needle leadership, that has its own kind of ugliness. It requires everyone to ignore or cover for the insanities, the corruption, the ugliness, and the lies in the name of team loyalty. It protects power for an existing set of failed leaders. It quashes all

debate, the good faith and principled, as well as the bad faith and absurd. In a functioning democracy, battles of the sort that are breaking out on the right right now, they can be healthy, they can be positive, they can lead to rebirth and renewal rather than a festering quagmire that's maintained because everyone who has a voice is too afraid to challenge the status quo. But unfortunately, debates over the future of the Republican Party, in my opinion, have long ago lost any real content. Trumpism collapsed pretty quickly from any sort of policy agenda to loyalty tests, vibes, and aesthetics. That's how you can have Tea Partiers plotting to cut Social Security, posturing as MAGA at the same time as Trump himself declares that Social Security

and Medicare cuts should be absolutely off the table. That's how you can have the supposed populist himself, Trump, having a giant tax cut for the rich as his single most significant achievement in office. So I fully expect the brewing war for the GOP to follow precisely the model we have just seen of Crowder versus Shapiro. It will be as ugly as Stephen Crowder secretly recording calls from longtime friends and allies. It will be as ugly as Steven Crowder secretly recording calls from longtime friends and allies. It will be as absurd as claiming a $50 million contract is literal slavery. And as meaningless as two dyed-in-the-wool capitalists funded by billionaires posturing as true adversaries to corporate giants. And like with Crowder versus Shapiro, the amount of money involved, it will be truly shocking. Bottom line, it'll be a struggle for power and influence for the sake of power and influence fought via manufactured proxy wars. There's really no side we're taking here. The only thing to do is grab the popcorn and enjoy the fireworks. So that's my take, Sagar.

Interesting. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Jonah Fuhrman is a staff writer for Labor Notes, and he joins us now. Great to see you, Jonah. Good to see you, man. Yeah, likewise. So we have the piece that you wrote actually for Jack, but let's go ahead and put this up on the screen, and I'll read some of the key data that came out in this pure labor statistics report showing that even though the number of unionized workers did rise, union density, as has been the trend for a long time, continued to fall. That's the percentage of the workforce that is unionized.

You say here the headline grabber in this year's release is that there were, by the Bureau's count, 273,000 more union members in 2022 than in 2021. But overall, union density continued to fall to its lowest level, 10.1 percent since the 1920s. You go on to ask, how does that happen? Union jobs are growing, but non-union jobs are growing faster. So as you dug into the data here, Jonah, what did you find? Yeah, I mean, I think the big headline that people should appreciate is that we're in a long period of declines since 1980. And that's still happening. The headline is sort of that this is the biggest increase in union jobs since the Great Recession since 2008. So maybe there's some signs of hope there. But if you dig a little deeper, it's a lot of that is pandemic recovery. A lot of that is growth of industries that happen to already be unionized. It's not as much as you might think from reading headlines about Starbucks and Amazon and big new organizing. We're not there yet. The tide has not turned. And really looking at 10 and 20 year trends, we're still on the same path we've been in since Reagan and since, you know,

late Jimmy Carter era. So just when people are trying to think like, where are we at in the union moment, we're still in this period of slide and there's hopeful points, but just kind of digging into the numbers, that's still the situation. So, Jonah, there was a lot of theorization that it might help the post-pandemic moment. Unions had more approval than ever. So where is the systemic drop coming from? Well, I mean, it's coming from everywhere, basically. There's not a lot of places that are not seeing decline.

Now, there's year-over-year sort of blips. We saw a big growth in hospitality union members this year, but a lot of that is the hospitality industry coming back. loss of the past 20 years is you just lose millions of manufacturing jobs, but you also lose disproportionately the unions and the unionized jobs of that share. Same thing in construction. But what's interesting, it's also in the public sector. So at the Postal Service, a big source of union jobs, we've probably lost 300,000 union members in 20, 25 years. You know, even in the federal sector, federal workers who are, you know, the public sector is supposed to be easier to unionize for certain reasons. There's not, you know, certain states that have jurisdiction over it, have different rules,

but certain blue states, you know, prop up unionism of the public sector. But even there, we've seen density mostly fall. And where we've seen sort of unions hold on, it's more about the growth of different industries. So education, health care, a decently strong union industry, but density hasn't gone up. Density being the proportion of the workers who are unionized. So it's been, you know, around a third or less, 30 percent for some of these industries. That hasn't climbed despite more strikes, more interest in unionization. And part of it is because this lags, right? You're not going to have a huge increase in union density because Starbucks workers organized six months ago. We're talking on the scale of millions of workers, but we have not yet flattened or reversed the trend. And Jonah, that brings up a good question, which is, you know, we covered obviously the Starbucks workers and their incredible movement, the way it spread like wildfire. And also the way it upended some conventional wisdom about which workplaces you could even unionize. We obviously covered Amazon Labor Union, their stunning victory, which was, you know, true Dave and Goliath story.

Is it possible that these wins are more significant than their numbers would indicate in that perhaps they, you know, they shift what's possible, they shift a public perception of where and how and who can organize, that they light a fire under some, you know, entrenched union bureaucracy that's kind of been sitting back on their laurels. Is it possible that even though things didn't really fully turn around in 2022, you saw the beginning of what could be a different trend line? Yeah, totally. I mean, I think one of the main ways to read this report every year is to say there is no universe in which we turn this around using the tools we've been using and the tools that we have. So the NLRB, for example, just going through those union elections, something like 70,000 workers joined unions

through the NLRB this year. That's like half a percentage point of the total number of union workers. So one thing that tells you is that it's going to take sort of geometric or exponential increase in unionization, which is going to mean things beyond what the union staff that currently exists can do. It's going to mean something catching on like wildfire. It's going to mean big political changes. When we've seen leaps in unionization, it's not for the most part just that the staff organizers or the unions that do exist are just doing a much better job. That's a key. That part has to happen too. But it also has to change sort of people's common sense about unions. And we have to see union

organizing that far outpaces what the current structures are able to take in. And so I think the surprise victories from the Amazon labor union, from the Starbucks workers are a huge part of it. The other huge part of it to me is seeing unions that are turning around after decades. So this year, I think the big 2023 labor story is not going to be the new organizing numbers or, you know, our density or how many members we grew. But it's going to be that this summer, it's quite possible that UPS and the big three automakers are all going to go on strike. We're going to have some of the most workers on strike at UPS since 1997, the last UPS strike and one of the biggest strikes in history. You know,

if that's how this goes, we're suddenly talking about a level of like inspiration, political influence. That's not just about did we get 5000 members here or there. So I think that's totally right. I do think it's important to look at the numbers and remind yourself sort of where we're at, we're still coming down. And it's going to take all different sorts of turnarounds, explicit turnarounds, right? So in the team studies, you've had new leadership saying, what we've been doing for 25 years is not working. We're going to run against the leadership. We're going to turn it around and go on strike. Same in the UAW. You have people running who are saying, we are not going to do what we've been doing for 30 years, for 50 years. And we're going to, you know, run a huge

strike and organize all the Southern factories, you know, things like that. we're going to run a huge strike and organize all the Southern factories, things like that. We're going to need to see change on that scale that's challenging the entire status quo of unionism in this country. Yeah. Things that are going to be really important to watch for the future. I know I've also had my eye on that potential UPS strike for a while. I mean, the new leadership of the Teamsters ran explicitly on a pledge to be more militant in these contract negotiations and to be willing to strike. Obviously, that would be a huge deal in the labor movement, would be a huge deal nationwide and in terms of the political ecosystem overall. So, Jonah, thank you so much. It's a great article. People should check it out.

And you always do a fantastic job laying out exactly what is what within the labor movement, the wins, the losses and everything in between. So, so great to see you. Thanks, man. Yeah. Thanks guys. Yeah. Our pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching. Really appreciate it. We've got the live show going on. We're going to debut some merch later on today on our channel for that live show, specifically in Austin. So you've got to buy your tickets if you want access to that. Otherwise, we love our premium members. Thank you guys so much for supporting us as we're gearing up, getting prepared for 2024 and all of that, and considering the major upgrades that we're having right now to the studio. We love you all. We'll see you all tomorrow. Love y'all. See you soon. This is an iHeart Podcast.