Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/27/24: Flint Michigan Doc, Amazon's "Everything War", James Li Interviews Congressional Candidate

Episode Date: April 27, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss a new documentary from Jordan Chariton on Flint Michigan 10 years later, then we talk to Dana Mattioli about her new book on Amazon's monopoly "The Everything War", and James Li talks to Jen Perelman who is running for Congress against Debbie Wasserman-Schulz about AIPAC and student protests. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man.

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I'm Michael Kasson, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on good company, the podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi. We dive into the competitive world of streaming. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. There are so many stories out there. And if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.

We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. It has been 10 years since the city of Flint, Michigan was poisoned with lead. And there is one journalist I know who never gave up on the story, never left the story, and has continued to break explosive news about what was an unbelievable criminal cover-up and

conspiracy that did poison an entire American town. That would be Jordan Cheriton of Status Coup. And he has a new documentary coming out that tells the entire story in a way that I think has never been told before. What matters right now is this, that that Flint River right there is still right there. And those people that are victims of what was played on them are still victims. The 7,000 babies are still brain damaged. You fucked up the fact that the matter is now.

What do you do about it now? You left a lot of people dead and laying in the street and you still got people dead laying in the street. Excuse my French. They told us we were disposable. That's what they told us, is that we are disposable people. Do you think this will ever be fixed? No. And, you know, I don't, I'm never going to my baby again. And they're never gonna see their loved ones again. And I don't know how to deal with that.

These aren't all elderly people. We're talking people in their 40s, 50s. We're talking about eight years old. Oh wow. I'm talking about, I know a young girl have breast cancer. Eight years old. My grandson, he was no longer an AB student,

but a DEF student. Year 10 of the water crisis. And my eighth year of covering this I first went to Flint in 2016 and is this cancer crisis connected to the water switch? Newly released data from the health department reveals cancer rates here significantly higher than anywhere else in the state of Michigan. It's the 10-year anniversary of the Flint water crisis, and it's not something from the past. Jordan, it's always great to see you. Hey, thank you for having me.

Yeah, of course. So just talk to us a little bit about what's new in this documentary and why you felt it was so important to stay on this story? Yeah, I think in today's news cycle where it's hard to remember what happened yesterday, it is incredibly hard since the media stopped covering Flint long ago to remember what Flint is about and also realize that it's actively still a crisis, not something from the past. So I've reported there 20 times since 2016. And each time I go back, it's truly shocking and really horrifying that it's still actively a crisis. We've become numb to that word, but it's still a crisis. And in this documentary, you'll see cancer is through the roof in Flint, and it's not from the weather. It's from the water.

Teens are sadly now committing suicide. They were children when they were poisoned. There is serious, serious mental health problems, education problems in Flint. You'll learn that a lot of the money that Congress and elsewhere earmarked for Flint mysteriously did not go to Flint and water relief. So it's kind of a mix of showing the active crisis. Yes, the water is still toxic. And the domino effect with the cancers, the teen suicides, and really a city that is actively in crisis.

Tell us some of what residents that you spoke with want people to know about what has been done to them. For the most part, residents desperately want people to know that they are still actively in crisis. Residents I speak with still, 10 years later, get rashes from the water. Residents I speak to still, their eyes burn when they shower. Still, in many cases, getting smelly or discolored water. On the other side, residents are nearly going bankrupt paying for medical bills because they did not get universal health care like some other cities with similar issues had. Libby, Montana, for example, with an asbestos disaster, they're predominantly white.

They got Medicare for all for their crisis, rightfully so. Flint did not. Residents desperately want the media to pay attention. I know we're in a 24-7 never-ending Trump and Russia and now, understandably, Israel-Gaza. But they can't even get their local media to continue covering their issues with the water, much less national media. So I think between the water, the medical problems, the children, the lost generation, children who are having serious learning problems, reading problems, learning disabilities, autism on the rise, and also crime is on the rise. We know that heavy metal poisoning, lead poisoning, there's research that shows that could lead to higher crime.

And there is no kind of understanding or sympathy being shown to Flint teenagers or young adults that are committing crimes. Not to defend those crimes, but a lot of that is because their brain was damaged and they have volatile mood swings. Yeah, and there is no cure. There is no recovery. There is no moving on from lead poisoning. Talk to us about the process of accountability of any of the politicians who were involved. Have they been held accountable to any extent? You know, it's funny. All we hear about and you cover a lot is all this hubba-baloo about saving democracy. Well, how's this for democracy? A U.S. city of 100,000 people was poisoned a

decade ago, and not one government official, private individual has been held accountable. Not one has even seen a jury. And unfortunately, it does not seem anyone will been held accountable. Not one has even seen a jury. And unfortunately, it does not seem anyone will be held accountable. Not to get too in the weeds, but Attorney General Dana Nessel of Michigan, she is a beloved MSNBC resistance hero for some of the cases she brought against Republicans, the election scheme. But she basically tanked the criminal investigation of the Michigan State Supreme Court throughout her office's criminal prosecution, stating that they essentially violated the state constitution and the way they brought it. As a result, former Governor Rick Snyder's charges were thrown out. Eight other state

officials' charges were thrown out. In many cases, the statute of limitations has passed for those crimes. And as we speak, the criminal investigation has ended. So it seems no one will be held criminally accountable. Jordan, lastly, what do you think that this story tells us about America? I think the story of Flint tells us about America, that the capitalist system, if you're in the wrong city at the wrong time, if you have leaders that wanna run government like a business, throw emergency managers, which are unelected czars to take over power, try to privatize things, which is what led to this. The government is not going to help you,

really help you, if you are poisoned, whether it's water, whether it's fracking, mining, whether a train blows up in your town in Ohio. You'll get some kind of artificial surface help. The headlines will say you're getting money, but at the end of the day, they will leave you to slowly die. And that's what's happening in Flint between the cancer and other illnesses from lead and other things that were in that water. It's basically a city that's been abandoned by the government and the media. And there are so many places like that around the country, which you have done maybe a better job than anyone on covering and staying with the story even after a lot of the cameras go away. Jordan, thank you for joining us. Thank you for doing this incredible work on the documentary. And thank you also for letting us

post this on our channel. We're really proud to be able to premiere this and show off the work that you've done and bring this story to the country. So everybody, make sure you check out Jordan's documentary. And any last thoughts, Jordan, or any additional advice on how to follow your work? And thank you to Breaking Points. There are no mainstream media outlets that are willing to stay on Flint. So you're not a mainstream outlet, and that's why you're airing it. Yes, you can check out and subscribe to Status Quo on YouTube, Status Quo, where we cover Flint, East Palestine, and many similar stories.

And you can support our work at statuscoup.com slash join. Statuscoup.com, guys, go check it out. They do really important work that is totally overlooked by the mainstream press. Jordan, always great to see and talk to you. Thank you, sir. So one thing we have been covering here for quite a while is the massive role in the U.S. and really global economy of the behemoth Amazon. So we're lucky to be joined this morning by an author of a new book about that corporate giant. The title is The Everything War, Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power. The author is Dana Mattioli. She's a Wall Street Journal

Amazon reporter, and she joins us now. Dana, great to meet you and welcome. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, of course. So tell us what is sort of the core thesis of the book. Yeah, the book tracks Amazon's rise from this garage startup to really the most dominant force in corporate America, but the world writ large. Its effects on the economy, job creation, competition, and how it's found itself in the center of this monopoly lawsuit because of the havoc it's wreaked across different industries. So it's an investigation to the company's business practices and the results of it having accumulated so much power. One of the things that you go into, Dana, is about monopoly itself and the definition. I'm wondering if you could lay that out from

our audience, because I know it's a bit complicated. But what's the effect of that and how regulators are looking at the power of Amazon? Yeah, so these antitrust laws were first derived in the Gilded Age to stop the trusts like Standard Oil. And for years and years, decades, it was enforced to allow competition, to protect smaller rivals, to compete. There was a change in the way that it was enforced in the 1970s and 80s where the lens shifted to looking at these laws and competition through its effect on prices and

efficiency. So if companies were offering low prices and they could be more efficient, there was a standard of letting that happen. And we stopped defending David versus Goliath so vehemently. And that's sort of given rise to companies like Amazon. In the early days, in particular, it was known as this low-cost retailer. So as long as it was offering low prices for consumers, it was allowed to get away with lots of other types of behavior that would have been enforced in years past. And you see that throughout big tech, you know, with Google and Apple and Facebook as well. So one of the things that you point to, an anecdote that you have in the story, just so people can get like a finer point on the type of behavior you're talking about, is how when Amazon decided they wanted to go into the

food business and have a private label, their approach was just to hire up some former Trader Joe's execs and be like, give us everything you have about what their top items are, and we're just going to copy them. And that's what we're going to do. Just tell us about that anecdote and how that connects to their like typical business practices. So in 2015, Amazon was launching this food brand called Wickedly Prime and they wrote this paper internally to pitch it to management and it said, we want to replicate the top 200 items at Trader Joe's. Problem was they didn't know what those items were. So they set out and hired this executive from Trader Joe's, didn't really tell her what she'd be working on. And her first week in Seattle, she stumbles across this very secretive conference room.

It has brown paper covering the windows and the doors so no one could see inside. And she walks in and it's filled with boxes of Trader Joe's snacks, the exact area that she worked in at Trader Joe's. She starts getting alarmed. And from there, her manager starts pressuring her to give any sorts of documents she had retained from her employment at Trader Joe's, even though she has an NDA and whatnot. She caves to the pressure. She gives them an Excel spreadsheet with the top items from Trader Joe's, the sales volume over the course of a week. But then he just keeps hounding her. He says, I want the margins data. He screams at her. She cries in the middle of Amazon's headquarters. And someone reported this to legal. So the people that were involved did get let go. But everyone I've spoken to has said this

was so indicative of the pressure people at Amazon are under to perform. They need to improve their numbers. They need to hit their targets because at the end of the year, the bottom 6% gets cut. And that has effects on the type of behavior that play out across the company. And this is like not an isolated incident by any means. Right. Well, and in this instance, they didn't have access to the Trader Joe information, and it's not something that you can get publicly. So their approach was, all right, we're going to hire this person, and we're just going to steal the information, and then we're going to copy it. But in lots of cases, you know, they have this giant marketplace with lots of independent sellers. They can see exactly which products are selling really well and performing really well among their customers. They can

replicate those products, and then they can use their customers, they can replicate those products. And then they can use their own algorithm to make sure that when a shopper is looking for something like that product, it's not that original independent seller's product who gets pushed. It's their business line that gets pushed so that they get to reap the benefits of every aspect of this marketplace. And they've been doing that for years. The book gets into details about how, first of all, Amazon has unprecedented access to data, not just from its sellers, but its rivals, its partners, that you see time and time again in really shocking ways. Amazon uses that information to undercut them and to reverse engineer their hits and claim it as their own. On the private label side, they were spying on their sellers, taking their data when, you know, about what's selling well, and then reverse engineering it

in Shenzhen and just putting some of these sellers out of business. But we also saw that in the, on the VC arm, you know, Amazon, because they're so big there, there's many tentacled octopus with such big market share everywhere. Founders come and pitch them on an acquisition or funding. And so many of the people I spoke to came out of those meetings saying, was that a deal making talk or was that corporate espionage? Wow. Fascinating. Dana, so in the future, what do you expect now that Amazon is already, what is it, the second largest employer in the United States. Their power is only increasing. They are eventually going to brush up against actual legislative action or even the FTC. Where do you see the future going for Amazon right now? So the FTC filed a lawsuit against Amazon

saying that you're a monopoly. It will go to court in 2026. So that's still some times away from here. But what's kind of interesting to me is that they don't seem at all rattled. Andy Jassy, the CEO right now, has told his deputies that we could be a $10 trillion company. Their general counsel, a few weeks after this lawsuit was filed against Amazon, got on stage and in all hands and was asked about his outlook for the monopoly lawsuit. And he said, haters are going to hate. We're going to shake it off. So he just quoted Taylor Swift. So they really don't seem phased. All right. Or to have any shame about cringy comments like that. Dana, my last question for you is just to give the other side, like, you know, there's a lot of

people who love Amazon who are like, Amazon's amazing and they're super convenient. And guess what? Like they did amazing and they grew to such size because people really like what they had to offer. And it's super cool that I can get, you know, my toilet paper delivered next day or whatever. And, you know, something I saw you got question about before, you got a lot of independent sellers who may be in some small town in Kansas or wherever, and now they're able to each reach this global marketplace. Isn't that glorious for them? So what's your response there?

I would say for consumers, we should be thinking about at what cost. So what was very telling to me is I went back to some of Amazon's earliest employees from the 1990s, the people that helped build this machine. They've become fabulously wealthy from their stock options at the time, right? I mean, they're living really well. And I've gone back to them to say, like, how do you feel about the company now?

So many of them have canceled their prime accounts. A lot of them avoid Amazon wherever they can. And some of them have even said, I feel like I helped build a monster. Like, they have regrets about this. They worry about its impact on innovation, Main Street, the economy. I mean, if you look at just the jobs in retail, in 2018, there's a net loss of 700,000 retail jobs, according to one study. And then between 2001 and 2017, half a million department store jobs were evaporated.

That's 18 times as many as that were lost in coal mining, to give you an example, right? And that's just one of their tentacles. And when I speak to those CEOs, the mall retailer CEOs, the CEOs of the department stores, the other retailers, they point directly at Amazon. Really a lot to think about. I recommend everybody go and buy the book.

We'll have a link in the description. Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Yeah, great to have you, Dana. Thank you. Thank you very much. Welcome to Breaking Points Beyond the Headlines. My name is James Lee.

Joining us today is Jen Perlman. She is running against Debbie Wasserman Schultz in the Democratic primary to represent Florida's 25th congressional district. Jen, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me on. Of course, of course. First question has to be, I think, why are you running? Because we all know that the Democratic Party probably doesn't want you to run. So tell us, what makes your candidacy different than that of your opponent, Debbie Wasserman Schultz? Okay, so the main reason that I ran in 20 and the same reason that I'm running now is this idea of transforming politics into service. This idea that this is supposed to be a term of service and not a career.

And it is certainly not meant to the military industrial complex, big pharma, APAC, you name it, is very appealing to a lot of people in the district. And some people, yes, there's policy and stuff that they're concerned with. But I got to tell you, for the most part, what people want is to get rid of the corruption. And as somebody who isn't looking for a second career and doesn't need this job and generally gets like a five year itch, this is not this is not a career choice for me. It has to be like I'm not going to sit there. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a

company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the war on drugs.

We are back in a big way, in a very big way, real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star studded a little bit, man. We got a Ricky Williams, NFL player,

Hasman trophy winner. It's just the compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown.

Got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does.

It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone,

I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day.

The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for.

If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. The only reason I feel like it's hard right now is unseating a corporate incumbent that's backed by AIPAC, right? This is about

unseating a corporate monolith and returning this seat and potentially even the state of Florida to people that may have its best interest at heart over people that do not. I wanted to ask you, you brought up AIPAC several times.

So I wanted to ask you, recently they've been openly bragging about their influence in Congress, whether with the big bill now to Israel and also how their support basically guarantees election to Congress. And your opponent takes millions from AIPAC, and there's been a lot written about this as well. How much control do you think pro-Israel lobbies have on members of Congress? Oh, I think they seem to own them. They seem to own actually all three branches of government and the fourth estate. I find it terrifying. Everybody should be asking themselves, why isn't AIPAC registered as a foreign agent? Why is AIPAC the only lobbying group on behalf of a foreign entity that does not have to have its lobbyists registered as foreign agents? Why is that? It's so they can give unlimited dollars. It's that's why. And so,

you know, obviously we have, we're being ruled by the Zionist state. You can always tell who's in charge by what you're not allowed to speak out against. So if I can sit here and I can talk about Joe Biden, no problem. I could talk about, you know, I could talk about my congresswoman, no problem, but you talk about Israel, then that's it. So that's clearly who's in charge. I basically have told AIPAC to bring it. Bring it. You can call me a self-loathing Jew. You can do whatever you want to do. concept that electing someone like me as an anti-Zionist Jew over someone like Debbie would be the strongest signal message that the collectively we could send to AIPAC seriously. That would be like the biggest F you to AIPAC because right now there aren't any anti-Zionist Jews running for Congress. And I haven't seen any, but maybe a couple even sort of maybe kind of say something that are in there. So, you know, I'm the last thing that they want.

Yeah. Speaking of conflation of maybe anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, a lot that's been going on in college campuses, most recently at Columbia with the Gaza encampment sit-in. And I also saw this morning footage from NYU now, reports of MIT, Tufts, other universities doing the exact same thing. And some in the mainstream are really calling these students terrorists. I've heard that thrown out there. Some members of Congress saying similar,

not going as far, but they're saying similar things, basically portraying them as not anti-Zionist protests, but also anti-Semitic targeting Jews. I've seen some videos, you know, both good and bad videos. So I'm wondering, based on your values that you just talked about, what's your reaction to what the students are doing? I could not be prouder. Like I could almost cry. Like I, I, those kids are the future of everything. Those kids are smart and capable and organized. Like seriously, I could cry. I am so proud of those kids. They're not even my kids, but I'm okay. I'm old enough to be their mother, but I feel like, you know, they are doing, they are kicking ass. I could not stand more solidarity. And as far as the people that are calling you know, it's scary, you know, like what's going

on is scary, but I, you know, this is, this is how it needs to be before it can be different. And so I understand that it's very uncomfortable for people, but like those students, that is all my goal in life is to consolidate those people with the union, the labor movement, with the environmentalist movement, with the environmentalist movement, with the block cop city movement and everybody. And like, that's the coalition that we need to build. So those, those kids are, you know, they're fighting for everyone. I'm very pleased with them and they need to, I, I, I, and I'm also will stand in solidarity with the professors that are putting their careers on the line for standing up for these students. And so, you know, that is something that I,

yeah, major respect. If you're, I'm curious, if you're one of the university presidents, how would you handle this? Cause it's obviously a very controversial, it's, it's uncomfortable and they're in a tough spot. So I'm curious how you, how would you handle this? I can actually tell you exactly how I would handle it because I can go back to the first time I saw, it was the MIT president and the pen, I think back, like it was like a few months ago when they were sitting in front and being questioned

by that vile woman up in New York. And she was asking them, basically trying to get them to say that they condone the suggestion of genocide by saying that words like intifada and phrases like from the river to the sea are chants for genocide. And right there, when neither of those people spoke up in that moment and looked her in the face and said, nobody's calling for a genocide. That's not what that means. And given that woman the history lesson that she needed at the time, I am so tired of people calling things what they are not. Those chants have nothing to do with anti-Semitism.

In fact, they are ethnic cleansing terms that were created by the Likud party in Israel. So if anybody, and I will say this, like I say every time, every single thing that Zionists accuse others of are only admissions of stuff that they do. And you know, they're lying when their lips are moving. And I know this because I was trained and brainwashed and grown up all Zionist and proud. And it's taken me about 14 years to deprogram. How did you deprogram yourself? What was your journey there?

You know what? It's taken a long time. And it was definitely like a process. But it started around the time of the second intifada, which was also around the time that I started hearing about BDS. And then I started hearing about anti BDS legislation. This was like early 2000s. And I started looking into that. And then it just sort of unfolded like a house of cards because I am someone who very much believes in the first amendment.

And so the idea that I am not allowed to boycott a foreign entity and also get a contract with a city for work, that seems like a violation of my first amendment to me. And so then I started looking into why are we so scared of BDS? Where does that come from? You know, and it just, it was a rabbit hole. And up until even 2019, I still thought that a two state solution was possible. I was still what you would call, they call them liberal Zionists. Like you, you believe that the

state of Israel has a right to exist, but you believe Palestinians should have their own state, those people. Um, and then once you do the research and you realize that there was never an intent by Zionists to have a Palestinian state that was always made up talking point again, like the whole thing unraveled. And, um, so yeah, that's, that's my, my background, but it's very upsetting to me. I grew up in a working class family that would send money to Israel to plant trees in Israel. Everything was through JNF. I did a high school program through the Jewish National Fund called Alexander Moss High School in Israel, where they have us planting trees in occupied territory under under armed guard. And we all thought, oh, that's so cool. This guy has an assault rifle and he's traveling with us. And as a mother, I'm thinking, if you are taking my child somewhere where you think that they need somebody standing over them with an assault rifle to protect them, you are somewhere you ought not be. And therefore you are using my child as a human shield. That's that's what I think. And also as a tool of ethnic cleansing.

So my thoughts on APAC are that they can come for me all they want. I know all their secrets. I know all their stories. I know all their talking points. And all they have, they have money. They have money. You know, they'll put out tons of constant reminding people over and over again that I support terrorists. I'm a Hamas lover. You know, they'll put out tons of constant reminding people over and over again that I support terrorists.

I'm a Hamas lover. You know, they'll put that on repeat. But the problem is, at the end of the day, it's still only going to appeal to a very small, finite echo chamber of voters. And the people that are watch that AIPAC loop over and over, it's not going to expand. That group of people isn't going to just get bigger. You're not going to all of a group of people isn't going to just get bigger. You're not going to all of a sudden have somebody that cares about that issue. I don't think you're wrong there in terms of the number of people supporting Israel in the same way they have done in the past are going to be smaller and smaller. But we just saw this past weekend that

doesn't really matter in Congress. They just shoved through this $95 billion foreign aid package, Ukraine, Israel, a little bit of- It wouldn't have had my name on it. I could tell you that right now. It would not have had my name on it. And they could bundle it with all sorts of other stuff. You could bundle it with everything. You could put whipped cream and a cherry on top, and I still would not sign that.

So yeah, I saw that. And of course, Debbie, she always gives them more money than they ask for. So then, you know, we saw some of the footage coming out this week from the from the weekend, just members of Congress waving foreign flags. And it looked, you know, it was a really striking visual to see, especially since we have been more or less gridlocked on a lot of these domestic legislative pieces but then they got somehow the ability to do that also sneaking into a the tiktok ban which i think is a pretty unpopular legislation um for the american people so then what do you say the folks that you know that have kind of just given up on the electoral process and say well it doesn't matter who we vote in there they're just still going to do the thing i know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1.

Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. and episodes 4, 5, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown.

We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corps vet. MMA fighter Liz Caramouch. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does.

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Things that they do. You know what? There is no solid answer for that. I think you gotta just be chipping away at it. I mean, look, there were there were people that didn't sign that. There were there were people there were even some Jewish congresspeople that didn't sign that. So, you know, it can be done.

You just need to start chipping away at the corporate tentacles that are basically holding people. And you can only do that by electing people that don't take corporate money. And then it becomes even people that don't take corporate money, but they're still scared of being primaried from that corporate money. So even though they're not taking it, they're still sort of acting in accordance with it. So there's a lot of that too. And it's, look, I don't, I can't speak for anyone else anyone else right like I only know how it is for me and I would just always be as transparent and really bring this home here what people want what they want to see and not just fall in line with a party or fall in line with anybody if it's not in the

best interest or what the majority of people really want yeah speaking of political strategy so I've noticed that if you compare the more, you can say more extreme members of each party, the Freedom Caucus, those guys versus say the squad, one side seems much more willing to play hardball to kind of get what they want. Now, where would you stand? How would you approach politics?

When I am sitting here and I'm on the same page as people like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. And this wasn't the first time, by the way. Now, granted, I will say this. Her reasons for why she would vote no to certain things are completely different than my reasons. OK, like that's neither here nor there. She doesn't want to give them money because she's worried about China and space lasers or whatever her shit is.

But like their strategy of really sticking it to their party is that's exactly what we need to be doing. That's exact. That's the whole point of having a progressive caucus, except there's like over 100 people in the progressive caucus. But yet only how many people signed didn't sign this resolution. And that's barely being progressive. So, no, I think that they they are definitely feckless. I think they don't wield power. I think they're more concerned with getting primaried. I think that the rainmakers and the queen bees and whoever in that party just scare them and bully them. And and I don't again, I don't know because I'm not there. But I do know that there are a lot

more people listed in the progressive caucus than there are actually seemingly progressive people. So maybe if that caucus actually stood for something and really was a progressive caucus of actual progressive people, not people that take, let's say, big farm and insurance money, then maybe they'd have power. But they don't have any power because they're infiltrated by so many different people that aren't really with them. Like there's no what what is that? The squad isn't a real thing. That's a made up term by media. That's not a real thing. Yeah, when I'm looking at this whole election cycle and in totality all the way from the top

to the bottom, I kind of see. So there's a lot of people, I think, gravitating towards the more Trump like figures, the guys who are out there saying, hey, we're going to have the best country, the best economy, jobs coming back, strong border, a little bit of that. You could say, just trust me, give me the keys and I'm going to take good care of you vibes. And then I think the other side, the Democrats have characterized that kind of posturing as dictatorial. And that's why we need to vote Joe Biden. We got to save democracy. They don't really talk too much about their domestic agenda beyond anti-Trump.

So what I'm curious about is, let's say the Democrats are right. Let's say we go with their definition. One side is dictatorship. The other side is maybe what you just kind of characterize as a pseudo-dem democratic administration that's in effect owned by many of the same groups. I was talking about Congress. If you want to talk about Joe, now we're not just now we're talking genocidal. So, yeah, you might have a dictator on one side, but you got somebody genocidal on the other. But please continue. So then what's so is one side truly that different than the other? I guess what are your thoughts on this argument?

I think it's absurd. I think the fact that we're sitting here and talking about between those two individuals in particular, that that's the two main choices, that's a sign that we no longer have a democracy. We're already there, people. We have so crossed over into the realm of fascist corporate takeover of this country that I just don't know what to tell you anymore. But the fact that that's the choice, what are you scared? Seriously. And the thing is, the people that truly do, I have found this and I have been dialing for dollars a lot lately. So I talk to a lot of people on the phone and I always say, you know, who do you like in the election? And so I'm talking to a lot of people. And the without without fail, the people whose primary concern is about Trump are more privileged people without fail. The people who are struggling, working, whatever they it's they don't even mention Trump.

They mention they mention health care. They mention in clean water. They mention wars. They mention those things. So the people that are really so scared of Trump at this point are really a small group of people. And it is an establishment, democratic, very elitist group of people. And they are completely out of touch with regular people, because when you talk to vulnerable people or in any moment, so for example, Palestinians at the moment, I'm pretty sure that there's nothing worse than somebody who's participating in genociding their family. I'm pretty sure that there's no worse than that. That's as bad as, you're not going to scare them with anything at this point. So you look at the most vulnerable and oppressed people at any time and look at from their perspective, what's their perspective on who would be worse, not who would be worse for rich, you know, you know, elitist America.

That doesn't concern me. You look at it for what what would be worse for the least of these. And I am telling you from someone who has been in the streets with the least of these for the better part of the past five years, it is six of one, half a dozen of the other between those two people. I assure you. Before I let you go, I want to talk about your campaign specifically. So you ran 2020 also against Debbie Wasserman Schultz. You lost, I think the vote count was about 55K for her, 21 for you, 70, 30 split. So this time in 2024, what are you trying to do differently? What do you see as your path to victory? Between now and August 20th, what are the kinds of things that you and your campaign are doing to strategically try to close that gap? Okay. So let me be very clear, even though I didn't run in 22, I have been

working canvassing in this district for the past four years, whether it was for women's reproductive freedom, whether it was for other candidates, whatever. Okay. So just the amount of community ties, name recognition, build up all of that connections in city commission seats that weren't there four years ago, people that are in positions where other people used to put their hands on the weight for Debbie, hands on the scale for Debbie, just a lot of things in play there. Also, just having my podcast, having more name recognition, but our district lines have also changed. And the entire Dade County portion that used to be in our district, which is coastal, affluent, very Jewish, that entire portion is no longer in our district.

And instead, we gained an area, a town called Miramar, which is very working class, canvassable, regular people, heavy Latino, a lot of Haitian, Islander, working people, but most importantly, canvassable. Because the rich hoity-toity high-rises that got cut out of our district were areas that we couldn't even canvass as a grassroots campaign. So the only way in those is TV and mailers, which we could do a couple, but she's able to like flood it. So to get rid of portions of the district that's no longer in district. Where I grew up is that. And so what we gained is not that. So the demographic has changed as well. That is also in favor of people fighting for working class issues. So there's been a lot of different variables. And honestly, what's going on in Gaza is that that makes it almost a perfect storm in terms of the people that have been reaching out to me and wanting to support me and people, especially in the Muslim community that aren't overly politically involved normally, but are very organized and involved right now.

And I just feel like the tide is turning. It just feels, it just feels, it just feels different this time. And again, it's still, it's still an uphill battle to unseat an incumbent. You know what I mean? It's by no means, it's by no means just like a gimme no matter what. But I definitely know that we have made huge advancements in terms of my presence in the community, as well as national for fundraising and name recognition. I actually have a team this time, which is amazing because last time it was my business partner and I, and it was just the two of us basically.

And we had some people helping us do stuff, but this is so much better to have. It's so nice to have a campaign manager. It's so nice to have a finance person. It's like, it feels almost luxurious to have. It's so nice to have a campaign manager. It's so nice to have a finance person. It's just, it's like, it's, it feels almost luxurious to me. So I feel like the way that I did it the first time being so insane made it that maybe this is why it's easy or feels easier to me. Maybe that's why like people, maybe if you start this way, you're just used to having a campaign manager and a comms person and all that. I don't, we're not used to that. So I definitely feel like there's a team of people working really,

really hard and I'm it's yeah. It's inspiring. Where can people find more information about your campaign? If they're interested in learning more, perhaps even getting involved. Oh, for sure. At Jen, J E N 2024.org. And go there, sign up. All of the links are social media on there. I do not want to begin to tell you what all the social media handles are. I just, I can't. So go to Jen 2024.org. And if you're local by any chance, and you would like to help locally, we'd love to

have you sign up and show up in an event or something like that too. But anybody can volunteer from anywhere. And if you want to even host a fundraiser, we can do those on Zoom. If you have like a group of people that you think would be interested in having a chat, you know, like I could be, you know, I do gen, I could do gen talks for hire. We just, they're Zoom fundraisers. And we have a few different things coming up that are that are going to be fun. We're going to be having a Jesse Ventura fundraiser that he's going to do for us. And that's the one coming up that is a public. It will be a public thing soon. All right. Well, Jen Perlman, everybody, we appreciate you for joining us today on Breaking Points.

Best of luck on the trail. Thank you. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated.

I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports.

This kind of star-stud that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at the recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to it. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two

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