Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/4/22: Amazon Labor Union, Ukraine Strategic Shifts, Russian Economic Outlook, Media Corruption, Chris Smalls Interview, & More!

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

Krystal and Saagar talk about the Amazon Labor Union victory, the company's fight back against the workers, media freakout, Ukraine updates, hawkish rhetoric, Russia's economy, cable news corruption, Taylor Lorenz blackmail, fake friends of workers, and an interview with Christian Smalls!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Amazon Labor Union: https://www.amazonlaborunion.org/donate/ Ukraine: https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1510681908958617601?s=20&t=-To7LOBNSPSeJcRL54sk3A  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of big stories that I'm very excited to talk about. Namely, Amazon first warehouse voting to join a union historic moment. I have about a million things I want to say about this, so we'll dig into everything we've learned about how exactly they were able to pull this off and a little bit of the media reaction, which is always an interesting part of the story. Also, some terrible breaking news in Ukraine about

the situation there on the ground. We'll get into that. We'll also talk about the economic situation as best we can tell in Russia. New signs that, sadly, as we predicted, the sanctions that we have levied, the economic warfare that we are conducting against Russia is completely backfiring. I mean, that's just pretty much- It may not be working as well as people thought. It may not be working as well as people thought, and it seems to be having the effect of bolstering Russian public opinion in favor of Putin and in favor of this war. So exactly the opposite of the outcome that you would actually want, but we'll dig into those details. Also, a new study that's kind of good

and bad. It reveals that cable news, sadly, really does impact the way that people think about the world and think about politics. No question. The good side of that is that it also indicates that people's minds can be changed. So that's hopeful because if you change their information diet, you can create a better political landscape. So we'll talk about that. Also, it looks like Jen Psaki has a new job coming up here. Lo and behold, she's going to MSNBC, Sagar. Yes.

And it is pretty extraordinary for someone who is still the White House press secretary to be conducting these type of negotiations. It's so extraordinary, actually, that even the White House press secretary to be conducting these type of negotiations. It's so extraordinary, actually, that even the White House press corps was repeatedly pressing on her on it, including one of the people at NBC, Kristen Welker, who would be her colleague if these reports are indeed true. We have on here Christian Smalls might be joining us. Not 100% sure about that. So we had a tentative confirmation. He's a busy guy. We forget him. Extraordinarily busy, so we'll see if we'll get him.

If not, we've got another piece of the Amazon story that we want to tell you about, another media reaction from one of his appearances on MSNBC. But let us start with the news out of Staten Island and Amazon. As you all probably already know, a warehouse on Staten Island, it's called JFK8, has now officially become the very first Amazon warehouse to vote to unionize. It was not particularly close. This was extraordinary and historic in all kinds of ways, not only because it's the first, but also because Amazon is such a behemoth because they really set the conditions for labor across the country because they spent millions of dollars to keep this from happening anywhere.

And also because these workers decided to go a completely different path. They didn't join up with an existing union. Christian Smalls and his colleagues and Derek Palmer, his best friend, who's the vice president there who still works at Amazon, they decided that they were going to start a brand new worker-led union called the Amazon Labor Union and that they were going to start from scratch and organize this warehouse. And lo and behold, that effort and that strategy has succeeded where no one else has been able to. Let's take a listen to a little bit of the man himself upon his victory. Damn, two years ago, my life changed forever. And the only ones that do the right thing and speak up are the workers behind me. Jason was

one of them, Derek, Jordan, Gerald, everybody, and JFK. You know, when COVID-19 came into play, Amazon failed us. They dropped the ball. They lied to the public, saying they're doing all these things. None of that was the reality of our situation. So I let her walk out after they quarantined just me and nobody else. And that walkout led to my firing. Then a week after that, a couple weeks after that, maybe a week or two, that memo that came out calling me not smart or articulate.

Ironically, they also said to make me the face of the whole unionizing efforts, which I had no intention at the time. Now, you guys probably all know the story that he's referring to there. But we've been interviewing Christian since he was fired from Amazon. I don't know, for two years. Yes, for almost exactly two years ago was our first interview with him. And he said in that interview, I may have started a revolution, which is kind of incredible. Clearly, that was exactly what was going on. But so he was very distressed over the lack of COVID safety procedures. He was witnessing his colleagues getting sick. They weren't getting any information. They didn't have adequate PPE within the warehouse. And so he led what was actually a very small walkout at the time. I think we may have even

covered it here. Amazon retaliates against him, fires him. And then as if that wasn't bad enough, one of their top executives in a memo that went out to all of the leadership, up to and including Jeff Bezos, says, hey, you know what we should do? We should make this guy, Christian Smalls, the face of the Amazon union movement because he's, quote, not smart or articulate. That lights the fire under Christian, and ultimately, we see what the results are today. We're learning more and more about exactly how they pulled off this extraordinary victory. There have been a number of good pieces that have looked at the tactics they've used, the people that were involved, why this effort

succeeded when others failed, and also some of the backlash to Amazon's aggressive over-the-top tactics, which really did backfire. Let's go ahead and put this Jacobin piece up on the screen. This is an interview with one of the worker organizers, a woman named Angelica Maldonado. And a few things that jumped out at me here, and this, by the way, is from our friend Eric Blanc, who we've interviewed as well, who's a great labor reporter. So a couple of things that jumped out at me here is she talked a lot about how they went about bridging generational divides, racial divides, ethnic divides, language divides. You have a very diverse workforce that they had to be able to communicate with and be able to win over people's trust. She talks about the fact that the younger workers were

easier to sway than the older workers. And, you know, that makes a lot of sense in terms of if you look at our political landscape, younger voters tend to be more in favor of unions, more on the left politically. Older voters tend to be, you know, more sort of on the right and have more traditional economic views. So that made sense. But she also talked about how they organized across racial lines. She said, that was another thing, reaching out to the diverse races at JFK8. For instance, a lot of our co-workers are African. During the campaign, I had an idea which ended up turning out great. My neighbor, she's also African and she caters. So I said, we've given out so much food. Why don't we give out food that targets the culture of the workers at Amazon? So one day I asked my neighbor to make

us some African fried rice and that really attracted a whole bunch of African workers towards us. And we gained a couple of new organizers off that. I would say having organizers of the same race was also crucial. I'm Hispanic, half Hispanic myself, but I don't speak Spanish. So it was easier for one of our organizers who speak Spanish to speak to those Hispanic workers who had questions. Another thing she talks about, and this really jumped down at me, is part of what Amazon has used successfully in the past, Sagar, is this climate of fear where people feel like, oh, I can't stand up to these people. I can't possibly join a union. I'm going to get fired. My life is going to be ruined. And so they took what they described as intentional calculated risks to demonstrate

that they could stand up for themselves, that they shouldn't be afraid of Amazon. What she says is they would go into these union busting captive audience meetings knowing they were going to get kicked out because they weren't invited. And she said, though, we did get kicked out eventually. Action like that showed them that there are certain rights and certain laws that protect us and that we should not be scared of Amazon. And of course, Agar, Christian Smalls is a perfect example of that because they did the absolute worst they possibly could to that guy. And here he is, still unafraid, still fighting, and still pushing forward. Yeah, it was an ultimate smear campaign that backfired obviously tremendously. And I think that that's what we saw at the heart of this at the beginning,

when they said he's not smart, he's not very articulate. It ended up resulting in the resignation of a top Amazon executive at the time. And ultimately, you know, they awoke a sleeping giant. It's funny because watching the New York Times and the traditional media kind of catch up to a story, which we've been doing for so long, kind of is interesting to see how exactly they interpret the lens. Let's put this up there on the screen. The New York Times profiled Christian, and they talk about there how two best friends beat Amazon, specifically talking about the original firing, about how Christian decided in order to start a union from scratch rather than start with another established union, and how really, I mean, what he's accomplished is one of the most extraordinary feats in the history of the modern labor movement.

It really is. I don't think there is another way to describe it. We watched what happened in Bessemer, Alabama. We watched also the Teamsters unions. Many others told Christian he was making a huge mistake. I remember, I think we interviewed him here, what, six months ago? Exactly on this. And he's like, well, a lot of people didn't want us to do this, but we decided to start it from scratch because we wanted it to be our own. And of course,

everybody said that wasn't going to work, lack of institutional connection. And what they point to on the most significant part is his low budget and then just focusing relentlessly on traditional and important organizing tactics like you point to in the Jacobin piece culminates then in the actual victory that we see for him himself. And I think that that's what's fascinating, organizing tactics like you point to in the Jacobin piece, culminates then in the actual victory that we see for him himself. And I think that that's what's fascinating, is that now with the media attention on him, they are now unable, Amazon is, in order to paint him as not smart or articulate, and they are going to throw everything at the wall in order to make sure that this union never sticks, that they have no

bargaining power. And I'm really curious to see how they begin targeting Christian himself. Yes. Because that is going to happen. But you know, the fact of the matter is the way they've targeted him this far, it only played into his hands because this is a man who worked at this warehouse, who had relationships there. And so when they fired him, when they smeared him as not smart or articulate, when they had him arrested for bringing food into the warehouse to serve these workers. And by the way, they had gotten an order from the NLRB, and this was really critical, saying that organizers could talk about unions and organize within the Amazon warehouses. That mattered a lot.

There's a few other things from this New York Times piece that are really interesting, which lays out not just the smart strategy of Christian and Derek Palmer and the other worker organizers, but also some of the big missteps that Amazon made. Because as Jodi Kantor put it, the reporter on that story, while Amazon deployed an incident commander, the workers deployed baked ziti. So they were there. They were organizing at a bus stop that all the workers came to that, you know, funneling into and out of work. They were serving food. They were hyper local, hyper like culturally competent with all the different diverse constituencies in this warehouse. And so when Amazon would say, oh, he's not smart or articulate or get people arrested, this just made them look extremely heavy-handed and ultimately really

backfired. Think about the odds here. Christian said that they spent about $120,000 overall in this effort. Let me tell you, that is peanuts compared to what normally goes into these things. He says, we started this with nothing, with two tables, two chairs, and a tent. Amazon spent more than $4.3 million just on anti-union consultants nationwide last year, just last year. And that's just scratching the surface of how much they spent to try to destroy this. There was one other incident they say here that was a big Amazon mistake. Reportedly, one of their anti-union consultants called the labor organizers, who are mostly black,

thugs. And that also backfired and made the, and this has been reported to the NLRB too, made the workers feel like they were discriminatory against these organizers. All of this led to a situation where they quote a worker there, a woman named Kathleen LeJuz, who's 41, who said she's not a big union fan, but she voted for the union to send a message to the company because she said, quote, the humanity at Amazon is gone. I think that says it all there that they were able to win over even people who were skeptical because they were so relentlessly hyperlocal and culturally competent and, you know, friendly, warm faces, extremely hopeful. While Amazon is coming over the top with a gigantic hammer. New York Times article, which is they mentioned in passing, Sagar, that there were some labor sympathizers who went to work at the warehouse just to try to help with this effort. And they quote one woman in particular, Ms. Medina, and it turns out she was the president of the Queens DSA chapter. So I want to know more about that, about how many DSA members went and took jobs at this warehouse and other places

to try to be helpful in the organizing effort. Because even though the numbers, I'm sure, are relatively small, just having a few more people who can do the communication and organize on breaks and all of that, that really makes a difference. Yeah, that's an interesting point.

I do want to know more about that, too. Because now is the real question. Well, we have upcoming, how many votes do we have upcoming in Amazon in terms of the New York area? We have one more warehouse that is scheduled to vote. I think that voting starts April 23rd. So that is coming right now. So what the point here is how much of this was a one-off and how much of it can be scaled. And that's actually, I mean, that's the ultimate question when it comes to all of these things, which is that at this point of this was a one-off and how much of it can be scaled. And that's actually, I mean, that's the ultimate question when it comes to all of these things, which is that at this point it was a victory. Can it then be transported, kind of a unionization effort in a box,

and then exported to different warehouses and sweep the country? Now, we saw that happen with Starbucks, and we know that it's happening quite well. Starbucks, though, has a very, very different workforce. We've talked about here a lot. Starbucks is a much more educated workforce. These are people who are disproportionately younger, probably also disproportionately a lot more liberal. And I don't mean that in terms of a disparaging way, just much more likely to probably have been actively involved in like

a Bernie Sanders type campaign, where an Amazon worker is really going to run the gamut in terms of both political beliefs, socioeconomic, and possibly just politically disconnected, most likely to fall into a non-voter category. So how do you get— That's what Christian talks about. Yeah. Because when you're working at Amazon, they just take over your whole damn life. Of course.

I mean, what are you supposed to do? We talk about this all the time. The people feel shame whenever they're like, I don't— you know, they kind of say it under their breath. You know, I know I'm supposed to care, but I don't care about politics. It's like, listen, you're trying to pay your bills. You're working paycheck to paycheck. Gas is $4.50 a gallon.

Your rent is out of control. Heating bills. And you're worried about your kids' medical expense or they got pulled out of school. Who can blame you? You have way bigger problems. So unionizing that workforce in a scalable way is going to be the single biggest obstacle. And also, I mean, this is probably a good segue to the next part of this, but it's not like Amazon is going to just let this happen. They are throwing everything they can at this.

Absolutely. We have no idea what they're about to throw at us. Let's put this last piece for part one up on the screen, A4. This is a great profile actually before the vote. I want to give credit to the city for interviewing Christian Smalls and Derek Palmer before the vote happened here. And this piece gets into a lot of the generational approach here. You know, Derek and Chris are both 33 years old. So they are young. I think that makes them young millennials, not Gen Z.

Right. And then. Yeah, for sure. And then they're also organizing a lot of Zoomers using TikTok and, you know, just being sort of like of that generation and really comfortable. And so that was a big part of the appeal. So there was a lot going on here. I mean, think if you add it all together, they had a really smart approach. They went down to Bessemer and what they took away was that the organizers who had come in felt like outsiders. And they said, you know, we're going to do this a different way. We're going to be hyper local. We're going to be hyper, you know, engaged with the Amazon work and really understand what their day to day is like. That clearly was a smart strategy.

You had Amazon overreach. And, you know, frankly, I don't know if Amazon took them that seriously because a lot of the country, the media, certainly political class didn't take them seriously at all. So, you know, you have a national landscape also that is wildly different than it was just a short time ago where there are lots of jobs. But the question is, are they good jobs? And so workers feel a little bit more empowered to take this kind of risk. And then it's no accident that the Starbucks movement and the Amazon movement starts in New York. New York is the state that has the largest union density. So you have a culture of unionization. Christian's mom and Angelica, the other organizer I mentioned, both of their moms were members of SEIU 1199.

There you go. So they have union membership in their blood. They understand what it's all about intuitively. You have that culture around you. And then you have helpful members from DSA. Also, that's part of the culture there in that area. All of that coming together in kind of a perfect storm and pulling up off what we all thought may well have been impossible. So it's an extraordinary story. Obviously, I'm extremely

excited about it. I think it's fascinating to dig into all these facets. And before we move on to the next part, the other thing I want to say is they do have another vote coming up this month. And so if you guys are able to contribute to their solidarity fund, you know, they did this with peanuts, but they're going to need some resources to keep the train going. Link is going to be down there in the description. Make sure you guys can help. Yeah. All right. So let's transition to then what is coming up because we know Amazon is going to pull out every dirty trick in the book to try to reverse these results, to try to make sure that these workers never actually win a contract, to make

sure that this is the one and only warehouse that ever unionizes in the entire country. So let's put up Amazon's little response here. They're kind of going full stop the steel, Sagar. This is the commentary. They say, Amazon getting about as close as it can to claiming the union election was rigged. Let's put their statement up on the screen here. They say, I'm going to read this in full, guys,

so leave this up for a minute. They say, we're disappointed with the outcome of the election in Staten Island. I'm sure you are. Because we believe having a direct relationship with the company is best for our employees. We're evaluating our options, including filing objections based on the, and this is the key part, based on the, quote, inappropriate and undue influence by the NLRB that we and others, including the National Retail Federation and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, witnessed in this election. First of all, those are two groups that are consultants for Amazon. So these aren't like separate,

independent entities. They're also extremely anti-union. But when you're talking about, when you're alleging that the NLRB basically rigged this process, that's the governing body that oversees these elections. So that's setting up a potential court challenge and possibly signaling that they are going to go to the mat to try to ultimately reverse these results. So this is pretty wild that this is what they're putting out in their statement. It's very characteristic of Amazon. I mean, I've read a lot about Amazon, the history of Amazon. Something that Bezos baked into the DNA was taking on regulatory, any regulatory capture industry relentlessly in terms of using Amazon's lawyers.

So at the previous times in the 1990s up until the early 2000s, Bezos would use his entire legal infrastructure to challenge on sales tax. They do not want to collect online sales tax, all of that. They went so far as to set up separate entities in states where they did collect and require online sales tax and did not allow them to use Amazon.com emails and any other stuff. I'm just trying to show people that within the DNA of Amazon.com is the complete declaration of war against any regulatory impetus on top of Amazon.com is the complete declaration of war against any regulatory impetus on top of it. And when you're a scrappy little startup selling books in 1998, I get it. Whenever you're the

second largest company on planet Earth, especially in terms of employment in America, that's a little bit of a different story. And I think that that is why they're going to do this. I've noticed this with Bezos, period. What he does is he uses the court system and his political connections in order to try and rig the game in his favor. He's doing that right now with Blue Origin and his spaceship. Don't worry, that is actually still alive. And unfortunately, that's very likely to be the tactic here, because one of the things that we've pointed to is that, sure, the NLRB in this case is going to be a lot more friendly to Amazon, but they can mire this thing in legal fees and in the courts for years to come, leaving things up in the air, demoralizing the current effort at the unions, and also showing the workforce, like, yeah, you can vote. It

doesn't matter. We will destroy you if we have the ability. There is high turnover at these warehouses, which by the way, is partly by design by Amazon. I mean, they chew these workers up and they spit them out as fast as they possibly can. There's a couple of things that are in the worker's favor because one thing that we talked about on the show before is winning the vote is just the first step in the battle. They have a long road ahead of them before they actually get a contract. Amazon labor union put out a statement demanding that Amazon negotiate with them and start collective bargaining in early May. I wouldn't hold your breath on that one. And in fact, what we often see is that corporations, they don't have any legal requirement to really negotiate in good faith. So they drag their feet.

They pretend like they're negotiating, but they continually put poison pills into the contract so that you can never actually reach a contract agreement. So that's the next big fight for these workers that we're going to have to pay really close attention to. That and any sort of legal challenges that Amazon files about, you know, how this election ultimately unfolded. A couple things that are going in their favor. Number one, we did learn that according to Amazon Labor Union, I think it was Derek Palmer who put this out. There are 18 other Amazon facilities across the country that have reached out to them that want to organize. So very much sounds like, you know, what happened with Starbucks where Buffalo just lit a fire across the country. And then you had all these workers seeing that example and saying, oh my God, like if they can do it, we can do it too. We could pull this off. Let's go

guys. So that I think is really important because I think the key strategy here has to be to strike while the iron is hot and to try to organize as many of these places as quickly as possible. The other tactic that companies often will use is they will just close, shutter the shop. So we saw this, I think it was Dollar General in Missouri. A lot of companies will do this. And this is why workers are afraid to unionize is the company will just say, all right, fine, we're just going to close this place down. Oh, it's not profitable anymore, even though it's been profitable for 25 years. Exactly.

Well, Amazon, they don't really have that luxury of doing that in New York City. If anything, they need more workers and they need more infrastructure in this region. You don't really have the wiggle room to just close down. This is a gigantic facility with 8,000 workers and a key part of their distributions network in New York City and the surrounding areas. So that makes it a lot harder for them to just say, forget it. We're going to write this one off and we're going to go somewhere else. So at least that gives the workers a little bit of leverage here. I think that's right. And it's also just the irony of Amazon accusing the NLRB of rigging the election when the NLRB found that Amazon actually

exerted undue influence on the Bessemer Alabama election, resulting in a new election having to be held. That's really what this is all about. But it also goes to show you about the immense power of the national retail, the NRF, and then also the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, both of those organizations here in Washington, they have two of the nicest buildings in the city. I'll put it that way. I think number one and number two in terms of- It's always very telling. Yeah. Oh, yeah. In terms of the lobbying power that these people is immense, and they are going to have to exert their influence both on the NLRB to try and rig

some of the future findings about how this is going to happen. They're going to try and mire it within red tape. And really what you're seeing is that they are just showing you that they will declare all out legal warfare on all of these elections in the future to discourage it. But the counter to that is that with the success of the Smalls effort, and if you can get, especially if we get one more store, because that's kind of how Starbucks started. Once they got two, it was like, okay, this is a thing. Because then two became six, and then six became like 18. I think that

that is very likely. If they can get the second one in order to unionize, then it will spread. But of course, you know, the real test, too, it failed in Bessemer for a reason. You know, New York, as you were saying, high union density, you have people there with a lot more familiar, they don't have as much. It's more of a sticky thing in terms of the warehouse. They know that Amazon can't just pull the plug on JFK. Like,

what are you going to do? Not deliver to Amazon? I mean, to New York City, like, you're going to do it. So here's the question. Can it work in Kansas City? Can it work in Nebraska? Can it work in Ohio? Can it work in Texas? I mean, these are all areas where that's going to be the true test. That's the big question because in Starbucks, the answer was yes. I mean, now we've had Starbucks kind of across the country that have voted to unionize, including places like Tennessee and, you know, places that don't have that strong union culture. But Starbucks is obviously very different. I mean, we're talking about very small workforces versus thousands of workers. places that don't have that strong union culture. But Starbucks is obviously very different. I mean, we're talking about very small workforces versus thousands of workers. I do think the new redo election results in Bessemer are actually cause for encouragement

because right now where things stand, the union is roughly 100 votes down in the new count. First of all, that is way better than they did the first time around when they lost something like two thirds to one third. Shows you that number one, the union just had more time to organize. The last one was done really in a rush and really in a hurry. So they probably had more time to build those local ties and have local worker organizers who had those relationships and were able to be more effective. Number two, it shows you the national landscape is very, very different. And by the way, there's over 400 ballots that have been challenged in that Bessemer election. So that one is not over yet. Even though the union is down in the count right now,

there still is a glimmer of hope that once all of the challenges have been sorted through and resolved, that they could potentially, I think it's still a long shot, but could potentially end up on top. The very fact that it shifted so significantly that it could even be close this time around shows you what an extraordinarily different landscape this is now and how workers are feeling a lot bolder about, you know, about taking matters into their own hands. Yeah, that's really well said. And on top of this also is the media. What is going on exactly with the media? So we've got to look over to our friends over on the CNBC network, Jim Cramer, the mind of business and

the voice of Wall Street. What is his reaction to all of these union efforts? Let's take a listen. Well, we know that the union work rules are what everything is about. It's the same case with Starbucks, too. If you can't tell your employees when they work, then you're really not able to have much of an ability to be able to move product or move coffee. And I think that people, the unions will be in charge of time that you need to work. And that would be dreadful for, very dreadful for Andy Jassy. And that's just a U.S. picture, right? Yeah. They got Europe to think about as well. You know, look, one of the problems was, you know, Starbucks does indeed have unionized places in

the ones that they franchise. But if you can't control the work rules, no one wants to work certain shifts. So you can just say, listen, I'm not going to work that shift. And Amazon would not be able to say, yes, you must work it. So that's what's at stake with union is time that you have to work. Our thanks to Dee. We're going to watch developments in New York and Alabama. I imagine we will. Because she's doing amazing work. This is a very important story because the reason why, one of the reasons why Amazon works so well is because people work when Amazon says you must work. Yeah. Wow. That's amazing.

Giving up the game there, isn't he? Yeah, of course it is. And look, you know, this is a guy who doesn't, he's accusing people of wanting to have probably exactly what he has. Nobody tells him when to work. He gets to choose his own hours, probably only works a couple of hours a day in terms of whenever he's on the television and then the rest is like comfy research in an office. I just find this maddening in terms of the way that they're reacting to this. Imagine that your boss does not 100% rule your life. Is that really the objection that we're having here? Also, it's not like people, also Starbucks can incentivize people wanting to work terrible

shifts by paying them more money. You can actually easily could do that. You can incentivize your workers. And it's also not like these people are demanding not to work. They're demanding to have some say over the conditions of their work. Everybody, these people are such hard workers. I mean, anybody go and watch a video of what it's actually like to work in an Amazon warehouse. Most white collar folks, you would not last a single day in terms of the amount of weight they have to carry, the steps that they have to take, the health effects that come from lifting and putting things down. I mean, the sciatica and stuff that these people have to work through is unbelievable. And all they're asking for is, hey, maybe I want a 10 to 15,

instead of a 10 minute break, I want 15. Because actually it takes me seven minutes to walk to the break room, which means that after the time I've gone to the bathroom, I have like two minutes before I actually have to get up and go back to work. Could I have 10 minutes maybe? Radical idea. I know this is the point, which is that they deserve a say within that. And look, the history of unionization does not see us, especially at this nascent level, not in the bloated stuff of the 1970s and the 1980s. I'm talking about in the real history of unionization, whenever there's zero power and then zero power and 100% power on the half of the bosses, it made it so that capitalism was much more sustainable and we had an industrial middle class in the 1950s.

I think that's a very good way of framing it because obviously we know our audience is ideologically diverse. And what unions represent is just a counterweight, right, that doesn't require a bunch of government bureaucracy. Yes, you need the NLRB to be strong and enforce the rules, but this is a counterweight, a way to sort of make capitalism work for, not a big capitalist, but make it work for the middle class, be able to have people bought in to the prosperity of America. It's no accident that this is happening right now when you've had workers watch for two years as Jeff Bezos had plenty of money to like fly into space. Reconstruct a bridge for his yacht. Right. Exactly.

And add billions to his net worth. And they're like, really? I can't get like a 20-minute break? Are you serious? Why Kramer's comments are so revealing here is because he is telling you that this isn't really about profit margins. It is on the margins. This isn't that they can't afford to pay the workers more or give them better benefits or let them have breaks. It's that they want to have total and complete control. And anything that is going to take away that control even a little bit, they consider to

be completely unacceptable. I mean, he says, if you can't control the workforce, then this is, you know, this is basically going to be terrible for Amazon. Look, the reality is what we have seen with the Starbucks that have unionized, at least the ones in the Buffalo, their sales actually went up. People were so excited that you had these workers who were in the news, who were taking power into their own hands. And, you know, they'd sort of like ingested the rhetoric about essential workers and wanted to show their support. It was actually good for business. Amazon is facing a problem right now because they had churned through so many workers so quickly. They're having trouble being able to add enough workforce to be able to meet their, you know, burgeoning, wildly large business.

So, you know, maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing for their business if their workers were actually bought in and felt like they had some say over their day-to-day lives. Study after study shows that one of the key determinants of happiness is, you know, you need enough money to be able to do okay and meet your basic needs. But the big determinant is actually that you feel like you have control over your day to day. And that is exactly the thing that Amazon will fight tooth and nail to make sure that you don't have. We've talked here before many times about the way they track your every movement. Every single thing you do from the time that you enter that facility until the time that you leave, your whole day, your whole life, everything is governed by Amazon. And what these workers are saying, they have some specific demands in terms of wages and benefits they want to see. But what they're really saying here is we deserve to have some democracy within our

workplace. We deserve to have a say in what is going on here. And you can't call us essential and then treat us like we're garbage. Yeah, I mean, look, Amazon just what? This is March 9th, so less than one month ago, announced a 20 to 1 stock split and bought back $10 billion of its own stock just to juice the price and make all of its executives very wealthy along with its shareholders. Bezos himself could give up all of the wealth that he just earned in the last two years. I'm not, look, I'm not proposing something radical. He went from $100 billion to like $200 billion. And I'm not saying give up as in the government forced him to. If he just did it voluntarily, does he really need that extra

$50 billion? Could have given everybody at the company, including the workforce, a massive raise, healthcare benefits. And ask yourself this too, in terms of the market cap of Amazon, bad press and all that, wouldn't that be the immense show of faith that would stop the unionization efforts in his tracks? Yes. But here's the truth. They care so much about that extra 50 billion on top of the 100 billion and the extra billions to the executives or millions to the people in the C-suites that they are willing to fight this tooth and nail just so that they can enrich themselves and the shareholder class. This is the absolute truth. It's right there in terms of buying back their own stock while fighting the union effort hand in foot. They tried to increase.

They did. They upped their wages and they upped some benefits in response to increasing worker dissatisfaction and some of these union drives. It didn't work. Because ultimately there is no workplace in America where you are more controlled, more surveilled than as an Amazon worker. They are at the bleeding edge of all of this wearable tech so that they know exactly where you are, exactly how many seconds it took for you to pack that box or pick that item. And so even though, yes, they, you know, upped some of their wages, upped some of their benefits. Workers, what this is really a fight over ultimately is control. One last note here on the media response.

So we highlighted for you the New York Times, I thought, had a very good and interesting write-up, you know, of what ultimately went down here. Some of the other sort of mainstream, like, news outlets of that ilk had similar pieces. I went and tried to look through cable news to see what they were doing. And the answer was like basically nothing. As far as I could tell, Fox News, the only aspect of this that they covered was like me fighting with AOC.

Oh, cool. Which I'm going to talk about in my monologue too and sort of like a response to them. But they're such disingenuous hacks. Like they're so anti-union, but they posture like they're pro-worker just because it's a way for them to own AOC. It's a stupid, they're stupid in the way that they did it. But anyway, we'll get into that. CNN, I can't find that they said a word about this. They have one little article on their website. And when you go to it, they normally embed a relevant segment.

Right, that they did on that, yes. There's no relevant segment about this. So I don't think they mentioned it at all. And again, guys, whatever you think about it, this is a historic moment, like the biggest win for labor since the 1930s. Amazon is the holy grail of labor organizing. So for you to just be like, eh, it's not that important is pretty extraordinary. MSMUC, the segment I could find from them, we may show you later in the show, but they actually interview Christian Smalls. And it gets uncomfortable because they ask him like, oh, what about this thing with AOC?

And she says she's trying to be helpful. And Christian's like, I have no idea what you're talking about because we certainly didn't see any of that help. So they quickly end the segment after that. I'm sure they cut real quick. That'll probably be the last you hear about the MSNBC. That's the last time you'll ever hear it there. So cable news, not exactly all over it.

And I also, final note on this, you know, the bottom line is the mainstream press is not that good at their job because we've been covering this for years. And it's just you and me and the small team. It's not that hard. And it's not that hard. And we saw, you know, yeah, it's a long shot, but this is really significant. It's shorter what they're trying to do. The story of Christian himself is extremely compelling.

And this is, you know, a really dynamic and courageous leader. And so, you know, they just totally missed the boat on something that is extremely impactful and profoundly interesting and really relevant to their audience. And they're just nowhere to be found. I actually remember how that came about. We did the segment about Christian getting fired. He saw it, he tweeted about it, DM'd him and booked him for the show. It was literally that simple. So, you know, guys, it's not that hard. Cable news bookers, they spend, they have a much, much, much bigger budget. Their budget for booking is bigger than the budget of this entire show. And yet they are on orders of magnitude and they are still unable to bring you the most important stories. Uh, look, that's just really the name of the game. And that's why we do what we do here. And we, of course, thank the people who support us to enable that type of journalism.

Absolutely. Let's move on now to Ukraine, obviously. Actually, it's been nice to not have to open the show with Ukraine to actually bring some people some good news. But let's get to how exactly things are faring on the battlefield and any of the bigger diplomatic updates. So our friend at SimTac continued to have some of the best maps in the game here. Let's put this up there on the screen. So in terms of what's happening with Kiev, that's where we're going to focus the bulk of our attention. There's been a lot made. Are they withdrawing? And is it strategic? And did they plan it all along or not? So the Ukrainian military has managed to secure some

of these territories northwest of Kiev, up near the Belarusian border. And Ukrainian forces continue to clear individual localities behind the withdrawing Russian forces. You can see, for those who are watching just on the screen, those red arrows up into Belarusia and into Russian territory. Now, at the same time, though, that doesn't mean that there isn't an offensive all the way in the eastern part of the country, predominantly around the Donbass region, which is where a lot of the trouble has started. Now, before we get to the specifics of that, Michael Kaufman, the analyst that we both deeply respect, had two long threads on the context of

where the war is that I think are really worth parsing and going through for everybody for trying to understand what's happening. Let's put this up there on the screen, please. Which is that what Michael points to is that in terms of the map and the progress of forces, he says that it kind of splits the difference here, which is that it seems certain that the Russians definitely did want to take Kiev, but that that doesn't mean that they have not still the ability in order to fight to some sort of stalemate or in order even possibly offensively in the Donbass region, really what he points to is that Putin has put himself into a real bind. And the reason why is that the bind has been made by Putin calling this a special operation. And by calling it a special operation, he's only been able to bring some of his ultimate force to bear. The problem is,

is think of it this way. Russia is fighting this war with 15 to 20% of its operational capacity. However, the Ukrainians are fighting this with 100% of their operational capacity, both in terms of war, also in terms of civilian buy-in. Put the next thread up there, please, on the screen. And we'll have links down there just so everybody can go and watch it. What I find is the most important thing here that Michael points to is that for Putin in order to, quote-unquote, scale up operations, here's what he has to do. Russia can get more battalions, but without a national mobilization,

its ability to pursue the war beyond the Donbass looks very circumspect. And it can't get more units quickly. Right now, the Russian military has to fight largely with what it has managed to put together. That's a problem for when you want to conduct a national-scale military operation on the entire country of Ukraine, which is the largest country in Europe. A lot of people forget that. So what it means is that the limited war aims could be, and again, this is a big could, could be such that what the Russians want to do is retreat slash focus all of their efforts on securing the Donbass region in the eastern part of the country in order to then get concessions from Zelensky in terms of a neutrality declaration. Yes, we're going to give

you Donetsk. And they may not say it, but they're not going to fight over it. Yes, we will officially recognize Crimea kind of with a stalemate that we actually were in. And then maybe we can just see some sort of ceasefire come about. But I found those two threads very revealing. And number one, that the Russians, because they've hamstrung themselves by not declaring this war, declaring it a special operation, they really are not able to bring the full force of military power to bear. And number two, that politically, it's dicey in terms of whether Putin could pull off the full-scale national mobilization.

It reminds me a lot of past Russian campaigns. Afghanistan, Finland, and more sold to the public in much the same way. Unless you have total buy-in, it's not really capable of fighting it fully to the extent that you need to, which is why they were able to do that when Hitler invaded. Yeah, so you have a couple of things going on. First of all, it's very clear you now have a refocusing of the fight in the eastern region of Ukraine. There was a sort of countertake that we brought you last week of perhaps it was always intentional that the, you know, threat to take Kyiv was kind of like, you know, a fake out move. Right. I'm not sure if I buy that, but that is an alternative

interpretation here. I think it's worth hearing. Yeah, it's worth putting out there that that's an alternative interpretation. Most analysts, though, are saying that basically, look, they haven't been able to achieve their maximalist political aims here. So now they're focusing on their sort of core strategic objectives and that, you know, the Ukrainian forces, they have fought extraordinarily well and they've been supplied with, you know, incredible amounts of weapons by us and by the West. But they've, you know, they've sustained losses as well. And so now the fight moves to eastern and southern Ukraine. And we'll see what this next phase of the war ultimately looks like. You have a very difficult political bind for Putin as you laid out because he hasn't been honest at all with his public about

what this is. And so it makes it very hard to go to them and say, we've got to mobilize for a war effort when they're like, what war? Yes. Right. They're like, what are you talking about? There's no war. So that's his bind. And then Zelensky has his own bind, which is that, you know, Ukrainians really feel like they're able to out and out win this, which makes it very difficult to sell any sort of negotiated agreement and settlement to the public. So that's why sometimes when you hear him talk, he's kind of all over the place. Sometimes it's very conciliatory. It really depends on the audience. Very conciliatory. Listen, we're willing to, let's talk about neutral status.

Listen, we know that we're not going to, we aren't going to use arms to try to take back the regions like Crimea and Donetsk that you've occupied. And sometimes you hear the language, which you did this weekend on the Sunday shows. This is a genocide and we've got to be all in and we're not going to give up an inch of territory. So that's the balancing act that he's having to deal with here. And so right now we're just waiting to see, you know, how this all shakes out and what it looks like once they refocus on the eastern part of the country. There's just no way to know. And on top of all of this is the real issue. Let's move on to this next part. Let's put this next on the screen, which is that there has been, you know, some pretty dramatic accusations of war crimes by the Russian military.

Now, we're not going to show you the photos because it's very difficult, A, in order to verify that it's happening, B, in terms of who these people are and others, and there's a ton of propaganda going around. I think what can be said is this, which is that on the internet, over the last couple of days, where there have been traded accusations of war crimes by the Russian forces, which has spawned a lot of calls by the media in order for more intervention. And also the Russian telegram channels are alight with all of these videos purporting to show

Ukrainian forces also not treating Russian soldiers well. I'm going to err on the side of, frankly, believing both of them, which is not going to please a lot of people. And the reason why is war is hell. It brings out the absolute brutality and the worst in people. And sometimes strategy has nothing to do with it. And the immense anger that some, you know, junior level forces feel in the heat of this type of conflict can actually lead to some of the worst things that happen, as we have seen throughout the history of warfare. But that obviously is a complicated story. The problem, though, is it has spawned some of the craziest calls yet that we have seen from the mainstream media for direct intervention into the conflict with Ukraine by the United States. Chief among them really has been Ali Velshi over at MSNBC. Here was his dispatch

after some of the war crime photos appeared to be a public. Let's take a listen. The global world order and potentially democracy survival hang in the balance. If this isn't the kind of moment that the United Nations and NATO and the UN and the G20 and the Council of Europe and the G7 were made for, what is the point of these alliances if not to stop this? The world cannot sit by as Vladimir Putin continues this reign of terror. Oh my gosh, Crystal. This is the other problem, which is we can't let emotion cloud your judgment this way. When you say, if this is not what to do, then what? You're talking once again about a nuclear exchange. Also, and look, I know this sounds heartless, and I do not diminish what's

happened to the Ukrainian people and to many of the civilians and others who have suffered here, but the point of an alliance is about defense. It's not actually about acting on humanitarian force in order to bring military force to bear. It's about protecting national interests. This can sound callous, but at the very core level, that is what the NATO alliance is actually about. It's not about this entire doctrine, which he's espousing here, which is called R2P, the responsibility to protect. This is something that's emerged in the decadence of the 1990s. If you were to go back and talk to any statesman in history, this would be a completely foreign concept. But it has completely taken over all of the brains of the people in media here. And they almost are using emotional blackmail, which is saying, oh, are you saying that you

don't care about the war crime? Of course not. It's horrible what is happening. Does that mean that we should risk a nuclear exchange? No, I mean that's a very simple calculus to me. I don't understand why they are discarding these outright risks. It may come from chauvinism, hubris of the West. They may just want to call Putin's buff. Maybe they're fine with it. I really don't know the answer. But that's incredibly irresponsible to broadcast to millions of people.

Yeah, and by the way, just in case he wasn't clear enough in that clip that we just showed, on Twitter, he said something very similar. He said, the turning point for the West and NATO will come when the sun rises over Kiev on Sunday and the war crimes against civilian noncombatants become visible to all. There is no more time for prevarication. If never again means anything, then this is the time to act. Aaron Maté replied to that and said, okay, what specifically are you advocating for? And Ali Velshi replies, direct military involvement. So he's, I mean, you know, he's not even trying to couch it or hide it or whatever, which I mean, I kind of appreciate the honesty because that's what a lot of these people ultimately want but won't actually come out and say.

But no, he came right out and said, what I want is direct military involvement. And this is why I've been very leery of the overwhelming, this is going to sound terrible, but this is the reality, the overwhelming focus on just the humanitarian aspect of this, which is important, deserves coverage, deserves endless compassion. But without corresponding hard-nosed conversation about what each of these options ultimately mean. What did it mean when we launched all-out economic warfare on Russia and how is that likely ultimately to go? And we're going to get to that in a moment. It hasn't gone well. In fact, it's really backfired. It's made it less likely to create the outcomes that we ultimately like. It's sort of strengthened

the hand of Putin in a lot of regards in terms of his hold on power within Russia. What does it mean if you're going to have fighter jets in Ukraine? If you're going to send fighter jets in, what does it mean if you enforce a no-fly zone? The lack of that kind of discussion of how this could escalate and what each of our choices ultimately risks, that's how you end up with people who I'm sure think of themselves as very liberal, like Ali Velshi and potentially progressive, advocating for worse. It's the same exact playbook that we saw with regards to Afghanistan, where people who see themselves as really you know, like really do good, bleeding heart liberals, and I don't say that in a disparaging way, being manipulated into thinking that the right, like just humanitarian thing is for us to stay in Afghanistan forever. Okay, let's roll the tape here. What happened the last time that NATO acted out of humanitarian intervention? We know.

It's 2011, Libya. The French and the Germans say we want to have a humanitarian NATO mission in order to take out Gaddafi's air force to stop him from, you know, inflicting pain on the civilian population amid the Libyan revolution. Sounds noble. Okay, so we do that. What ends up happening? Well, these rebels win the civil war, sodomize Gaddafi on live television. I have no sympathy for Gaddafi, by the way. But that's what happens. So we have a cheer. We think this is all going to work out well. Okay, what happens? Libya collapses into a massive civil war. Hundreds of thousands are dead. Many of those weapons from

Gaddafi find their way into Syria. By the way, our ambassador, Christopher Stevens, gets attacked by radical Islamic terrorists on September 11th and ends up dying. Then what happens is that modern day slave markets begin to pop up in Libya. And now it's 2022. The city of Benghazi, which at the time we were trying to protect, fell to ISIS, requiring us to bomb it to smithereens in order to take them out. And 11 years later, after all of this has happened, are the Libyan people better off for us having done that at the time? Some of them might say that what has resulted as all of this has been utter chaos, the destruction of wealth, the destruction of the entire Libyan middle class, and has also sparked, by the way, the refugee crisis in terms of what's happening in Europe. So you put that all together, we know what happens. I don't understand how we can't look at that story and then say, you know what, let's up the ante and do that again in Europe, except against somebody who has nuclear weapons. This is the point. You can't let just

sheer emotion guide your security decisions. And when you have calls like this without airing really what the consequences are, it's dangerous. You know, I saw over the weekend, there's a Ukrainian politician. He tweeted out some of these photos, these terrible photos of civilians who were killed. Again, my heart goes out to these people, seriously. He says, this is the Ukrainian city after being deoccupied. Dead bodies of civilians with hands tied and bullet holes in their heads from behind. This is 2022. Is it fascism or genocide? What's this? Europe, USA, how did we let this happen? Now, once again, you are presuming that it is all within our control. It is the chief, you know, the egotism

to think that you have a direct influence on the affairs of the entire world is crazy. But what's even worse is that that was quote tweeted and reiterated by some of the top people in all of media. Margaret Brennan at CBS News faced the nation chief among them. She literally just quote tweeted it and said, Europe, USA, how did we let this happen? And a very quick perusal of her feed is just constant retweeting calls for NATO, saying that this questions the entire NATO alliance about all you know, all of these calls for military. Isn't she supposed to be like a straight news journalist? That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying.

This is why it's crazy. And we see this in terms of her coverage as well. Look, I think Zelensky is a hero of his own people and he's doing a great job for Ukraine. Does that mean that we have to take everything the man says entirely as fact? No, we have to fact check these things. And yet look at how she conducts herself whenever she has him on television. Let's take a listen. Mr. President, your team shared with us a video, images that your government has gathered of what has been left behind outside of Kiev that I do want to share with our viewers.

And I want to ask you about it. So again, we're airing images obtained direct from the Ukrainian government. Do I think that they're wrong? No. Are they perhaps selectively edited? Should we then maybe do our due diligence? Last time I checked, there are war photographers in Ukraine. You can also use open source photos from what's happening. This is a dangerous precedent that we're setting here. You know, what we've learned from Iraq, WMD, don't trust anything that governments are

going to tell you straight up. You should find trust, but verify at the very least. And I hate trying. I hate sounding as if I'm diminishing the Ukrainian cause. I think it's a just cause. What I'm pointing to instead is that how we conduct ourselves should at the very least be the chief consideration of what do we have at stake? What are the consequences of escalation? How would that impact the American people, the global economy, the lives of our everyday citizens?

All of that is being pushed aside by our current mainstream media. And I do think that Biden really gave up the game when he admitted that what their real goal was was removing Putin from power. Not through – I don't think that there are many people within the administration who are pushing for like a direct war on Russia, but they are foolishly deluding themselves into thinking that they can bring enough pressure to bear internally within the country that his regime will fall. And again, we're about to tell you why that whole approach has completely backfired. When in fact, what we should be relentlessly focused on, if you do care about the lives of the Ukrainian people and about their cause, which is just how do we create conditions for peace? How do we put pressure on both sides to create conditions for peace?

And that is not a conversation that you see anywhere unfolding in our media. I mean, to the Margaret Brennan thing, listen, the Ukrainians are in a fight for their lives. They're in an absolutely existential struggle. And as part of that, they are using every single channel of resistance that is available to them. And part of that resistance is information. Zelensky has been, you know, mostly very effective in that sphere. And we've already seen some just, you know, blatant propaganda that came from them that was just not true. There was the, what is he called, the ghost fighter or whatever, ghost pilot. There was the Snake Island thing. I mean,

we've had these instances already, which were debunked, which was propaganda came out from the Ukrainian government. And I'm not justifying it, but no one should be surprised that a nation in an existential battle for survival is going to use all of the tools at their disposal. So then for you to just effectively, uncritically, yes, they put a little label on it that said Ukrainian government footage, but that's as far as they went.

And you just uncritically share the propaganda reel that they've prepared for you. That is really, really something. I mean, talk about just complete lack of any sort of journalistic integrity. It's extraordinary. And clearly, you know, Margaret Brannan has become very activist on this issue. And this is another thing that really frustrates me with the mainstream press. I don't mind journalists having a worldview and having a lens and having an opinion. But what I despise is people holding themselves out as neutral arbiters and then actually being some of the most ideological

actors that exist in American politics. Yeah, they need to just admit the truth. She's like, look, this is really tugged on my heartstrings. This is a very difficult story for me to tell on the other side. But at the same time, I don't even really accept that because I think that whenever you hold that position, look, there are all kinds

of things I believe. We have people on here all the time who I disagree with and that's fine. You know, that's the whole point, which is that it's not about me. It's about everybody up here.

I'll tell you what I think. You know, everybody knows that. But that doesn't mean it should be the only thing that people can hear. And unfortunately, that just is the complete disposition right now of our media. And look, that just is the complete disposition right now

of our media. And look, the conditions have probably never been better than right now for peace. The Ukrainians have actually fought this tremendously well. Now we see a Russian withdrawal, strategic, whatever you want to call it, to the Donbass region. Let's get in these conference rooms and let's hammer something out so we can end this war and there can be no more war crimes so that people don't die. Let's not use it as an excuse in order to launch World War III in which things could hop off and really kill hundreds of millions of people in such a short period of time. How are you going to offer to roll back sanctions on Russia now?

Now when you've said you want regime change and he's a war criminal and he's a butcher and when you're playing videos like this. I mean, we didn't put it in the show, but I mean, Hillary Clinton was out there on the Sunday shows too saying the same thing. We can never welcome Russia back into the community of nations as long as Putin is in power effectively. So how are you, what are you coming to the negotiating table with then if your stance is like, nah, sanctions forever actually? That's not creating conditions for peace. That is creating increasing escalation at the risk and using basically Ukrainian lives as cannon fodder.

My alternative thesis is we never let Hillary back in the community of media. I'm sorry, that was forced. This is an important one about the Russian ruble. All eyes are on the Russian economy. Now, even in our analysis, I'll admit everything that I had read told me we just dropped a financial thermonuclear bomb on Russia. Very possible that that could still be the case. However, in the short term, things are not going exactly as predicted and as planned. Let's put this up there on the screen, which is that despite Western sanctions, Russia's ruble and banks are recovering. So look at that chart, which is there on the right side of the screen.

Now, for those who are just listening, the official ruble exchange for the dollar was 75 before the war began. It plunged to 120, obviously. Then, though, in the period of the next month, it has climbed from 120 back up to 84. So down, to be sure, certainly in terms of where it was previously. But, Crystal, I don't think that that was the picture that was painted for the American people and for the world in terms of the long-term impact of the actual economy. And on all sides, we are beginning to see some strength on the part of the Russians. Let's put this up there on the screen.

Russia's Gazprom has actually exited German business amid the crisis in energy ties. Now, it's not the other way around. It's not the Germans who are pulling out of the deal. It's Gazprom saying it is quitting its business in Germany. And the reason why is very clearly some of these sanctions and is a move by the Russian government in order to put the squeeze on the Germans who have left themselves tremendously vulnerable in terms of natural gas. There's another piece they mentioned here as well, though, which is that a German business daily had just reported on Thursday that the German economy ministry was considering nationalizing both Gazprom and Rosneft units in the country amid concerns about the security of energy supplies. So Germany was considering taking their assets, basically nationalizing it. Russia obviously took this opportunity to say, we're going to take this

back before you can do this. Another thing that goes to show you in terms of the power of the Russian government is that they are now requiring those payments in rubles, which what does that do? It's a backstop to the actual currency, very similar to some of the petrodollar discourse. By requiring that, they're actually inflating the price there of the ruble and keeping something to an inelastic product, which is gas and oil, which of course is very expensive right now. Even at the discounted Russian rates, they're still making a killing over there. So what it goes to show you in terms of all of this is that the exports are backing the Russian ruble and that as much as you can try to cut off Russian exports and that from the

global economy, it's really not possible, especially whenever we're talking about petroleum and especially whenever you don't have China and India on board, two of the largest consumers of petroleum products on the global stage. So I talked to our friend Igor about some of this. Yeah, what does he think? He thinks that the picture they're painting here is too rosy and that Russia is taking a bigger hit than this article was ultimately projecting or as reflected in the exchange rate of the ruble at this point. Possible. Basically, what he was pointing to, and this makes some sense to me, is that Russians follow the strength of the ruble very closely, so this would be a metric that everybody would kind of be paying attention to.

And so Putin has engaged in sort of extraordinary lengths to prop up the value of the ruble. One of the things that The Washington Post mentions is that the central bank in late February began requiring exporting companies to exchange 80% of their hard currency revenue for rubles. That created new demand for Russia's currency, as you said, also demanding payments in rubles. So he's using these sort of extraordinary measures to help artificially prop up the value of the ruble, and that helps to hide some of the economic calamity. I think it likely still is not as extreme as what was projected.

And then this is the other important piece of this, which is that not only has the economic fallout not been what was ultimately anticipated or projected, but the sanctions we have levied are really backfiring. They're doing exactly what, you know, they have done in Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela, and all these other places that we tried to do this, which is it's actually strengthening the hand of the regime. Yeah, it's terrible for the people. It's very hard on the people, but ultimately the regime stays in power. Let's go ahead and put Ross Douthat here had a good piece on this. This is as bold as you could be in The New York Times in proclaiming effectively that our sanctions have been foolish and have backfired.

He writes Putin is losing in Ukraine, but he is winning in Russia. He said, yes, failed wars sometimes bring down authoritarian regimes like in Argentina after its misadventure in the Falkland Islands. But externally imposed sanctions, economic warfare often end up strengthening the internal power of the targeted regime. In the short run, they supply an external scapegoat, an obvious enemy to blame for hardship instead of your own leaders. In the long run, the academic literature suggests they make states more repressive and less likely to democratize. He closes by saying, no, if we intend to make economic war on Russia for a generation, we should be clear-eyed about the calculus. In the hopes of making a dangerous great power as weak as possible, we will make it more likely that Putinism rules for decades and that Russia

remains our deadly enemy for as long as anyone can reasonably foresee. Is that the outcome that you were sold? And is that the outcome that you ultimately want? Because that is what these indiscriminate sanctions that hit the entire population, that's the reality they're creating. Another thing that Ross points to, and I think it's really important, is that in the previous era, Putin was not the only game in town. And you saw this by oligarchs gallivanting all around Europe, having business in London. I mean, they even made jokes in London, like, oh, this is little Moscow, you know, in Cyprus, all over Europe. Anytime you travel, some of the richest people that you'll find, even New York, I mean, a lot of these people

are Russian. And they're using their capital, usually ill-gotten, and washing it through legitimate Western financial institutions. Well, what Ross points to is that with the total declaration of economic war on Russia, he has actually united the Russian elite in a way that has not existed under his entire tenure in office, because now Russians understand the only way to survive is Putin. We have to support Putin because we have no other options available to us in the global economy. For every, you know, one oligarch that might say one thing, the rest of them are 100% behind him. They have no other ability in order to maintain wealth, Crystal. Right. So when you consider that, you've united

the Russian elite. The history of Russian revolutions, both the Tsar and the Bolshevik revolution, also the Soviet Union, is when the Russian elite abandoned the political project. Unfortunately, in Russia, the history of Russia tells us that what the peasant class or the normal worker wants there really doesn't matter all that much. And Igor told us, he's like, yeah, the people want the war to end, but it doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter. Not relevant.

Right. And so we've actually united the entire Russian elite against us and towards Putin. And he could die tomorrow, and I think some form of his regime would still endure for decades. Possibly someone even worse. Yeah, possibly. I mean, that's the kind of conditions we're creating right now. I think that's really important. I also think there's been a lot of kind of triumphalist conversation about the brain drain as educated elites flee Russia, which I think is a real phenomenon that's happening.

That's not necessarily bad for Putin, guys. I mean, some of these folks were like the liberal opposition within the country. So for him to push the out of the state, again, that sort of strengthens his hand internally and domestically. We covered the guy who was like the highest level Kremlin advisor to resign. He'd been the, I'm blanking on his name because I'm terrible at remembering names, but he was like the architect of the 90s era neoliberal reforms. He essentially like architected the oligarchic system in Russia. He was very well known. And he kind of been kept in place in a high level as more of like a figurehead and a token and a symbol than having any actual power. But, you know, that guy left

and that's emblematic of how the sort of more liberal opposition wing is the ones who aren't down for it. They're leaving. And that what that leaves in place is the ones who aren't down for it, they're leaving. And what that leaves in place is the ones who are sort of like hardliners and down for the cause or have decided they have to be down for the cause because their wealth depends on it. Yeah. That's just an honest conversation about how things are actually going there. Yep. And once again, one that you're very unlikely to hear in mainstream press, even though we really need to understand, because we rushed into all of this, what the consequences of our actions ultimately are and have a clear understanding of what are our policy goals. I mean, we don't even have like honest talk from the Biden administration

about what our real goals here ultimately are. So that's why this matters. All right. This is an interesting study that Matt Iglesias is writing about that kind of caught our eye about the impact that cable news has, which I guess was a good segue that I just provided there for us. Let's go and throw this piece from Bloomberg up on the screen there. It says, what if Fox News viewers watch CNN instead? Previous studies have shown that partisan media affect how people vote. A new study shows they also affect how people think. So I'm going to give you some of the details. But the TLDR is that cable news matters. It really does shape public opinion and how people vote. But the good thing about that is that also means that, hey, people's minds can actually be changed if you have a better information ecosystem. And to me, that's a very

positive thing. So here's the details of this study. What they basically did is they took people who are religious Fox News viewers and they paid them to watch only CNN. And they like had an enforcement mechanism to make sure they weren't like sneaking in their Hannity on the side. And what they found is CNN and Fox covered different things during this happened in September 2020. But the audience of committed Fox viewers, which started the month with conservative predispositions, they actually changed their minds on many issues. Switchers were five percentage points more likely to believe that people suffer from long COVID and six points more likely to believe many foreign countries did a better job in the U.S. of controlling the virus. There were seven points more likely to believe many foreign countries did a better job in the U.S. of controlling the virus. There were seven points more likely to support voting by mail. There were 10 points less likely to believe that supporters of then candidate Joe Biden were happy when police officers got shot.

There were 11 points less likely to say it's more important for the president to focus on containing violent protesters than on the coronavirus. And there were 13 points less likely to agree that if Biden were elected, we'll see many more police get shot by Black Lives Matters. And there were a couple of stories that broke during that time that basically Fox News sort of like memory hold and didn't talk about and CNN did. So they also showed awareness of those stories where the Fox News viewers didn't. And one of the things that he says switchers changed their mind about was Fox News itself. They became more skeptical that Fox would cover a story that reflected poorly on Trump, even if it were true. I think that's actually really important because it reveals their eyes. I'm sure they still didn't love CNN like they saw CNN for the fraud it was.

Yeah, but it also opened their eyes to, oh, I'm being sold propaganda over here as well. Iglesias concludes by talking about how, you know, Republican members of Congress and Republican elites, they will go on any platform to sell their message to the American people. And Iglesias, who's, you know, center left, he basically makes the case, we got to stop with this whole, like, I can't believe that you're like validating or platforming by going on Tucker Carlson and going wherever. No, you need to compete in all of the information ecosystem because in fact, people's minds can be changed and they do actually take in the information that is being reported to them. So however you feel about the various

issues, and certainly we are not CNN or Fox News fans here, but I think the important part of this study is how much the media diet ultimately matters, and that the image that's been portrayed of the American public as just these mindless robots who are totally partisan and never, ever change their minds is also completely untrue. Yeah, it's fascinating. There's so much to say about this. I think what it is, is that number one, this is a bleak one, cable news matters. And that's why he's saying why you should go on in order to talk to people. I was talking with some people over the weekend. And one of the most important things is that we have to understand is that old people predominantly watch cable.

And they derive an immense amount of their political belief from that. That's a flat fact. It is not changing anytime soon. And also, old people vote. This is why cable, this is why if you're younger like me, you feel like you're living in a bizarro clown world because you're like, how can only 10 million people watch cable news and yet it rules our entire discourse? Well, the law of disproportionality is what impacts if those people are the ones who are most likely to vote, especially in a party primary, then you can actually have 10 million people who rule the entire country of 335 million.

That's essentially the story. But also it goes to show that when candidates are running, and this is where Bernie Sanders took an immense amount of pushback for doing that Fox News town hall. If I recall, 3 million people watched it. Yes. An immense amount of people watched it. And Chris Wallace didn't pull any punches whenever he was doing it. And a lot of people got something out of it. Pete Buttigieg actually did the same thing. He would go on Fox News very often. I would say that Biden's problem is that he probably doesn't do enough of this. He should do many more interviews.

Well, I don't know. For his own sake, maybe that's not true. But let's say Obama, OK? Obama very famously declared war on Fox News in 2009. They said this is not a legitimate news organization. They tried to push them out of the White House press corps. They tried to make it so that they weren't giving interviews. And ultimately, they had to cave and do an interview with Bill O'Reilly during the Super Bowl. And the reason why was because they had to understand that even at that time, I mean, millions and millions and millions of people, especially those who were most politically engaged, watched it. So on the one hand, it's an important lesson for politicians.

But on the other, it just shows us a very pathetic reality that so many millions of people just derive, not their political opinions but their entire worldview from the programming decisions of these three networks. Have you think of a more destructive oligopoly in the history of the United States? Yeah. At least in the past. We had just, we had decentralized news. Yes, the Hearst papers and all of that. And I'm not saying they didn't cause damage, but you were exposed to such a wide array of opinion in the yellow journalism era with all these different papers and opinions and all this stuff going on. Right now, it is controlled by three news organizations who are all based in New York City and who a lot of them work together or work in their own controlled ecosystem. That's not a good place for this country. I'm kind of hopeful right now, though, I have to be honest with you,

because what this shows is you have to have a new mainstream. You have to have a different media ecosystem that has different incentives because the incentive, like cable news is never going to be better than it is. It's a profit-making venture driven by advertising dollars with a bunch of people who are completely captured by D.C. bubble culture, either of the liberal variety or of the conservative variety. That ain't changing. But what is changing is the amount of options that you have that are wildly superior to what these people are ultimately doing. And while, yes, it is a definite fact that you have older

generations which disproportionately watch cable news. Their average consumer is really old, and sometimes you make fun of that, but that gives them disproportionate political power. On the other hand, rising generations, they're not watching this crap. They're not watching it at all. Those Amazon workers who just voted to unionize. Yeah, they watched TikTok. They weren't watching this crap.

They were watching TikTok from the Amazon labor union. I know Christian mentioned to me a lot of them watch Rogan, which is interesting for those of you who, you know, think that Rogan is like ushering in an era of total right wing government or whatever you think it is that he's doing. So, you know, there is an opportunity here to create a much better media ecosystem and information ecosystem. And what this study shows is that if you do that, there is hope because people change their minds. They change their views. We've seen it here. I think our union coverage to sort of like toot our own horn, I think it has changed a lot of minds. And it's because we aren't just preaching to the choir because we do have an ideologically diverse audience that, you know, listens to what we have to say and considers whether they might agree with some of the things that we're bringing to the table. And so we've seen the way that the response to our union segments and labor segments has grown and interest has increased.

So it just, again, demonstrates the fact that, you know, people are open minded. They do think things through. They can have their minds changed, but you have to actually have the information in front of them. And so the union movement is a perfect case in point. There was some coverage extraordinarily, which is very rare of some of the strikes that unfolded this year. But like this Amazon effort on cable news, completely invisible, completely buried, even though this is the most extraordinary labor victory that we've had since the 30s. The Starbucks workers, they've gotten a little bit of coverage. But again, this is an incredibly like turning point for the labor movement.

And if you're watching CNN, Fox or MSNBC, you barely even know that it's happening whatsoever. Well, there's a class element to this in terms of Christian. Let's just be honest. I think a lot of people who discriminate against him, both cable news bookers, AOC, and others, simply because he's not a polished up union organizer boss from big labor. I think that's true. I also think it's true in terms of the new form of media. I mean, the number one way they like to denigrate, somebody quoted me in The Atlantic over the

weekend and of course, every single time, podcaster, Sagar and Jetty. Okay. I mean, sure, that's true, but they use this terminology and I've come to embrace it of, you know, they try to denigrate you. Would they refer to Margaret Brennan or somebody who has a similar size audience in that way? No, I mean, not at all. They refer to them as a news host over some sort of more neutral language. That's fine. But it just goes to show you again that there is a denigration of the form of media that you and I are participating in right now. I mean, one of the ways they've come after us in the past, YouTubers, Crystal Ball and Socrates. Yeah, I feel like podcast is like one notch above YouTuber. It's even more like you're totally silly and irrelevant. Exactly. Like, oh, YouTube. It's even more like you're totally silly and irrelevant.

Exactly, like, oh, YouTube. It's like, well, no, actually millions of people watch YouTube, and is there a real substantive difference between somebody who's watching YouTube and cable? The answer is yes. The YouTube viewer is actually 10 times more engaged than some crap that's on in the background, but that's a deeper conversation.

More what I'm talking about is that the form of media that we all consume in, Rogan as well for entertainment, even this, or even comedy on YouTube, news on YouTube, even on Instagram, TikTok, or whatever, they're meant to denigrate it as not a legitimate source of information. Instagram, there's another one, right? Which is that you can find, and I've done this, the amount of health information that I find on Instagram, you got to be careful in terms of what you wade into and what you don't. But I've lost like 12 pounds so far this year. It's because of Instagram and YouTube and Reddit. I mean, that's honest, but that doesn't sound legitimate. It sounds cringe even whenever I talk about it. That's the point, which is that even though vast majorities of people consume information and get information this way, the mainstream has this elite

cachet, which we're slowly trying to change and destroy here by the work that we do. And that is where breaking through that and creating the new mainstream is probably the single most important political project of our lifetime. That I think is really, really key. And look, the bottom line is because of the bottom line is because of the incentive structure, because of the way that system is set up, they're just not very good at their jobs. They miss things that are really important. They have tremendous blind spots. They obviously have complete ideological blind spots and capture. And that means that they are not actually informing you in the way that you need to be informed to conduct yourself as like a citizen

in this country and really understand what is going on around you. So that is a fight that you need to be informed to conduct yourself as like a citizen in this country and really understand what is going on around you. So that is a fight that you will continue to hear more about. And it is also a perfect segue to the newest cable news star who is upcoming. And that would be Jen Psaki. Let's go ahead and put Sarah Fisher's report from Axios there. So she says that Jen Psaki will host a show for MSNBC on NBCUniversal's streaming platform Peacock. She will also be part of live programming on MSNBC's cable network as a voice on different shows, but she will not be hosting the 9 p.m. hour replacing Rachel Maddow, which has been speculated. I also thought this was kind of interesting. In the report, it mentions that NBC News in particular has several outlets for talent looking to host their own programs.

In addition to Peacock, it also has a 24-7 news streaming network called NBC News Now, which I've literally never heard of. Yeah, it's one of those projects like on YouTube where they go 24 hours. I think ABC News does this as well. Look, all of these guys are pivoting to streaming and doing this. I just think this is remarkable, which is that Jen Psaki, while she's the sitting White House press secretary, is having advanced negotiations in order to take a job and get paid really good money, probably much more money than she's getting paid at the White House. And while she continues to be the chief spokesperson for the president of the United States, I think that's corrupt.

You sue me if you want to. I also thought it was corrupt and bad when Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kayleigh McEnany immediately signed with Fox News the day after or whatever that they leave the White House. Same with Ari Fleischer, Dana Perino, all this other madness. George Stephanopoulos. Sanders, also Biden administration. Who in media doesn't formerly work as a spokesperson for the government? That's a problem. I think it's a big problem in terms of your ability to be objective.

And this, though, is such across the line, as in not even waiting until you leave in order to negotiate, that even the paid mouthpieces in the press corps, including the Kristen Welker at NBC, were like, come on now, how can you be negotiating deals while you are the spokesperson for the president of the United States? Let's take a listen to this little mashup we put together. Is it ethical for you to continue conducting this job while negotiating with the media? Well, I have always gone over and above the stringent ethical and legal requirements of the Biden administration, and I take that very seriously. And as a standard for every employee of the White House, I have received rigorous ethics counseling, including as it relates to any future employment. Given the reports, which have now been confirmed by multiple media outlets, how can you continue to be an effective briefer if you do in fact have plans to join a media outlet?

Well, I have nothing again to announce about any conversations or any future plans. And at whatever time I leave the White House, I can promise you the first thing I'm going to do is sleep and spend time with my three and six-year-olds who are... I understand what you're saying, but I guess the question is, how is it ethical to have these conversations with media outlets while you continue to have a job standing behind that podium? Well, there are a range of stringent ethical and legal requirements that are imposed on everybody in this administration and many administrations past about any conversations you're having with future employers. That is the policy of this White House to allow staffers to have discussions even

indirectly with institutions that impact and affect their jobs. Well, it is the policy of this White House to ensure that anyone who is having conversations about future employment does so through consultation with the White House Counsel's Office and ensuring they abide by any ethics and legal requirements. And those are conversations that I have taken very seriously and abided by every component of. So as you can see, even the lapdogs in the press corps were like, hey, this is a little screwed up here. I don't know if I can get behind it. I think it's extraordinarily corrupt in order to have this revolving door with the media. It's outrageous, especially because she plans on staying the White House press secretary for a good month or so and has a guaranteed salary. It's not even legal for people to do this whenever it comes to lobbying. I think it's insane that it

is allowed to on the media side. But at the same time, look, this is why the incentives are the way they are. They're never going to actually give it to the press whenever they want to go and work in the press in the absence. It's just a total fusion. And if you want to know what state TV looks like, it looks like this. It looks like Fox. It looks like CNN. That's it. And they see it. Listen, I'm glad they pushed back on her. But you know, if this was coming out of the Trump White House, it'd be hair on fire. You know, everybody would be totally melting down and be leading cable news broadcasts every night. So it's very selective sort of outrage around these things. And ultimately, you can understand why

Jen Psaki did this, because, yes, she'll take a few uncomfortable questions here in the press briefing and then she'll go on to make her millions watching, you know, hosting a streaming show that literally no one watches. Yeah, look, but will capitalism correct? Will the free market be at work? They'll never actually tell us what the real numbers are. We will never know. Also, the idea for the show is circle back. That's what I've, it's not real, but I'm saying that's the meme online.

Everyone's like, everyone should call it circle back with Jen Psaki because she never actually answers the question. They really might do that. They actually might do it. That's what I mean. They're cringe enough that they could make the meme a reality. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? There's a war going on right now. Journalists have been killed in Ukraine. My own friend from my Wine House press days, Trey Yankst at Fox News, literally had his colleague killed during shelling in Kiev. Heroes are being detained in Russia for standing up to their government and for telling the truth. Burmese journalists, of course, are in prison.

You probably have barely even heard of many of these instances or of actual journalists who are risking their lives in war zones. But what do you think the story in the U.S. media is? It's not these heroes. Instead, meet the Press, the flagship political program of NBC News, a household name identified with politics, chose instead to focus its time on, quote, online harassment that some journalists face. One of those people who was spotlighted is the Washington Post and formerly the New York Times' Taylor Lorenz. Let's watch the segment. That's right, Chuck. And you know, before this was all sort of anecdotal, but now we have hard data.

I mean, this is one of the biggest issues facing female journalists right now. And an unprecedented study is giving us a closer look at just how some of those online attacks against female journalists are actually getting started and what it looks like for those who are on the receiving end. But a warning to our viewers, some of the language you hear in this report, it may be disturbing. Female reporters are often at the center of the bullseye. Taylor Lorenz is a columnist for The Washington Post and was targeted nearly one year ago in a segment on Fox News. She's at the very top of journalism's repulsive little food chain. Host Tucker Carlson mocking her after she called for an end to online harassment. Now she's at the center of a new study by NYU researchers, among the first to actually quantify online hate against female journalists.

This is the moment that Carlson aired that segment. Yes. We see this really dramatic rise. Using large-scale data to measure online language, they tracked violent and threatening tweets directed at two female journalists after being targeted by two male media figures. Researchers found that attacks against Lorenz went up as much as 144 percent after just one Twitter thread. For another journalist, they went up 65%. Every single social tie, I had severe PTSD from this. I contemplated suicide. It got really bad.

You feel like any little piece of information that gets out on you will be used by the worst people on the Internet to destroy your life. And it's so isolating. And terrifying. it's horrifying all right there's a lot to say about this at the top of the most obvious i genuinely feel very bad for both of them it sucks to be targeted online it's clear that she suffered mental distress over that and that's really awful now that being said let's discuss the tone and the actual allegations of the segment that means that things said online are somehow the fault of Tucker Carlson for literally saying Lorenz's full name on the air. And it's on Glenn Greenwald for tweeting criticism of her work.

Which means that what NBC News is saying and what Taylor Lorenz are saying, what the segment really means, is they are not allowed to be criticized in any way. That is why this segment is emotional blackmail and manipulative. I feel bad for all women online who have suffered harsh criticism. But the clear point of this report is simply to say that criticizing them is out of bounds forever. And for people who are reporters and to interact with the public square, that is an obviously ludicrous standard. As friend of the show, Glenn Greenwald responded in his substack, quote, your top priority is the emotional comfort of the most powerful elites, which you fulfill by never criticizing them. He adds, corporate journalists have license to use their huge platforms to malign, expose, and destroy anyone they want.

Your moral duty is to sit in respectful silence and never object. That's the point. By the Taylor Lorenz standard, you're directing harassment towards her if you say her name on the air. And the sad part for Taylor is this. You have nobody but yourself to blame. A maxim I have learned making a career on the internet is this. You get back what you put out into the world. If you try, as we do, to put out as much content as possible, focus on a mission of making people hate each other less, then most of what you're going to get back is going to be positive, which it is overwhelmingly. But if you try and cancel people, ruin their lives, spread false rumors and lies, paint yourself as a victim every

chance you get, I'm sorry to say you are reaping exactly what you sow. Let's review Lorenz's record, shall we? This is the person who falsely accused venture capitalist Marc Andreessen of saying the R word on Clubhouse. She then refused to acknowledge her slander until 48 hours later when her bosses forced her to apologize. This is a person who literally ruined the life of a young female influencer girl with no job because her mother, yes, her mother, not her, was a prominent anti-Muslim activist. This is a person who attempted to destroy Mr. Beast years ago because he said a bad word when he was a freaking teenager. She cheers cancellation attempts. She was part of the New York Times staff who claimed that black New York Times staffers were put in danger because of a Tom Cotton op-ed during the BLM protests.

This is a person who, even after her own outlet stuck up for her, trashed the New York Times on her way out because senior staffers within the paper had the audacity to tell her she was acting unprofessionally, tarnishing the brand, and needed to grow up. This is a person, just to show you how pathologically sociopathic she is, went after Meet the Press even after that segment aired, despite their little sob story, for having the audacity to reach out to Glenn Greenwald, to ask him to respond to the allegation that he was responsible for harassment against her. That is the most basic of all basic journalistic practices. She demands you air her propaganda free from any perspective except her own. That's the problem.

And just so you know, here's what Greenwald wrote to everyday employees of large media corporations, such as NBC, post-insults and attacks which target me and my journalism and me personally, often resulting in vile and bigoted attacks against me based in homophobia, anti-Semitism, and the nature of my interracial marriage and my family. But I don't whine about it or try to claim that nobody can criticize my work because I understand that those who seek out large and influential journalistic platform that affect people's lives are fair game for criticism. He continues, perhaps influential employees of the largest media outlets such as Taylor Lorenz will one day come to a similar realization that being a front page

reporter for the largest and most influential news outlets makes you fair game for critique. He ends it this way, as a member of various marginalized groups, I don't want or accept some special immunity shield against being criticized. No journalist with any dignity or worth should want that either. The man has a way with words, doesn't he? All of this matters for the battle of the future. As CNN Plus fades from memory in its first week, the people like Lorenz and the sociopaths who staff the biggest newsrooms will make it so that those of us on the outside of the power structure are to be condemned, canceled, destroyed, targeted for having the audacity of pointing out their faults. All of this is a part of a broader power struggle to set the terms of debate, to make her and her ilk immune from criticism, and to imbue them with the eternal power to take us out and we can't say a word. Don't be fooled.

As much as she was widely mocked and ridiculed over the last several years, the overwhelming majority of those in media sphere are either on her side or they are too cowardly to say the truth, that she behaves like a lunatic. And in that environment, she has emotionally blackmailed enough people to operate with impunity at the highest levels of the media business. The only thing that we have here is our voice to expose their venality. And it's what we are going to continue to do here every single day, as long as we're able. And that's the point, which is that this is all about making sure that-

And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, by now you probably all know about my little back and forth with AOC over her lack of support for the Amazon labor union when it really counted. Basically, according to union president Christian Smalls, she pledged to show at one of their rallies and then she backed out and she ghosted them.

She didn't even offer so much as a Twitter mention as ballots were being cast. Now, this exchange led to a real conundrum for Fox News. Naturally, they can't resist any opportunity to own AOC, but how could they pull it off without accidentally signaling support for unions? Here is how Fox & Friends handled this delicate dance. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been called out by a journalist for, you know, she went to the Met

gala, but she skipped an Amazon union rally after she stopped by an Amazon factory from being, you know, she stopped that from being built. Biggest embarrassment. A big headquarters, 25,000 jobs, she stopped that from being built. Biggest headquarters, 25,000 jobs here in the New York City area. Yes. I don't think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a great sort of partner for America's working families because she doesn't really represent them. She represents the interests which are against them in many ways. It is America is creating this inflation and it's hurting working families. And AOC doesn't realize it. It's just so funny. She just says the Biden administration

has let a lot of young people down and they should really correct things before it's too late. Yeah. Good luck with that. We're not going in the right direction. She wants $2,000 expunged from everyone's student loans. Yes, I heard that. Yes. It's not going well. What a bunch of slimy hacks. AOC failed to show up, but these people, they would destroy every union in the nation if they had the chance. Stuart Varney is a classic Wall Street plutocrat.

He is not a man of the people. In fact, he routinely trashes unions. He used to do a regular segment on his show, I don't think he does it anymore, called Union Watch, which only existed to serve exactly that union-busting purpose. For this dude to posture like he's some friend of the working class is extraordinarily rich. And you notice how they immediately pivot to a host of more comfortable grievances like inflation and Biden and randomly reducing student loan debt? None offer even vague support for labor unions, of course. Now, this all got me thinking about how many fake friends of workers are out there in our political and media class. And it also got me thinking about what an absolutely existential

threat this budding movement really is to all of those fake friends in the establishments of both parties. You got the lefties like AOC and Co., who are supposed to be allies, but for whatever reason, deemed this fight with with Amazon the most critical labor fight in the entire country as not being worth their time and attention. But at least now that they see this as a winnable fight, maybe they'll show up next time. You've got establishment Democrats. At this point, most of them fall in the category of completely useless rather than actively oppositional. They're willing to generally say they support unions, but do little to change a status quo, which is overwhelmingly anti-union. Then you got the Republicans. More

on them in just a moment. So More Perfect Union has compiled a helpful tracker of which members of Congress have bothered to say a single word about this historic, monumental victory for workers. Makes the score here pretty clear. In the House, when I checked this yesterday, 34 out of 221 Democrats have congratulated the workers on their victory. 34. That is a paltry 15% of the caucus. This list is dominated It's a mix of progressives, people like Bernie and Ward and Sherrod Brown, and then the New York Democrats, Schumer and Gillibrand. That is also pathetic. But it is a damn sight better than the Republicans. Over in the GOP caucus, exactly zero members have said a single word about what is the most significant and truly earth-shattering victory for workers since the 1930s. Obviously, this comes as no surprise, but it's worth taking note of nonetheless. Republicans spent the Trump years using the language of the working class, putting workers on stage at the RNC as a political ploy,

but not moving their actual policy a single inch. It's a damn shame, because in previous eras, labor unions did receive bipartisan support, and it was better for everyone when both parties felt like they had to compete to win union votes and organizational backing. The supposed populace in Washington now are just completely obsessed with culture war outrage. The furthest they have gone on unions is Marco Rubio, who wrote an op-ed offering lukewarm support for the effort to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, but only because of Amazon's woke HR department. He made sure to note in the piece that, quote, adversarial labor relations are generally harmful. So to everyone, it was perfectly clear that his squishy support was just a one-off, not an actual embrace of working class politics. The only real legislation

offered by the swing of the party was similarly token, provisional, and sneakily anti-union, pushing for the creation of so-called employee involvement organizations, or EIOs. According to the advocates of this legislation, quote, EIOs would not collectively bargain like unions, but would instead facilitate voluntary cooperation on critical issues like working conditions, benefits, and productivity. In larger companies, an EIO's members would be able to elect a non-voting representative to the board of directors. In other words, workers get a non-voting rep with zero actual power.

It is classic token identity politics, a diversity and inclusion program just for workers. This is a perfect encapsulation of the GOP stance towards the working class. It's all rhetorical, pro-worker virtue signaling and hollow gestures, the equivalent of Nancy Pelosi kneeling in kente cloth, but for workers. And that's before we even talk about Donald Trump. He'll put on a hard hat or he'll jump behind the wheel of a semi for a photo op,

but his only real accomplishment in office was handing out tax cuts to the rich. And even worse, he staffed up his National Labor Relations Board with a bunch of union-busting lawyers and handed the top job at the Labor Department to the disgusting Epstein enabler, Alex Acosta. Acosta spent his time in the post trying to undercut union apprenticeship programs and, I kid you not, pushing to slash the budget of the department that fights child sex trafficking. Now listen, Biden, he has fallen far short of his promise to be the most pro-union president in history. But his union-friendly NLRB handed Amazon and Starbucks workers key decisions in their favor that gave their drives the chance to succeed.

Now the reason I was hard on AOC is because it is vital that we are crystal clear about where all of our elites stand on all of these issues. What they've said, what they've done, as we head into what could be a transformational new era of labor politics. I've got some real hope the lefties will do better because they're the only ones with any track record of showing up for labor and standing up to corporate power. Vitally, they're the only group in Congress that rejects corporate cash. You screwed this one up. Do better. That's all. For all the rest, make no mistake. This new era represents an absolutely existential threat to the power of both establishments. That's why they're all afraid to even say a word about it. Don't take my word for it, though. Here is Christian Smalls, president of ALU,

on what their victory shows. We got the juggler. We went for the juggler. And we went for the top dog because we want every other industry, every other business to know that things have changed. We're going to unionize. We're not going to quit our jobs anymore. And, you know, this is a prime example of what the power that people have when they come together. Unions are the only way the multiracial working class will have power. They were the backbone of the New Deal era. As much as we talk about FDR, it was labor struggle that forced politicians to cut the working class in on the deal of American prosperity. Organized workers means organized political power. It means real fights over real issues and real accountability, not just bullshit

kabuki theater culture war. But the vanguard of this movement is young, young millennials, Gen Z. Many are likely non-voters, a latent and powerful force taking its first steps towards mass political power. These workers were radicalized. They're radicalized by COVID, by being treated as disposable by their corporate bosses and by their political leaders. Whether you have a D or an R, they see right through your token gestures and will accept nothing less than actual say, power, and control in their workplaces and in society at large. In other words, this win is a step towards real democracy, a massive tectonic shift away from the slide towards police state

and technocratic rule by elites, and now all the fake friends have just been thoroughly exposed. Onward. Very interesting, Sagar, to see what anyone has to say about... And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, guys, we were not sure that he would have time this morning for us, but he has managed to squeeze in a few minutes to talk to Breaking Points. The man himself, Christian Smalls, president of the victorious Amazon Labor Union. And it is so great to see you. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Good to see you, man. Of course. So let's start with the personal. Just how are you feeling? What has this been like? It's been a whirlwind. Obviously, this weekend, it's been crazy for us. On our end, we're being bombarded by, you know, workers from all over the country, you know, media. So it's been a whirlwind, but it's been great to see. I'm happy to share this experience with the nation and with the world.

Yeah, I mean, it's stunning. It's also cool for us. You know, we've gotten to interview now over the time for the last two years on and off and watched your progress. It's just amazing to watch. Chris, we don't want to spend too much time in the past. years on and off and watched your progress. It's just amazing to watch. Chris, we don't want to spend too much time in the past. Let's talk about the future. What have you got, the votes that are coming up, what are you specifically going to be focused on? So you've got JFK 8. What's the next warehouse? And then what are the ones after that? I'm sure your phone is ringing off the hook. Yeah, LDJ 5 is up next in three weeks. So we're preparing

for that. You know, I was right back at the bus stop yesterday. I'm planning on going back out there, connecting with workers. We had several meetings yesterday. So we're right back on the grind, right back on the campaign trail. We obviously want to be two for two. To have a fulfillment center and a sortation center, this is a different type of building that definitely is going to just show the strength of the union. And we're, you know, once again, we're hoping to be successful.

Chris, you mentioned you've got workers across the country reaching out to you. How many other Amazon facilities across the country right now are interested in unionizing with Amazon Labor Union? Oh, well, I can tell you before the election, I had a list of about maybe about 12 to 18 buildings in different states. But now that's probably four times the amount. You know, we have workers from, I don't even know, all different types of, all different parts of the country.

Even as far as South Africa, India, and other countries, warehouses that want to form an ALU chapter for Amazon. So it's been beautiful to see, to be honest with you. So it's fascinating to me, Chris, kind of thinking about

why the entire world counted you out. I mean, you were the person who was at the center of the story. Why do you think so? At the end of the day, Bessemer got a ton of media attention in the lead up to that. You were counted out from the beginning. You were written off both by Amazon leadership, by the media. We've talked previously about how AOC canceled her appearance with you, but a lot of people had time to go down to Bessemer, Alabama. Why did everybody count you out in this fight? The most victorious, the biggest victory in the modern American labor movement?

Yeah, I can't fathom that. I don't know why. I just believe that it was just a lot of misinformation about me as a leader, about what we're doing with this union from the beginning. A lot of people didn't believe in us. They didn't believe that we were even going to make it to an election. Then they didn't believe that we were going to recover from the withdrawal. So a lot of people just abandoned us. And it doesn't make any sense that we all claim that we stand in solidarity with one another. We needed a lot of support in the beginning, and we got zero.

And once I realized that we were victorious without back end, I realized that there's nothing that we can't achieve. And, you know, once again, I'm just happy that I've been able to, you know, lead us to this victory because I know what I sacrificed. The people around me know what I sacrificed. And people around me know what I sacrificed. And I know that we love one another. We take care of one another. And the way we got here is the way we're going to continue to move forward.

I want to say something about that, too. Because every single union drive in this country, because of the way that the laws are rigged and because of the power that these corporate behemoths hold. Every single union drive in this country is a long shot uphill battle. That doesn't mean you don't show up for it. That doesn't mean that, you know, you calculate, oh, is this one going to win? Let me see. I'm not sure. I'll show up after the fact. You got to be there from the start, because if even the people who are supposed to be allies don't have your back, well, then that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now, luckily, you were obviously able to overcome those odds in stunning fashion. You now have workers from across the country and around the globe reaching out to you about forming ALU chapters. How are you going to replicate the success you had here? Because from what I read

and from what I've been talking to you about, you all had such an intensely hyper-local focus. Obviously, you were a leader within Amazon before they fired you. People knew you. You had a lot of connections. You had a lot of ability to talk to people at the bus stop and make food that was culturally relevant and cross all kinds of age and racial and ethnic divides. Is that something that's possible to replicate in warehouses across the country? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, of course, New York is obviously a union town. It's a little different here. Our culture is a little different here. We had to adapt to that. You know, I brought in people from Miami, from Arizona, California.

They obviously don't know the culture here in New York. They never stepped foot over here in Staten Island. And so they got connected with me. You have to adapt to whatever region you are in the country. And that's fine. It's easy to do that. If you're from that community, you represent the people, you represent your coworkers.

You can absolutely take some things from our campaign and using your own campaign. And we encourage you to. We encourage you to reach out and we'll help you get started. We always been that way. I, myself, I've been on the picket lines for several different movements. People seen that for the last two years. It doesn't matter what the cause is about. If you call me and I have the availability, I make myself available. Like you mentioned, I show up when it needs to be, when it's time for action. Everybody knows that. And that's what it's going to take. You have to realize that this is 21st century. This is not the 1930s. You can't beat these major corporations with traditional style unionizing. That's why for the last 28 years, no established

union was able to achieve what we were able to do. Chris, what is Amazon going to throw at you now? We put up on the screen earlier in the show their response. They're basically like sort of claiming that the election was rigged and that NLRB acted inappropriately. I have no idea what they're going to try to throw at you. They've already tried to smear you once and it backfired tremendously. So if I were them, I'd be a little bit leery of trying to do that again. What do you think that they're going to come with now? I just think they're going to continue the union

bus and pour millions of dollars into stopping us with their lawyers and their union buses that they're hiring. You know, shoot, they already arrested me. So I don't know what else they want to do after that. You know, not only that arrested me, they arrested my organizer, who's actually a worker twice. And I don't know, you know, we are prepared for whatever they throw at us. You know, I mean, I know, once again, we're taking on a trillion dollar company and people are like, you know, we're going to need help. But we have some cavalry that's starting to show up now. And now that the world is paying attention, excuse me, we're going to have some help. We're going to have some legal representation

coming in. We're going to have, you know, some more negotiators coming in to help us with the contract. We're going to get everything we need. And I'm going to make sure that, you know, everybody knows that I'm a fighter and I'm going to fight until the very end and make sure not only that we're just winning elections, but we deliver a contract. Yeah. And I think that's really important. And, you know, to to call out the people who weren't there from the beginning, it's not too late to show up, guys. You got another vote that is happening right, you know, nearby. What is it, April 23rd that voting starts? You all still need, you know, a lot of support and a lot of help here.

Chris, just tell people who are watching how they can support the movement. Yes, please support us. Help us volunteer phone banking, whatever we share our links to have volunteers sign up to phone bank if you're in the New York area. Even if you're not, you can do it remotely. Please donate if you can't help us volunteering on the ground. Please donate to our GoFundMe. It's on our website at amazonlaborunion.org, on our social media as well. Follow us, support us, and just pay attention to what we're doing because it's only day one for the ALU, and we're hoping that we're going to continue to spread like wildfire. We're excited to see your progress, Chris. We encourage everybody to go and donate. We're going to link down there in the description. Been behind you from the very beginning and can't wait to see what you do next. Yeah, it is truly incredible. And I just want to say, guys, there is no more worthy cause out there. If you truly care about working people,

this isn't just even about Amazon workers across the country. Amazon sets the labor standards for workers in every industry in this nation. If we can change the game at Amazon, then literally anything is possible. So Christian's been out there with his coworkers doing this on his own, bootstrapping it. Now's the time to flood the zone with resources and make this a nationwide movement. Thank you.

Congratulations. Wonderful to see you. See you, man. Absolutely. Thank you. Take care. Thank you guys so much for watching. Thank you for Congratulations. Wonderful to see you. See you, man. Absolutely. Thank you. Take care. Take care. Thank you guys so much for watching. Thank you for supporting our work.

You support us so that we can bring to light cases like Christian Smalls. We've been doing this for two years straight. One of the only people who ever took him seriously, covered him from the beginning. When AOC and them turned their back on him, it didn't matter. Continued to bring you the story. That's the type of journalism you're supporting here. We've been thinking a lot here about our mission, and it really is becoming a new mainstream, creating a new environment which can flourish and replace the existing and kind of dead order. And it looks exactly like elevating voices like his, covering that story, and giving

legitimate coverage to what should be one of the biggest stories in the entire country. That is 100% the case. I went back and I was looking through our coverage at Rising Even before we came here and the number of segments that we did about what was going on with Christian and the conditions at the warehouse and the conditions for drivers and the conditions for now they want people to assemble furniture in like five seconds and get paid nothing extra for it. We really have laser focused on this issue, among others, because Amazon is so impactful across like every sector of American society.

And any media that's worth its salt would be doing the same because these are the sorts of things that really impact your day-to-day life, whether you are an Amazon worker or not. So extremely grateful to you guys for enabling us to continue that work. Obviously, extremely grateful to Christian for taking time out this morning when he is extremely, extremely busy. And listen, guys, we're hopeful and we're excited about the future. So thanks for being part of it, and we will see you tomorrow. See you tomorrow. Well, Sam, luckily, it's You're Not the Father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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