Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/5/22: Biden's Ukraine Rhetoric, Obama's Return, Starbucks Union Busting, Amazon Censorship, Musk's Twitter Play, Iron Workers, & More!

Episode Date: April 5, 2022

Krystal and Saagar discuss Biden's rhetoric towards Putin, Zelensky on Fox News, Obama's return to the White House, Starbucks union busting, Truth social failing, Christian Smalls on CNBC, Amazon cracking down on union organizing, Elon Musk's Twitter stock purchase, Iron Workers union campaign as a NLRB turning point, and more!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Iron Workers: gdintegratedunion.comhttp://ironworkersrising.org/ https://prospect.org/labor/ironworkers-resurrecting-joy-silk/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Your hard-earned money is gonna help us build for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Lots of big stories to get to this morning. First of all, President Obama returned to the White House for the first time since he was in office.

We will tell you why and what it means for the state of the Biden presidency. Also, some new developments in the union busting campaign from Starbucks. So they kicked out their old CEO, brought back Starbucks founder Howard Schultz. He made some very illuminating comments. And also within an hour of making those comments, they had fired one of the key worker organizers. So we will break all of that down for you. Also some new developments out of Truth Social. Oh my God. Some new reporting on it. You know, I've been doing my own little journalism.

I think I'm still like 280,000th on the wait list. So yeah, Truth Social not ready for me apparently. Not ready for my truths. And Christian Smalls, the president of Amazon Labor Union that was victorious in that fight to organize a warehouse on Staten Island. CNBC not only had to have him on, they had to take him seriously. Like, I don't know that I ever expected that would happen in my lifetime. But they still managed to be, like, obnoxious and condescending and patronizing.

So we'll break all of that down for you. Also, a story you don't want to miss about the iron workers. Sager is breaking down Elon Musk. Yes. Having the largest share of Twitter and what that means and his views on that. I will be talking about a new leaked memo revealing the words that Amazon is going to ban their workers from saying. Words that include things like unions and freedom. But we're going to start with the very latest out of Ukraine. All right. So with Ukraine, the president making some big news here, speaking again off the cuff, calling Putin not only a war criminal, but asking for him to be put on trial. Let's take a listen.

You may remember I got criticized for calling Putin a war criminal. Well, the truth of the matter is so it happened to Putin. This warrants him. He is a war criminal. Well, the truth of the matter, you saw what happened to Vukovic. This warrants him. He is a war criminal. But we have to gather the information. We have to continue to provide Ukraine with the weapons they need to continue the fight. And we have to gather all the detail so this could be an actual, have a war crime trial. This guy is brutal. And what's happening in Abuka is outrageous. And everyone's seen it. No, I think it is a war crime. I'm seeking more sanctions. Yes, I'll have time to ask that too. So interesting choice of words there by the president. You could see he could be,

he was specifically asked to call it a genocide. He said, no. Again, I've explained about why that carries weight in terms of how the United States is going to brand somebody. But war criminal itself was an extraordinary thing for him to say. Once again, I don't think either of us disagree Putin is a war criminal. The problem with Biden is he said it off of the cuff in response to a reporter. And then the administration had to be like, oh, well, here's the evidence. Now, in the specific instance that he's talking about here, the images coming out of Buka are horrifying, absolutely terrible. But whenever you brand somebody a war criminal, of course, you need evidence. And here's part of the issue. Just this morning, Crystal, we don't have time to get it made, but the Pentagon says they cannot

independently confirm atrocities in Ukraine's Buka. Now, I don't doubt that they happened. The circumstances through which they did obviously need to bear an incredible amount of investigation. You should not put it past the Russians whatsoever in order to do something so barbaric and terrible in terms of war. is because all of this is once again creating the conditions through which only the end of the Putin regime is an acceptable outcome to the United States, who, of course, is a major guarantor in the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia at this time, and it just makes peace even more likely. I hate having to do some of these segments, too, because it's so easy for bad faith actors to misconstrue this as apologism. Who is apologizing for Putin? Nobody. But the world is a horrific place. We still met with Kim Jong-un, even though he's literally guilty of genocide against his people. He's got nuclear weapons. It's because sometimes security interests trump some of these things. As horrible as that

may sound, that is simply the way that the world works. I don't think there can be any doubt now, given these latest comments, which, yeah, they're off the cuff. But to me, they felt very planned and intentional. It wasn't it wasn't an afterthought. It wasn't casually done. This was an intentional choice of words and intentional direction. I don't think there can be any doubt whatsoever that what Biden did sort of accidentally stumble into saying that Putin, quote, cannot remain in power is the actual end goal of this administration.

Because the reality is they are not doing anything to push for peace negotiations and they are doing everything they can to try to pressure Putin's regime, to try to punish Russia, to try to make life difficult for them. And as we covered yesterday, not only have the sanctions not been as effective as they wanted them to be, but in reality, all they're doing is strengthening Putin's hand and the hand of the regime within Russia and making it much more likely that he stays in power basically as long as he wants to and as long as his life continues. So, and that, by the way, is not like a veiled call for him to be assassinated. I'm just literally saying,

he will live out his life in Russia as a leader of Russia if that is indeed what he wants. The Biden administration is doing everything they can to cause that to happen. I mean, all of their actions so far have backfired. I also think it's very revealing. The questions that the media ask him there, none of the questions are like,

well, what does this mean for peace? How are you going to let Russia back in the community of nations when you call him a war criminal and you want him to be on trial? You know, how is he going to, how are you going to be able to negotiate or how is Zelensky going to be able to negotiate with someone who you've said should be put on trial for war crimes. How's that going to work out? So if you care about the lives of Ukrainians and ending this brutality, what you should be doing relentlessly is pushing for that negotiated settlement. And whether it's his off-the-cuff remarks that he's a war criminal, that he's a butcher, that he cannot remain in power, and now what seems to be very intentionally chosen words about he should actually face trial as a war

criminal, all of those words make it much more difficult to get to that end goal that we all should be wanting. Yeah, that's right. And look, even in terms of the International Criminal Court and all that stuff in The Hague, the United States is not even a party to The Hague Convention, very much because we don't want international jurisdiction over our troops. I actually support that, by the way. Well, remember, we just had during the KBJ confirmation hearings. That's true. All this meltdown. How could you call George W. Bush a war criminal?

So we're complete hypocrites on all of this. It's – and so we don't have a lot of standing in the world to be throwing around the words war criminal. Really what it is is that whenever it comes to international law and jurisdiction and all this, it's nonsense. It's great power conflict. It always has been and will be until the end of time. And really the reason why that I look at this and I see no other ability for the administration under this current regime in order to call for the end

and see it only as the acceptable way for Putin to fall out of power, you and I just know how unlikely that is. So now, as Ross Douthat pointed out in his column, which we brought everybody yesterday, the flat kind of frozen relations with Russia seem like the most likely scenario, where Russia will declare some sort of fake victory domestically. However, they will still have some occupation of Ukraine. How the Ukrainians themselves are actually going to go about this, obviously that also remains unclear. But that means that there's no off-ramp for sanctions to

come off and for Russia to then come back into any sort of G7 international community aspect. So then what happens? Well, we live in this kind of like perma-frost relations and quasi-Soviet Union era relations with Russia. That doesn't seem good for anybody who's involved. And actually, when it comes to Putin, that means that he has a 100% solidification of power. In terms of what we were talking about yesterday, we talked about how this oligarchs are now 100% united behind Putin. That may sound like a misnomer, but it's really not. Because a lot of these oligarchs in the 2010s, they had independent power bases. Yes, they were made from Putin, but they were billionaires in their own right.

They had assets in Europe. They had the ability in order to cavort around the world and Saint-Tropez and like all these places. Now with the sanctions, they have no choice but to be 100% behind the Putin regime when maybe previously they were 85%. We've consolidated a lot of the power around him. And in terms of the actions the administration is taking here, there is no off-ramp in sight. Let's put this up there on the screen. So this is a new one from CNN, and you should believe them whenever it comes to weapons transfers.

They say, U.S. is expected to help facilitate the transfer of tanks from NATO allies to Ukraine, according to senior U.S. officials. The tanks will be Soviet-era T-72s, with Ukrainian military has the experience operating, and will be delivered, quote, within days, not weeks. Now, that's not enough, though, for some members of Congress. Let's put this one up there on the screen. This one also is very important. There is a bipartisan coalition of three dozen lawmakers, some of the people who are most praised here in DC because they voted for the impeachment of Trump. Okay, apparently that's the only thing that matters.

You read a little bit further, these three dozen lawmakers have a list of weapons that are directly being requested by the Ukrainian government. So the problem here is that the Ukrainian government is delivering these lists to Congress because the administration is not necessarily giving them 150% of what they want. The administration is urging the U.S. to provide long-range surface-to- air missiles, fighter aircraft, anti-ship missiles, and other weapons, some of which are not being transferred by NATO and by the United States because they could be offensive in nature and not defensive. So you continue to see a bipartisan push, you know, very much acting on behest of the Ukrainians. And it's hard to parse this by reiterating the Ukrainian cause

is just. I don't blame them for trying to do everything within their power in order to defend their nation. I would do the same thing if my country was invaded. However, we are an independent partner. Yes, we support Ukraine. To what degree and more, we have to balance with our own legitimate security interests. And this is thinking and nuance that appears to just have disappeared. I think a lot of it, Crystal, is kind of a decadence of the West, where we have the hubris to think that we can do whatever we want without consequence. How many times in the 20th century do we need to, or in the 21st century, do we need to figure out that's wrong? Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya. I mean, Syria. We can continue to go down the list. Did any of those work out? No, they were complete disasters. The world is a multifaceted, complicated place. And

yet we see none of this thinking pervading in Washington. Yeah, I think it's really important to underscore there is a very good reason. It's not just arbitrary that the Biden administration has said no thus far to what these lawmakers and the Ukrainian government are asking for. So when you're talking about surface to air, longer range surface to air missiles, fighter aircraft, anti-ship missiles, you're starting to get into now offensive capabilities. That will 100 percent be seen as an escalation by Russia, no doubt about it. And the longer this conflict goes on and the more you have this step-by-step-by-step-by-step-by-step escalation, the more you risk a broader confrontation. The Russians, as much as this is 100 percent an existential threat to the Ukrainians, the Russians see this fight as existential as well. And they are not going to accept a complete surrender and we're sorry and here's your territory back.

That's not going to happen. So we have to figure out ways to empower Zelensky to be able to negotiate a peace. He is in, you have to remember, he's in a very difficult political situation here. Because you have, on the one hand, Ukrainians who are very emboldened and should be rightfully proud of the way that their people have fought and the way that they've been able to push Russia back to basically just the east and the south now of Ukraine. But on the other hand, the reality is that, you know, a bloody stalemate is going to be absolutely horrific, that Russia does have additional resources that they can decide to bring to bear. Putin would have to make a difficult political choice there as well. But you have to understand that failure is not an option for the Russian state either. So the more that you escalate, the more that you send in offensive weapons,

the more you are risking that gambling for resurrection scenario that we've talked about so much here, where they do something that seems like it might be crazy if you're looking from an outsider, but they see as like their last chance to sort of save their nation and accomplish their objectives. Yeah, look, I mean the one pathway off of this is some sort of peace deal. We should be doing everything that we can in order to ensure that happening. And I just checked the very latest. All signs actually point against it. Zelensky today is speaking towards the United Nations Security Council about Buka and evidence of Russian war crimes.

The Russians say that they're going to respond and prove that it wasn't them. We'll see. In terms of the EU and others, they said they're going to be toughening sanctions against Russia today. I honestly want to know what is left within the arsenal. Same with the United States, very likely to act in concert. And in terms of those peace deal- I mean, the big thing for the Europeans is cutting off their use of Russian oil. Yeah, we all know they're not gonna do that.

Then they would literally be in poverty within the next month. So some of this is chicanery and fake on their part as well. And there's quite a bit of virtue signaling that's happening. But in terms of the latest, that's where things are.

The administration pushing things in one way. Zelensky also very much going within that vein. Peace talks, no update over the last several days. And unfortunately, that's where things are. that the indiscriminate sanctions that we have levied against Russia have backfired. They have not been effective. And yet the media doesn't process that information. Our lawmakers don't process that information because they're on this one track direction of we have to make them pay. We have to hold Putin accountable when that shouldn't be the end goal at all. First of all, the Russian citizens, once again, did not do anything wrong. They don't deserve to be punished, period, full stop. But second of all, my goal isn't to make them pay.

My goal is to end this conflict and to have peace. That never seems to be the thinking here. And so they're not able to evaluate the fact like, okay, we tried this direction. It's very clear it's not working. And not only that, it's actually strengthening Putin's hand and it's backfiring. What are some other directions we can pursue? Instead, they just say, oh, well, like 90 percent of what we can do on sanctions doesn't work. So how about we try 100 percent? How about we just double down on the same failed strategy that hasn't worked out to this point?

Yeah, look, we need an endgame. Sanctions can be a tool as long as there is an actual result that is desired. And unfortunately, this current result that the administration has is one that could actually probably only be accomplished by military aims, and even that would be a disaster. So then they're settling for some middle ground on a moralistic basis, which sounds nice and can make people feel better, but may not necessarily accomplish the actual goal that anybody actually wants as a result of this conflict. So it's a bad situation at the end of the day. Okay, let's go to the second part here, which is that President

Zelensky was actually appearing on Fox News with Brett Baier. And Brett Baier actually asked him about Russian accusations around, quote unquote, Nazis within the Ukrainian military. And I think his response is worth us talking a little bit about. Let's take a listen. I want to have you clear something up for us. And this is these reports about the Azov battalion that is said to be Nazi affiliated organization operating as a militia in your country, said to be committing their own atrocities. What should Americans know about that unit, about those reports? So Azov was one of those many battalions. They are what they are. They were defending our country. And later I want to explain to you. Everything from all the components of those volunteer battalions later were incorporated into the

military of Ukraine. Those Azov fighters are no longer a self-established group. They are a component of the Ukrainian military. Back in 2014, there were situations when our volunteers were encircled and some of them did violate laws, laws of Ukraine. And they actually were taken to court and got prison sentences. So law is above all. Yeah, this is a tough response there from Zelensky. Part of the issue, obviously, is that the Russians have been trying to paint the entire Ukrainian military as neo-Nazis. That is ludicrous. President Zelensky himself is a Jewish man. However, it is certainly true that a very small part of the Ukrainian military is neo-Nazi. And people need to be honest about that, about what exactly they believe, about some of the weapons and the training and the celebration that the mainstream media has had of this. And part of the reason why

I do think it is useful for Brett Baier to ask the question, and I think for U.S.-based commentators like us to discuss it, is you should not want to let the Russians have this one element of their propaganda, which is true, which is that it should be confronted. And we should also be honest about the exact composition of the force who we are supporting. It does not diminish a just Ukrainian cause. It does not even diminish what's happening. But we have to be honest here that, you know, Zelensky did ban some opposition parties and that the Azov battalion and some of these neo-Nazis, while yes, a small percentage, were being legitimately incorporated into the defense of Ukraine, which sadly, I do think validates some bad faith Russian propaganda. You know, there's this instinct in the American press typically, and I appreciate Brett Baer

asking this question. Yeah, I think he did it well. I think it's important because there's this instinct in the American press always to just like ignore anything that's a little bit uncomfortable. And I don't think it serves their aims because then, yeah, if you're Russia and you want to paint the entire Ukrainian military as Nazi or it's they actually, you know, are on the ballot and voters have a chance to choose what they want in the direction that they want to see for their country. So the whole thing is farcical from the Russian perspective, the way they're trying to portray it. However, when you just try to ignore it and just try to bury it, you actually strengthen their hand because then they say, look, you're not even you're not even willing to talk about this. Look, we caught you putting Nazis like training grandmas on TV and not even mentioning. Look, CNN, you're putting this like Nazi battalion commander

on television and acting like he's some great hero. So you're not actually helping the Ukrainian cause by burying this type of information. And it's interesting, Zelensky's answer here. First of all, I mean, he doesn't deny it. He's like, they are what they are, which is hardly comforting, especially when you know the U.S. history of how it goes when we arm radical militants. And then once the war is over and you've got these young men who are armed and equipped and itching for some sort of conflict, what happens next? That's the question.

It's also something that's really relevant when we're considering what type of weapons we're ultimately shipping into Ukraine. So that part of his response is really interesting. Like, well, they are what they are. But the other part, I think he thinks that saying that they are now, which is true, incorporated into the Ukrainian army is somehow we're going to ease our minds. When actually you're like, no, that's not, that doesn't really make us feel a lot better that they're like officially part of the Ukrainian military now. And just so people know, I mean, look, the accusations of neo-Nazism with the Azov battalion are very well founded. And before this war, there was a lot of writing, not a lot, but there was some writing in the liberal press about this as well.

Yeah, the New York Times, elsewhere, yeah. And Azov was also trying to recruit foreign neo-Nazi sympathizers from the U.S. and from Brazil and from other places around the world to come to Ukraine. And they see this as like, you know, the potential sort of homeland of the white people. Their founding member, this is sort of the most famous quote, their founding member famously said in 2010 that the historic mission of Ukraine was to, lead the white races of the world in a final crusade for their survival. And in case that wasn't clear enough, a crusade against the Jew-led Untermenschen. So that's the history of Azov Battalion. And to try to sweep that under the rug, pretend it doesn't exist,

doesn't help your cause when you can just point out that they perform very poorly, that the sentiment, yes, of course there are fringe members of society there as there are here who hold extremist views. And by the way, you might put some pressure on the Ukrainians to not arm and supply these extremist factions within their own military. The bottom line is here, it just is helpful to be honest about the situation and you are not effectively

fighting Russian propaganda when you are completely trying to ignore the reality of what's going on. Yeah, that's right. I think parsing what is true, what is false, what is exaggerated and all that is a direct service to the public who need to make a decision for themselves. I've seen, we've all seen this movie before, and this is part of the issue. When the United States was arming the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, there was no discussion around, and obviously, look, I was arming the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, there was no discussion around, and obviously, look, I think some of the Mujahideen cause against the Soviets was incredibly just. One of the people, though, that we were doing direct deals with and giving a lot

of money to was Gulbadin Hekmatyar, who was one of the most vicious Islamic extremist militias, who in some ways was allied with the Taliban and was, let's just say, sympathetic to Osama bin Laden. Yeah, and without getting into all of the history of this, we basically outsourced our choice of who to fund and arm to the Pakistanis. Yeah, to ISI. And they went with, and we affirmatively liked the fact that they went with the most ruthless, brutal, unscrupulous killers. Great when you're fighting the Soviets. Right. Not great when you're against us.

Because there were other anti-Soviet groups that were more moderate and more tolerant in their views that we could have gone with instead. But we liked the fact that they were killers and they were completely unscrupulous and willing to – and barbaric and willing to do absolutely anything. And that ends up not working out well for the world, for Afghanistan, or for ourselves. Same thing happened in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, which is with al-Qaeda. Yeah, they happen to be enemies of ISIS. They're also al-Qaeda. They ended up having some people or some weapons or whatever made their way over into those hands. Same thing happened in Libya.

We watched the Libyan rebels. Libyan democracy, obviously a just cause. Gaddafi's weapons start flowing. Chris, I'm forgetting his name, our ambassador who died, was there in order to facilitate some interesting stuff. This is not a blame America first. I'm just saying that these actions have consequences. We never learn the lessons.

That's what we're saying. Right. And having an honest discussion at the time before you do the policy can save you a lot of headache many, many years to come. And that's why in the moment it's important to try and be clear-eyed. That's all we're saying. I know that this segment will still be used by bad faith actors and all the others. But I think it's important that our audience out there is trying to make up their minds for themselves, can hold many different things in their head all at once. And I trust people to have enough honesty with themselves to be able to parse the situation regardless of even our own thoughts on this. So that's what you need.

Indeed. Okay. All right, guys. Banner Day here in D.C. with the return of former President Obama to the White House for a hangout with his buddy Joe Biden. Let's go ahead and put USA Today up on the screen here. So Biden is expected to sign an executive order with regards to sort of shoring up the Affordable Care Act. And I believe they're supposed to speak together at like 2 p.m. and from the Rose Garden. This is the first time that Obama has returned to the White House since he was in office. We all know he's kind of he really picks and chooses when he engages in any sort of political fights. Famously, when he was even president, he liked to kind of remain above the

fray and like to get his hands dirty with the common folk in terms of actually engaging in the give and take of politics. He had a little bit of disdain for that. We also know very famously on the campaign trail, first of all, he did not endorse Biden until the deal was done. Biden was like, oh, I asked him not to endorse. Okay, sure. Okay, sure. It also was reported that during that campaign, as he was watching things unfold, he was telling his advisors privately, like, don't underestimate the ability of Joe Biden to F things up, which I think was a very accurate assessment of not only the Biden campaign, but also how the Biden White House has unfolded. It is very telling that the thing he returns for is his primary legacy, the Affordable Care Act, because that's what this guy is mostly about at this point. It's about preserving his

brand. It's about preserving his legacy. And that may sound like, OK, well, you know, that's understandable. No big deal. But that means making sure that no one goes beyond what he did because, you know, if you had, for example, universal health care, well, then that really reveals and shows up how inadequate the Affordable Care Act ultimately was and how it was largely, while it did contain some significant real improvements in terms of pre-existing conditions and some of those other things, but ultimately also was a giant giveaway to the health insurance industry. Jen Psaki was asked about all of this yesterday, and she has a way of, like, saying things that she doesn't mean to be revealing, but actually are really revealing because she's just so in the D.C. bubble, she doesn't really understand how her words are going to land.

Let's take a listen to a little bit of what she had to say. Tomorrow they'll announce more steps. I'll also note, as they did every week when former President Obama was president and President Biden was vice president, that's a mouthful, they will have lunch tomorrow as well as they used to do on a weekly basis. I would note they continue to talk regularly. They are real friends, not just Washington friends. And so I'm sure they will talk about events in the world

as well as their families and personal lives. Real friends, not just actual Washington friends. And for the uninitiated, and this is the part that's so revealing, like the term Washington friends is so gross because what they're talking about is something that is just purely transactional and cynical and would be a completely foreign concept to, you know, 99% of the country. But it's just, you know, part of doing business here in Washington

is of course you have some, a few real friends and he, she puts Barack and Joe into that category. And then you have like the fake friends that you're just basically using for your own ends. Having come from that world, that's the worst part of it. How transactional everything is being required to go to parties with a bunch of people that you don't like and they don't like you. And you're only there in order to network so that you can all get more information so you can continue to do your job better. This was a key part of being a White House correspondent. And it is such a revealing comment. And you see it all the time when you're here.

People are dining next to each other and they're like doing the cheers and, you know, the this. And it's like you hate each other's guts. Everybody knows that. But it's all complete kabuki theater. It reminds me of one of my favorite moments of the campaign. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is a real trip down memory lane for us. Joe Biden tweeting in 2019, happy best friend's day to my friend at Barack Obama with the Joe and Barack friendship bracelet.

That tweet was so cringe that David Axelrod, who worked for Barack Obama and chief strategist on the Obama campaign, replied, quote, this is a joke, right? And it's because at that time, Biden was 2% or whatever in the polls, complete failure. And he was trying as hard as he could to ride Obama's coattails to try and win the Iowa caucuses and to gain more foothold with the Democratic primary base. It really is stunning to just think back to what it was, to how Biden was such a failure pre-coronavirus, so many gaffes on the campaign trail, making a fool out of himself, with full knowledge by the Obamas and many people around him that Biden is an awful candidate. Put that up there on the screen. You're alluding, you were alluding to this quote, and this is a direct one, which is that Obama reportedly said, quote, don't underestimate Joe's ability to F things up. I mean, I agree, Mr. President.

Fair. If you look back, too. Very accurate assessment. You know, Obamacare is a great example. What did Biden do on that hot mic the day that it passed? You know, he leans into Obama. When the mic is hot, he goes, this is a big effing deal, which became a meme. I mean, the guy, before he was verbally incontinent, he was known as the gaffe machine.

That was his nickname in D.C. within the press. Everybody's like, oh, he always says something which causes a problem. It was an open secret in Washington that the Obama people, and Obama specifically, could not stand whenever Biden went off script and whenever he would do these things because it would cause big headaches for him and his team. So a lot of this is just contrived. Oh, they're real friends, not just Washington friends. That's not true. Otherwise, Obama would have endorsed you. Or as Biden said, I asked him not to endorse. He said it so seriously. I asked him not to endorse. I asked him not to endorse. No, you did. Or maybe you did after

you found out he wouldn't endorse you. It's such a joke. Yeah. So there's a couple other things to say about it. First of all, I saw some more David Axelrod analysis of Obama coming back to the White House. And he's like, oh, it's a smart move because, of course, you know, Obama has this great relationship with the base of the Democratic Party, which is true. He does have—he is held in high regard with the base of the Democratic Party. But it also has been proven, like, for over a decade now that he is unable to translate his own personal popularity into votes. 100%.

I mean, that was true when he was in office. Democrats got destroyed across the country while Barack Obama was in office, losing a record number of state houses and a thousand state legislative seats in the House and the Senate and ultimately the presidency to Donald Trump. He was not able to confer his personal popularity into political power for literally anyone, not Hillary Clinton. You know, he refrained from getting involved in the Biden thing. The only thing he's really been effective at is these kind of like backroom deals and machinations behind the scene. For example, putting Tom Perez in, installing him as the head of the DNC, and also being involved in, you know, when everybody dropped down and made it a one-on-one

contest between Biden and Bernie to make sure that Biden ends up, after all other options are exhausted, make sure Biden actually ends up as the nominee in order to crush Bernie Sanders. I mean, if you think about that record, really the only ways he's been politically effective is to use his influence within the party machinery in order to crush the influence of the left and deny what is like the sort of most compelling and interesting and compelling, especially among younger generations, part of the Democratic Party. So that has been his real influence. And so if they think that he's going to save them in the midterms, like that is really fanciful. But I think it also is a sign of desperation that they're saying, all right, let's bring, let's bring Obama back. Like Biden's

clearly not getting the job done here. A hundred percent. That's how I read it. There's, there's one other thing to say about this, which is that an American prospect has done the reporting on this. Democrats have they do have a big problem in terms of the Affordable Care Act, just as they allowed the child tax credit to expire. And I show the polling here a couple of times of how that directly led to more independence fleeing the Democratic Party when they lost that benefit, which really propped up and supported a lot of families and kept a lot of children, millions of children out of poverty and out of hunger. So they dropped the ball on that one. That was supposed to be extended as part of Build Back Better bill. But they also dropped the ball on these Affordable Care Act subsidies

that were passed at the same time, which benefit some 14 million people. And guess what? They're going to get, 14 million Americans thereabouts, are going to get a letter in October informing them that their health insurance premiums are about to skyrocket. All because Democrats could not get it together to make these subsidies permanent. They were afraid to put it in the original when they originally passed the bill because they were worried about the cost. And so and they thought, oh, surely, surely we'll be able to, you know, extend this thing because no one will want to see their premiums go up. Well, they've completely failed. And so they've set up for themselves this October surprise, surprise 14 million Americans.

And by the way, because of the crazy, confusing, means-tested structure of the Affordable Care Act, the people who are going to see their prices skyrocket the most happen to be older, middle-class Americans. Guess who always votes in maternal elections? Older, middle-class Americans. Guess who always votes in midterm elections? Older, middle-class Americans. So if you wanted to screw over a more potent political base, like, congratulations, you really hit the nail on the head here. So while this executive order that Biden is planning to sign, it has to deal with another little loophole in the Affordable Care Act that he apparently has the power to close. This is the real problem here and why they're still desperately trying to figure out something with Joe Manchin because otherwise a lot of voters, millions of them, are going to get a rude awakening

right as they're getting ready to go to the polls. Yeah, it's not like inflation was killing you enough already. And just reading the way that this executive order is constructed just shows you why Obamacare is like literally the worst of all worlds. The administration is closing what's known as the family glitch. Stems from a part of the healthcare law that deals with eligibility and premium subsidies and ultimately prices some families out of health insurance. Under current regs, people who are eligible for affordable employer health insurance aren't eligible for premium assistance on the ACA marketplace. The

Obama administration defined affordability as the premium for a single beneficiary being below a certain percentage of family income, which doesn't take into account the higher cost of adding dependents to family coverage. I have no idea what you mean. I don't even know what I just said. All I know is I had to purchase health insurance on the marketplace and it cost a ton of money for a terrible plan. Yeah. Shocker.

You don't have kids yeah i don't even have i'm a single male below 30 or below 30 for the next two weeks and uh during that i have no underlying health conditions paying hundreds of dollars a month for disaster essentially i if i get hit by a bus it'll be worth it catastrophic yeah catastrophic yeah i better if i get bone marrow cancer then we'll be okay it. Catastrophic. Yeah. Catastrophic. Yeah. I better, if I get bone marrow cancer, then we'll be okay. That's about it. There's so much to say about the Affordable Care Act because part, okay. So the big reason why it's structured in such a shitty way is because they decided we're not going to stand up to the health insurance industry. We're just going to make it a giveaway for them so that they don't destroy this thing. So that's the biggest problem.

But the second biggest problem is that they were so worried about, like, these talking points around, oh, it's too expensive and deficit reduction or whatever, that they contorted it in all of these crazy ways that they knew at the time were going to be a problem. But they again figured, like, we'll fix it down the road. It's going to people are going to like it's going to be popular. We'll be able to fix this down the road. And I think Republicans will go along with it at that point or we'll have power or whatever. We'll fix it down the road. People are going to like it. It's going to be popular. We'll be able to fix this down the road. And I think Republicans will go along with it at that point or we'll have power or whatever. We'll fix it. And so things like this are a known issue. The whole reason the subsidies weren't sufficient in the first place was because they were worried about like, oh, you're spending too much money. And so because they hamstring themselves from the jump, that means, oh, lo and behold, the policy is not that popular.

And, oh, lo and behold, when it comes to trying to shore it up and trying to fix it, Americans don't actually have any confidence that you are doing a good job on health care to start with. So they are not highly motivated to give you the political power to be able to make these fixes. What they've learned from all of this with, you know, health care situation and Obamacare situation, what the D.C. Democrats have learned is, oh, people don't reward you for like doing good work and passing good policy. No, people don't reward you for passing like convoluted, half-assed policies that were a mixed bag for a whole lot of people. That's what they don't reward you for. And so, you know, that has led to a shift towards, that's helped contribute to the shift among Democrats towards cultural signaling and culture war and virtue signaling, when the exact opposite lesson should be learned, which is like, no, actually, we should have stood

up. We shouldn't have been afraid of those talking points to start with. We should have actually passed the legislation that would deliver for the American people and then have faith that they're going to see, you know, oh, this actually benefits my bottom line here. And oh, by the way, the most important thing to say about this is maybe you should also just do that because it's the right thing to do and not out of some like weird political calculus about how it's going to play in the midterms or the next presidential election. Just make healthcare cheaper. Everyone will be happy. That's all anybody wants.

And yet they twist themselves into all of these things. And that's how you end up in the nightmare situation, which all of us are in right now. I can get them right among with you people. Yeah. Okay, guys. We have some big developments with regards to Starbucks. Now, as you all know, there is a union movement spreading across Starbucks like wildfire. We've already had a number of stories unionized.

We have more than 100 that are set to vote. And this thing just continues to pick up steam. Apparently, the execs over at Starbucks are sort of freaking out because their attempts to union bust, not only did they fall flat, I think they completely backfired. They only made the case for a union that much stronger. So they kicked down the old CEO. They brought back Howard Schultz, who, of course, was the founder of Starbucks and we'll get to in a moment, has a long history and lots of experience at union busting. And in his first town hall meeting, had some very revealing things to say about how he views the union effort. Let's take a listen.

Now, here's where it gets a little sensitive because I've been coached a little bit, but I do want to talk about something pretty serious. We can't ignore what is happening in the country as it relates to companies throughout the country being assaulted in many ways by the threat of unionization. Assaulted by the threat of unionization. Assaulted by the threat of unionization. Let's just be clear. All a union means is that your workers have a voice and some power and a little bit of democratic say in what goes on in their workplace.

That is not an assault. It's not an existential threat. Starbucks is doing just fine in terms of their profit margin. Howard Schultz is extraordinarily wealthy. This guy never has to worry. But they see this as an outright assault. use about their baristas, and I don't remember if they call them like partners or whatever, they're sort of like languages around it, and they have on their website all this fuzzy language about uplift and how much they care about these people. But when it comes to, and they're happy to give them, you know, they have better wages than some places in the food industry, they have better benefits than some places in the food industry, they're okay with doing that because it's like part of the way that they virtue signal in their brand. But when it comes to workers having an actual say and a little bit of power, absolutely not. They consider that a completely existential threat. And they're willing to go

to some pretty extreme lengths in order to try to stop this union movement in its tracks. Here is the very first big move that Howard Schultz is making now reinstated as CEO of Starbucks. He is scrapping, and this for them is a really big deal, scrapping stock buybacks to, quote, invest more profit into our people. Let me read you a little bit from this piece. In a letter on Monday to employees, customers, investors, and others titled On the Future of Starbucks, Schultz announced the company would suspend stock buybacks immediately. It's his first act on his first day back in the top job, which he held twice before. He said stopping buybacks would allow Starbucks to, quote, invest more profit into our people and our stores, the only way to create long-term value for our stakeholders. And here's more of the context. Starbucks spent $10 billion on buybacks in 2019, paused them at the start of the pandemic,

but recently resumed the practice, spending $3.5 billion on buybacks in its most recent quarter, which ended in early January. In October, Starbucks said it would spend $20 billion on buybacks and dividends over the next three years, which is obviously an extraordinary giveaway to shareholders and investors. That's the way you should think about stock buybacks. And so they are so desperate to stop this union movement that they will even agree to stop giving away the whole store to the investors and the shareholders to try to signal to their workers that they're going to do better. The bottom line is, though, workers should not have to depend on the goodwill and largesse of billionaires in order to have a decent workplace. All they want is a little bit of say in what is their day-to-day life.

That's it. And no amount of investor announcements is going to be able to stop that sentiment within these Starbucks across the country. Yeah. I think that there's a lot to be said here. And I actually kind of look at it as a win-win, which is on the one hand, we finally stopped a company from doing stock buybacks. Great. This is a good thing. Now it's really what it should be, which is that because of balance and pressure from the workforce, they're like, well, if we don't want to deal with these unions, we're going to have to pay people a hell of a lot more and give them power. Yep. So they either get paid. Not give them power.

Yeah, not too much. Not give them power. Right. But we'll give them a little more. We'll give them a little better benefits. We might give them a little pay raise. Power, absolutely not. Absolutely.

Okay, but win-win, right? I mean, like, on one hand, you either get more money, or they join a union and they fight you, and then they're going to make even more money. So, this is one of those areas where even the threat of it itself can significantly impact corporate behavior. It shows you how powerful it is. Amazon did the same thing. Exactly. They had to, after the Bessemer effort, which, you know, the first time around really didn't even come close. But even just that first little threat of unionization, they totally tried to reframe how they were talking about workers. They said they want to be the best employer on the planet.

They upped some of the benefits and some of the wages to try to, again, stem the tide. show you the power of these movements that even when they don't end up forming a union and workers actually having direct power and direct say in their workplace, it forces these corporate titans into making some concessions, which is pretty extraordinary. Yeah. So and let's go and put C4 up there on the screen. This is something we want to keep everybody updated on, which is don't take this all 100 percent, you know, as a good thing. Layla Dalton, who was an organizer for Starbucks Workers United, was just fired by Starbucks. And you actually pointed out, Crystal, that in an interview that she gave, she said to Jacobin, my goal is to unionize the entire food industry. Starbucks is a big corporation, but there are many other fast food places. There are

many health hazards that happen on a day-to-day basis because of understaffing or improper working conditions. You're serving customers, cleaning and getting sanitizer, washing your hands. It's hard. I think some people deal with not only Starbucks but, say, McDonald's and Wendy's too. So I want the whole food industry to know it's possible to unionize. And just as Mr. Schultz takes helm of the company and accuses people like her of assault, she is summarily fired from that company. So it's not – by the way, that is illegal if you can prove it, but it's very hard to prove. There's a lot to say about this.

First of all, I just think these standard union busting tactics, not only do I not think that they're working, I think they're backfiring. And we see that with Amazon. I mean, Starbucks should go and ask Amazon how it goes for them, how it went for them when they fired Christian Smalls before they fire more of these worker organizers. And Layla is not the first one to get the ax, by the way. I think that there is a new climate of worker boldness, a genuine sort of uprising. Where normally these tactics, what are they intended to do? They're intended to scare people. They're intended to enforce and demand compliance because you're just too afraid to even

vote yes on the union or stand up for yourself at all. Instead, what I see and what certainly was the case at Amazon is it just pissed people off. It made them more committed to the cause because people see, you know, someone like Layla, who was a leader within her store, the people she works with, they know who she is. They know what a good worker she was. They know that her firing was completely unfair. And they also see the way that she was unafraid of standing up for herself. Same thing with Christian Smalls. This is one of the things, the stories that keeps coming out of the Amazon organizing effort is that they very intentionally created a culture of boldness and a culture of risk-taking to demonstrate to the people around them, you don't have to be afraid of these people. You don't have to be afraid of these managers.

You don't have to be afraid of Amazon. You have rights. And if we stand together, we actually are powerful and we actually can cause their capitulation on key issues because of the labor landscape as it exists today, where by and large, the problem isn't getting a job. The problem is getting a good job. That also creates a climate of boldness because workers feel like, all right, the worst you're going to do to me is you're going to fire me. Guess what? I can get another crappy low wage job. This one is not all that special right now. What they are in the fight for is to have some say and to have living wages, decent benefits at the workplace that they're at. Christian, actually, we played it yesterday, said something that was kind of revolutionary that I don't know if you guys caught it, but he said, we're not quitting our jobs

anymore. We're going to unionize. That represents a sea change in how workers have viewed their employment and viewed the workforce. No, no. I'm not just leaving and getting another gig. You don't have that power over me anymore. I'm going to force you to make this job that I have right now into a good job. So I just have this sense, and we'll see what the impact here of Layla being fired is, but I just have this sense that these tactics, they are not working. They are completely backfiring. We saw it in Buffalo, too. Remember, Howard Schultz came in and made that weird Holocaust analogy that everyone was like,

what is this all about? They flooded the zone with all these corporate executives and these captive audience meetings and every other tactic they could think of. And it didn't work. And not only did it not work, I really think that is part of why you have seen this take off in the way that it has. So listen, Layla, like, I really hope for the best for her. I know she has big ambitions. I hope she stays engaged in the Libra movement. And I think that this movement is only going to continue to grow. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. I think in the social media age, you're right. This is not, you know, 1896 where you can just disappear people. With the internet and with organization, Twitter, and the open channels of communication, I do think it is just impossible, and especially people like

us who bring attention and who talk about it. So I expect that there will be a backlash. And like we said, even this is a victory. Stopping stock buybacks and making them pay more in salary, that is a titanic shift in corporate behavior in the span of, what, a year relative to how they were conducting themselves previously. So let's keep it going. All right, let's move on. This is a hilarious story, which I've done as much reading on as I can into the situation because it is very emblematic of the Trump administration and everything that the man touches. So let's put this up there on the screen and start with just the news, which is that two top tech executives at the Truth Social app that President Trump had founded have quit the company as they

have faced lackluster numbers of users and plummeting signups. So here's who they are. Josh Adams and Billy Boozer. They were apparently the technology and product development heads at the company, including the chief technology officer. Now, we've already talked here about the rollout, about the glitches, and the errors. The biggest problem that they have today is that since its launch, downloads on the app have gone from 170,000 downloads a day to just 8,000. And what they point to is that within Truth Social itself, there's already all kinds of issues. Number one being they were supposed to be fully operational by April 1st, according to internal company documents. According to Devin Nunez. Well, and Devin Nunez, who is the CEO. I mean, the man left

Congress. He was a very powerful member of Congress and now leaves his seat in order to serve as the CEO of this organization. Now, that day has come and gone. It's April 5th, the day that we're recording this segment. We're not fully operational. Crystal, you went ahead and you were chicken. I've got an update for you. Yes.

I have not moved. I'm still 240,541 on the list. Right. I did. I thought maybe if I log out, log back in, maybe I the list. Right. I did, I thought maybe like if I log out, log back in, maybe I'll move. No. And nothing has happened. And that's exactly the issue,

which is that people are reporting being stuck in long queues in terms of the posting itself. We already brought you last week that Trump hadn't even posted on the platform. He posted once at the launch. That's it. Since then, you know, exactly.

And so what's going on? Isn't the whole point of having this to be that you're going to replace a Twitter alternative? Also, apparently Roger Stone is saying that the app is censoring him. So now they have their own MAGA issues of censorship. Oh, really? What did he say? So here's what it said. He said, the app is censoring me.

He isn't giving a reason or he isn't giving any content specifically that's been flagged. It wouldn't be necessarily surprising if that were the case. Well, isn't there some inter-MAGA-like sort of divide over these social media apps? Yes, because some people are on Getter. Okay, so here's what Roger Stone says here. He says that he took to Truth Social, said that they were about free speech to post about radical Islam, including a picture of an old Trump campaign button. Trump warns about the growing threat of terrorism, etc. Well, what happened is they put a sensitive content thing on his button, and he says, why is this being censored content on Truth Social? He wrote in a follow-up post, notably that the second post was not slapped with a content warning. So that

is exactly what he's pointing to. It has a sensitive content thing that posts up on an image of what is literally a Trump campaign thing, which is kind of ironic when you think about it. All of this just goes to show you that, look, if you thought this was going to be a competently executed company, I don't know what exactly country that you lived in for five straight years. And it's a good example of how Trump himself does not care about the details of almost anything that he gets involved in. He cares about the branding. And look, the man is a legitimate genius whenever it comes to that. But in terms of executive management and branding. And look, the man is a legitimate genius whenever it comes to that. But in terms of executive management and any sort of competence, he's probably the single worst person in the United States in order to head something like that up. Put this up there on

the screen, please, which is that Trump himself announced that he was creating Truth Social to stand up to the tyranny of big tech. They hired these top tech executives, the ones who have just now quit, specifically to show that they were a real company. And yet, the launch day has come and gone. In terms of posting, all he posted was, get ready, your favorite president will see you soon. That remains to be the case. In terms of the number of followers and more, the downloads remain plummeting. The top executives are gone. Devin Nunes hasn't really said anything in terms of what's going on exactly with behind the scenes. They're going to have to replace that. And it's very clear here that they're off to a rocky start, to say the least.

You can say and believe, as I do, that I would love to see a better Twitter. I think a lot of that could come from Elon Musk, which I'll be talking about in my monologue. But a lot of these alternatives have just become cringe grift efforts on every part of the spectrum. And I feel bad because a lot of people who legitimately trust Trump and they don't understand just how incompetent kind of a moron that he actually is, fell for this and are giving over their data and signing up for his app. It's not just a sign of his incompetence, which I think is an important part of this, because a central part of his pitch and his appeal was like, I'm the businessman, I know how to get things done, the country's going to be well run, the executive office and

the executive branch is going to be well run. If you still believe that, I don't know what to tell you, because we have manifest evidence that that is not the case in truth social being a very predictable, you know, very similar outcome. I genuinely want to know what is going on behind the scenes. Yeah. Because, listen, I've never stood up a gigantic social media platform personally. So I cannot speak to how complicated it is. But surely, look, they got a ton of money. Surely you can hire someone who knows how to do this thing and figure it out.

This has been now like this has been a long time that I'm number 240,000th on the list and nothing is changing and nothing is moving. So there's that to be said for it. I think it also shows, though, the sort of lack of care, concern and at times outright contempt that he has for his own people. Because this was held down as like, this is going to be a platform where you can really express your beliefs. And this is going to be part of our movement effectively. And the fact that he doesn't even care enough to see that the basic elements of it are competently executed, it is another sign of his lack of care and concern for the people who most believe in him.

And so I think that part of it really does matter. Yeah, I think you're right. It makes me upset just to see the way so many of these people have been used. A lot of them are boomers and they don't have access to better information. I'll never forget. I remember this one when Rush was still alive and there was this elderly gentleman calling in. He was like literally in tears being like, they're stealing the election from Trump. Like,

why won't these Republicans do something? He's like distraught personally because he believes these people about what's happening. And these people donated millions, tens of millions of dollars to Donald Trump to save the election. And we even pointed out that they didn't spend a lot of that money on challenging even the election results. So they lied to people whenever they took their money. Even today, he requires the RNC and all these other people to pay his legal bills. I mean, it's just a grift through and through and through. And that's the other thing. He'll make a lot of money off of this. It doesn't matter that it's a complete embarrassment, failure, incompetently executed, et cetera, et cetera. He'll be in a position to make lots of money off of this. The last thing I'll say with regards to these new platforms that

are meant to be about free speech, we've already seen the sort of successful model of how this really works. So we've pointed this out a couple of times, but I do think it's worth reiterating. You know, I was looking at Substack, which has a free speech ethos, like very genuinely committed to it, has taken a lot of heat for it, and has stood their ground. And I think proven themselves to be sort of true allies of the free speech movement. And I was just looking, I happened on Twitter, across what their top ten trending newsletters are right now. And it is truly ideologically diverse. The number one is still the like letters from an American, like a liberal historian, you know, very much aligned with sort of like

the mainstream liberal sentiment. There are others in that camp. There are some that are right wing. There are some that are left wing. There are some that are hard to categorize. I mean, they really are all across the map because their whole thing was not just, we're going to be like X existing platform, except we're going to have different rules on free speech. They met a market need and had integrated into that

their care and concern and commitment to free speech. That's the way it has to be done because ultimately social networks are valuable because of the vast array of people that are on them. And so if your only pitch is, hey, we are exactly like Twitter, only we have different rules with regards to free speech, well, you're only going to attract a very specific audience and you're going to limit ultimately what the impact and the reach of that platform is. So the game with these big established players is you have to change the policy framework. You have to make sure that they are subjected to scrutiny, accountability, transparency. In my opinion, these should be treated as sort of public infrastructure

and handled more or less like utilities because communication and the public square is backbone critical infrastructure in a democracy. That's the way you have to go about these. Creating a competing product with different sort of rules of the road is not going to work out. Almost certainly never. It's sad to say as much as we would like it to. But network effects are real.

Go ask any real business person in Silicon Valley and they'll tell you the exact same thing. It is what it is. Yeah. All right. Last thing we wanted to get to before we jump into our monologues is I've been watching with great interest as the mainstream press decided that they have to now take Amazon labor union president Christian Smalls seriously. They have to give him a platform. They have to talk to him with some level of respect because this is a man who's messing around with capital now. So now, okay, we're going to have to keep and take you seriously. It kind of reminds me of, and Ironman pointed this out to me, it kind of reminds me of that,

like two weeks during the Democratic primary when CNN felt like they had to have me on to represent like the thinking of people who were aligned with Bernie. So there's a kind of a similar dynamic going on. And I'm not sure I ever thought in my lifetime that CNBC would not only have Christian Smalls on, but give him seven minutes to talk about why unions matter and how they are fighting and winning. Let's take a listen to a little bit of that. Chris, first of all, welcome once again. This started as a highly contentious relationship between you and Amazon to no small degree because people there belittled you, alienated you, thought they could win by making you the face of the union push. But you've won this round. So my question is on your strategy from here. Amazon's got a new

CEO, right, since you started this. You are now a national figure in this new labor movement. What's your approach from here? To what degree do you think you can cooperate more with Amazon leadership, or to what degree do you think that's wise? Well, they don't have no choice. You know, the revolution is here. That's what we just witnessed on Friday. We're going to organize buildings all across the nation. You know, in the last 72 hours, we've been contacted from workers all over the world. So they want to unionize. We're going to absolutely help them. We're going to get it done here in New York first. We have another election coming up in three weeks. So we're right back at the campaign on the campaign trail. And once we're finished here in New York,

we're going to spread just like the Starbucks movement is spreading across the nation. Hey, Chris, you clearly understand a big part of the Amazon workforce. But for those who voted against unionization, what were their reasons, do you think? And what do you have to say to change their minds? Well, you know, I don't think we have to say anything too much. You know, they were misinformed. Amazon spent millions of dollars putting them into captive audiences for the last few months, every 20 minutes, every single day. So imagine being put into a classroom being drilled uh anti-union propaganda for months of course of course some people are

going to fall victim to that and i think that's that's what we saw you know a lot of people just really didn't know they were undecided um the company's telling you to vote no this is their main source of income so of course of course, they went with that. But I think if we show them better and we talk about it, we deliver our contract, we improve the quality of life, I think they'll all come around and be on board. There is so much to say about that. So, first of all, let's just always keep in mind Amazon made their bed. They chose to make Christian Smalls the face of the movement. They're the ones who did this.

They're the ones who created this situation for themselves and I think you can see there, this man has a very powerful voice. I love how that question to him, the first question that we showed you, where they're like, all right, you won. Now isn't it time for you to lay off a little bit? Isn't it time to cooperate?

And that same dude comes back at the end and basically asks the same question of like, isn't it time for you to like lay off a little bit? Isn't it time to cooperate? And that same dude comes back at the end and basically asks the same question of like, isn't it time for diplomacy now? And he's like, no. Amazon, his response is they're going to have no choice basically but to negotiate and sit with us because the revolution is here. That is his response to these CNBC ghouls who are like so panicked about what's going on that they feel like they have to have him on and try to persuade him to like basically back down. So that is relatively extraordinary. I also love how they're trying to get him to lay out the anti-union argument, you know, like, well, how about the people who voted against the union? Don't they have a point? What is their perspective?

And he's like, listen, we don't really have to persuade them. All we have to do is deliver for them. That's it. That's it. And then they'll be persuaded because they were subjected to an overwhelming propaganda campaign. So of course, some are going to fall victim to that. Of course, some people are going to understand that. All we have to do is stand our ground, keep doing what we're doing. And ultimately, when we deliver a contract that they see is better for them, that's when they'll all be on board. That's why it works. Look, even if they weren't misinformed, maybe they just legitimately didn't want the union. If they get better wages, well, then they can be like, okay, I was wrong. And they can change their mind. That's what it's all about.

It's about just giving people a chance. And what I never can't stand about these things is they won't even want to give them the chance. and they want unilateral power when they're the second largest employer in the entire United States. You can't have that situation. I feel like I'm crazy whenever I'm stating like basic facts of American labor practices, which we resolved in law in the 1950s. Why are we having to do this entire dance again? But apparently we have to. The CNBC thing is also revealing. It's like, well, last time I checked, just only getting a single warehouse unionized is not that. I mean, look, it's a big accomplishment. But it's not like that's the end

goal. Like, why is JFK 8 where you stop? That's not when you stop. When you really have power is when you have like a majority of the workforce or a lot of the warehouses that are under the air employed. Then you have legitimate bargaining power and then, okay, maybe it's time to talk. I mean, right now you're just getting started. Why would you even ask the question at a single one? The real next question is, okay, what's the plan for the next warehouse? Why don't they even ask that? Amazon doesn't respect diplomacy and cooperation. They respect hard power. I mean, they don't respect any of it. They have to be forced into doing the right thing. That is the only tactic. That is the only way that they're ultimately going to be able to win better conditions, not only for this warehouse,

but for workers across the country. And as I continually say, this is not just a fight about Amazon. This really is about wages, benefits, and labor standards across the entire country. And according to Christian, there are getting workers reaching out around the globe even. So he really has sparked something. I watched him on MSNBC as well. I told you yesterday about the segment he'd done with Ari Melber. He's another one with Mehdi Hassan and also got asked about, you know, who was there and whether AOC supported them and all of this. And so you have a guy who's now being brought on MSNBC to inform their audience about the reality of the Democratic Party's hollow support for labor unions. Who else is allowed

to do that? I mean, you just don't hear that perspective on that network whatsoever. But again, because first of all, Christian, I mean, you talk about a free man. This man doesn't owe anyone anything. That's the beauty of him winning with no support is now he is free to totally tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But the other piece is because he has established himself as a credible figure that has to be platform, has to be dealt with because he's messing around with capital. I mean, that's what these people ultimately respect. And so it's no accident then that these mainstream platforms feel like they have to hear him out to figure out like, oh my God, what the hell is going on here? And do you think that we can persuade him to cooperate and be a diplomat now rather than continuing the successful unionization drive

that he's hoping to spark around the country? Yeah, it's an interesting thing, too. I think, you know, I don't know how much they even know about unions over there. That's actually the other question. The CNBC? The CNBC. That probably is one of the first times they've ever had to even grapple with that. They don't think of unions as part of business.

Yes. They see it as like, yeah, I mean, we played the Jim Cramer thing yesterday, right? And he's like, well, what is Amazon going to do if they can't control their workers and force them to work shifts that they don't want to work? And you pointed this out, and this is so true. He would not view his own workplace that way.

If CNBC was like, you have to work these hours, and that's that, you'd throw a whole fit. Hey, you're on the 2 a.m. shift now, Jim. He'd be like, no, I'm not view his own workplace that way. Like, if CNBC was like, you have to work these hours and that's that, he'd throw a whole bit. Hey, you're on the 2 a.m. shift now, Jim. He'd be like, no, I'm not doing that. Yeah, he'd be like, screw you, I'm not doing that. And would never think that that was, like, an acceptable demand of him and people who are in his class. But people like Christian and, you know, his fellow workers there, they're just seen as, like, cogs to be moved around and placed into the machine and disposed of at will. And they consider it like an existential threat when suddenly the cogs have a little bit of a say in when and where and how they're being plugged in. So it's really extraordinary to

watch them all trying to grapple with this in real time. That's fun. I know you got more on this, so what are you taking a look at? Indeed. Well, friends, Ronald Reagan once said the most terrifying words in the English language were, I'm from the government and I'm here to help. Well, thanks to the intrepid reporting of one Ken Klippenstein, we are now learning the most terrifying words in the English language, at least according to the corporate ghouls who run Amazon. According to a leaked internal memo, Amazon is planning to ban the words union, living wage, slave labor, harassment, and restrooms, among a long list of

others from a new internal worker chat app. I presume the restroom reference is likely with regards to the common complaint from workers that their breaks do not even afford them enough time to make it to the restroom and get back to their stations. Now, this leaked memo, it reveals quite a lot. First of all, that Amazon keeps such a tight and authoritarian grip on their workers that they feel entitled to exercise complete control even over those workers' language and speech and words. And second, it is very revealing that it is these particular words which Amazon finds to be so incredibly threatening as requiring a complete ban. But you know what? Actually, they're not wrong. Because the Amazon union movement is the one

thing that is budding and blossoming in the nation right now that could actually threaten the power of our ruling elite. ALU President Christian Smalls, he has announced that the revolution is here. And this time, it is for real. Let me explain in detail why the Amazon Union movement could become a truly pivotal era-transforming moment in American history, and why I personally am so focused on it. So first, let's consider the context here. Our country is at a tipping point. The system of neoliberalism, which was architected by elite Democrats and elite Republicans, has robbed our towns of jobs. It has hollowed out our communities. It has destabilized families and local institutions. This has led to a collapse of democracy itself. How can you have democracy when there are no real communities to organize and no citizen-led membership organizations to lead the fight. And when most Americans are too

exhausted by struggling to get from paycheck to paycheck to focus on politics, the logic of the market and profit maximization was applied to every aspect of our lives. Our human worth was defined by what the market would pay us. Our value was measured by whether or not we were good little consumers. Politicians no longer engaged in governance. They substituted in market demands for values and for planning. This entire system, it was ultimately designed to create a fat overclass, which it did very well. And this overclass then easily captured the political system and manipulated that market logic to their exclusive benefit. This has been a catastrophe, leading to a spiritual, economic, and political decay. Most of the problems that we see in society today are due to this neoliberal system of economics and

of politics. Everything from terrible media, to corrupt politicians, to industrial decay, to deaths of despair, to our slide towards authoritarianism, surveillance, and censorship, to the divisive culture war nonsense that tears the working class apart. All of that can be traced to the elevation of rigged markets over the needs of actual human beings. And there's a really only one counterweight that could check the power of this tilted system and create the roots of a healthy, actually democratic, in a true sense of the word, culture. Workers have to be organized. People must come together so that they can wield power in the one sphere that our financial overlords actually care about, and that's in the sphere of money and of profit. Unions are really

the only way that we can fight back against the system that has hollowed out everything good in this nation. It is no accident, then, that the neoliberal era coincided with a massive wave of union busting, kicked off by Reagan and Pat Coe and cemented by Clinton and NAFTA. You see, the values of unions, they are diametrically opposed to the values of elite neoliberalism. Neoliberalism, it's about the individual, every man and woman competing for their rightful spot in the market hierarchy. Unions, on the other hand, they're about solidarity. They're about men and women working collectively for basic rights they deserve,

not because of their market worth, but because of their humanity. Strong unions could not coexist with a total neoliberal takeover. And as union rates have declined, the middle class has collapsed. The profit margins of corporations, well, they have exploded. But wages, of course, they've flatlined. In certain instances, like now, they declined. Work has become increasingly precarious. The gig economy has explored new and novel ways of abusing labor. Benefits that were once common and expected as part of employment, they've become rare. They've become fragile. No one has been harder hit by this shift than millennials and Gen Z, who are being

shut out of wealth creation entirely, only able to get ahead if their parents happen to be able to cough up the down payment for their first home. This is a disaster for everyone in this entire country. People of all races, urban and rural, college and high school educated, rich and poor even. Because who wants to live in a declining nation of anxiety, violence, and polarization? Electoral politics, listen, they are one part of that struggle. But the truth is, without organized labor, democracy is hollow. Unions are a basic required building block of actual democracy because the union hall, it's one of the few places left where people of different political ideologies and cultural backgrounds actually have to engage with one another and democratically work through their

differences. Think about the John Deere workers in Iowa standing shoulder to shoulder fighting against a gigantic multinational. Their surface-level political divides and cultural schisms, those meant absolutely nothing in that moment of collective struggle. Bonds of brotherhood were forged on that picket line that are sure to withstand the next culture war or moral fake panic. Unions help create stability and security, supporting families, nurturing communities. That stability, provided by a good paycheck and reliable benefits, creates real freedom, actual freedom to make life choices and to participate as a full citizen in our democracy. And that participation leads to a system that is never going to be perfect, guys. We're not talking about utopia. But it will actually be representative and real instead of captured by elites and completely fake. It is no accident that Christian Smalls

is able to go on MSNBC and CNBC and CNN and tell them the whole truth. It's because he is a truly free man in the realist sense of that term. I can see how we get to that actual democracy from here, from where we stand right now. Amazon is ground zero. That's why I care about it so much. It's the seemingly invincible giant. They are not only enforcing the current system and pushing it to new extremes of cruelty and humanity. Their size is their greatest asset, but it's also an opportunity because if a wave of unionization takes off in Amazon warehouses around the country in a flash, a significant proportion

of the working population could be actively engaged with a union campaign and undergoing an education in forgotten values like solidarity and forgotten tactics like strikes. It would change the whole culture. And this is one culture war that I am 100% in on. I don't care where you live. I don't care what party you like. I don't care where you position yourself on the ideological spectrum or on the class spectrum, for that matter.

If you care about having a country that is healthy, that is democratic, in the true sense of that word, where the basic worth of humanity is affirmed, this is your fight. It's time for us to forge a new bipartisan consensus and to bury neoliberalism in the grave of its own making. Amazon is right to be quaking in their union-busting boots. And there is a reason why there is a general panic, why they have to put Christian on these shows, why, you know, at Starbucks...

And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today a general panic why they have to put Christian on these shows. Why, you know, at Starbucks... And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, as I've said here before on the show, out of all the mega billionaires in our society, the only one I really respect is Elon Musk. That doesn't mean he's above criticism, as I've shown here before in detailing his financial ties to the Chinese regime, but I do find that most people in elite media criticize Elon because of his occasionally cringe Twitter feed, but more importantly,

his general refusal to bow to whatever the trendy thing is in our current elite culture and to buck those trends. One of those issues where Elon has stood fast, at least in rhetoric, has been free speech, where he released a tantalizing and interesting poll on Twitter several days ago, asking if, quote, free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle? 30% of respondents said yes. I'd love to meet those folks. 70% said no. Elon mysteriously replied, quote, the consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully. Now, it's very likely that decision may have already been made as when Elon released his latest poll on whether he should buy Twitter stock or not. But it still stunned

the world when yesterday morning, Elon filed paperwork with the SEC disclosing that he had purchased a 9% stake in Twitter. The 9.2% stake Elon has acquired within Twitter makes him the largest single shareholder in the company, and it opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities. Just this morning, they announced he'll be joining the board of directors. And to put it in perspective, Elon now owns four times as much of Twitter as Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey,

an absolutely astounding percentage of the company. Now, to be clear, it's a little bit wonky here. He does not own a more than 10% or known as an insider stake of the company, and he is disclosing instead a passive role. Still, he has a board seat, so it's important. Twitter's stock popped nearly 25% of the news that Elon had acquired it, but more interesting to me is how is this going to change things? You see, Twitter has been going through a very rough patch business-wise for some time. Jack Dorsey's departure, while spun as voluntary, was the result of immense pressure from outside investors

who wanted Twitter to pursue more subscription products, and they wanted to get rid of Dorsey, who they saw as absentee and not very good at his job. As a result of this, Dorsey was forced out in a reorganization of the company and a reshuffling of the board, which is why they turned to well-liked Parag Agarwal as the new CEO. Parag, a former engineer, was tapped mostly because he didn't offend anybody and because the main demand from the new investors was that he continue product innovation at a faster pace. What they ignored was this. None of that is really that hard. And in tapping Agarwal, they elevated somebody to the position of CEO, who is clearly not thought that hard about the

way that Twitter influences discourse, especially amongst elites, and whether the First Amendment matters or not. As Agarwal himself said before he became the CEO, quote, our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment when it relates to censorship. Instead, he reiterated that making people feel safe was the priority. Classic activist nonsense. Exactly the wrong choice. What this highlighted to me at that time was how awful a choice that Agarwal was for CEO. I wrote this, ironically enough, on Twitter in reaction. Quote, none of the big problems that Twitter faces in the next five years are tech ones. They are socio-political. They require principles and forethought as to how policy applies in controversial use cases. I added, choosing someone who clearly

does not have a track record of this type of management will lead to more haphazard enforcement, more woke employee results, and worse public discourse. In other words, the biggest problem that Twitter faces has nothing to do with engineering. And honestly, even with business, their stock and their value is inextricably linked to the fact that while, yes, the majority of the US population is not on Twitter, that the elites overwhelmingly are. In almost every sector, sports, news, politics, finance, venture capital, each individual sector has its own Twitterverse, where being somebody actually does mean something, very much so in the real world. Twitter's elite capture and its disproportionate impact then on so much of the

world that you are, is around you, is why it's important to understand then its content policy, and why then, when they ban the Hunter Biden laptop story, when they cancel or they take off accounts of elected representatives, and even the sitting president of the United States, that a discussion around those principles is so important. That is where Elon can come in. The truth is, from a business perspective, there is not much except the current ad business and subscription products that Twitter blew, like Twitter blew, that is left to be done over there. But some of the most critical decisions in company history are coming. First and foremost is this. Donald Trump is probably running for president again. If he does,

and especially if he wins the GOP nomination, is Twitter really not going to let him back on that platform? Because that seems crazy. I'm of the opinion that world leaders, no matter who they are, Kim Jong-un, Ayatollah Khomeini, Chairman Xi, and others should never be taken off the platform. Why? Because I think the public interest outweighs any stupid trust and safety policy at Twitter. But the election aside, Twitter has other big problems to solve. They already flubbed the lab leak in the early days of COVID. What if we have another pandemic? They banned the Hunter Biden laptop story, as I already mentioned. Their ad hoc policy under the new CEO even led to a new

stupid rule that would effectively take away your right to record somebody who is wronging you and then post a video of it online because they're a private citizen. In short, the content policies of Twitter have a huge impact on the world around us. If Musk can have any effect at all, it will be his ability to influence the company in that way. And as a friend of mine put it, this is basically a win-win situation. Either Musk impacts the company in a positive way and we have freer speech, or we learn that all the BS about shareholder activism was actually fake in the first place. And then we get to explore more creative solutions for making Twitter better for all of us. Either way, it's a good thing. So, Elon, I wish you the best of luck.

Interesting, just this morning that he was appointed to the board of directors, Crystal, while we were talking. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, guys, we're joined now by two iron workers who are at the center of a labor dispute that could have implications for the entire country. Let's go ahead and put this American Prospect article up on the screen. It says the iron workers are resurrecting Joy Silk. I'll explain in a little bit what that means. After months of complaints over basic safety standards, a majority of workers in a fabrication plant demanded union recognition, but the company refused and then retaliated.

Joining us now, we have Vince DiDonato. He's industrial representative with the Ironworkers International. And we also have Ron Rhodes. He is an ironworker who, because of all of this, is now unemployed. Gentlemen, we're really glad to have you this morning. Thank you so much. Great to see you guys. Thank you. Yeah, we're really glad to have you this morning. Thank you so much. Great to see you guys. Thank you. Yeah, of course. Vince, let me start with you. So there's a majority of workers who want to form a union, and you would think that that would lead to contract negotiations, an agreement. That's the way these things are supposed to unfold. What happened instead? So, you know, the company started playing games as soon as they found out that the workers at GND wanted union representation. And they started

playing games, threatening to close the doors if they voted yes. After the election, they started telling workers, hey, thank you. Now you should go look for a job. And then roughly on March 1st, management walked in, tapped everyone on the shoulder, and told them to leave, every one but two workers who are working there right now. The companies tried to avoid negotiating the contract with these workers. And right now, like I said, we're down to two people in the bargaining unit out of roughly 20 in the beginning. And there's roughly, there's well over 100, 125 unfair labor practices filed right now currently. There's probably more to come. So Ron, let's go into this. You were retaliated against as a result of this vote and

by the company. Talk to us about that process and what it was like for you personally to have experienced this retaliation. I mean, from the very get-go, as soon as we marched on them, everything changed. They started surveilling us. They started bringing up attendance from eight, nine months back. They took away, they would let us put in earned time anytime and take it off. They stopped doing that. Pretty much, they just did whatever they could to make our job more difficult. Ron, I don't know too much about the job that you do, but I have known a few iron workers in my day, and I know they take extraordinary risks in the work that they do. I know it is vitally important to the entire country and to the infrastructure of this nation. And I also know from the reporting from the American Prospect that not only was the company, you know, ultimately did they basically fire almost everyone, but they were taking shortcuts on safety measures that were putting your health and lives at risk. Could you go into that in a little bit of detail?

Well, we build decks that go around the big coal mining trucks for Komatsu and the tables were too close. We had talked to them about spreading out the tables because we have to flip these decks. We have to do the bottom, then we have to do the top. And they wouldn't move the tables if a chain or some of the rigging would have broke. And I mean, it could have very easily fell on somebody right next to you because they wouldn't spread the tables out more. The chains were never inspected, maybe once in the four years that I was there. They were making their own lifting devices, fabricating, and they weren't OSHA approved. That's some of what we went through there. Vince, talk to us about how Joy Silk comes into play here, suspecting that you don't actually have a majority of workers who want to join a union.

And as a secondary piece of this, and this is really important, if you have a host of purported labor violations as you have in this case, the company can actually be forced into negotiations with those workers in that bargaining unit. The new general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board says that she would like to revive that doctrine. That would be a massive sea change for how workers are able to organize. Right now, the field is extraordinarily tilted against unions and against workers forming collective power. This would make it closer to the default that if you get a majority of signatures on union cards, that you ultimately are going to end up with a union and with a contract. Can you talk about the relevance of that decision here? Yeah, so on September 17th, or September 7th, 2021, a large majority of workers at G&D walked in and demanded union recognition. Union, Joy Silk basically states there is no reason to continue this fight and push out an election so that the company has an opportunity to bring in union busters, fear tactics, intimidation, the lying, cheats, and threats that they always do in every single election out there.

And so these workers on September 7th, they marched on the boss without a reasonable doubt of majority force or majority support. And the company refused to recognize that they wanted the iron workers to represent them. So at that point, we filed a petition. But the board stance is, why do these workers have to endure this fight? They went through three union busters during this process. The company now has two attorney firms handling this. They've spent millions of dollars to break a bargaining unit of 20 that fully support a union, and they still do. They're still fighting for this, and they're not going to stop. With Joy Silk, when the company starts breaking the law, it's dealt with a little bit sooner.

There is possibly, you can get a 10-J injunction a little bit faster because the laws say that if you prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that you have the majority workforce, if the company refuses the bargain, that is immediately a bad faith bargaining charge. And when the board hears that, if the company is found guilty, they will be forced to negotiate with that group right then and there. We could have been negotiating the afternoon of September 7th instead of waiting until November, going through the election process. We have three wrongful termination cases filed because of what the company done and with their tactics. And now we're sitting where I believe 10 or 12 workers on March 1st had retaliatory layoffs.

There was a couple workers that left right before that because they seen the writing on the wall. They seen the games the company were playing and they just, they couldn't handle it no more. They needed to go look for jobs to support their families. The workers were working overtime prior to the election and they weren't allowed to work overtime after the election. Wow. Yeah. This is just so completely ridiculous. I mean, and Vince, lay it out for people in terms of what recourse that you have under the current system with the NLRB and with the current regime. I mean, how hard is it going to be for you guys to get what you rightfully deserve?

It's going to be a battle. I mean, yeah, we've got labor laws, but they need to be enforced. They need to be enforced quicker to help workers when, you know, before they actually get into a situation of a retaliatory layoff or a lockout or anything of the sorts. We're going to fight this all the way. We're not going to stop. The company broke the law, in our opinion, and we're going to fight that and we're going to see it all the way through. We're requesting 10-J injunctions to help with negotiations. We are still trying to negotiate because there are two workers still in the bargaining unit,

and we're not going to stop. One thing that we're asking the board is, you know, use this to help bring Joy Silk back. The workers in this country obviously need it, looking at the workers at GND and other cases across the country. The workforce is tired of being cheated, exploited, and abused. They're standing up and they're going to fight for it. And we need this. Yeah. And I think it's really important for our audience to understand that this is something, this is a change that NLRB could make that would impact not just you all and bring a, you know, a just conclusion to your struggle, but would significantly make it easier for workers across the country to unionize in shops where they, where a clear majority ultimately wants to. And that's why this case has such importance nationally. Ron, let's just close with, you know, what has this been like for you?

How are you getting by? Now you're unemployed. You're in the struggle. You're in the fight. It's hard to say how long it's going to take for it ultimately to be resolved. And is there something that our audience can do if they support your cause and they support the direction of bringing back Joy Silk? Is there some way that they can be helpful? That'd be more of a question for Vince on that. I don't really know. Okay. This is my, sorry. Not at all.

I mean, Vince knows. Well, you can certainly speak to, though, how you're getting by and how you're doing. Oh, yeah. I mean, my pay went to about half, a little bit less than half a week. So I've fallen behind on some bills. It was so sudden. I mean, they just walked up to us on the first, like he said, tapped us on the shoulder, post come over for a meeting.

They read us a letter from Komatsu saying that we had finished all our orders when we were all in the middle of building decks. And so, I mean, it was just a huge surprise. I mean, so I'm just trying to eat by until I can find something. Yeah. Must be tough, man. Vince, is there something- Vince, you wanna speak to that? Yeah, is there something our audience can do to be helpful?

So one thing that we're asking right now is we've got an iron workers rising page. We've got a GND integrated union website. We're asking people to get on there, support these workers, keep an eye out. We're going to have some call to actions. But you know, push on your local politicians, your building trades and everyone involved. The NLRB, the workers of this country need Joy Silk. The workers of GND need support. And so those are kind of some of the things that we're asking for right now, and we're doing our

best to assist the workers as we can. Great. Well, we'll have a link down there in the description to what you just mentioned. We really appreciate you gentlemen joining us today, and we're definitely with you guys, so please keep us updated as well so we can tell our audience. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Pleasure. Thanks, guys. Thank you guys so much for watching.

We really appreciate it. We love all of your support, and you're just helping us, look, build a media company which is able to bring you the stories like the ones that we just did and Amazon as well. Also, just an update for everybody on the demonetization front. My monologue yesterday on Taylor Lorenz was found not suitable for advertising. Did you get an answer on that, by the way? By the way, I reached out to YouTube. We appealed the decision, as we do, and it has got no answer. It remains limited ads, which means we'll make like YouTube premium money or whatever. But it was also one of our top performing segments of the day yesterday. Interesting. Interesting.

Okay. About how some of these things happen. Just pointing to you. I'm sure they'll give me some BS explanation now that I've talked about it. But listen, this is why we rely on you because you rely on this and this unsteady flow. And now because Taylor is crying and she's upset, we can't make any money off of the work that we do. It's why we need your support, not only for keeping the bills being paid, but we've got some big stuff coming up, which I'm pretty excited to announce. Yeah, we've got some things coming. By the way, did you see Taylor's response to the – No, she blocked me. I have no idea what she said.

No, not her response to what you said. Yeah. She was outraged at the segment itself. Oh, yeah, I know. Yeah. I have no idea what she said. No, not her response to what you said. Yeah. She was outraged at the segment itself. Oh, yeah, I know. Yeah, I put some of that in there. Because now she's, I guess, being harassed more.

And so it's like... Anyway, I guess it's MSNBC's fault she's being harassed today. Yeah, no, it's MSNBC. It's MSNBC. We appreciate you guys. That's the bottom line. You enable us to do what we do

without fear or favor and to try to create, you know, a better information ecosystem that is doing its best to sort of sort through what are complex issues and to create a more democratic, better informed country. So thank you for being a part of that. We are eternally grateful. We hope you have a wonderful day and we'll be back here on Thursday. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.

Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are

actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. DNA test proves he is not the father, now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John, Who's not the father?

Well, Sam, luckily, it's your 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 Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an iHeart Podcast.