Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/14/21: Fauci Gaslights, Bezos Bailout, Kamala's Failures, and More!

Episode Date: June 14, 2021

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Some really something comments from Anthony Fauci that we're going to dig into. Jeff Bezos gets a bailout from the Senate. Because he needs one. You know, richest man on the planet definitely needs some help from our nation's senators. Fascinating lawsuit against Google in Ohio that has potentially major implications. Some new numbers on how the public is thinking about UFOs. Both of our breaking points monologues. We also recorded an interview with Kyle Kalinsky. He's going to be talking about Justice Democrats and what went right.

And more importantly, maybe what went wrong. But we did want to start with those comments from the one and only Dr. Anthony Fauci. Dr. Anthony Fauci. This is one of the most revealing interviews that he's ever given. I'm going to let the entire thing speak for itself, and then we'll just dissect it on the other side. Let's take a listen. Now, you're at the focal point. What is your level of concern that we're going to discredit public health officials to the point of, you know, look at Russia. They actually have

a good vaccine, and none of their citizens will take it because they don't trust their own government. Right. It's very dangerous, Chuck, because a lot of what you're seeing as attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science, because all of the things that I have spoken about consistently from the very beginning have been fundamentally based on science. Sometimes those things were inconvenient truths for people And there was pushback against me. So if you are trying to, you know, get at me as a public health official and a scientist, you're really attacking not only Dr. Anthony Fauci, you're attacking science. And anybody that looks at what's going on clearly sees that. You have to be asleep not to see that. That is what's going on.

Science and the truth are being attacked. Oh, really? Science and the truth are being attacked. This is outrageous to me, Crystal, because what Fauci has done is he has conflated himself with defending the public health establishment and the scientific community. In a way, he is right. It is an attack on science and the scientific establishment itself in order to point out that their actions with gain-of-function research, which they have irresponsibly funded, promoted, and then covered up possibly the role in the outbreak of coronavirus in the very first place, it is an attack by anybody who

wants to know the truth about why coronavirus came about in order to go after Dr. Anthony Fauci and maybe point out the fact that he was instrumental in reversing the ban on gain-of-function research, that he, the public health establishment, and others covered up many of the well-known facts in the early days of the pandemic showing a possible man-made origin of coronavirus, and that they have continued to lie to the American people for over a year and a half. It's not an exaggeration. He's admitted about lying about masks.

He has admitted manipulating public opinion whenever it comes to what level of herd immunity he thinks is acceptable and more. But really what this is, this is the quiet part out loud. Fauci says if you disagree with him, you're anti-science. And in reality, science is about the pursuit of the truth. He has covered up the truth almost since the very beginning. The critiques of him, some of them have been unjustified and some of them, the ones that you

just laid out, have been completely justified. And in fact, I would say that those critiques where he has fallen short of what the facts and the evidence actually say, those critiques bolster science. Real science. Real science. Because as you said, science is about the pursuit of knowledge and the truth. So the distance between what you, Dr. Fauci, are saying and where that truth lies, pointing out that inconsistency is actually bolstering science. And, you know, it's really interesting. Obviously, he knows his audience here. Like, this is exactly... Russia. Either the lies... What does Russia have to do with this chuck top? The Russia thing. But then, you know, the language Fauci uses about truth and lies and

commitment to facts and science, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, it sounds like one of those liberal signs that's in every affluent liberal's yard in this city. But if you actually think about what he's saying here, it's some real authoritarian shit. Incredibly. Like if you think about strongman dictators, what they do is they equate themselves with the state and they say, you can't criticize me because then you're putting down the country. You're criticizing the state. That's exactly the tactic he's using here.

He's putting himself above reproach. Oh, if you're criticizing me, you're really attacking science and facts and truth. And yeah, a lot of liberals will absolutely eat that up. But that's the polar opposite of what a true liberal value set would look't get a mask because it's not effective. At the same time, the real reason he was saying that was because they were worried about a run on masks and it not being available for frontline workers. Okay, that's like a noble goal, but you weren't going with the science. You have to be, if you want to be a trusted science expert, leave the spin and all the bullshit to the politicians.

You just need to lay on the fact. Exactly. You failed number one there. You and I both gave him a lot of latitude. Like, it was the beginning of the crisis. I regret some of it. He screwed up. There was a lot of conflicting information coming out about masks.

We really kind of gave him a pass for a while on that. Then it's revealed he admits himself because people were trying to pin him down on like, well, okay, what is the herd immunity number? Because you were saying it's here. Now you're saying it's there. You've been slowly increasing the herd immunity percent that the population of vaccination, the population has to achieve in order to achieve herd immunity. And he admitted that he was telling people what he thought they could handle in the moment. Again, maybe, I mean, it's not even really okay for politicians to engage in that type of spin. But when you're talking about someone who is just supposed to be telling you the science, if you don't know exactly what the number is, and I think that's probably the truth, is like there's a range and nobody knows specifically what the number is.

Give us the range. Tell us what the probabilities are. Give us some sense. And the fact that we had those failures early on fed into, I mean, Trump is the worst actor in all of this in terms of making it this culture war thing. But people really felt like they were on their own to figure out what made sense for themselves and their families and to keep themselves safe. They had to go by sort of like these rules of thumb and guesstimates and whatever their kind of like cultural frame told them made sense because of these types of failings. And the most recent one that is revealed, of course, we've been talking about the COVID, the lab leak theory. We know now from the emails that were revealed that he had some insight and some intelligence suggesting it could have come from a lab early on, even as he publicly was completely

dismissing that out of hand. Now he's kind of changed his tune a little bit, playing fast and loose word games, like very lawyerly with what gain of function research technically is. So no, pointing those things out, that's not an attack on science. That's bolstering the science. That's trying to reclaim science as a pursuit of truth rather than some, like, cultural battle or playing field for your career ambitions. What's happened here is Fauci has actually become the worst version of himself. Like, for a long period, he was booking himself on television. He was becoming a celebrity. He was becoming the craft of science itself.

When once again, Fauci is the person who funded gain of function research, reversed the ban by the Obama administration in 2017. He is the person who directed gain of function research funds to Dr. Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance who funded bat coronavirus gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which possibly led,

again, it's just a hypothesis, to the outbreak of COVID-19 and led to the worst pandemic in a century. So if that is what happened, and if that's an attack on science, then so be it. But I think what real scientific inquiry would say is, did this come from a lab? If so, maybe we should rethink how we do gain-of-function research. Maybe we should rethink how exactly we can communicate to the public. Let's say gain-of-function research is necessary, which I'm actually pretty dubious on still.

Make the case to me that you're gonna be able to do it safely again. And especially, don't pull the wool over the eyes of the American public and say that the function, that gain-of- function research is so necessary that our response to the pandemic, which is what Fauci and others have done, is to push even more gain of function research to the tune of $1.2 billion to the global virus project. All of those, you put it all together, and you just see a scenario in which the public health establishment,

the so-called trusted scientists, they lied to us from the beginning. The Fauci emails reveal that he knew about a possible man-made origin of coronavirus January 31st, 2020, after the genome of the virus had been sequenced. It was in his inbox. And then those very same scientists came out and lied to the public and said that there was no evidence whatsoever. So in reality, maybe it is an attack on the scientific establishment, but it is an affront to actual science itself. And real scientists are the ones who know this. Fauci really has just lost all credibility at this point. Trust the science, but recognize that scientists are human beings. Exactly. Follow the money. Human beings are fallible. They have their own interests. They have their own professional stakes in mind. And the fact that he wants, I mean, the arrogance of saying that he's above reproach is really something.

And you get away with it. He gets away with it. And we've seen this pattern repeat time and time again because you can point to, like, Donald Trump and, oh, Donald Trump and his acolytes. And it's these right-wingers who hate him. Right. And sometimes because that rhetoric and some of the attacks are unfair, it gives Fauci and his defenders more of a leg to stand on to say, oh, this is all in bad faith, so that they can just dismiss all of the criticism out of hand, even the pieces that are entirely legitimate.

No, that's right. At the same time, what are we talking about today? A Bezos bailout. I feel like we have a Bezos update every day, that's right. At the same time, what are we talking about today? A Bezos bailout. Oh, what's happening here? I feel like we have a Bezos update every day, but my God. He's the richest man in the world. What are we supposed to do?

And not only that, he controls the labor market. He controls the consumer market. And this is something Ryan Grimm actually brought to our attention initially. He was in line to get this $10 billion bailout for his Blue Origin space company, this NASA contract. And essentially what had happened is he had lost out on a competitive

bid process to another billionaire space company, Elon Musk. What is this thing called? Which one? Blue Origin? No, Elon Musk. SpaceX. SpaceX, yeah. So he lost on the contract to SpaceX. And so he went to Maria Cantwell, Democrat. His home senator. Liberal Democrat from his home state of Washington. And she said, you know what? One $10 billion contract, not enough. Let's put another one in so we can make sure that Blue Origin ultimately gets these dollars.

Now, listen, just to be clear, it's not like the money is earmarked for him, but there are only so many billionaire space companies that could win this contract, potentially. So it's very clear what happened here, ultimately. So the update is that funding went through bipartisan basis last week. Very few objections raised. We can throw this here on the screen. Another great friend of the show, Jeff Stein, says in case you missed it, the Senate tonight approved a bill with overwhelming bipartisan support that included $10 billion in lunar lander contracts likely to go to Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin company. Of course, we also covered that he'll be flying aboard one of these Blue Origins. I think it's fake space travel personally. Right, because they are not going to, what is it? They're not going to orbital space.

Yeah, they're just technically going to the lowest limit of space. But anyway. To lower Earth orbit. I think that should be the limit. Lower Earth orbit, that space. Anything else is fake space. The other piece of this, though, just to add one more thing, and then I want to hear your thoughts, is so Bernie Sanders, probably partly because of Ryan Grimm's reporting, he caught caught wind of this. He was tweeting about it. Good. Warren Connells,

they were going after him. They were saying, absolutely no, we're not doing a Bezos bailout. But in this story, it says the chip funding troubled some lawmakers, Senator Bernie Sanders for days criticized the measure because the money did not come with significant strings attached. He sought to prohibit companies from taking federal aid to subsidize their manufacturing, then purchasing back stock or padding their executive's pay. But he did not prevail in pushing for his amendment, and he ultimately did vote against the bill because he wasn't able to get that amendment through that would have blocked this bailout. So Bernie tried, but ultimately failed and did vote against the bill, but otherwise overwhelming bipartisan support. There's actually been a fun corollary to this, just as an aside, I want you guys to know,

which is that it was brought to my attention. Senator John Cornyn tried to put in a provision where we were going to give all this money to semiconductor manufacture in America. He wanted to take fair wage practices out of that so that they could then pay, they could not only take federal dollars, but then they didn't have to pay a fair prevailing wage to the workers. And actually, luckily, eight Republicans did step up and vote down that amendment. But my own home state senator, John Cornyn, thank you, John Cornyn, for standing up for the right of businesses to pay, use federal dollars and then not pay fair wages to workers. Texas thanks him for their service. or three, right? Texas thanks him for their service. In leadership. Yeah, he's the number three Republican in the entire Senate. I just want people to be aware of just how uncouth and horrible

these people are. But back to Bezos. This is my favorite. Also, by the way, it takes a lot of courage for Jeff to tweet that because he technically works for Jeff Bezos. Yeah. Props, dude. Here's how the Post writes it. In a chamber often rocked by partisan division, Democrats and Republicans found rare accord over the sprawling measure known as the United States Innovation and Competition Act as lawmakers warned that Washington risks ceding countries' technological leadership

to one of its foremost geopolitical adversaries. All of that is true. And if this was just about semiconductors, I would say that the bill is one third of what it should be. Let's give billions of dollars more. Let's build it right here in the USA. But unfortunately, well, what did they do? They go and attach this little Bezos bailout into the $10 billion authorization for two lunar landing contracts, which would benefit Blue Origin. And then they have to say who also owns

the Washington Post. Cantwell, whose committee oversees NASA, spearheaded the spending as part of that bipartisan amendment. Now, why is this even more important? Which is that this is the key part that actually Ryan Grim made. NASA has been asking for new money for years. And so Maria Cantwell, the senator who oversees NASA's budget, was not willing to provide a $10 billion authorization to NASA. She was not willing to give to the government agency, who also used to land stuff on the moon. I don't know. It's been a while. Instead, what does she do? When Bezos needs a $10 billion contract for lunar lander, it sails right through Congress,

bipartisan, okay? And now, look, holding the bill up over this and all that, I don't know. There's a lot of good stuff in the Frontier Act and more. But this is just a disgusting display of Jeff Bezos, who centers his company, Amazon, in Washington. He owns the entire state of Washington. He's the richest man in the world, owns the Washington Post, owns so many levers of power in America. They just bought MGM Studios. I think that's the last monologue I ever did over at Rising, which is now he owns Hollywood because he didn't own enough here in America and can use the senator from Washington in order to write in a special provision directly for his company. That is just, I mean, I don't know how else to describe corruption. It's brazen.

It is so brazen. I mean, it is truly brazen. Like, that's as close as you're going to come in America to that direct exchange of cash. You know, you got like one thin veneer layer where it doesn't technically say in the law, this is going to Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin, but it's 100% clear to everyone involved exactly what is happening. And in terms of the bill overall, like I agree with you, I think the semiconductor thing, like supporting, you know, I really, I do support, you know, bolstering manufacturing in this country so that we have our own supply lines.

It's something that we saw in coronavirus, like some of our critical PPE, et cetera. We were really kind of hosed and dependent on China in particular, but other countries as well. But if you're going to, and this was Bernie's point, if you're going to give money to these companies, then you need to have some strings attached. Of course, like being able to pay or having to pay a fair wage. Right, a good wage and union rights. And by the way, you can't just use this money to then like engage in these stock purchase buybacks and bolster your executive pay and all of that stuff. And that's what Bernie was pushing for that and couldn't get bipartisan agreement on.

Like, who's voting against that? And the fact of the matter is like everybody i mean it was a lost on both sides of the aisle just to attach some basic strings to these provisions so you have the first level of like this disgusting bailout for the richest man on the freaking planet um who by the way we also learned pays next to zero, some years literal zero. He actually took government money for his child. Right. Nothing against his kids, but I'm sorry.

I think they're doing just fine. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Claiming a child tax credit because he lost money there. Yeah. Lost money there. Anyway, so he's paying zero in taxes, but he's getting a $10 billion bailout, and then they can't even agree to add some basic strings to this funding so that the companies that are receiving it don't just use it for stock buybacks and all that sort of stuff. Amazing. Always be skeptical. Anytime you

see these bipartisan packages, you should start to get nervous. Well, this is also a very important point, which I make here all the time. Congress works plenty. It just works for the rich. And people are like, oh, Congress can't get anything done. Oh, no, it gets a lot done. Defense budget? Ain't got no problems. That's it. Whenever it comes to the Bezos bailout, nope, no problems whatsoever. Whenever you want to go and you want to look at the specific authorizations and the things that are able to be moved through Congress, this is the type of stuff. Nate, show me one corporate media segment, one, which informed the American people that this even happened. People don't even know. They have no idea.

And that's the thing, which actually bothers me even more. You want to talk about these congressional correspondents. I know many of them are running around Capitol Hill right now. They'll stick a camera and a mic in every senator's face and ask them about the goddamn January 6th commission. Enough about the goddamn commission. What about the Bezos bailout? Ask Maria Cantwell. Corner her in the hall of the U.S. Senate

and say, why are you bailing out the richest man in the world? When you find me a journalist who will do that, maybe the country will be one-tenth a little bit better. Indeed. There's some really interesting news coming out of Ohio. And I want to read you a little bit from this story. So Ohio is suing Google. This is according to Columbus Dispatch.

Yeah, this is really interesting. Seeking to declare the internet company a public utility. Now, Ohio is a state dominated by Republicans at this point. And Mike DeWine is the governor. And Mike DeWine is the governor. And this comes from Ohio Attorney General David Yost. He's filed a lawsuit asking in court to declare Google a public utility that should be regulated as such. He said, Google uses its dominance of

internet search to steer Ohioans to Google's own products. That is discriminatory and anti-competitive. When you own the railroad or the electric company or the cell phone tower, you have to treat everyone the same and give everybody access. The lawsuit is specifically seeking a legal declaration that Google is a common carrier, like phone, gas, and electric companies, which must provide its services to anyone willing to pay its fee. In lieu of a fee, Yost argues in the complaint, Google collects user data that's monetized primarily by selling targeted advertisements. This is the first time we've seen this particular approach. So we had, what is it, like 37 states' attorneys general who signed a huge number that signed on to an antitrust lawsuit against Google,

alleging some of these same things in terms of anti-competitive behavior. But this is a little bit of a different approach, arguing that they should be treated and regulated as a public utility, which is something that a lot of lefties have been saying. But also there are a few Republicans, David Yost being one of them, and then a couple people in Congress too, who have been moving in that direction as well. So it is an interesting development. So the fascinating part here is around the common carrier law. And this actually is almost exactly like the original fights over the railroads in the 1890s and Rockefeller and all of that, which is that what the lawsuit does seeks that legal declaration that Google is a common carrier, like a phone company, gas company,

electric company. Therefore, actually, it has to provide its services to anyone who is willing to pay a fee, which would make it much more like a public utility. Now, by doing that, what they're going to say is that the monetization over collected user data and by targeted advertisements actually selectively goes over and circumvents common carrier law. And it means that they're making a whole lot of money based upon some common carriers. So what he says then is that they should not be able to prioritize placement of its own products, services, and websites. I think this is really important because it sets the ground not just for Google, but for places like Amazon. For example, with Amazon, the big controversy is this. Private label brands like Amazon Basics, those have been around for a century in any sort of market department store.

But those were regional, right? Right. So Walmart has Walmart-branded stuff. Macy's has Macy's-branded stuff. Nordstrom has Nordstrom-branded stuff. But those are regional monopolies and have regional footprints in physical locations. Amazon owns so much of e-commerce that the argument is that they are using the private seller data of their third-party vendors, seeing what people buy a lot of, and then creating their own. In principle, not necessarily anything wrong with that. But at scale,

then it becomes the question of, are you a monopoly? Are you making it so that you can price out your competitors? And Amazon has claimed that it's part of their company policy that they don't do such a thing. But guess what? Emails revealed by the Wall Street Journal about two years ago show that that's complete BS. And when Jeff Bezos was asked about it before Congress, he had nothing to say. Shocker, right? He's like, oh, I have no idea. That's against our ethos, whatever. I mean, he barely even knows what's happening inside of Amazon. But this type of law, common carrier law and more, is an attack vector I very much expect to see happen more in terms of our national discourse. Because there's been a lot of discussion. Is Google a monopoly? I don't know. And here's the question. And I actually got this from

Andrew Yang when he was on our show, our very first interview with ever, Andrew Yang. And he told us, nobody wants to use the third best search engine. Nobody wants to use the fourth best Twitter. And nobody, the only whole reason of Facebook is that everybody's on Facebook. I kind of agree with him. So what we're saying is that the internet naturally selects four monopolies. If that is true, common carrier law is actually a better way to describe this rather than breaking up these companies. That is all really well said. And it does relate back to these old battles of the past because there are certain markets, specifically railroads. Railroads

are a good example. Utilities. Those are the classic examples that lend themselves to the sort of natural state of the market is a monopoly or something close to it. And so you could very much make that case for Google search results, for certain social media platforms. Because of course, the whole value of a social media platform is that you can connect with all the people you know in your circle and your friends or the people you like as journalists or celebrities, et cetera, et cetera, that they're all in one place is what gives those social media platforms all of their value. So I can very easily see the case that those markets are sort of natural monopolies or close to it.

And so if you accept that that is the case, this is the only direction that you can ultimately go in. Along with the other thing that you have to layer on top of this is part of why places like, I mean, Amazon's the one that is really, really disturbing because they have such a large, vulnerable, blue-collar workforce. Yes. The second largest employer in the United States. Right. So part of what is so damaging about Amazon is that they have so much power over the labor markets. and all of those labor market conditions as well, since you're accepting that this gigantic behemoth company is going to be an integral part of the fabric of America. If you're not going to break them up, then you have to regulate every aspect of what they're doing to make sure that it's actually beneficial to the country and to the workers there. No, you're right. And this is the

most important and difficult part with Amazon. Amazon, I just read this book by Brad Stone. I've read his first book. I interviewed him on the Realignment podcast as well. Amazon is this like tentacles in everything. They're a retail company. They're the most successful retail company probably in America outside of Walmart. They are the most successful web hosting company basically in the entire world. They are also now a Hollywood studio.

It's like everything. And they're also, by the way, a subscription platform in terms of Amazon Prime. There are more people in America who have Amazon Prime memberships than who put up Christmas trees. Amazon is literally more American than Apple Pie. And they run the backbone of the internet infrastructure with their cloud computing services, actually their most profitable thing that they do. Exactly. And which then subsidizes some of the other. So it's like, it's very difficult to unravel all of these things. And actually, Amazon is just like Google. Google is Google search, which has YouTube, which we're literally on right now. Do you guys want to know something crazy? YouTube made more money than Netflix last year. Wow. And they didn't have to

pay a dime in original content. We're out here slaving away for free. We're uploading all of this to YouTube so people can watch it, which is kind of nuts when you start to think about it. I mean, it's a brilliant model. No, I mean, listen, it's a cool platform, but it's like, Google, then you got YouTube. And then you've got, YouTube is a $15 billion company on its own, and then you've got all sorts of other extraneous projects, Gmail, Google Chrome, which all become vertically integrated. And it's like I said, maybe that is just how the internet's going to work. Maybe. I actually accept that. Winner-take-all system, zero marginal cost businesses. I understand. But if that's the

case, the public has to start having a chance. I really think that's where it all comes down to. Transparency, regulation, equal access. Equal access is a huge part too. And labor market conditions that allow for unionization, fair living wages so that the workers at these companies are able to make a living for themselves and able to feed their families in lives that are relatively dignified. Yeah. You got some big UFO news for us there, Scott? It's not that big, but we cover it whenever we can. Way to bill it. Listen, this is important. It's important to my heart. It's important to the hearts of many, at least according to this new poll. Let's put it up there on the screen from Newsweek, which is that 43% of Americans are now more interested in UFOs after the Pentagon report

in the New York Times and more. Now, I actually think there's something really fascinating about this, which is that you'll recall I did that monologue earlier last week, which was about UFOs, and it was about how the Pentagon is basically trying to cover up the fact that they have no idea what the hell is going on. They got the New York Times, the CNN, Washington Post to write headlines which say, government finds no evidence of aliens. But then in the next paragraph, it's like, and no evidence that it's not. They have nothing that they can explain. And even more importantly, they actually debunk the weather balloon explanation, which has been put forward by a lot of different debunkers. They specifically say that that is not

the case, at least in some of the instances that they have recorded. That's really, really important. So despite the fact that the Pentagon wanted to manufacture consent, wanted to try and gaslight the American people into thinking this is possibly Chinese or Russian drones, despite the fact that there is zero evidence for that claim, and also wants to bias them away from the extraterrestrial hypothesis, which is also just a hypothesis. I'm not saying there's any evidence to support that claim. All of that comes together, but with tremendous public interest. And I think this is very inspiring, which is that for the first time in decades, you actually see public calls in order to look and be for the government to, quote, be more open and honest in the future, and that they want the government to be more forthright

with the admission of the existence and authenticity of the footage. Now, this matters because the only reason we know any of this stuff is because of great journalists like Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp, who have been attacking this for years, and because public interest led Senator Harry Reid and others in order to force the Pentagon in order to create programs which created the disclosure all in the first place. This is a bottom-up campaign against the military industrial complex. They don't want it to be something which they don't have a conventional explanation for. I keep trying to tell people this. No, they know exactly how to manipulate the public. Everybody keeps saying, oh, this is all a ploy for more funding. And here's the thing,

because I actually cover Congress and I cover the Pentagon, you know when they would have had a PSYOP? In 2013, when we had sequestration and whenever we had massive defense cuts all across the board. That would have been the time for the PSYOP, not during a time of record defense spending. Biden just passed the largest defense budget in history. Right, right. Yeah, which was billed by the media as like,

oh, he slows the rate of growth from Trump. It's like, no, but it still went, it's still increased. It's huge. It's still the largest one. Yeah. Well, and you made a great point too, which was that, look, if you actually wanted, were in it for the funding for the Pentagon, the China or Russia explanation. Oh, that's the easiest way to do it. That they got the media to write up. That's a far more profitable direction to go in because what do you do? What contract are you getting if it's, you know getting if it really is extraterrestrial in origin? There's an interesting number here, which I find I get a little bit of hope from.

So it says this survey found that 44% of Americans reported trusting the government to be more open and honest in the future. And they posit it's possible the government's forthright admission of the existence and authenticity of some of this footage is bolstering the population's trust. So there's a lot of hand-wringing, which is justifiable, about how the public doesn't trust any of our institutions anymore, right? Like, you go down the list. Congress, the government, the Democrats, the Republicans, the media, the Republicans, the media, etc., etc., etc. And look at what happened here. They release a little bit of footage. They actually own up to like 10% or some small percent of what they know.

2%, whatever, we don't know, right? Some percent of what they know. And even just that made a significant chunk of Americans go like, oh, I actually feel a little bit better about the government right now. This isn't rocket science to get people to trust you again. Just don't be shitty and lie to people. Like just a little bit of transparency and accountability would help to rebuild that faith that these institutions aren't just routinely lying to you and screwing you over and over again. It's not, and look, I know it's cartoonish and childish how I talk about UFOs because it's fascinating, but it does keep with a very core ethos of the show, which is that powerful people

are trying to hide a lot of different stuff from us. And what did I say also about the lab leak hypothesis, which is that now all of a sudden they're like intelligence and all this suggests, I don't want to hear some intelligence. Publish all the documents. If the lab leak hypothesis is true, I want to see literally all of even the most declassified or even the most classified cables and other stuff flying back and forth between Washington. Because the public deserves to know. Same thing with the UFOs. Look, we already know about the cover-ups of Project Blue Book and all that stuff for many years, but around the current developments, we don't really know that much. What we do know is largely from service members who are

in the service, who are leaking information to people who are outside journalists. That is an untenable situation. The government needs to come 100% clean. They need to publish everything that they possibly know on this subject. Otherwise, there's gonna be zero trust, and there should be. I don't trust them. I don't trust the report.

I especially don't trust now what they're saying here to the journalists, because I'm seeing how easily that they've all been spun. We need so much more information on this phenomenon. Yeah, I also wanna know who really killed Kennedy. So while we're at it. I'd love to know that too.

And remember, Trump, Trump, remember, was going to declassify all those documents and he didn't do it. So, you know, and he also never declassified the UFO stuff. So that always makes me think about who really runs the government. Total failure. Anyway, Crystal, what are your breaking points today?

Well, as you all know, I'm a strong believer in ending the war on drugs. Prohibition has done nothing but immiserate millions, empower murderous criminals, and destabilize an entire section of the globe. Even the goal it's supposed to achieve of reducing addiction and overdose death has been a dramatic failure. We have been interdicting heroin and trying to cut off the supply of a myriad of drugs for 100 years. Yet, last year was the worst in history for overdose deaths. Clearly, our long-standing approach is a complete failure. Yet my friend Sagar and others raise a concern about drug legalization that I actually think

is really legitimate. What is the end result going to be when legal weed and other substances get in the hands of big pharma, big tobacco, and other corporate actors who are chomping at the bit to profit off of substance use and abuse. After all, these corporate actors, they've got no incentive to foster a moderate, responsible culture around drug use. The more desperate and addicted people become, the more money those bad actors stand to make. And the truth is, we already know what this looks like. Purdue Pharma, owned by the Sackler family, they pushed Oxy on the nation, concocting an entire well-funded and organized scheme to addict users and push their pills on people who did not want or need them. When those prescriptions ran out, users often turned to street heroin or worse, fentanyl, in an unregulated market with nefarious actors and no help when a habit turned into a disaster.

Now, this future is frankly of little risk with weed because it's not particularly addictive, but legalization efforts underway now as we move away from a war on drugs mentality, hopefully, are a chance to blaze the trail for what future drug legalization efforts might look like. Do we want to blaze that trail to another hellscape of endless capitalist exploitation, or might there be another way? A chance to demonstrate an alternative way of thinking about markets and about workplaces. Now, a lot of states seem to at least pay lip service to righting the wrongs of decades of mass incarceration that have criminalized poverty and Blackness, have included equity provisions in their marijuana legalization

laws. Generally, these are written so as to encourage black business ownership. But anyone who understands the limits of identity politics alone can see the limitations in this approach. It is still unmitigated American-style late-stage capitalism, even if you do successfully get some diverse ownership into the mix. But as we speak, the state of Rhode Island is considering a far more revolutionary approach. According to The Intercept, Rhode Island's Yes We Cannabis Coalition is pushing a legalization bill that would include those equity provisions similar to those present in New York State's legalization, but they would add in a push for workplace democracy that could actually be a real game changer. So the provisions they're pushing would address concerns from organized labor that marijuana workers be able to organize.

But even more significant here, they would prioritize marijuana licenses for worker-owned co-ops so that workers themselves would be in position to profit from this new market. That would be truly groundbreaking. So co-ops, they barely have a toehold in the rapacious capital markets of America. But there are some signs that increasing dissatisfaction with our current profit-above-everything approach is leading to more experimentation with workplace democracy and worker ownership. So in New York, workers recently launched a new Uber-style ride-sharing app under a co-op model and had thousands of drivers sign up to participate. Co-op Ride gives all of its drivers a vote in company decision making and a share of the company profits. After a 15% commission to cover operating expenses,

the rest of the profits are shared with the drivers. One of the drivers who's involved in the effort explained that he's just looking for a fair deal and a reflection of the thousands of dollars in costs that drivers incur in wear and tear on their vehicles. Drivers' lives are, quote, in the hands of Uber and Lyft, Michael Gugu told Gizmodo. This is our time to make money for our own selves instead of enriching those giant companies. We made them giant, by the way. Drivers invested their money in big cars, $80,000 or $90,000 just to drive for them, and they don't care. A recent documentary by Jaisal Noor of The Real News Network documented the success of co-ops during coronavirus. Workers rarely get an adequate share of the

wealth their labor creates. In 2020, the median salary at Amazon was under $30,000, while its founder, Jeff Bezos, made hundreds of times that, over $13 million every hour. While seemingly ignoring how these issues may be connected, some have decried a shortage of people who want to work in frontline and service sectors. But a growing movement is putting this narrative on its head. We work as well as own this company, and we designed this to what will work for us, what would make it not feel like a job when we come into this environment, what makes it feel like more of just

being around your friends and getting a job done versus actually being at a job with somebody ruling and watching over you. Under the radar, the small but growing sector of worker-run co-ops, part of the larger cooperative ecosystem, is demonstrating that you don't need bosses. Workers can be successful if granted the necessary power and resources.

Now, the link to that full doc is in the description, so make sure to check out the great work Max Alvarez and Noor and others are doing over there at The Real News Network. Now, Rhode Island, if they adopt a co-op approach to weed legalization, it will represent a very small step towards a different way of doing business and really a different set of values than the ones that have dominated in America for decades. A co-op sector in Rhode Island could compete against the traditional capital sector, and we could all see what the results are in real time. This type of small step leading to large changes is far from unprecedented.

A law in Italy actually provides unemployed workers with capital to start co-ops, and that has led to a huge concentration of worker-owned co-ops in that country, in particular in the Emilia-Romagna region of that country. 30% of the businesses in that region are worker-owned co-ops. It also happens to be one of the most prosperous areas in Italy, and they weathered the 2008 financial crisis better than anywhere else in that country. None of that happened by accident, of course. The Italian government has support for co-ops in their constitution, and they've set up a number of institutions and incentives to help these worker-owned businesses be able to compete. In Rhode Island, there's a small sliver

of a chance to try something similar in the marijuana market and see what happens. At a time when, as we've documented here, workers across the board are reassessing and shifting their habits, looking for meaning, looking for control, this type of thinking and policy push is exactly the direction that we should be heading in. If we are opening up new markets, why not run those markets in a new way? And Sagar, this is one of the things that you've challenged me on that I honestly haven't really had an answer for. Well, most people are pro we don't. Yeah. I mean, I have felt very fatalistic about it. It's like, well, as a capitalist society, so what are you going to do? It doesn't have to be, though. But it doesn't have to be.

And so you can look at these new markets as an area. I mean, this could be huge business, very profitable, as an area to try to shift things and try something different than what we've done in the past. Yeah. This is a small effort, but we'll see where it goes. But I thought it was really thought-provoking. Well, it's good because actually, remember also, if you're against big business and big pharma and all those people, those people love weed. I mean, big tobacco and Altria and all these other people are going all in, venture capital as well. Pretty much the only way I would support legal marijuana is if it was nonprofit.

Worker co-ops that are completely nonprofit with profits that are distributed all throughout the workforce and are not for shareholder capital, that's it. Because it's the only way to make sure that you don't have the cigarette, cigarette ization of weed. I don't know. People are always like, what about cigarettes? What about alcohol? Those are terrible. Do you really want big tobacco and big alcohol? Like, do you want those things in order to increase? Did you guys know that we pay one fifth currently the alcohol tax that we did in the 1980s? That's because of lobbying here in Washington and go ahead and be the Senator who wants to vote for a higher alcohol tax that we did in the 1980s, that's because of lobbying here in Washington. And go ahead and be the senator who wants to vote for a higher alcohol tax. I mean, good luck. And look, most of these taxes are paid by the poor. And that's why my solution is not to simply tax legal

marijuana, pass the tax on to the poor people or average people who would be consuming it while the companies make billions. It would be consuming it while the companies make billions. It would be, don't let the companies exist in the first place. This is a real troubling concern because big tobacco and others are moving in. Do you want Joe Cool for high-engineered THC? If you're over 25 years old and you want to bomb yourself with some mega-grade THC brownie, honestly, go for it. I've got nothing against it. But if you're 16 years old, we know from research that that's going to affect your IQ in the long run.

Yeah. And I'm not cool with that. And I don't think anybody should be cool with that. Well, the issue, though, is that prohibition has failed to prevent those 16-year-olds. The current model, for sure. If anything, the fact that, I mean, instead of Joe Cool and Big Tobacco, you have like criminal narcotics gangs and warlords. I didn't say the current system is good. You know, killing us with people with fentanyl, which is impure and people are dying of overdose deaths because of all of that.

So the current system is wildly immoral, doesn't even come close to doing what it claims to do, which is to stop people from using these substances in the first place. So as it seems to be that the public becomes more and more accepting, especially of marijuana, but we're starting to see psilocybin. It's like 65% at marijuana. Let's be honest. It's going to be legal in 10 years. Yeah. And I don't know what Joe Biden is messing around with. I mean, he could, this is one area where he has the power to act right now. If you're going to do it, you should not do it willy-nilly because then the corporate people will come in and they will own the business from the beginning. And good luck. Name me one corporation billion dollar interest that was created and then rolled back.

Well, I do think that, look, I personally think that all markets are totally screwed up by the just like relentless obsession with profits and completely immoral value system. But there are certain markets where you can see those problems more clearly. Yeah. One is health care. Yes. Right. The idea that people profit off of death and sickness and disease.

And this is obviously adjacent to health care, frankly. I mean, some of these substances have direct uses, marijuana being one of them, psilocybin being another one. We're learning more and more about the potential use of some of these products to deal with PTSD and severe depression and even easing people's journey at the end of life. There's an incredible promise there. But when it gets wrapped up in a capitalist system where you're just selling, selling, selling, and your only interest is in more and more and more with potentially addictive substances which can be abused, you can see how that just like late stage capitalist structure

is really, really troubling. So the fact that they're offering a different model that not only would help to ameliorate those concerns, but also could actually be a springboard for reforms across other sectors, I thought that that was, that's actually really exciting, really interesting, something to follow. We'll see if they do. The other thing that this relates to is I don't know if you remember, I did this monologue a long time back on Rising about how in Rhode Island, they just had a massive sea change in terms of their elected representatives. They had. Oh, that's right. I remember. Remember this? There was a slate.

I think this is another thing Ryan Griff Griffith was a Democratic Democratic DSA slate. It was like a slate of progressives that ran together as a coalition. Rhode Island is a blue state, but it was one of these like Gina Raimondo, the governor. She's like totally right wing commerce secretary. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Awesome. And she's like totally right wing corporate Democrat. And that was the model. These essentially Republicans would run as Democrats because you have to to win in the state. And so they just swept in this new, you know, mostly young, more radical coalition. So you would think that that combined with this proposal, there may be some fertile ground there. So I don't know. We'll see. We'll keep an eye on it. Yeah, it'll be interesting. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at for your breaking points? Well, one of the stories that I delighted in most while at Rising was during the Democratic primary. Any time Kamala Harris would open her mouth, you could pretty much guarantee whatever she said would be cringe, politically calculated, hacky, and generally so untalented and fake, it would repel anyone in a hundred foot radius around her. Unfortunately, she wasn't around that long because she was literally so bad she had to drop out of the primary before Iowa. She dropped out because she was literally polling like fourth or fifth in her own home state of California.

She was around 3% nationally in the polls. It was one of the biggest political falls relative to media coverage that we saw. Now, I thought we were rid of her until Biden decided to pick her for vice president, which I was shocked, honestly. I thought he was a much better politician than that. He's been around so long and he picks one of the most unlikable people in modern American politics to not only be his VP, but natural successor. In his own words, come on, man. Well, it looks like right now, Biden is starting to regret that choice of Kamala. After six months in office, finally being handed something to do in typical Kamala fashion, it's not going so well. Harris recently made her first trip down to Central America to try and address, quote, the root causes of the migrant crisis. And while she

was there, she decided to sit for an interview with NBC's Lester Holt. And it went really poorly for her. Let's take a look. Quickly put a button. Do you have any plans to visit the border? At some point, you know, we are going to the border. We've been to the border. So this whole thing about the border, we've been to the border. We've been to the border. You haven't been to the border. And I haven't been to Europe.

And I don't understand the point that you're making. I'm not discounting the importance of the border. Well, I mentioned it because I know Republicans have certainly come at you on this. But Democratic Congressman Cuellar, as a border district, has said to you and the president, come. You need to see this. Listen, I care about what's happening at the border. I'm in Guatemala because my focus is dealing with the root causes of migration. There may be... Uh, what? So she cares about the border. She's been to the border. She hasn't been to the border and also hasn't been to Europe. Okay. Lots going on there stemming from the pretty legitimate question. Why hasn't the person in charge of stopping the migrant crisis been to

the U.S.-Mexico border? It's a pretty basic question that she cannot seem to answer. It's not just me saying it. Apparently, it's people inside the White House, too. Kamala's trip went so bad, the White House leaked to CNN's morning news show that they were unhappy. It's truly incredible. Take a listen. Vice President Kamala Harris back in the United States this morning after a trip to Guatemala and Mexico, her first foreign trip as vice president. This morning, we're told that some of what she said on the trip, her answers to questions, maybe even obvious questions. Those answers have White House insiders perplexed. Imagine having your trip go so badly, your own boss leaks to CNN to do a segment that they hated how bad of a job that you did.

And it actually gets better. CNN and the White House are not the only ones turning on Kamala. It so is the bastion of the center left, Morning Joe. Even Mika Brzezinski turned on her during that show. Yes, we have to look at root causes, but there is a crisis at the border right now today. And you have to address that today while you look at the root causes down the road. I think also part of leading is optics and showing that and showing what you care about and what your goals are and going to the border would have made a big difference. This has been a discussion for weeks. I'm not sure why it hasn't happened. It's a lot easier said than done, but perhaps should have been a priority.

It is genuinely hilarious to me to see this happen because it vindicates something I've always believed. Kamala Harris is a terrible politician, probably even worse vice president. She is unable to complete the most basic task of a low-grade foreign trip without causing herself multiple domestic political crises. And do not mistake this as something only the GOP is mad at her for. She managed to piss off AOC and all the progressives because she hilariously traveled all the way down to Central America as some sort of major departure from the Trump administration policy, only to literally repeat the same Trump administration line and Obama administrations. Let's take a listen. I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making

that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border. Do not come. Do not come. Yeah, go ahead and tell me how that's qualitatively different than Trump and Obama before him. Hint, it's not. It's the same policy. I'm not the only one who noticed. Even AOC went after Harris, along with several other progressives in the media. She has managed to literally piss off everyone in this trip, affirming my basic position from the very beginning of her ill-fated campaign. She's a bad politician, and even the center-left, who desperately tried to make her happen

in the first place, are beginning to realize it, along with the guy who hired her to be his literal successor. You just can't make some of this stuff up. It's just amazing, Crystal. I've never seen such a, I mean, that interview is so cringe. That is Trump-level lack of coherence

whenever you're answering her question. I've never been to Europe. What? What are you saying? And here's the thing. If you are in charge, we all know why she doesn't want to go to the border. She doesn't want the photo op of being in the border.

She doesn't want it to be in the news. If you're gonna, if this is gonna be your thing, then make it your thing. And then she stumbles in this interview, does a terrible, Lester, can you think of an easier interviewer or like somebody who's probably going to be more friendly to you? I can't. And she screws that up. Then the White House leaks that they're perplexed to CNN, which I think is just so funny. So, and then pisses off AOC and the Republicans. So I'm like, go ahead. Good job. It's just an amazing vindication that she was terrible from the

beginning. She never was able to do a very good job. And here we go. Now we're seeing what the actual results are. Lester can actually be a very savvy interviewer, but this question was so obvious. Yeah. You know you're going to get answered or asked. A hundred percent know that you're going to get asked about why you haven't gone to the border. Personally, I don't really care about the photo op at the border. And I, you know, this whole idea of like, you must go to the border. I mean, she's not going to like do anything at the border. And if she has any alternative to say, it would be fine. Yeah.

I mean, it is very funny that, of course, the Morning Joe thing that people, what they pick up on is like, oh, the optics, because that's the only thing that they really understand or care about. But you know that this question is coming and you're still unable to give a decent response to it. I mean, it just seemed, first of all, it seemed like she was sort of trying to get away with this sleight of hand of like, well, we've been to the border. Right. And he says, but you haven't been to the border. Why? And then she gives this very flippant response about Europe combined with that super awkward laugh that she does when she's uncomfortable, which I relate to. I probably do the same thing, but she does it a lot. It reminded me of back in the early days of the campaign,

that first debate performance when she knifed Joe Biden and it landed. And, you know, now in retrospect, we see the way they spun it up with the T-shirts and prepackaged it and undercut it. And she immediately like came out and basically said she agreed with Biden on it. The whole thing was a mess. But that performance truly was really strong. The whole debate, she was on it. She was prepared. She was ready to go. And then the next morning, I saw an interview with her on one of the morning shows. I think she's on with Nora O'Donnell or somebody like that. And she was completely different. Oh, when she walked it back. It wasn't strong. It wasn't coherent. She was uncomfortable. And this is something that people who work with her know is that she doesn't do a lot of interviews. She's very carefully

managed because she's really effective when she can prepare and have total control over the situation. That comes from her background as a prosecutor. But when she's off the cuff at all, you end up with situations like this one where you just incredibly off-putting remarks and inability to handle just like basic questions routinely. This is what happens when you pick a vice president who, I mean, the Democratic primary base thoroughly rejected. Yes. Completely. They looked, they evaluated the situation, said, this person's not, we're not ready to put this person in this position of power. And I think they had a lot more wisdom ultimately than the Biden administration and putting her on the ticket. Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right.

It's just stunning that Joe Biden thinks that this person could ever run for president. If she runs in 2024, you all better get those MAGA hats back out of the closet. So true. And one other thing I want to say is like the hypocrisy is just astounding. I mean, the thing she said about go home and then she goes through the whole, and these are very like Republican talking, we have a legal system of immigration and we want legal immigration, not illegal, which, okay, yeah, sure, but fails to acknowledge what everybody knows, that the legal migration system is a total broken disaster joke any way that you cut it. So contrast that with what she was saying on the campaign trail. I mean, it's night and day. Clearly, she doesn't stand for or believe in anything. And that's always been the core problem.

I generally agree with the core principle of the Trump administration that they enforced during the migrant crisis. But you know what? Don't gaslight and say, oh, cruelty, whatever, and then do the exact same thing whenever you go in there. You're just so absolutely full of it. But we have a great guest in order to talk about how Democrats are full of it, not just mainstream ones, the Justice Democrats as well. Our old friend Kyle Kalinsky is going to join us next. Let's take a listen. Some really interesting new data on stimulus checks and how they made such an incredible impact on the lives of Americans. The perfect person to come here and talk about it. Indeed, a young up-and-comer you may just be learning about. The host of Secular Talk and also the co-host of a little podcast you might want to check out called Crystal Callen Friends.

The one and only Kyle Kalinsky. Great to see you, sir. Hello. Good to see you, Kyle. I take issue with the young thing because everybody can clearly see under these bright lights the gray hair. Everybody knows I've been on YouTube since 2012. If you're not young, then I need to be in the nursing home. So we're sticking with young for you. Maybe I'll meet you in the nursing home.

So what do you make of what's happening here, Kyle? So Jeff Stein, we'll put his tweet up there on the screen. After $1,400 stimulus checks, we had a 42% decline in food shortages, 43% decline in gauge of financial instability, and 20% decline in anxiety and depression. I actually think this busts a lot of myths around how exactly money from the government actually can have such a substantial impact on people's lives. Well, you know what it reminds me of?

It reminds me of that UBI study from Stockton, California. That's right. Where they tracked it very closely. Now, it was only $500 a month for that study, but the amount of the money that went to things that you would typically view as like a vice that people would look down on, like drinking or gambling or whatever it may be. If I remember correctly, it was about 2% of the money went for that. And the overwhelming majority went for like food, paying the electricity bill, rent.

Interview clothes. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, a point that you made about that is there was a guy who really wanted a new job, a better job, but he couldn't get a day off in order to go interview for a new job. And getting that $500 made it so that he was able to actually go out and interview for a new job. And he got the job and now he makes better money and now he's much happier. So, I mean, listen, we've been fed propaganda for decades about how the government can't do any good. And if you give somebody a government check, you're basically fostering laziness. It turns out that's just factually incorrect. And most people have some sort of driver passion to do

something in some kind of workplace, whether they're an entrepreneur or they're working for somebody in a field that they want. And so this doesn't disincentivize work. If anything, it just eases the burden and the pain and the hurt of living in a very rapacious capitalist system that's dog-eat-dog, where everybody's sort of clawing at everybody else's face. And $1,400 was actually less than the bare minimum of what people should have gotten. And when you read the interviews that they did with people for whom this was life-changing in this New York Times article, they're like, I was able to be able to feed my kids three times a day again. I was able to go

get treatment for my cancer. I was able to get the electricity turned back on in my house. And it just makes you realize, like, for want of this small amount of money, you are immiserating people. I wonder, Kyle, do you think that it changes? Like, do you think that the fact that people got these couple of checks and were able to see in a super tangible way, like, oh, the government actually can make a difference in my life in a really simple and straightforward way, like, do you think government actually can make a difference in my life in a really simple and straightforward way. Do you think that that ultimately shifts our politics in any way? Well, I mean, it has shifted our politics in the sense that the polls show the people are like, this is awesome. Let's do more of this. Like the support for universal basic income is through the

roof when not that long ago, like two or three years ago, the polls were way under 50%. So the people have moved. But unfortunately, like virtually every other issue in our politics, that doesn't necessarily mean that the federal government is going to move on that and stay in that position. Because, you know, I mean, we could go through the numbers all day long, 70% support Medicare for all, 80% support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The list goes on and on. When you look at stuff like gun reform, it's like, you know, background checks are over 90%. But that doesn't necessarily reflect in terms of policy and what Washington, D.C. is doing, because they're representing big corporate donors, and they're really the last people who want these sorts of policies to be implemented. So really, it's like, among the people, we're in a social democratic

era. We're in a post Reagan era. But in terms of the way that they're governing in D.C., we're still largely in that Reagan era, although there are little derivatives here and there out of sheer necessity because of a pandemic and what was effectively a depression. The problem I see is that right now there are two ways to look at what happened with COVID. There was in the beginning, an era of transformative change, which is that Trump could have completely remade American

society. He could have made this the populist era. We could redistribute it of cash, rebuilding a national project. He chose the complete opposite. We entered a more libertarian politics. And Biden explicitly came in with going back to normal, which actually rejects cash politics. Of course, he did embrace it in the beginning, but let's be honest. I mean, this is a flash in the pan moment. So that is really where I wonder how you see it. I already see a return to the 1990s politics, which is that I don't think another check is ever hitting a bank again in the next 10 years, simply because, and I actually see this amongst some of my more Republican friends who will often point to this, which is that working class white men, GOP based, are the number one opponents actually of unassisted cash welfare and of unassisted cash checks. Very, very susceptible to work requirements and more. You could talk to your blue in the face about studies and a lot of people just don't care. So I just don't know whether this changes politics or not, right? Well, here's what I'm afraid of.

And this is what I currently see unfolding. What I'm afraid of is now the rhetoric in DC is going to catch up to the polling data and the people where now politicians will go out there and talk about how, hey, I'm helping you out. Hey, I expanded the child tax credit. Hey, I wanted to cut you a stimulus check. Hey, I wanted to give you this sort of money and that sort of money. So the rhetoric is going to catch up in the same way that the rhetoric of like the left is winning is catching

up and Biden's the new FDR is catching up. So they're now changing the narrative in terms of how this stuff is discussed. But again, substantively, not much is changing. So now the trick is like, just believe our words about how left we are and about how much we're helping you and about how much cash we're doling out. But in terms of our actions, it's going to lag way behind. And this is sort of a way, especially with left Congress people, to sort of like pat them on the back and be like, you guys are doing a great job. I hope you know how much you're influencing President Biden. I mean, he's totally bending to your will in every way. And then, of course, it's just status quo business as usual.

And these people can't wait to have their ego stroked. So the second they get their ego stroked, they forget how to fight for any of these things. So it's actually the worst of all worlds because Reaganomics continues, but you have the rhetoric sounding more progressive and people sort of being deluded into the idea that we've already won a lot of these left-wing battles, even though the main ones are nowhere to be seen. Well, so how do you reflect on as one of the founders of the Justice Democrats, you know, the people who have been elected as part of that movement to, you know, challenge the Democratic establishment, et cetera? I mean, in the Biden era, certainly, especially this was maybe the one that was most disheartening to me, like with the Capitol Police funding,

they're providing the votes to serve power and serve the Democratic establishment agenda. Is it just that we need to keep trying in that direction and eventually maybe Nina Turner gets there and you've got some leadership? Or do you think that that model in general is just not workable or not a success? So I have ideas and preferences as to what I think is the best and what I think is more likely to work. But substantively, I think you really need to do an all of the above approach. And when I say that, I mean, yes, you have to still try to take over at least one of the two major parties. Yes, people who are trying for a third party route, even though I think it's largely fruitless and they're going to do terribly, I think they should still go down that path.

And I also think effectively like almost anti-politics roles work too, where you get directly involved building unions, some sort of general strike, large protest movements, fighting on specific issues, even at the state level and the local level. I think that's the path forward. In terms of grading Justice Democrats and how they did, I think they've been a miserable failure. And the reason I think they've been a miserable failure is because I know as a co-founder of Justice Democrats, the whole idea was you are going to be a Tea Party of the left. I want you to hold the Democratic leadership just as accountable as you hold the Republican leadership. Because famously, John Boehner hated the Tea Party just as much as he hated the Democrats and hated Obama. They drove him out of Congress. That's

exactly right. He wrote a book 10 years later being like, screw you. They don't even have the correct strategy being implemented right now. It's not even that they're doing the strategy I want and they're doing it poorly. They're just not even doing the strategy. If they were doing the strategy, they would find maneuvers they could use. Like, for example, there's enough of them to block all legislation. That's right. Why don't you block all legislation and say, I'm not going to stop blocking it until Joe Biden takes out his pen and legalizes marijuana through executive order because he can do that. I'm also going to say, you have to at least eliminate $50,000 worth of student debt. In reality, you should do all of it, but he has the legal authority to do it through executive order.

So if you really want to play the kind of politics that I'm in favor of, that's what you fucking do. Because guess what? Even if the media attacks you and they're going to attack you, you can fucking fight back. These people are scared of their own shadow. Like, oh my God, CNN came after me. Their negative eight fans are going to hate me. I don't give a fuck. Fight back.

Say, I'm fighting for the people. I remember when the Tea Party was willing to hold up the full faith and credit of the United States. Yeah, that's right. Over like literally like a moderate increase in the American debt. So, yeah. So let me ask you, though, is that, do you think that that's like inevitable? Are these personal failings specific to these individual lawmakers, or is this just like the system is always going to create this outcome for the left? That's a great question. So it's both.

It's both things. I think there are both individual failings, and I think it's systemic as well. Where I differ from some of my lefty friends is that a lot of people like to argue that like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar and fill in the blank with whatever justice Democrat, they're now corrupt just like Nancy Pelosi. No words have meaning. The word corrupt means something very specific. You're taking money from certain donors and you're doing favors for them. That's what corrupt means. They're not doing that. They're not corrupt. They're just simply not the same as Nancy Pelosi. So you're fucking factually wrong if you make that case, but they do have DC brain, which is basically

a rotten brain where you get there and now you're involved in the culture, you're surrounded by these people. These are people you fucking eat lunch with and see every day and you learn their personal stories. And so now the group thing takes over. And you don't want to be the sore thumb that sticks out. You don't want to be the sore

thumb that sticks out because guess what? If you do the sort of grandstanding fighting politics that I want you to do, everybody's going to fucking hate you. Everybody in DC is going to hate you. Everybody in the media is going to hate you. It's a lonely fucking world. So guess what? That's where the individual failing comes in because even though it's really hard and you're really pushed in the direction of don't do anything, don't rock the boat, that's why we sent you there. So you have to stand up and fight. You have to be willing to be hated by all of them. I will just say again, the Tea Party didn't give a shit, and they were fine.

They actually, Joe, do you remember Joe Wilson, the guy who shouted, you liar, Obama? He made a million dollars in a single day. So politically, this strategy works. You just actually have to be willing to fight for something. So anyways, Kyle, we really appreciate you joining us, man. I think the reflections on just Democrats and just hooking it to the stimulus checks and what it does to tell us about politics today, really enjoyed the discussion. Thanks, man. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. And congrats on your guys' massive launch and success.

Thanks, man. Thank you, Kyle. Thanks to Kyle. And of course, you can check out our podcast, Crystal Kyle and Friends. We'll put that in the description box. You can sub on Substack. Thank you guys so much for watching. We have a little surprise for you tomorrow. We're going to have a slightly different show tomorrow, but we will post at the normal time. You will get your fix. We promise.

It's coming. But yeah, we have very exciting something that we're going to reveal tomorrow, so make sure you tune in for that, as always. You're going to see all of that. As you guys know, you can watch the full show uncut if you become a premium member. Thank you. Shout out to all those premium members that are already there.

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