Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/22/23: Submarine Out Of Oxygen, Potential China Base In Cuba, SCOTUS Caught On Billionaire Vacation, Teen Test Scores Plummet, Elon Says Cisgender Is Slur, Billionaire Backed Populism, Remote Worker Revolution, Amazon Prime Lawsuit

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss the Coast Guard reporting that the OceanGate Submarine has run out of oxygen, China potentially opening a military base in Cuba, China freaking out after Biden calls Xi a Dictator, SCOTUS Justice Alito caught on billionaire vacation, Teenage Test Scores plummet after pandemic, Elon says "Cisgender" is a Slur, Krystal looks into outsider faux populist candidates with billionaire backing, Saagar looks into the remote worker revolution as workers flee big cities, and we're joined by Matt Stoller to discuss Amazon being sued over Prime subscription renewal tricks on its customers.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?

Indeed we do. We have the very latest on that search for the missing Titan submersible. So we will break all of that down for you. The story that has truly captivated the nation, I think, for a lot of reasons. We also have some updates with regards to our relationship with China, their potential plans to operate in Cuba, President Biden calling Xi a dictator after what seemed to be a fairly successful visit between Tony Blinken and his counterpart in China. So we'll break all of that down for you. Also, pretty bombshell and weird situation with Justice Alito. So ProPublica published some information about him flying on a private jet of a billionaire

who ended up having business before the court. He preempted their report with his own Wall Street Journal op-ed. Very odd situation, very troubling situation in a lot of ways. So we'll break that down for you. We also have another very troubling situation with test scores for teenagers falling off a cliff during the pandemic, still suffering from learning loss, still taking account of what exactly happened with all of that. Also new Elon Musk fight. Now he's saying that people who use the terms cis or cisgender as a slur could be banned from the platform.

Mr. Free Speech, interesting direction from him. Also excited to talk to you, Matt Stoller, today about the FTC suing Amazon over some deceptive techniques that they use to try to get and keep customers in their prime service, which is sort of key to their whole monopoly grip on power. Before we get to any of that, though, we are getting mighty close to a million subs on YouTube. Do you have the official count, Sagar, for us as of this moment? Stop the count for now. No, actually, don't stop the count. No, actually, no, don't stop the count. All right.

I got the live count up in front of me. Exactly 991,209 subscribers. That's where we're at. So we need to get to a million people. As of 8.05 a.m. on Thursday, June 22nd. And as you guys know, as we mentioned before,

Sagar is going out of the country very soon. He is doing a wedding ceremony in India for his relatives. For my grandparents.

And it would be a beautiful send-off and wedding present for Sagar if we could get to a million subs before he leaves because it would be

kind of awkward. That would be weird. If you were out of the country when we actually hit the milestones. I think it would be sad. Subscribe. It'd be great, guys. You can have it two ways, guys. We can either do it on Tuesday. I can be here in the studio. We can all have a lot of fun. Or I can be jet-lagged.

It'll be 3 a.m. in the morning. I'll wake up from a text that's excited from you guys. But then I won't be back until a little bit later. You can send out some delirious tweet from your jet-lagged state at 3 a.m. or whatever. It'll be completely misspelled. So anyway, look, it's up to you. You're the ones who will decide our fate.

So if you can go ahead and you can hit subscribe, it would deeply appreciate it. Get all your friends, your relatives, all of your family after we hit a million. Then we're all good. We have a nice, beautiful gold plaque that we want to go put over there that we've been promised.

I've been admiring Kyle's. I like the way that it looks. I want to put my hands on it, the tactile feeling and all of that. But why don't we get to the show? Yes, indeed. So we wanted to start with the very latest on the search for the Titan submersible. As you guys, I'm sure, know at this point, five individuals who were basically tourists going down to view the Titanic wreckage. They lost contact with the mothership. We have no idea exactly what happened. And so the very latest we have this morning is search teams deployed remote-controlled vehicles deep into the North Atlantic. Experts are saying today is going to

be a critical day in the search and rescue mission as the subs life support supplies are starting to run low. And the reason today is so critical is because when the company lost contact with this submersible, they said they would have, you know, a limited supply of oxygen. And basically today is the day that that oxygen is expected to run out. And when you consider, you know, assuming this thing is still intact, assuming that people are still alive, which I think is a big question mark to start with, even if you located them now, of course, it would take time to bring them back up to the surface. So these are really critical moments. And producer Griffin just tells us that the Coast Guard is now saying they expect everyone aboard to be deceased. Well, they say they believe to have been run out of oxygen. Unfortunately,

that was just breaking this morning. So, you know, it's very sad. There's been a lot. The nation has truly been captured, Crystal, by this submersible. And, you know, there's actually quite, we were thinking, like, can we cover this, you know, outside of just like the, I guess, tawdry details, I suppose. Yeah. But the truth is, is that there's actually a lot to say around regulation,

around the way that these companies operate. It also applies to people like Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos, Virgin Atlantic. That's true. Who, you know, you know, to Starlink, or sorry, to SpaceX's credit, like, they're focusing on NASA and the space program. Like, Blue Origin, Virgin Atlantic, and many of these other services, their entire mission is just shooting rich people out into space. This is effectively the same thing except going deep underground. And well, you know, whenever it comes to these international covenants around submersibles and the way that this technology and all that is governed, we've actually learned quite a bit. And it's not great, unfortunately. I mean, apparently it's basically the wild, wild west. I mean, the SpaceX thing is an interesting point because they did just have kind of a catastrophe in terms of, you know, they used a launch pad that wasn't ready in time the way that Elon wanted it to be. But he went forward with it. There was massive debris. There was clouds of ash and soot and whatever. So I think there's a lot of questions there about some coziness between regulators and between the billionaires and company executives.

But to be specific to this one, some of the details that have come out about the way that this submersible was constructed are really shocking. And there were a lot of warnings in advance that this was not remotely prepared to go as deep to the depths of the bottom of the ocean where the Titanic is located. So there was a news report, I think it was about a year ago, where a journalist for CBS actually went on one of these trips. And so you get a glimpse inside of this submersible and how it's, you know, really cobbled together with low budget, off the shelf components. Just take a look at a little bit of that report. An experimental submersible vessel that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body

and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma, or death. Where do I sign? Oh-ho! Take your shoes off. That's customary. Okay. Wow! Oh, take your shoes off. That's customary. Okay. Wow. Inside, the sub has about as much room as a minivan. So this is not your grandfather's submersible. We only have one button. That's it.

It should be like an elevator. You know, it shouldn't take a lot of skill. The Titan is the only five-person sub in the world that can reach titanic depths 2.4 miles below the sea. It's also the only one with a toilet, sort of. And yet I couldn't help noticing how many pieces of this sub seemed improvised. We can use these off-the-shelf components. I got these from Camper World. We run the whole thing with this game controller.

Come on! So the individual that he is interviewing there, that the journalist is interviewing there, is the CEO of the company that built the submersible. And I mean, it's a classic story of human hubris. He thought he didn't need to get this thing classed. He didn't need to get it evaluated and actually like certified to the depths that they wanted to take people. Thought he could cut corners in all these ways and save on costs to make the trip, quote unquote, more affordable. I suppose tickets were still $250,000. Why would you want to cut corners on safety when this is such an incredibly dangerous activity? And, you know, you get a sense of his thinking also in this same

report. Let's take a listen to how he justified some of the decision making. It seems like this submersible has some elements of MacGyver-y Jerry Rignis. I mean, you're putting construction pipes as ballasts. I don't know if I'd use that description of it, but there's certain things that you want to be buttoned down. So the pressure vessel is not MacGyver at all because that's where we work with Boeing and NASA and the University of Washington. Everything else can fail. Your thrusters can go. Your lights can go.

You're still going to be safe. I'm the king of the surface vessel. There's a limit. At some point, safety just is pure waste. I mean, if you just want to be safe, don't get out of bed. Don't get in your car. Don't do anything. At some point, you're going to take some risk.

And it really is a risk-reward question. I said, I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules. I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules. And basically, the justification, and, you know and it's expected that the CEO was also a board and has likely lost his life on the submersible as well. But basically the justification saga was like, oh, these regulators, they're too slow. We're too innovative. They can't keep up with what we're doing. But it wasn't just the bureaucratic suits who might've raised some questions here. There was at least one employee

who was a whistleblower. There was a slew of experts who unanimously said, this is dangerous. This is a terrible idea. But he pushed for it anyway. Yeah, let's put that up there on the screen where you're referencing, which is that 2018, there was actually a lawsuit, a safety lawsuit, saying that there was a, quote, a potential danger to passengers, and OceanGate, you know, actually vociferously fought back against it because they fired an employee, David Lockridge, after he expressed concern about the safety. They actually sued him, saying he had breached his employment contract by disclosing confidential information with the

Occupational Safety and Health Administration, aka OSHA. What they said is that Lockridge said that he had been wrongfully terminated and his actions were aimed at ensuring the safety of passengers on the submersible called the Titan, which is now currently missing. I mean, my major takeaway throughout this entire thing, Crystal, is that your use of the word hubris is perfect. There's also a fundamental mismatch in terms of this guy's ideology because the problem is he's trying to drive down costs. And that is actually fine whenever we're talking about normal consumer products in which you are competing with a vast swath of people. people who were on this and were customers are extraordinarily wealthy. Bringing costs down from half a mil to 250 means nothing to them. They don't even think twice about spending $1 million on tickets versus $2 million versus $3 million. For them, it's about the experience. We were talking with our producer. Ironically, he could have made it a safer and a more luxurious experience,

and he probably would have made the exact same amount of money because the current environment that they... Look, if these people are still alive or were alive at any point for some time, it was hell on earth down there. I mean, we're talking about the size of what's been described of the minivan. Minivan, which from the pictures, I feel like it's pretty generous. It's a very generous minivan. That's like a compact SUV, I think, if you ask me. It's like one of those European minivans. Yes, that's right. Like this big.

European minivan. We are also talking about no toilet. We're talking about one guy who had actually ridden on the submarine had said previously that you have to be able to sit cross-legged for 10 hours and bear extreme discomfort. And listen, I get it. You know, I'm the type of person where if I had this type of money, I would absolutely do something like this. I think the Titanic's cool. I like

exploration. I don't think the idea necessarily is bad. I've seen some people be like, why would anyone want to do this? Listen, I think it's awesome. And one of the guys on there had done a lot of stuff. But at the same time, as somebody, as somebody who also has often, you know, dreamed or thought about doing things like this, you have to do a tremendous amount of research for safety. And you also have to make sure that you're going with a reputable person. And unfortunately, it really seems like OceanGate, the company, invested a hell of a lot more in marketing around the Titan than it did around the actual safety on this. So it's a good meta story too, to look at,

you know, sometimes things are too good to be true. Sometimes, look, you know, I think a lot of regulation is dumb, is annoying. We run a business here. It can be an absolute massive pain. However, we're not taking people down to the bottom of the ocean. And when you are, I do actually think there's quite a few things like checklists that need to exist. There need to be some safety boxes that work. There's a reason only nation states usually are the ones who are capable of doing something like this. And as we are all finding, you know, whenever the Titan goes missing, there's what, like two craft, I believe, on planet Earth that are even capable of going to go get them. Right.

One of them is French. The other is part of the U.S. Navy. But then getting them there in time is, you know, it's such a massive pain. So that was the other. They had obviously they did not have proper safety and contingency around this, around, you know, should a massive event like this occur, which, again, that's what the U.S. Navy actually has. Like they don't just send people down to the bottom of the sea without plans and redundancies that exist. This was MacGyvered in the really the worst sense. Yeah. Well, and that was one of the red flags that that employee who was a whistleblower who was fired and sued, that was one of the red flags that he raised.

He expressed concern the company planned for the sub to rely on an acoustic monitoring system to detect if the hull was breaking down or about to fail. That wouldn't provide much help in an emergency, he claimed, because the acoustic analysis would only alert people about imminent problems milliseconds before an implosion. I mean, of the various things that could have gone wrong, you know, they could have had an electrical failure. They could have had a fire on board. They could have gotten caught up in the Titanic wreckage itself and been unable to, you know to go back up to the surface. They could have gotten caught up in a fishing net. Any number of things could have happened. Or the hull and the body of the submersible could have failed and basically instant implosion. Frankly, for the sake of the people here, to me, that would be the least cruel way to go because at least it's over in an instant. I think part of why people have been so captivated by the story is thinking about being trapped in that thing, counting down the hours until your oxygen runs out.

I mean, that's just like literal nightmare scenario. So it's horrific. You know, the one sign that they had that was giving people some hope is there was some sounds that were detected, some banging sounds that were detected underwater that repeated, you know, a couple on Tuesday, they heard it. I heard it again on Wednesday. The theory was that this these would be the kind of noises that maybe if they were banging the ship up against something underneath the water to help rescuers be able to find them, perhaps that's what was going on. And maybe that is the case. But at this point, it's becoming clear they just ran out of time. One other story that came out in the New York Post that was from, it's a firsthand account from another adventurer who

went on a different one of these missions. And Sagar, he called it a suicide mission because of his experience. He said this was a Bavarian entrepreneur. He said it was a suicide mission back then. The first submarine did not work. Then a dive at 1,600 meters, which is nowhere close to how deep they were going for the Titanic, had to be abandoned. He explained they ended up launching five hours late due to electrical issues. He suspects that's, he thinks that's what's to blame for the Titan cruise issues here. Not only that, but right before the voyage, the bracket of the stabilization tube,

which balances the sub, seems kind of important, tore and had to be reattached with zip ties. That was the type of operation they were running here, cobbled together, you know, very little, just very little concern for safety. There was a slew of experts who wrote a letter raising these concerns, but because there was no regulation and he just decided, the CEO here, Stockton Rush, just decided to push forward anyway and not get the submersible evaluated, not get it classed, it appears to have ended in complete catastrophe for these individuals who are on board. And just to give everyone an idea of the hubris of this guy, listen to the way he talks about his hiring decisions. Let's take a listen.

When I started the business, one of the things you'll find, there are other sub-operators out there, but they typically have gentlemen who are ex-military submariners and you'll see a whole bunch of 50-year-old white guys. I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspirational. And I'm not going to inspire a 16-year-old to go pursue marine technology. But a 25-year-old who's a sub pilot or a a platform operator, one of our techs, can be inspirational. Yeah, Chris, why would you want to hire a bunch of people who are experienced on submarines to run your submarine company? I mean, who doesn't want somebody just straight out of school with

no experience in a highly technical environment aboard a a vessel which imminent death is always a possibility, and people who have developed redundancies and systems to make sure over the last 75 years that something like this doesn't ever happen. And I think we know the real reason why he didn't

want these people. Because he didn't want to pay, and because he knew they would cause problems for him, like the one guy who was a whistleblower who was like, what the hell

are you thinking here? So he needed young, inexperienced 25-year-olds who he could frame as quote-unquote inspirational. But the real reason was he wanted them cheap and he wanted them easy to manipulate. And, you know, here we are. Listen. Sad story.

We can hold out hope. You know, as the Coast Guard says, you can never underestimate the will to live. I'm obsessed with survival stories. This would be one of the all-time greats if they do walk out of there. That said, all the decks stacked against them. We've got the Coast Guard estimating

they ran out of oxygen. One of the only ways they'd be able to extend their oxygen is if they were starting to breathe slower. They would actually have to regulate their breathing. The other reason, you know, a lot of people were thinking about Apollo 13, for example. Well, here's the difference. People on Apollo 13 were highly trained astronauts

who had trained for two years or so, actually more, had flight test pilots who had been through multiple failures, were experienced aerospace engineers who were capable of, you know, maintaining the thought needed at that time, ex-military, and then be able to listen and communicate with NASA to finally get themselves back. That's the other one that's ruling out of Titan's favor. They don't have the ability to

communicate and to say exactly what is wrong with them. So like I said, the deck is really stacked against the Coast Guard currently on estimating that they've run out of oxygen. I'm assuming search and rescue will maintain operations for the next couple of days at the very least. You don't want to necessarily just call it. But look, there's a very human story here for us to all to learn from. Sometimes if it's too good to be true, or sometimes if it is regulated, it's for a good reason. And sometimes if it sounds too good to be true, it is. If you're putting your life in the hands of an individual who, you know, whose technical capacity is required, make sure they're like the nerdiest, most boring attention to detail person ever. This guy read like a sort of like charismatic salesperson. That's and clearly, you know, did not have that attention to detail.

So it is it is a sad and disastrous story. Yeah. All right, let's get to the big geopolitical news breaking here in Washington. Let's put this up there on the screen. This one about Beijing planning a new training facility in Cuba, raising the prospect of Chinese troops on America's doorstep. Now, Crystal, it's not like foreign troops on Cuban soil has ever caused problems for the United States or a global crisis before. Currently, the Chinese and the Cubans are negotiating a joint military training facility. What they would establish is a, quote, advanced stage in terms of their negotiations. This is

according to leaked U.S. intelligence reports that the Biden administration is effectively confirming. Now, the Biden administration says they have been contacting the Cubans to forestall the deal and are seeking to tap into what they think could be Cuban concerns about ceding their own sovereignty. Beijing is selling the training facility on top of potential ties that they could deepen with the Cubans. It also highlights an interesting theoretical question around diplomacy that I've seen raised in terms of the experts around this issue. It could be that the Cubans are actually more considering this Chinese overture as they did during the times of the Soviet Union, because they feel that the US political system is so intractable whenever it comes to a Cuban embargo and to trade

that this could be a way to extend leverage and actually get some better dealings with Washington. Personally, I think it's probably very entrenched because of the way that Florida rolls in our politics. That said, it does show you, though, a complex, possible geopolitical crisis that could be ignited over this. Troops itself is not going to cause the same thing as the Cuban missile crisis, of course, that was around missiles. That said, it's something that we are probably right to be concerned about and also just highlights what ratcheting up tensions with China is going to look like in our hemisphere. And that this is really the jump off point for something like that. Well, with regard to, you know, potentially Cuba using this as leverage to gain better status or reduce sanctions or whatever.

With regard to the Cubans using this as potential leverage, Ryan has been making a good point, which is that, you know, Florida's not a swing state anymore. Florida's a red state. And so the reason why, you know, we have all these corn subsidies is because Iowa and the role it plays in the primary process. The reason that we have the relations we do with Cuba is because of trying to appease the large and significant Cuban vote in Florida. Democrats don't really have to care about that anymore because there's no sign that they're going to be winning the state back anytime soon. I mean, that goes with Cuba, goes with regard to Venezuela, too. So in terms of the political calculations around this, that has really shifted. That's number one. Number two, you know, I just think it's always important to keep in mind where these reports

are coming from. This is clearly a leak by, there's kind of a divide within the Biden administration between people who are more hawkish towards China and people who want more engagement, more diplomacy of the type that was, you know was on display with Tony Blinken traveling to China recently. And this appears to be a leak from the more hawkish quarters to try to secure their policy ends and goals. So keep that in mind with this as well. But the other thing, Sagar, that I think is important to point out here is when it's us in our country and you have, you know, the possibility of troops from China on nearby soil in Cuba, we understand very clearly how the empire is going to react and how the country is going to feel about that, et cetera. There seems to be a blind

spot with regards to our own operations around the world and how, for example, that may have appeared to Russia and raised similar sensitivities. Now, I will say for the millionth time, Russia's invasion of Ukraine was illegal and wrong and no one is justifying it. But, you know, when you have it close to home, suddenly it's like, oh, this is a problem. We see how this is an issue. But we have far more. I mean, think of this. So this is actually from the Wall Street Journal piece. They said, listen, the way China views this is they look at

Taiwan. We have the U.S. deploying more than 100 troops to Taiwan to train their defense forces. We heavily arm and train that self-governing island. It sits right off of mainland China. Beijing sees it as its own. That's about the same distance that Cuba is from Florida. Also, they point out China has no combat forces in Latin America. Meanwhile, the U.S. has dozens of military bases throughout the Pacific where it stations more than 350,000 troops. Chinese officials have pointed this out when they push back on American efforts to counter their military expansion outside of the Indo-Pacific. So I just want to put out there, take yourself out of the American context and think of how China views our actions. Think of how Russia views our actions. And I feel like we can garner some

more potential understanding of the way they may view what we're doing from this particular provocation. I think it's an important point, specifically with what you said vis-a-vis Russia. I will say, sometimes I get very annoyed whenever they're like, well, you have troops in Japan. I'm like, yeah, the Japanese want us there. They literally are the ones who are asking us to stay. And for all the people who are going to threaten to Okinawa in my face, that's not the only one that I'm talking about. Same with the South Koreans. So it's not like these aren't deep and entrenched allied governments. So we'll put that aside. Sure, but the Cubans want to make the Chinese there. No, no, no. And I think that is why it is an important point. And actually, this is very

specifically most likely in response to the special military advisors which were sent to Taiwan after the Ukraine invasion. I also would say that one of the things that I have always tried to say here is with regard to aid to Ukraine, whenever it comes to the way that we are sapping so much of our military strength and so much of our geopolitical attention, I just saw this morning, you sent it to me, the Financial Times reporting Jake Sullivan is traveling to Denmark or something like that in order to try and pressure Indian and Brazilian officials who are also traveling there. The full force of the US government right now is focused almost entirely on Ukraine and on Russia, two countries which their GDP combined don't even make up a single Chinese province. So we have to focus all of our energy specifically on this issue, on navigating and going through this so that we don't

end up in a catastrophic situation. And unfortunately, we are obviously being stretched thin. And this is just even more evidence that what was going on in Ukraine is distracting us from any potential even attention at the way that we should be paying, that we should be paying towards China. Second, you can see here Secretary Blinken seems a bit blindsided by the issue, specifically after he left Beijing for his visit. Here's what he had to say. Made very clear that we would have deep concerns about PRC intelligence or military activities. Both countries see the importance of trying to bring more stability to the relationship. So he says both countries see more stability to the relationship.

I mean, the Chinese are not stupid. They know exactly what this will provoke here in the United States. And they are also trying to get their own policy concession. So we're stretched very thin all over the world, and it's a problem. The other problem, you know, that we have, Crystal, is a doddering president who seems to just say whatever is at the top of his mind. Now, look, I'm not saying that what he said isn't true, which is obvious. Put this up there on the screen. China is freaking out after

Joe Biden called Xi Jinping, quote, a dictator. They say that the president's, quote, absurd comments threatened to undermine efforts to improve Sino-US relations. It actually happened at a campaign fundraiser on Tuesday at the very moment. So before a bunch of rich donors, at the very moment that his own secretary of state is in China, says quote, what a great embarrassment for dictators when they didn't know what was happening. He was talking at a private home in California. After the comments were leaked, the Chinese foreign ministry said that they were, quote, extremely absurd, irresponsible, seriously violate basic facts, diplomatic protocols, and China's political dignity.

Now, listen, obviously Xi Jinping is a dictator. Okay. But this kind of gets back, or Putin is a war criminal. We've gotten this before. The thing is, is that when you're the president of the United States, your comments should be calibrated to actual policy. Just talking off the cuff, you know, without any plan, specifically when your secretary of state is in the, or at least in the airspace of the country, you just look like a fool.

And it's like, what is your policy here? What are we actually talking about? This is the thing I can't stand with the Biden administration. President Biden's like, yeah, we're going to defend Taiwan. I'm like, do you understand what you're saying? Like, do you actually understand what you're saying? Look at the deployment of our military resources. I was just reading two days ago, the CEO of Raytheon says, listen, we're never going to be able to get our supply chains out of China. So you're like, wait, hold on a sec. So if we go to war with China, then you're saying that you actually can't produce any weapons here in the United States. Are we understanding this? So what is the policy? And then the president of secretary of state

on Chinese soil says we don't support Taiwan independence. That's not a policy change per se, but it's a rhetorical gift to the Chinese. But then Biden is like, oh, but he's a dictator. It's like, what are we doing? What's happening? Yeah. Yeah. It's like, look, if we want to take a hawkish approach, that's fine. Let's let them, let's debate that. Let's actually plan for it. Let's have a whole of government approach towards it. It may be serious, but this like seesaw come back and forth. Like I want to appear tough on my own soil, but I'm also going to try and get climate concessions or whatever crap that people like John Kerry want to get out of them. It's incoherent. And actually, it creates uncertainty such that the Chinese themselves, we've talked

about this in our last show, there are many different factions in the Chinese government. One faction, Xi Jinping, and mostly a part of them, thinks the US wants to destroy their entire country. And they think it's existential and they want to fight back accordingly. Things like this only give them more fuel. Then the diplomatic side, which Blinken was just engaging with

while he was over there, they're like, no, see, we can work with them. We can avoid this. Let's just all, you know, we're all making a lot of money. Let's just keep it that way. And so we are sending so many mixed signals

that they have no idea what the actual policy of government is. And each side can basically point to whatever else is going on as incoherence. And that causes a lot of uncertainty and damage potentially in the future. Yeah, that's exactly right. statements of Blinken on the same day, basically, as these statements from Biden, you know, they don't know if this is just a gaffe and a bumble and him like just having verbal diarrhea. They don't know if this is an intentional statement of provocation to directly undermine the comments that were made publicly by Blinken. They don't know. Neither do we, by the way. We don't know

either. We don't know what the official policy is, what the official view is. I continue to, the reporting suggests there's a real tug of war within the administration. And you have Biden now multiple times undermining what seems to be the more carefully crafted, strategic, tactical direction of the State Department as headed by Tony Blinken. And he'll just go off and, you know, shoot off at the mouth, whatever he feels like saying in this very, you know, in this very imprudent- It's honestly Trumpian. It is.

I was thinking the same thing. And, you know, that was something that we said before Biden even came into office, that actually Trump and Biden on foreign policy, they have some similarities because there's no real overarching view. It's all about how they feel and their personal relationship with this or that leader and their like narcissistic belief in their

own ability to navigate and like cut a deal, et cetera. And so it is a very Trumpian feeling moment. And then it's just like the grotesque nature of when he gives his most unvarnished views is behind closed doors with a bunch of like super, the super rich funding the democratic party. That is grotesque as well. But you see from this why it is that his aides keep him under wrap. It's not only because they're worried about political damage and the country really being able to assess the nature and extent of his potential mental decline. But also because they're worried about stuff like this with massive global implications for our nation and for foreign affairs. It reminds me of President Biden when he said that the prospect of Armageddon is the highest since Cuban Missile Crisis, which he said to whom?

Rich Democratic donors in New York City, outside. And I remember, I think I tweeted this at the time. I said, if the president of the United States believes that the risk of nuclear war is higher than the Cuban missile crisis, we need an Oval Office address now, yesterday, immediately. You need to lay out your policy in Ukraine, how you are going to get this away. But no, they're not doing that. They, you know, behind closed doors. So I read an interview once with President Obama. I am, I'm no fan of Obama. A lot of people here know that, but I did respect that he understood the gravity of his words. And he said, every time I open my mouth, I have to understand that what I

say has implications around the world to the stock market, to normal everyday people, to my opponents, and to my supporters. And thus, I always think before I open my mouth. That's not something that we got from Trump, obviously. Some people find that refreshing. And in a political context, I can understand that. But we still have to understand the gravity of the office that these people hold. So just like the war criminal comment with Putin, I'm like, what are you saying, man? Are you saying you will never have normal relations with Russia again?

Because that's pretty crazy. You need to understand what we're saying here. That's right. You know, same here with China. I'm like, well, okay, you can say that. You can piss them off and we can all get into a pissing contest. But what about like trade?

What are we doing? Where do we go from here? What are our bilateral relations around economics? Because last I checked, we're actually importing more from China than at any time ever before. So is that the policy? Are we decoupling? Are we de-risking?

Like, you know, all of these nonsense terms that just get thrown out of there. And the lack of seriousness, it will leave us tremendously vulnerable. It's not a joke because the incoherence opens up, you know, as I said, the danger that the Chinese can take any action and think that it's justified. You know, we learned this also during the Pelosi Taiwan visit. The Chinese were like, we don't understand how she can just go and defy you. They're like, we don't believe you. Right. They're like, we think that you're sending her.

He's like, we're separate, you know. And they're like, yeah, we just don't buy it. I didn't really buy it either. Yeah, I didn't particularly buy it either. But I'm saying they have no understanding of separate but equal branches of government, literally at all. So you always have to think, what about the eye of the beholder? What does that look like? What are the consequences? And are we willing to pay them?

These are all very, very important. Well, and lastly, adding to the gall of what is revealed to wealthy donors versus what is revealed to the American people, we also got at least his most extensive comments about the intelligence around the whole spy balloon situation. That was the context in which he was talking about where he described Xi as a dictator. He said that that's what's a great embarrassment for dictators when they didn't know what happened, claiming that Xi had no idea what was going on with this balloon. And so he said the balloon was blown off course up through Alaska, down through the U.S. He didn't know about it.

When it got shot down, he was very embarrassed. He denied it was even there. So those are also the most extensive comments we've gotten about at least his interpretation of the intelligence report. So again, you know, listen, I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but this is why you need to have debates. This is why you need to have, you know, a president and other politicians who are willing to sit for real interviews with real journalists and field hard hitting questions and, you know, do press conferences and all of those things because American people deserve to hear these things from the president and not have to get it secondhand from a fundraiser. They deserve to see pushback on, okay, well, what is, if

Blinken is saying this and you're saying that, like, what is the actual policy and where do we go from here? And increasingly, it's not just Biden, it's Trump too. It's basically, you know, a lot of modern politicians who feel like we don't have to do that anymore. We can just communicate through social media. We can just go on friendly channels. Why would we want to subject ourselves to the rigors of a debate or the rigors of a difficult political interview, as Trump subjected himself to that this week with Brett Baier, when I could just go on and get softballs from, you know, some like 20 year old TikToker or whatever. It's pathetic. Yeah, certainly. Indeed. All right. Let's break down what's going on with Supreme Court Justice Alito. So there was news from ProPublica. Let's start with here about some

potential, very questionable ethics decisions on the part of Alito. This really rhymes with some of the reporting they did also about Justice Thomas accepting gifts and luxury travel from Harlan Crowe, billionaire, who's also a major political donor. Put this up on the screen from ProPublica to show their report. The headline here is Justice Samuel Alito took a luxury fishing vacation with GOP billionaire who later had cases before the court. Let me read you the opening here, which contains all of the most relevant facts. So in early July 2008, Samuel Alito stood on a riverbank in a remote corner of Alaska. The Supreme Court justice was on vacation at a luxury fishing lodge that charged more than $1,000 a day. And after catching a king salmon nearly the size of his leg, Alito posed for a

picture that you can see if you're watching this, guys. To his left, a man stood beaming. Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes. We're talking multi-billion dollars at stake in these disputes as well, guys. Singer was more than a fellow angler. He flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet. If the justice chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 just one way. In the years that followed, Singer's hedge fund came before the court at least 10 times in cases where his role was often covered by the legal press and mainstream media. They go on to say Leonard Leo, the longtime leader of the conservative Federalist Society, attended and helped organize that fishing vacation.

Leo invited Singer to join and asked Singer if he and Alito could fly on the billionaire's jet. Leo also recently played an important role in the justices' confirmation to the court. Singer and the lodge owner were both major donors to Leo's political group. So you guys get the outlines here. Supreme Court justice invited on this luxury, all expenses paid fishing trip organized by Leonard Leo, who himself is a fund billionaire, who again had multiple cases, including a big one dispute with the nation state of Argentina, where again, there were billions of dollars at stake here. It was like a debt thing. Yeah. Alito doesn't recuse himself from any of this. And Singer provides him with space on his private jet to fly there again,

that would cost $100,000 in one direction. None of this was disclosed. And as I just mentioned, Alito did not recuse himself from any of the cases involving Singer. There's another layer to this story, though, which is that ProPublica, as, you know, typical journalist organization, news organization would do, reached out to Alito for comment. He didn't respond to them. Instead, he wrote up his response, which was published in the Wall Street Journal before the piece even dropped. Now that raises a whole lot of questions about the Wall Street Journal just willing to be his PR ally, because how could you fact check what he was saying when the piece hasn't even come out yet from ProPublica. But put

this up on the screen. This was the justification from Alito. And the headline here, too, is wild. Justice Samuel Alito, ProPublica misleads its readers. The publication levels false charges about Supreme Court recusal, financial disclosures, and a 2008 fishing trip. Again, Wall Street Journal published this piece with that headline before the ProPublica piece even dropped. Basically, if you read through this, what you see is a lot of cope about like, well, the lodge wasn't really all that fancy. And, you know, I interpreted, lots of other people have interpreted that private jet flights don't technically meet the definition of needing disclosure. Now, they just adjusted the ethics rules to make it quite clear that private jet flights don't technically meet the definition of needing disclosure.

Now, they just adjusted the ethics rules to make it quite clear that private jet rides do require disclosure. And a lot of experts say that the plain face reading, you know, has always indicated that it needed to be disclosed. And he went on to say that he didn't think any reasonable person would think that these cozy relationships with Paul Singer would lead them to question his impartiality. And so that's why he didn't recuse. But there's a lot going on with this story here. I have spoken with a lot of friends who are big defenders of Justice Alito here. And listen, the question there, someone was like, well, did it work? Like, did Singer get his way? It doesn't matter. It's about the appearance of corruption. And guess what?

Why do we all understand that whenever it comes to congressional stock trades? But then it starts to get fuzzy whenever we're talking about our favorite presidential candidate or maybe the guy who authored a decision that we really, really like before the Supreme Court, like Roe versus Wade. And I just think that if any reasonable person could see, this is outrageous. This is one of the most powerful people in the United States. He's flying in a lavish luxury vacation. Personally, I want to know

why we're not indulging in this, Crystal. Why do we have better, you know, Crystal and I, we've been invited on some weird stuff. Every once in a while, someone very powerful wants to interview, whatever, hang out with you, interview you. Like, oh, all expenses paid.

And every time we're like, yeah, I just think it would look bad. It's like one of those where, and we're not even government officials. We're just doing people, bringing the news. We're under no obligation. We're small business owners, and as private citizens, we could do it if we wanted to. There's nothing stopping it. But everyone understands there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

And specifically here, here's what I want to know. There were a served wine that was costing $1,000 a bottle. First of all, I like wine every once in a while, you know, on the rare occasions that I do drink. I have never had a bottle of wine more than like $100, something like that. What is a $1,000 bottle of wine? It must be nice. You know, to me— To be honest with you, I bet

it doesn't even taste bad. I was going to say, I bet it's just the flex. I bet it's just all about, oh, this is 1968 Chateau, whatever. Drink it because you can. Exactly. Drink it because you can. It's the flex on the part of the guy who's able to serve it. Maybe not necessarily about

the taste. I typically drink $8 bottles of wine from Walmart. This is not my area of expertise. On a broader level, I mean, this is so obvious. Like in an era where we have bad institutional trust and we see constant corruption and cavorting of the elite and the policymakers, if you want to appear unimpeachable, then you have no right to be going on vacations like this or what Clarence Thomas

was doing as well. All of us understand that nobody gives you a private jet for free. And that nobody is hanging out with you getting invited on luxury vacations. And my response to them always is like, what do you expect them to just have no lives? No, you can leave, dude. Resign. You can live a very comfortable private retirement and none of us would care. It's not like they're getting paid like paupers either. Like they make a hefty salary. Go on your own damn vacation and don't fly around on some hedge fund billionaire's private jet, secretly by the way, or you don't even disclose it, who has business frequently, like routinely, before the court. What do you think people are going to think about that?

Maybe my favorite justification he gave here, Sagar, in his little Wall Street Journal piece was, he said, As for the flight, Mr. Singer and others had already made arrangements to fly to Alaska when I was invited shortly before the event. And I was asked whether I would like to fly there in a seat that, as far as I'm aware, would have otherwise been vacant. It was my understanding this would not impose any extra cost on Mr. Singer. All right, let's put it this way. I had somebody who used that excuse to me. And I go, hey, man, you know, I'm flying to India in two weeks. The jet's going there anyway. They still charge you for it. It's not- Oh, it's receipt. Who wants it? Guys, come on. That's not how business works. They still charge you for it, man. And I just looked it up. Justice

Alito has a net worth of 2.9 million to 7.4 million. So listen, man, you can afford it. You can easily buy- You can go fishing in West Virginia. You don't have to fly by private jet to Alaska. Of course, he can get to Alaska, there's a direct flight here from Washington to San Francisco. You could be in Alaska in seven hours. When you're 2.9 to 7.4 million net worth, you could buy yourself a nice first class ticket. And you could buy yourself a seat at this, quote, comfortable and rustic lodge. It's like, you know, it's so obvious that this is problematic. And, you know, a lot of court defenders are very upset. They're like, oh know, it's so obvious that this is problematic. And, you know,

a lot of court defenders are very upset. They're like, oh, Clarence Thomas did nothing wrong. I'm like, he obviously did. Like going on these crazy yacht vacations, having some dude buy his mom's house while she's still living in it. Here, this guy going on a luxury fishing vacation. I mean, if you like to fish, then pay for it yourself, man. That's what a lot of normal people do in this country. You just can't be going out here saying that there was absolutely nothing that was exchanged. Nobody on earth, no normal person on earth, none, gets to go on a trip like this. Yeah. You think they're just doing this out of the goodness of their heart because they really like you because you're just a nice guy. You think that's why they had you fly on the private jet to the luxury fishing vacation?

I mean, I don't think there are a lot of people who are getting that opportunity when there isn't some kind of a quid pro quo. And just the appearance is a problem. The last thing I'll say about this is, you know, it's insane and disgraceful that there is no Supreme Court standard of ethics. Every other federal court judge has to abide by a code of ethics. Random low-level government employees have to abide by a code of ethics that prevents them from taking even small dollar gifts from anyone because they're worried about actual and the appearance of corruption.

John Roberts has basically stonewalled on all of this, refused to go testify to Congress about some of the revelations with regard to Justice Thomas and the concerns more broadly about corruption on the court. They have shown certainly no interest in having Congress get involved. In fact, Roberts has sort of insinuated he doesn't think that Congress even has the power to regulate them, which I think is, I mean, it just shows like their arrogance and the way that they really don't see themselves as a co-equal branch. And to be honest with you, they're not treated like a co-equal branch. They really are these sort of like unaccountable supremacist branch of the United States government. And if you poll the American people, like should Supreme Court justices have to abide by a code of ethics? branch of the United States government. And if you poll the American people, like,

should Supreme Court justices have to abide by a code of ethics? It's like 90 some percent that are like, obviously they should. So it's at the very least complete insanity that there are not official guidelines for when you recuse and what you, what your expectations are, what your moral and ethical expectations are if you are sitting on this court, which is one of the most powerful forces in the entire world, actually, not just in the country. No, I agree with you completely. Let's move on. Let's talk a little bit about test scores, about what's going on in this country. This is something which, look, we've been trying to draw attention to now for years,

specifically around school closures and what the impact of all of it is. And unfortunately, it's becoming very, very clear that school closures and the fallout from COVID have been a national catastrophe. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. This is called Chalkbeat. It is a education, specifically trade publication,

which did a really good job of looking at the newest averages of national test scores. What you can see here before you is that effectively national test scores, and there's a lot of questions even around whether the test scores themselves are good, but they're what we have, basically peaked in 2010. They were starting to decline in terms of overall standards up until the pandemic. But after the pandemic in 2020, they just absolutely fell off a cliff, both on national math and on national reading tests. So for example, 85% of 13-year-olds in 2012 demonstrated skills in basic problem solving and math. In 2020, that number is now just 79%, and now has fallen to 71%. So we're getting even

more of a precipitous drop in the last year. This is specifically the worst for students who are in the lowest income tranche of students. And they actually show you that the gap between lowest and highest performing students also widened significantly. And the reason why for that, let's go to the next one here, please, guys. Because what you can see here, as I was referencing, is around all students, you can see that the average there is at 264. However, whenever you drop it and you, or sorry, it's at 256. Whenever you look at white students, it's 264. When you look at Latino students, it's 247. If you look at black students, it's actually 237. That's just in reading.

In math, it's very similar what the gap is. And the gap, again, has widened between black and white. I actually prefer to look at it aggregated in terms of wealth. We don't have the exact data on it, but it's becoming clear that because of racial disparity when it comes to wealth is that students who are likely at the lower income spectrum, of which we have talked about here before, were basically left at home and screwed off. Parents were very busy. They had to work. Unlikely to work from home. What is a seven-year-old going to do? What is any seven-year-old going to do? Nothing if unsupervised. Richer students, what do their parents do? They sat there. They were working from home. They were monitoring their homework, monitoring lessons, and more importantly, hiring private tutors as what happened in San Francisco.

And thus, the gap has become so explosive now that by all metrics, we are living through one of the most unequal education times in modern history. And higher education is not grappling with this. The schools, obviously, they don't have the tools. Governments and all that, everybody's pointing their fingers. But on a raw level, this is a catastrophe. This is a disaster. It truly, truly is. And you're absolutely right that the poorest kids,

there's no doubt about it, got hit the hardest. And it's so obvious why. Because their parents are working. You know, a lot of them had to be left home with like an older brother or sister or potentially, you know, maybe a grandparent who's not particularly technologically savvy. I mean, as a parent who was navigating all of this, by the way, in a household that had very spotty internet access, even for someone who has, you know, is blessed to have the resource that I have, this was very, very difficult. And the other piece, Thakur, is that a lot of private schools actually stayed in person. So my youngest was in preschool at that point at the school that

actually my mom ran until she just retired. And so thank God she was able to stay in person the whole time because those years are so incredibly critical when she's learning, you know, the basic building blocks to be able to read. Very difficult situation for my son, who was in second grade at that point, who's, you know, typical little boy and has a lot of energy and to just stay focused on like schoolwork on a Zoom call is very difficult. My daughter, who was in middle school at that time, it was really, really challenging, even when you had everything going for you. So no one should be surprised that the results have been this catastrophic. One other thing that I noted here is if you look at the charts, and maybe we can put this back up on the screen, guys, the very first element that we showed. If you look at the charts, you see a sudden drop off

effectively in the pandemic years. But as you noted, Sagar, the peak year was actually, for these test scores, was actually 2012. And listen, correlation is not causation. So there's a lot of research that would need to be done. That's also the same year when you see some of the increases in depression, increases in suicide, increases in anxiety. And it's also the same year when smartphones became incredibly prevalent. It's the same year when, you know, when social media moved to be more algorithmically based. So it's triggering your emotions and manipulating you more and keeping you locked in for longer periods of time. Again, we would need research to show that there's actual

causation here. But to me, it seems like not an accident that these things are all tied together, that actually the test score decline predates the pandemic. Again, it was accelerated, as so many trends in our society were, by the pandemic. But they were actually going in the wrong direction for quite a number of years before we even got to the pandemic. Well, data backs this up. My friend Brad Wilcox over at the National Marriage Project at UVA tweeted this out yesterday. We wanted to bring it to all of you.

What you can see here is the depressive symptoms in U.S. 8th, 10th, and 12th graders. And the increase precipitously after 2012 is right there. You can literally see it in the data. In terms of the numbers of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders who say, I can't do anything right, it has gone from 30%, you know, back in 2010 now to almost 50%. In terms of my life is not useful, 44% now was hovering, you know, somewhere around like 22% at that time. And then I do not enjoy my life.

Same thing. It was bottomed out. It was near 20%. And it's now all the way up to 48.9. We're seeing an absolute disaster in terms of depressive symptoms. So it's not a surprise that you see depressive symptoms on the rise. You see rise of social media, smartphone use. We know the test scores have been dropping now at a certain smaller rate up until the pandemic. And then everything just was lit on fire afterwards. And unfortunately, it's just going to

exacerbate all of our existing problems in higher education. I'll give everyone an example. I've been doing a lot of monologues here about how higher education schools want to preserve affirmative action after the court is likely to strike it down. Well, unfortunately, they're going to have to nuke all merit-based scores in order to do that because, as I've said, of the gap in between poor and of rich students. Well, the issue is that the gap is going to get even wider, Crystal, and it actually validates the whole idea that a lot of this is unfair because then you're putting someone in a situation where they're not even academically or rigorously prepared for the curriculum. You can't fix the problem by the time people are at college. Exactly. It's got to be, it's got to start from, you know, with things like universal pre-K,

honestly, even before that, because kids who have those foundational years in preschool are much more prepared for school. They're much more likely to succeed academically throughout their careers. But, you know, I was thinking about when we interviewed Jack Dorsey, of course, was a head of Twitter. And I asked him about how he thinks about the social media part of this and the balance between being in the real world and being locked into your screen. And he doesn't have kids. But he said for a lot of his friends who are, you know, high up in the tech space, they don't let their kids on the stuff at all. Yeah, I know a lot of really rich people who work in tech and they don't let their kids on their phones. And it's actually another class divide because the technology now is more readily available. If you're busy, you know, I speak as a parent, lots of experience.

I am certainly guilty of this. The easiest thing you can do is give the phone, give the device, give the tablet, give the gaming set, whatever, to your kid, and they leave you alone. So you can accomplish what you need to do. It takes time, effort, and often resources to provide your kids alternatives to these devices. And so it opens up another class divide where the wealthy have the time and ability and also, you know, some of them got wealthy in the tech sector and are deeply aware of the manipulative techniques and just how bad this is for kids' brains, they're able to keep the devices away and limit the exposure. And working class people, it's much, much more difficult.

So it opens up yet another class divide. But, you know, I was sort of, I wouldn't say I was skeptical, but I was kind of ambivalent about whether it was really smartphones and social media that was driving a lot of the depression and other issues that we're seeing among teenagers. But I'm becoming increasingly convinced by the research that this is a real problem, and it's a hard one to put back in the bag. Yeah, exactly, because guess what? You can't get three years back. Nobody's going to go back and give children some of the most formative years of their lives. And who the hell is going to take away their phone?

If anything, they're getting phones at a younger and younger and younger age. I see nine-year-olds out there with smartphones. And, yeah, look, I don't know. Especially as it remains probably the easiest way for a lot of parents, basically,

to sedate their children. Of which, who can't sympathize with that? You know, you see a mom flying with three kids on a plane. They're all screaming. They whip out the iPads. What happens? Everything goes quiet.

It's nice. It's nice for me, right? Yeah. But there's a cost. There's a cost, I think, to all of that. So I've got a 16-hour flight coming up, and it's going to be tough, right? It's going to be tough. Like, see the kids out there, and they're going to be screaming.

You're like, just give them the damn iPad. Yeah, just give them the frigging tablet. It's fine. Okay. All right, let's get to this one. Consternation, Crystal. Let's put this up there on the screen. I guess there's a lot to say about it. So James Esses, who is, what is he? I would call him like somebody who tweets a lot about trans issues, but let's put it kindly. All right, I don't know who this individual is, so I'll take your word for it. He runs one of these words. All right, well. Okay,

gotcha. He says, quote, yesterday, after posting a tweet saying that I reject the word cis and don't wish to be called it, I received a slew of messages from trans activists who called me a sissy with a C, telling me I am cis, whether I like it or not. Just imagine if the roles were reversed. Elon replied and said, quote, Repeated and targeted harassment against any account will cause the harassing accounts to receive at a minimum of temporary suspensions. The words cis or cisgender are now considered slurs on the platform. So I guess there's actually a lot to say about this at the very least. Number one is this is bad because the previous policy that existed over

at Twitter, of which I opposed, I thought was very stupid, was that you were liable to be banned if you were to quote unquote dead name somebody, aka you, their previous name pre-transition. I think it's mean, but I also don't think you should be banned for doing so. Same in terms of using the wrong gender pronoun, like currently the Daily Wire's having a big host of problems. A lot of their videos have been taken off YouTube because they've been using different pronouns and the preferred pronouns of some of the people that they're talking about. Again, you know, you can think it's unkind. I wouldn't do that in a personal situation. That said, you know, they're taking a broader stance, whatever. I think that's right for you as an American citizen. But then you shouldn't be turning around and applying the same policy because the problem that he, can we throw that up there back, please, up on the screen? I want to

read again, the exact quote that he said. He specifically said repeated targeted harassment. And you know why my hair on the back of my neck goes up from that? That is the same exact policy that was used from some of the trans activists to get their opponents banned. And it comes down to the question, like, what does that mean? You tweet cis three times? Is that enough to get banned? Right. Like, what is it?

In my, yeah, I mean, the trans people who are calling the guy a sissy, I mean, again, I think it's probably mean. I don't really know why anybody would do that. But a lot of people are mean. It's the internet, you know? Deal with it. I don't wanna-

I mean, and it's really not that mean. Like, are you feeling he's really gonna be that hurt by it with it. I don't want to. I mean, and it's really not that mean. Like, are you feeling he's really going to be that hurt by it? No, I don't think so. I also don't think that somebody who's been quote unquote dead named is like the worst thing that's ever happened to them in their life. I'm like, yeah, shut up. You know, deal with it. You're the one putting yourself out there for attention on the internet. And then you're upset that somebody is responding and being unkind.

We get a lot of unkind comments about here. About my beard. About the hair. About. I have a list of people I'd like here. About my beard, about the hair, about... I have a list of people I'd like to be banned. Yeah, exactly. I have a whole list.

Listen, come to me, Elon. I can give you a list. But I would never do it. Even the worst critics, I'd be like, you know what, man? It's a free concert. Go ahead.

Say what you want. Say your piece. We put our words out there. Other people can put theirs. So I think it's very much the wrong policy. And unfortunately, it just really is the

ad hoc nature of which he is going about it at his own whims, which is just, look, you can think it's funny. I certainly do. But that does not mean that it is the right thing. And in fact, whenever you do kind of, you know, smile and you think, ah, they're getting a taste of their own medicine, that's exactly what you want to be able to prevent because that is the same way that the previous people who used to ran Twitter used to act whenever they got their ideological opponents banned. So no matter who it is, I will speak out for them. Yeah. If you are truly this free speech warrior, which we already have like a hundred examples where he's fallen short of that stated goal, but that's really your thing. It matters the most when it's like politically inconvenient for whatever your views are. So even if this is just mostly a troll, the fact that he just erratically makes these

decisions and they go very much contrary to that stated free speech commitment, it's just very revealing and everybody needs to stop being so fricking fragile. Listen, if your feelings are really going to be so hurt by, you know, whatever name you're called online, don't read it or don't go on Twitter. I mean, both of us don't tweet that much. What do you think Twitter is? Right. I mean, there's a reason I don't read my replies and I'm barely on Twitter because I don't like, I don't enjoy it. Right.

People are mean to each other and it's not really a nice place to hang out and live. And as we just discussed with the previous segment, I think there's a lot of clear evidence that none of this is really good for any of our mental health so if your feelings are getting hurt online you owe it to yourself to take a step back go touch some grass and let it be you know if you don't see it it's not gonna hurt your feelings. I agree and unfortunately that's you know people seem to live their entire lives and they make so many and This is really a both sides thing. And I actually find it the most in the trans issue.

The amount of people I know who live their entire lives about what's happening online with respect to this discourse is insane to me. I don't understand. I've even said this. I said in my previous monologue, transgender ideology drives me nuts. I find it abhorrent. I personally see it as a threat to a lot of children. I do not, though, live my entire life or spend all of my public platform time talking, drawing attention to it and acting as if the most important thing in the country for a couple of reasons. A, because I don't think so. B, also,

we have a responsibility to our audience to meet them where they are. And what we have found predominantly crystal is that there is a massive proliferation of you, you, how many YouTube videos and creators and people out there have built entire brands and spent hours, you know, analyzing the term cisgender, transgender, whatever queer, whatever drag show is happening, and then didn't talk about what we just did with test scores. We just spent some time on that. Or Samuel Alito and corruption or China and the Cuba base. We have found and understood that for the vast majority of people, they want to hear more about much more important issues. Sure, we'll talk.

We could talk about trans, of which we're doing some stuff here. But that's not all they want to hear about. Yeah's that's where I object to a lot of the discourse Look, I have felt it important in the current climate where there is a lot of legislation being passed Arkansas law just got struck down by a court there to stand up for trans people's rights to just Live and make their own decisions, And I think that that is really critical. But I also think like you're not really doing a lot of that when you're just engaging in this very insular, you know, discourse on Twitter that's just about getting retweets and being mean to each other. And there's no like there's no attempt at a good faith debate that's going on here with any of this.

But, you know, with back to Elon, it's just another example of the whole free speech idea. And let's take Elon out of it. Any billionaire is not going to solve your free speech issues. Like, they're just not going to, even if they're well-intentioned, even if they have the right commitments. That was another thing Dorsey really pointed out. It's like the level of pressure that you're under from advertisers in particular when the overwhelming bulk of your revenue is still driven by ad dollars. When you have countries that are coming to you and pressuring you and like, we're going to shut your whole thing down if you don't do what we want you

to do. You can't just leave it to the whims of any one person, whether you like them or hate them or think they're good or bad or indifferent, it is not going to work out. I'm with you. I'm with you 100%. Crystal, what do you take a look at? Well, devoid of much tangible political progress and stripped of hope that anything could really change, our politics has mostly collapsed into a competition of vibes. Crafty politicians recognizing the angry populist moment, they've seized on the anti-establishment aesthetic, offering appealing contrarian vibes that substitute for an actual platform that really challenges economic elites.

Where if you can mutter a few magic mantras and get the right people to hate you, then you too can have your moment in the political sun. These fraudulists are seizing on a market opening. A large group of voters are disgusted, rightly so, with the two major parties, and angry with an economy that has failed them for their whole lives. But actually delivering for those voters and standing up to the economic royalists, that is so hard. Embracing catchphrases is so easy. So after having absorbed the political lessons of Trump and burning the itch that both of them scratched, this election season has seen an explosion of candidates who know how to talk

the populist talk without actually really walking the walk. I got three examples for you today of politicians left, right, and center that this description fits. First, let's start with the least successful and most clownish fraudulist effort. This comes courtesy of the folks at No Labels. Now, this is a billionaire-backed group that is planning a third-party run and seeking ballot access in all 50 states. Their website uses all the language of anti-establishment third-party efforts. They talk about the duopoly. They speak in vague terms about the common sense majority. As we found out, though, in an interview earlier this week, they're very skittish when you actually ask them about their specific policy views. Just take a

listen. Can you get specific about what your complaints specifically with Joe Biden are and how your theoretical candidate would reflect a different policy valence specifically with Joe Biden are and how your theoretical candidate would reflect a different policy valence than with the Biden administration, which I view as very centrist and very moderate, which is you guys' brand, what they've put forward. So this is something that we've been very clear about since the beginning, which is we are not doing this

because of subjective judgment about how good or bad Biden is or a judgment about Trump. What we're doing is something that nobody else in the political system seems to be doing, which is actually just responding to what the public clearly wants. Now, they have obviously different reasons for not liking Trump right now or not liking Biden.

But the one thing we can anchor in is that they want a better choice. And in our view, having them ballot, and in July, we're actually gonna be putting out some ideas. What that's gonna finally do for the first time in a long time is there's this huge common sense majority in this country that gets ignored, that both parties don't feel like they have to be accountable to.

It's no accident that No Labels actively avoids specific critiques of Biden or of Trump, preferring to live in the mushy language of common sense and unity. Because the billionaire-backed agenda that they actually support is wildly unpopular. We know that because we can see from their allies and from their track record where their commitments truly lie. No Labels favorite Senator Kyrsten Sinema, she went to the mat to protect the private equity bonanza carried interest loophole. Another No Labels darling, Joe Manchin, he blocked tax hikes on the rich. Josh Gottheimer of the No Labels Aligned Problem Solvers Caucus, he was ready to blow everything up to reinstate the SALT tax deduction for the rich. Their allies have been among the most slavishly devoted to

protecting corporate interests and low taxes for the wealthy. Tellingly, No Labels complains about Republicans and Democrats being beholden to special interests, but then they refuse to disclose their own donors. And to be honest with you, I'm kind of confused about their 2024 tactics, but their goals are really clear. They want to use majoritarian rhetoric to Trojan horse in an agenda that is even more pro-corporate than what Biden or Trump would actually enact. The polar opposite of what the American people truly want. Next up, we've got the right-wing mode of fraudulism, which has been embraced by quite a few prominent figures, but is articulated in its most pristine form by Vivek Ramaswamy. Now, Vivek and DeSantis, among others, they've used the cloak of wokeness to posture as anti-corporate while boosting what is truly a thoroughly

corporate-friendly ideology. Just take a listen. So in a nutshell, here's how it worked. Wall Street got in bed with a bunch of woke millennials. Together, they birthed woke capitalism. And of course, they put Occupy Wall Street up for adoption. You don't even know what that is anymore. That's the Wall Street edition. As it turns out, there's a really similar backroom deal playing out in the other coast, in Silicon Valley as well. And here's the way it works over there. Woke activists demand that big tech censors political views that they don't like. And in return, the left agrees to leave big tech's monopoly power intact. And again, it is working masterfully for both sides. That is how this new arranged marriage works.

This is not a marriage of love. This is more like mutual prostitution, and it is working. And the net result is the rise of America's newest leviathan, the woke industrial complex. It is no longer just Wall Street. It is no longer just Silicon Valley. It is the rise of America's newest leviathan, the woke industrial complex. It is no longer just Wall Street. It is no longer just Silicon Valley. It is the entirety of corporate America as we know it. This is actually a pretty clever trick, which I talked about at greater length in an earlier monologue breaking down Vivek's interview with Jordan Peterson. Basically, embrace anti-corporate language, but instead of looking to address their power grip on the nation through antitrust, getting money out of politics, boosting unions and the like, you hit them on nothing more than their fake diversity and environmental virtue signaling.

You can see this playing out right now with outrage over Target's meaningless pride displays or Bud Light's use of a trans influencer. Do you think these companies actually care one bit about LGBTQ allyship? Of course they don't. They just thought marketing to the queer community was a good money-making strategy. You're not putting even a tiny dent in their social and political power by fixating on their meaningless gestures. But it is a brilliant way to keep your big donors and still maintain your populist aesthetic. Now Vivek has actually made a whole career out of opposing so-called ESG. He even launched his own fund to pressure companies

into strictly pursuing short-term profit maximization without the fake liberal values. But if it needs to be spelled out, forcing companies to only maximize profit is not exactly the revolutionary stance they might want us to think it is. Vivek and his ilk posture like they're opposing capital, when in reality they're just demanding capital be as psychopathically committed to the bottom line as possible. If your biggest beef with corporate America is a Pride Month display, your biggest problem with Wall Street is some diversity hires,

and your biggest complaint about the military-industrial complex is some inclusion training, you have completely missed the point and your phony critique challenges absolutely nothing. And that brings me to the weird world of the online left mode of faux populism as represented by RFK Jr.

Now listen, on a personal level, I actually really like Bobby, and for what it's worth, he strikes me as truly sincere. But it's become increasingly clear we share very little in terms of a commitment to checking corporate power and restoring power to the working class. His approach, though, has been the most successful by far in finding appeal, I think because of his sincerity and because it contains a few truly anti-establishment positions, namely his stated desire to end military aid to Ukraine, to combat online censorship, and to challenge big pharma.

But if you ask him any questions on economics, he will probably tell you he is a, quote, radical free marketeer, and that is music to the ears of every Wall Street ghoul and corporate profiteer. He's not sure what the minimum wage should be, won't fight for Medicare for All, doesn't know what he thinks about UBI and a federal jobs guarantee, and he will signal verbal support for unions but hasn't laid out an actual plan to reverse decades of union density decline. No wonder his bid is received backing from a number of prominent billionaires.

When Breonna Joy Gray recently asked about his support from those billionaires and whether he would accept corporate PAC money, RFK Jr. ended up sounding exactly like Nancy Pelosi, declaring that he's got to raise as much as possible, no matter the potential corruption. I'm going to tell you this. I'm not allowed to coordinate with our super PACs. But it's I think, you know, Bernie was able to do, as you said, to raise a lot of money. And I think Obama was raised a lot of money. And that's what I'm going to focus on from small donors. But, you know, if you're a super PAC, I, you know, the law is just wrong in our country, but it's hard to, you know, at some point you have to say, okay, I'm going to play by the rules as they are given to us. I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to bring a knife to a gunfight. Even on RFK Jr.'s supposedly core anti-establishment

positions, Bobby's opposition to the Ukraine war is not matched by similar critique of U.S. empire. He's made some pretty eyebrow-raising comments about China and notably upholds the pro-Israel line of every American president from both parties. And if he thinks that cutting the defense budget in any meaningful way will be any easier than, say, passing Medicare for all, he's really got another thing coming. On RFK Jr.'s life's work, which is raging against big pharma, correctly pointing out their corruption, but incorrectly pushing fat-free claims that vaccines cause autism, even on this core issue, he would keep the current disgusting system intact. When I asked about checking pharma through nationalizing the industry or at least creating

a public pharma option, he immediately rejected those solutions as contrary to his free market commitment. On censorship, Bobby seems to embrace the right-wing concept of fighting censorship by finding the correct billionaires to control platforms, and that strategy has utterly failed under Elon, rather than advocating for a more fundamental solution that would devolve content moderation to the people. So to sum up, based on what we've heard so far,

under RFK Jr., billionaires keep their social media playthings, big pharma So to sum up, based on what we've heard so far, under RFK Jr., billionaires keep their social media playthings, big pharma continues to pillage, and at least some of the most damaging and hypocritical aspects of the American war machine march on. Like Trump, however, the right people hate RFK, and so that's enough for many to love him without troubling themselves too much with the details. Although to be honest, a lot of his online support is from the libertarian and nationalist right, so RFK Jr.'s comfort with billionaires and corporate power won't necessarily be a problem for them. As for the normie Democrats who are disgusted with Biden and enthused by the Kennedy name, too early to say how they're going to respond once they actually tune in to his pitch.

So there you have it. Lots of billionaire-backed anti-establishment vibes this cycle, and my advice for you, for what it's worth, is to know what you believe in. Make sure you demand specifics. Don't get distracted by surface level critiques. And as always, follow the money. Any candidate or cause billionaires are lining up to support should be a pretty large red flag.

Don't fall for the cheap and easy mental shortcut of just looking for who most triggers the libs. And I guess in a way, Sagar, it's like a- 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 we looking at? Well, as everyone knows, I absolutely love all the emerging data

on mobility of workers during the pandemic. There's something very inspiring to me about picking up and trying something else. It's basically the essence of the American story. Before COVID, things were getting very stagnant for my taste. The ability to vote with your feet and with your dollars as to where you call home is and remains a luxury not available to everyone. But it does also tell us a lot about what the future of America looks like and the impacts on our elections. The work-from-home revolution for the white-collar sector has fundamentally transformed geographic distribution across the United States, has also changed the reason for

why people even move in the first place. Look at this chart. Before 2020, in-person workers far outpaced remote workers in moving in prior year. In other words, the primary reason for relocation pre-COVID was proximity to a job, not necessarily somewhere you wanted to live. But during COVID and after that, it has changed completely. Remote workers are now far more likely to move. But that's not the only story. It's that not just they're likely to move, it's from where and where to.

It's a meme at this point to talk about Austin and Nashville, but some of the cities that people have left and have chosen to move to may surprise you. Let's dive in. As you can see here is a familiar story. San Francisco, San Jose, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, they got destroyed by work from home. Rising crime, cost of living, loss of amenities caused a lot of people to say, screw it, not worth it. Of course, Austin is high up on the list. So is Nashville. But it may surprise you to see Denver, Colorado is actually much higher up than Nashville. Other cities, Raleigh, Portland, Richmond, Dallas, Sacramento, Boston, Minneapolis, all had positive population growth from remote workers. Now let me insert the caveat to this I always give. Right now, it is not available to most people. In fact, remote work

data shows that those who can work remotely have much higher incomes than average, and thus what looks like a deal to them would also price much higher than normal in a non-major metro area and prices out residents who have lived there for a long time. It drives up rents dramatically. Thus, remote work is not just a white-collar phenomenon, it's really the highest earners even of white-collar jobs. Now, though, the next analysis is where things get equally interesting. When people pick up and move, do they move states, or do they just move slightly away from where they already do? This entirely depends on job condition. Fully remote workers, of course, are able to pick up and to move wherever they felt the cost of living most aligned with their ideal space. In other words, more like true freedom. Other workers,

though, more akin to hybrid workers, are very different. They are more likely to accept now a longer commute than before because they are now required to only go into the office possibly a few times a month. Similarly, remote work has really changed space needs. When I was younger and I was living in DC, at one point I lived in a house with nine other guys. We all had our own bedrooms and a single common area. Here's the thing, though. It wasn't that bad. We all worked like crazy.

At any given time, only like four people were actually there. It was mostly a crash pad for career-driven young professionals. That model, though, is increasingly dying. Because if I was 25 and in a job today, the odds are I'd probably be working from home at least a little bit. And if I was, I can't just have a tiny bedroom, which leaks when it rains. You need a little bit of space.

And what new housing demand is showing us is exactly that. While two people may have lived together previously as roommates, increasingly remote workers are spending more on rent and on mortgages because they need more space. This poses a couple of challenges, but conceivably you could have had a married couple previously,

which only has a two-bedroom house. Now, though, may need four, simply because they need two workspaces. This further increases the premium on land and development and on existing housing stock, pushing prices further up. It actually would explain precisely why, despite astronomical increases in mortgage rates, housing prices have not fallen and are in fact still continuing to rise. The demand for housing so far outstrips supply, especially at the higher end of the price sector. It is still a good buy right now

if it is something that you really need. So what do we do with all this? Few things. We could have just let it continue what it is, but as I said before, I think it's a bad idea. It's not really fair to people in desirable remote work cities like Boise, Idaho, or Nashville, or Tampa, that real estate costs are going so sky high with a little plan to really do anything about it. Furthermore,

it's not fair to people who work in the trades, who would probably love to move if they could, but can't because they're, of course, tethered to the land. It's also not fair to everyone in between, those who will now be competing for the same housing stock and likely push down in price. Overall, I think we need a major federal program to make things less laissez-faire and more targeted. Right now, for example, the Sun Belt is blown up, which is great. It's where I grew up, after all. But the industrial Midwest, it's still hemorrhaging. With the right ideas, investment, maybe we could make those cities just as desirable. We could spread the population around areas that were once thriving. The original promise of the American West was anyone could pick up and take a chance out there. We need to

get back to that spirit if we wish to recapture the feeling of possibility that pervaded this country at that time, and to reclaim any real chance that we have at a revival. I think it's really interesting looking at all this. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. So the FTC is upping the ante against Amazon. Let's put this up on the screen from the New York Times. Their headline here is, FTC sues Amazon for tricking users into subscribing to Prime.

The lawsuit is the first time that the Federal Trade Commission under its chair, Lina Khan, has taken Amazon to court. We have the perfect person to break down what exactly this action means. We've got Matt Stoller, who's the director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project and also author of the big sub stack. So just give us a sense of what this is all about and some of the details that were contained in this lawsuit. Basically, this is a lawsuit about how it's almost impossible to cancel your Prime subscription because Amazon has all sorts of tricks and traps to keep you subscribed. And when you read the complaint, it's kind of amazing that Amazon has an internal name for the process of canceling Prime called Project Iliad,

which is the long, it's a story, the Greek story about the long, you know, the Trojan War and how long and difficult it was. And so it's a consumer deception claim about Amazon trying to, you know, they also trick people into signing up in certain ways. But it's essentially, it's like a user interface deceptive claim. But behind it is this recognition that Prime is a really core part of how Amazon runs its business and also controls pricing almost throughout the entire economy. And that is what I find really interesting about the problem. Yeah. So you've done a very popular segment here for us before on Prime. Can you explain some of the issues with Prime from an anti-competitive perspective from so

much more? Just get into it with us. Right. So Prime is about 150, 200 billion members. And Amazon gets about $25 billion a year in subscription revenue from Prime. But that's not really, that money is not what Prime is about. Prime is a market allocation mechanism. So Amazon, when you sign up for Prime, you start ordering a lot more stuff through Amazon. And then that gives Amazon power over entities that want to sell you stuff. So if you have 150 million Prime members, Amazon can then go to every consumer package good company, every sneaker company, every third-party seller and say, hey, if you want access to these Prime members, if you want your product to be what's called Prime eligible, then you have to pay these fees. You have to use our logistics business. You have to advertise on Amazon advertising. And that raises prices on Amazon and is like $100 to $150 billion of free cash flow that's coming to Amazon. Then Amazon forces

those producers, those packaged good producers, those third-party sellers, to sign a deal called a price parity agreement, where they agree not to sell for lower prices off of Amazon. So even if I could sell, say, my sneakers for cheaper through my own website, because I don't have to pay the 40% fee that I would ordinarily have to pay through Amazon, I'm not allowed to, or Amazon would ordinarily have to pay through Amazon. I'm not allowed to, or Amazon will strip my ability to sell through Amazon. And since to reach those 150, 200 million people, I have to sell through Amazon,

I can't afford to lower my price elsewhere. So that is the dynamic. And that actually pushes prices up everywhere in the economy. People think when they go onto Amazon, I'm getting the lowest prices. And they are. But that's only because Amazon forces everyone, they have so much power that they force everyone to raise prices off of Amazon. Matt, obviously, I'm very sympathetic to your views here. In fact, I completely agree with you.

But let me play a devil's advocate and say, hey, a lot of people like Prime. A lot of people like Amazon. A lot of people think it's great that they can push a button on their phone and, you know, their socks or whatever it is they just ordered shows up at their house, like, literally a day later and for a reasonable price. What do you say to them? Because when you do look at surveys, Amazon has very high sort of, like, favorability rating among the American public who do appreciate the ease of the service. Amazon's great. I mean, I use Amazon, and there's no reason.

I mean, there are a lot of problems, and I could nitpick. But, like, yeah, the basic premise is people use it because it's convenient. And the point is that, like, even though it's convenient and they're powerful, they shouldn't be able to keep prices for goods and services higher than they otherwise would be. Like why is it okay for Amazon to force sneakers to be 40% more expensive than they should be? Like just by using these techniques and tactics, there's nothing inherent to the service that forces that.

So if you just got rid of their ability to say, keep prices higher than they otherwise would be, Amazon would still exist. People would still be able to get the convenience from Amazon. It's just that then they would have to compete with companies that could then sell stuff for a better pricing. So I guess that's how I'd respond. It's like there's nothing inherent to it. It's like a baggage fee on an airline. You don't necessarily need a baggage. There's nothing inherent to the technology of flight that requires a baggage fee. There's just some business practices we can change.

Yes. I think that's really well said. And what does a happy medium look like for what like e-commerce and all that should be? And what is Lena Kahn trying to get to? The happy medium is where, you know, Amazon is this wonderful infrastructure and people and firms can use it to transact as a marketplace, but without being manipulated. And so they use it in a kind of a neutral way, a little bit like the post office. Amazon will make its money. They'll charge their fees for using their service, but they won't actually be able to pick and choose winners. They will have to compete on better service and

better pricing like everybody else. And then you'll have other marketplaces that come on that are differentiated, that maybe offer different service levels or different pricing terms. And right now we don't have that. We don't have companies coming in saying, buy through me instead of buying through Amazon and you get like 30% off. Like you've never seen that kind of offer and you should see that kind of offer because that is economically possible. It's just that that extra money is now going to Amazon and it shouldn't. Yeah, smart. Matt, one last question for you. I know you've got to run. You have been tracking closely how the Wall Street Journal has had a real vendetta against Lena Kahn. Can you talk

about that and why they in particular have taken such great interest in what she's up to? Well, so I guess I should say one other thing. You will be able to cancel your Prime subscription if you don't want it, and you won't be tricked into like signing up for things you don't mean. You don't mean to sign up for, not just in Amazon, but kind of across the board, because lots of companies are watching this case. So there's also the basic dynamic here of like, we shouldn't be tricked into things, and we shouldn't make it impossible to cancel stuff. And right now it is. So that's another big part of this case. So yeah, the Wall Street Journal, we set up a website called Wall Street Grumble. They've editorialized against Lena Kahn 68 times. Oh my God.

68 times, right? They're like just obsessed. And the reason is because like, you know, I deal with antitrust and people think it's like a nerdy type of like, nerdy type of thing. It's like kind of niche. But actually it's not. It's about how we interact with each other through the marketplace,

how we buy and sell from one another, our good services, ideas, labor, whatnot. It's like a really core part of the human experience. And for a long time, people have said, OK, that's not something that we can talk about politically. That's what economists and scientists, they have to handle it. And it's debated on places like the Wall Street Journal editorial page. And what Lena Kahn and Jonathan Cantor and some of the other officials in the Biden

administration, not everyone, but it's one faction of the Biden administration, are saying is, no, we should debate these things publicly and monopolies shouldn't be controlling everything. We should be having free and fair commerce among one another. And that is a real threat to the people at the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the antitrust bar and the bank who believe in a society based on rank and order and deference and hierarchy. And that's really what this is about. That's why they're very, very angry at Lena Kahn. She's a kind of a symbol of this. She's also like taking on consolidated corporate power in areas from defense contracting to pharmaceuticals to, you know, to, you know,

retailing to the cloud computing. But like on a gut level, what's really going on is the Wall Street Journal editorial guys are like, we should run things, not the like, not the rabble, right? Yeah, it's fundamentally elitist argument and anti-populist argument. Matt, great to have you.

Thank you so much for taking the time to break this down for us. We really appreciate it. Thanks, Matt. Thanks for having me. Yeah, our pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. Help us get to a million subs.

It would really mean a lot for Tuesday. Don't forget about the deadline here before I get on that plane to India. Not a real deadline. We're just kidding. Of course. We'll appreciate the million no matter when it comes. Otherwise, thank you all to our premium subscribers and others, BreakingPoints.com, if you can help us out. We'll see you all next week. See you all on Monday. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

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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,

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