Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/6/24: Morning Joe Freakout Over Biden Age Concerns, Trump VP Shortlist, Housing Top Concern For Young Voters, Amazon Tribe Gets Starlink

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Morning Joe freaking over Biden age concerns, Trump VP short list, housing prices young voters top concern, Amazon tribe gets addicted to social media.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. 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. Wall Street Journal published a piece about Biden's age, and boy, oh boy, there were some upset liberals. Morning, Joe. Freaking out. Whole meltdown. It's interesting.

The whole thing is interesting. We've also got a look at Trump's short list for VP. Kind of an interesting list there, too. So we'll dig into that. A new survey has revealed that the number one policy priority for Gen Z is housing affordability, something we have been covering here quite a bit but does not get nearly enough attention here in Washington. We also have an interesting story for you. So a remote tribe was given Starlink and gained internet access, and it's not going so well. A lot of revealing things about what, you know, internet does to us, modern society, and new research about our children's

brains and all kinds of stuff to get into there. We also have some very serious news coming out of Israel and the Gaza Strip, in particular. New York Times revealing that the Israeli government was behind an influence op targeting American lawmakers. This comes as we are just waking up to additional carnage in the Gaza Strip, another Israeli airstrike targeting a school, dozens of Palestinians dead, a lot going on there to get into. Meanwhile, Columbia Law Review, they published a single pro-Palestinian article, and the board was so upset that they killed the entire website. Not a joke. Took down the entire website because of this one article. So we have a fantastic guest in to talk to all of that. Yes, that's right. Before we get to any of that, we have an amazing counterpoints debate that is going to come for everybody, for the public tomorrow, for premium subscribers tonight. It is about the Trump trial. We've got a MAGA lawyer versus somebody who's defending the case. So if you want to actually look into both the legal details, because they do argue on that front, but also politically,

you want to go ahead and subscribe. It's going to be great. Televisionbreakingpoints.com. Also, just for everybody in general, for any other questions, support at locals.com if you're having issues with your account. Now, as Crystal said, the Wall Street Journal really poked the hornet's nest here by reporting the most obvious story in the world. Let's put it up there on the screen. Behind closed doors, Biden shows signs of slipping. Wow, really? Just behind closed doors? That's the only place? Participants in meetings said that the 81-year-old president performed poorly at times. The White House said Biden is sharp and his critics are playing partisan politics. Now, I encourage everybody to read this. It's a couple thousand

words. What they do is they have compiled this piece for three separate meetings focusing on Ukraine aid, on debt ceiling aid, and previous economic negotiations and others that compile in concrete terms how and when the exact circumstances of Biden kind of losing it manifest themselves in private meetings. Because that's always been the spin. Yeah, in public, he may lose his step every once in a while, but he's sharp. He's there. He's a dynamo behind closed doors. Let me tell you, he's a dynamo. And I mean, really, what comes through here is just the Pravda-esque nature of how they want to deny reality. For example, 41 people, as I said, were interviewed for this piece, including many Democratic lawmakers who share details and recordings.

And in fact, one of those congressmen, Representative Gregory Meeks, was explicitly told after the White House was told that he had been interviewed by The Wall Street Journal to call back the reporter and just say, you know, I should just give you a call back, according to Representative Gregory Meeks. The White House wanted me to set the record straight. Yeah. They also had people like Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, give quotes like this, quote, Biden is incredibly strong, forceful, and decisive. I mean, this is like North Korea-level propaganda. And I think we have that moment in the interview where they just close. They say after the offices of several Democrats shared with the White House a recording or

details about what was asked in our interview, some of those lawmakers spoke to the journal a second time and once again emphasized Biden's strength. So the White House was like, wait, what are they asking you about? You need to call them back and tell them just how amazing he is and be more strident in your defense of him. So very clear what's going on here. I mean, okay, so none of this will be a surprise to anyone with eyeballs and ears who've been watching Joe Biden.

Some of the details, just to give you a sense of what they're reporting behind closed doors, they lead the piece by saying when President Biden met with congressional leaders in the West Wing in January to negotiate a Ukraine funding deal. He spoke so softly at times that some participants struggled to hear him. That's something you see repeated a couple times in this piece and in various meetings, according to five people familiar with the meeting. He read from notes to make obvious points, paused for extended periods, and sometimes closed his eyes for so long that some in the room wondered whether he had tuned out. There were other anecdotes.

Mike Johnson was involved in one where he seemed to not grasp the details of his own policy. What is described overall is what they call a quote-unquote unevenness. So it's not that he's 100% addled 100% of the time. Sometimes he appears sharp, and sometimes he appears as he reportedly did in this meeting where he's kind of out of it and he's really reliant on note cards and defers to everyone in the room. You aren't even sure whether he's awake or asleep. His speech is, you know, very difficult to understand both because it's soft and also because he fails to enunciate. You get the same defenses from the White House as always. This is nonsense.

You know, they actually look at what a great job he's doing as president of the United States. They also go back to his speech impediment, the stutter. The one thing I'll say, so what opened this piece up for criticism from liberals is the fact that they couldn't get any Democrats on the record to say this. Yes. So all of the on the record comments are from like Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson and other Republicans. And so that's what opened this piece up to the criticism that it was like a partisan hit job. But the other thing that's funny to me, Sagar, is that we go through these periods of time that it's like there's certain moments when you're allowed to say these things out loud. Remember, there was a moment a little while ago after the report came out and, you know,

Biden was this like addled old man. And they're saying, I don't even know if he can prosecute this guy because the jury's just going to think he doesn't really know what's going on. And none of this was intentional. There was a moment there where there was some elite ability as recline, et cetera, to say these things out loud. And now that window has once again closed and the ranks have been closed once again. It's very clear Biden is not going anywhere. He's not being replaced. So we're once again in a place where you are not allowed to say these things that are patently obvious to probably 90% of Americans. That is extraordinarily well said. It's like this constant oscillation between he's too old, we got to replace him.

Actually, no, he's completely fine, as opposed to the best defense you could really muster is his name is not Donald Trump, and he's fine. He's fine-ish. That's basically it. But Biden is such an incredible egomaniac that any suggestion that he's lost any step whatsoever is met with the full fury of the White House. In that Time magazine interview that we spoke about on Tuesday, they asked him, can an 85-year-old really do the job of president? And he was just like, he's like, I could do it better than you. He's like, I could take you, like looking across at these two like mid-40s journalists. That's just obviously not true. I mean, again, he's asking us to deceive, you know, to not believe our eyes. Like that's basically what is being asked. It's, again,

1984 Pravda level. And then speaking of Pravda and of state media and propaganda, you have regime apparatchiks, basically Morning Joe here, Mika and Joe Scarborough, absolutely losing their minds over this Wall Street Journal story. Let's take a listen. People around Mike Johnson and admit that this was basically House Republicans whacking. Why didn't they just ask Marjorie Taylor Greene? Well, exactly. Why didn't they? Yeah, they could have. And Lauren Boebert. See both those guys right there? I've spent time with both of those guys privately. I've spent time

with Biden and Trump privately. I've spent time with Biden and Trump privately. I've spent time with every House speaker over the past 30 years and Joe Biden. It's just not close. If you want to talk about international affairs, if you want to talk about how to get bipartisan legislation, Joe Biden is light years ahead of all of them. And I can also talk about what the French delegation said when they were negotiating with him and what they told me. And friends that I have in that French delegation who were part of those negotiations who said that Macron came out like, wow, OK, it's a lot tougher than we expected. And actually, I think Macron sort of got his back up because Biden was pressing so hard. Can tell you the same thing about Middle Eastern leaders that I talked to. Nobody's saying he's not coach. And some people are suggesting that he he, you know, bit too tough in negotiations.

The United States throws their weight around a little bit too tough in negotiations that the United States throws their weight around a little bit too much. Oh, wow. The French said that he's good, Crystal. Apparently he's the sharpest tack in the history of France. Again, dynamo behind closed doors. Like, okay, well, maybe let us see it sometime. I want to address the Republican thing too, because it's like you said, yeah, you know why they have to rely on Republican on the record quotes? Because the Democrats won't go on the record and say what's actually going on. Yeah. And again, to actually be very fair to the journal, they even quoted Republicans who defended him, really elderly senators, who said, no, yeah, actually what you see is what you get.

He's okay. You know, he's sharp, not sharp as a tack, but they defended him saying, I've never been in a meeting with him where I didn't think that he didn't 100% have what it takes. So what they're upset about is the very concrete examples, Kevin McCarthy maybe being the best one. Is he a partisan guy? Absolutely. But he's like, listen, I used to meet with him when he was vice president eight years ago. I went over to his house all the time. And in fact, he's always had this reliance on note cards. And by the way, I love that that's the defense is that, oh no, he's always been a scripted buffoon being told exactly what to say by his aides.

Or, and nowadays, whenever I meet with him, I am honestly shocked at his diminishment. They also talk about in many of those meetings where, like you highlighted from the story, he doesn't take a commanding role. He'll very frequently just defer to a lot of the people around him. And again, they just say this is standard operating procedure. Even if that's a young and healthy president, that worries me. I don't necessarily want a person who doesn't have a lot of thoughts, who is not driving the meeting, who's constantly deferring to his advisors. You are the elected president of the United States.

So even their own defense, it just doesn't pass the smell test on any of this. There's a few other things. So to be honest with you, I think if people felt like the economy was great, they wouldn't really care that much about Biden's age, even if they had a sense of like, yeah, maybe sometimes in meetings, he's not as sharp as he used to be, or sometimes he has these moments or he's not as forceful, you know, when he's giving a speech, et cetera. I think if people felt like the administration had delivered for them and had been effective then and was in control both on domestic policy and on foreign policy, I think that they would be able to overlook these things. But when you have a sense both that, okay, my personal finances, things are not going well, and I don't have confidence you're the guy that's going to be able to get it together to right the ship, that's when it becomes a really difficult combination. And we should also say, too,

and people were pointing this out, I won't be the only one, that Biden really, he didn't fully commit to this, but he really suggested when he was running for president in 2020 that he may be a one-term president, that he would be the bridge to the next generation. So it wasn't just us or the American people who were like, you know, that's really an advanced age to be holding this incredibly powerful, incredibly demanding job. He himself was basically suggesting that when he was running back in 2020. One other thing I want to address is, you know, part of what Biden's advocates and what Joe Scarborough here are saying is like, well, just look at the results. Look at how effective he's been. And he shouts out in particular foreign policy and how amazing and incredible.

It's like, what country do you live in? What world do you live in? Do you see the way that he's just sort of careening from humiliation to humiliation when it comes to the Middle East in particular, when it comes to Israel in particular? I mean, his own aides have basically acknowledged, he's basically acknowledged that the bear hug Netanyahu strategy was an utter and complete failure. Failure. Every single, you know, quote unquote, red line, none of them, of course, which were actually red lines, but all of the concerns that were expressed, all of the tough conversations that were being had behind the scenes, none of them amounted to jack shit. So how can you look at that and say, oh, this is so effective and he's so commanding and he's so

in charge and this is going so well. So, you know, just on every level, it's gaslighting, it's asking people to not believe what they see in front of their eyes. And it's also painting an incredibly different portrait of the record itself, which, again, I think if the record was effective and people felt like he was delivering for them, his administration was delivering for them, his administration was delivering for them. Yeah, I think they would be willing to overlook these things. But when you put the two together, that's when you end up with a very dire reelection landscape. Absolutely. No, it's very well said. And with what we see in terms of the public and in the

private, it is clearly a man who is not fully in control or whenever he is in control, does so at the whims of his emotions, which this is one of those where it's not even necessarily him being old. What they always say about being old is it just makes you more of who you already are. He's always been that way. He's a stubborn guy. That's how he's been from the very beginning of his career. Let's put this up there on the screen as we can continue to see here with Joe Scarborough.

He says, I have spent a good time talking to Kevin McCarthy through the years and hours of Biden in 2024. There is no comparison. Biden is far sharper, more intellectually curious, and far more insightful on global affairs than any House GOP speaker I have met in over 30 years. It's just, again, he wants us to believe a fake version of who the man that we can all see in front of our eyes is. And funnily enough, whenever it comes to the American people, they can see right through it too. Now, I definitely agree with you. If the economy is doing better, I actually think it'd be okay because people will be like, yeah, whatever. You know, Reagan was old. We reelected him. Everything was fine. But let's put this up

there on the screen. When things are not going well and you're banking on everyone just saying, but Trump, but Trump, but Trump, really what you see is that Trump versus Biden, the conviction so far is not having a big impact yet. This is from New York Magazine in their review of a few of the polls that have come out since the conviction of Donald Trump has come forward, you've seen a slight movement, maybe two points or so. That's been very temporary. But overall, the big promise of the convicted felon really moving everything has just not materialized over and over and over and over again. We see a consistent thing in all of the national polling. Specifically, a lot of the voters Democrats supposedly care about about young people, black people, and Hispanics. They're like, look,

Trump. Yeah, he's an asshole. In fact, many of them agree that he should have been convicted. They agree with the conviction and they still say, but I think that he represents some sort of major change and the economy is just not very good under Biden. So a lot of this is coming back or reverting to the fundamentals, which Biden was really the greatest beneficiary of not having any real fundamental elections. 2020 was a crazy year for a variety of reasons, mostly because of COVID. 2022, same thing. He got the great abortion bump and defied history. But the only question is, is that tail end effect, is that really going to hang on here? I still think there's a chance, but not nearly as good

as it used to be. Yeah, I would I would say that's the case. Put up eight guys, these screenshots with the the voter comment. This is so funny because it just shows you like, you know, as much as we try to get in the head of the average voter, you can never get in the head of the average voter. They are their own. They have their own view of the world voter. You can never get in the head of the average voter. They are their own. They have their own view of the world. And I genuinely love that. So this was a Frank Luntz moderated focus group post-Trump conviction. And we've got this guy, Ben. He's 42. He's from Texas. He's white. He's a college advisor. And there were a few comments he made that people were taking note of with regards to the conviction. So one of them, he says, listen, of the Stormy Daniels stuff, we're all regular people with regular jobs. If any of us all did like one thousandth of what this guy did

for being on trial, the financial stuff, the forms, the bribes, the meeting with people, we all would have been fired. True. We all would have been out on our butts applying for jobs at grocery stores or driving Uber or whatnot. You're saying it's all like a political theater and farce and whatnot. But he was having an affair with a porn star and not a particularly attractive one at that. There are so many wonderful porn stars out there. So the first comment is about like, really, this porn star? There are other so much better porn stars out there for you to have an affair with. But that's not all from Ben.

He also talks about how he wants a president. This is his quote. I want a president who's going to be able to cover up a $130,000 bribe to Stormy Daniels. If he can't pull that off, I'm not going to trust him with the nuclear football. This seems like such an easy thing for him to screw up. I'm kind of leaning toward Biden now. He's like, listen, if you can't even cover up your affair with a porn star properly, like, how are you competent

to run government? I don't know. I think I'm going towards the other guy. I love that logic. It's so amazing. It's perfect. He's got a point.

He's got a point, to be honest with you. At a certain way, you can see it. You can kind of see what he's talking about. We also have to pull the latest Biden moment, which is just, I guess, odd. Is odd the kindest way to put this? Odd. It's just, this is what people think about whenever people are like, man, Biden, he's really a hold. Let's take a listen.

Mr. President, can you tell us your Donald Trump's proposal to help the police and the commissioner and blame things about the police response to that, sir? Do you think the conviction will have an impact on the campaign? We'd love to hear your thoughts, sir. Should he be on the ballot, sir? For people who are just

listening, he's walking out of this presser very slowly, old man, gay. I saw people online saying it looks like he's being controlled by puppets. You know, it's very like. And then he stops. Somebody shouts a question. He stops. He slowly turns and gives this weird grin and then slowly turns back. And it's just, I mean, listen, is it a big, of course it's not a big deal,

but it was one of those things that went crazy viral because it just was odd. And it showed off all of his like old man gates and tendencies and whatever. And he's, you know, producer Mack was probably trying to come up with some, like, witty retort, but his brain just doesn't have that in it anymore, so he just turns back and keeps walking off. Yeah, I have a couple friends on the White House press corps, and, like, what they tell me is that with him,

it all comes across in the camera, too, but it's like, when he puts those aviators on, he really believes he's 40 years old again. Like, in his head, he believes he's still got it all. Like in his head, he believes he's still got it all there. And any suggestion, any even inkling that something is moving away, he just cannot mentally handle that. And on a certain level, you know, I think we can all empathize. We know a lot of, there's a lot of old people who want to feel that way, but he's running

for reelection. And same thing there with his gate. Like, look at him walk. Look at the way that he talks. Remember the Afghanistan press conference? That one's burned into my mind because that's the first time I was like, oh, my God. Whenever he was like whispering and leaning, you know, they're talking about some of those who died. I was like, oh, my, you can't do this. And, you know, like mixing up the president of Egypt with the president of Mexico, telling stories about, you know, the German chancellor who's been dead for however many years. Died 10 years ago. And retelling the same anecdote.

And again, these are things, if you have someone in your life of you've, you know, loved dearly and who's aging, like, these will all seem very familiar to you. The inability to grasp certain words at certain times, the mixing up of people,

of events, of years, the forgetting that you just told this anecdote, you know, five minutes ago, and now you're telling this anecdote again. These are all just very common, typical things that we see. And, you know, I also have to say, if Democrats really believe this rhetoric about how the whole country is at stake and democracy is on the line, et cetera, like, why'd you close ranks against this guy? We see in every poll, he underperforms every single Democratic Senate candidate.

All of them, 100%. He underperforms them. Like, I am at this point really convinced that you could put almost anyone else into the slot and they would outperform Joe Biden. Yeah, I know that goes against history because typically there's a huge incumbency advantage, but you have a very specific and unique set of circumstances here. And Democrats decided to close ranks, I think in large part after the midterm elections

went better than expected. That kind of closed the door to what Gavin Newsom or whoever was playing with the idea of jumping in the race. And now they're just locked into denying the reality that's in front of all of our faces. Yeah, absolutely. And so what we really are going to watch is a very similar thing that happened in the lead up to the 2020 election. So in 2019, when Biden is losing his first two primaries and caucuses, and he's a joke, fifth place, everybody, including MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, is like, this guy's way too old. What is it? Which Castro was it? Was it Joaquin? Maybe Julian. Whatever one was running

for office. He even calls him out on the debate stage. This is open. It's acknowledged. Democratic elites were allowed to talk about Julian. There we go. All right. I apologize. They're twins. They literally look the same. It's not my fault. But then, you know, what happens? The Atlantic article comes out and he becomes the nominee. And then the COVID is a national crisis. So what happens? Oh, he has a magical stutter that he had as a child and then happened to just reemerge when he turned, oh, around 78 years old. And even though we've all seen him in public life, including many of these reporters, know him personally, know that he could speak cogently in the past. I've played here, I've done monologues in the past of his meet the press appearances over the years up until 2017,

completely different individual. I personally saw him on the campaign trail in 2012, completely different man to what he is. But it was after that article, then the attacks come out. No, we're not allowed to talk about it. So very similar thing. Ezra Klein can say it. Nate Silver could write it. That was kosher. That was okay. Now it's official. We're less than six months till election day. We got to put the guardrails back on. But this is where we don't live in the monoculture media moments anymore. Every person on TikTok, Instagram, and everywhere can see these memes proliferate everywhere. So they can't cover it up anymore. So person on TikTok, Instagram, and everywhere can see these memes proliferate everywhere. So they can't cover it up anymore. So good luck. Good luck to you. That's all I can say.

At the same time, we got some interesting Trump VP news that is worth digging into. This came out very late last night. So let's go and put this up there on the screen. Let's actually get into the official list. It's funny to me that Doug Burgum is now. Yeah, so Burgum is now. I did not see that coming. He's right up at the top, guys. All right, so the Trump campaign has officially sent a vice presidential vetting paperwork. For those who don't know, the paperwork thing, it's like you have to fill out all your stock investments.

Have you ever hired an illegal immigrant? Anything that could ever be compromising on you, et cetera. So the list so far, Doug Burgum, Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance, Tim Scott, Byron Donalds, Elise Stefanik, and Ben Carson. So those are the people who are on the list. I also saw Axios this morning saying that Tom Cotton similarly received paperwork. We'll see here, the only individual, yeah, Tom Cotton is the only individual here that was added to the Axios list who was not included in the Associated Press. But those are the so-called VP shortlist. Of course, it's Trump,

and things can literally change at any time. One name that didn't appear on there that some people have spoken to me about is Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I would not sleep on her. The only thing ding against her is she didn't endorse Trump immediately whenever he asked her to. She wanted to see how it played out with Ron DeSantis. But that would be the only name I think I would add to this one. For me, as I've said, I always think he's going to be one of three people. Maybe Burgum now, I guess, since he's filthy rich. But I either think it's going to be Tim Scott, it's going to be J.D. Vance, or Elise Stefanik, all depending on the whims of the candidate in the moment. If he wants the race card that he can play on TV, we're going with Tim Scott.

If he wants the woman because he thinks abortion is going to be a major issue, he's going with Elise, who is much more socially moderate than most other people in the GOP. She's literally a New York Republican. And then if he's 100% solid and he wants somebody who is like his id who can help manage the bureaucracy, that's when you pick J.D. But you only do that if you're feeling real confident that you're 100% going to win. So that's where my mind is at with all three. I don't want to even try to get inside Donald Trump's head. I just don't think that I have a good read on how he would be looking at

any of these names. But a few things that were interesting to me was, first, Elise Stefanik being the only woman on there. That's surprising to me because previously a lot of the commentary was that he was very likely to pick a woman. We've had a lot of women who have been floated from Carrie Lake to Kristi Noem, who I think, you know, her chances really fell apart with the whole book situation. And I think also because her state that she's governor of has such extreme abortion laws, I think that also was a problem for him. But, you know, there have been a variety of women who have been floated. The only one, though, that makes it on the list is Elise Stefanik. So that was interesting. You have three different, a lot of these choices, as we say on the Democratic

side, they're also filtered through an identity lens. So you have three different black men. That's interesting to me. Marco Rubio is obviously Latino. There is clearly some shift in both among black men and among Latino men towards Republicans. Maybe Trump is thinking, I don't really buy into this logic, by the way, but this is like standard thinking. Maybe he's thinking that if he puts a black man or a Latino man on the ticket, that will further the appeal to those demographic groups. Last time around, we know he made a very strategic and very smart, electorally smart choice with Mike Pence. He knew at that point he was a little shaky

with evangelicals and Mike Pence was meant to be a signal to them and to sort of ease their minds about going with this guy who's not religious at all and serial philanderer and all of those sorts of things. that not only are his electoral prospects on the line, but potentially his own personal freedom is on the line, that he will make a similarly strategic choice of whatever group he thinks needs to be shored up. Which is why, I mean, the one that I feel most skeptical of is J.D. Vance, because I just don't see what else that electorally brings to the ticket for him whatsoever. That's the question, is how is he,

like I said, I only think he's going to pick J.D. He's like, I'm 100% going to win this election. Now it's all about governance. But having met Trump, spent some time with him, he very rarely speaks about governance. So that's one of the issues. Now, one thing you could say is that J.D. has been doing a pretty good job recently of serving as like the media, like this is the thing about Trump. It's all about image. So he really enjoyed the, you know, he goes on CNN and goes toe-to-toe with Wolf Blitzer or Caitlin Collins or whatever. But let's be honest, all of these candidates who are underneath J.D. can also do it. Elise Stefanik, that's her bread and butter. She emerged

as his attack dog while it was impeachment one and impeachment two. They're all also going to do that, whether they're the VP pick or not. Correct. Yeah. So it's not like he loses that if, you know, if they're not on the ticket. And then, you know, with Burgum, I think it's just like, is he going to make the RFK Jr. choice of like, listen, I just need the money. So come on board, bills coming out of every or coming out of wherever. Nice callback. Trump has got over 100 million legal bills. He is hitting up every rich person on the planet right now. And in fact, there is a major concerted effort behind the scenes. For those of us who are like billionaire watchers, you had the Sequoia founder, Doug Leone, come out and endorse Trump.

This guy's worth like $8 billion. He just has this, he's got this upcoming fundraiser tonight, actually, with David Sachs and Chamath Palihapitiya over at the All In podcast. They actually sold that entire thing out at Silicon Valley. There's a lot of billionaires who will be in attendance. You've got Trump getting this $100 million check from Miriam Adelson, allegedly in exchange for no Palestinian sovereignty over the West Bank. You've got Nikki Haley, who recently just took a Gulf Sands jet, Miriam's jet to Israel that we're spotting. I mean, if you watch these things very closely, he is hard up more for big institutional money this time around than at any previous time. And in fact, just yesterday, I read an article about how

small dollar donors, both on the Democratic and Republican side, are at all-time lows. Yeah, that's right. Largely because the Dems tapped the crap out of it during Roe versus Wade. They've raised and squeezed every dollar that they can. And Trump's been hitting his list for what, like nine years straight now? And they hit that list hard. And they hit it. So even though, yes, he raised his $53 million on the aggregate, that dollar is an all-time low. Campaigns are still just as expensive. Both sides are going to spend well over a billion. So what do you do? Hire the billionaire. Not a bad strategy, I would add. Not a bad strategy. Well, and you're right that

Burgum, it's not just his own personal net worth, which is quite high, but also he would be a sort of sign of comfort. In the same way that Mike Pence gave comfort to evangelicals, he would give comfort to the Wall Street types who already have kind of warmed to Trump because they don't like Biden's antitrust policy is the biggest rub there. And they want Trump to extend the tax cuts. They want their tax cuts. And he has overtly promised them reportedly at fundraisers like I will look out for you specifically, Mr. and Mrs. Billionaire. If I am reelected, you will get your tax cuts. Oil execs, you will get your deregulation. Like it's all there for you. So he's making these explicit material plays to the billionaire class. That seems to be very important to him.

And so a Doug Burgum fits perfectly into that strategy of like, look, I'm not getting some crazy lunatic out there talking. This is a business guy right out of Silicon Valley that has very standard issue, conservative, Reaganite type of views. That's who's going to be my number two to help continue to shore up his support in these circles, which have already warmed to him versus how they perceived him in 2016 and in 2020. Yeah, you're right. And another thing that I forgot to mention, this came across my radar just yesterday.

Trump is actually going to be meeting with the Business Roundtable, which is like, I mean, it's hard to explain these things to people who don't work in Washington. But like the Business Roundtable is like the chamber of commerce, like on steroids. It is the top 100 richest companies in the United States. Jeff Bezos, Microsoft, Exxon, everybody's there. Their chief lobbyist, one of the most powerful people up there with the chamber in Washington. Really what it's come down to, again, as I understood is people aren't stupid. 2025, the tax return, the tax cuts expire. Somebody is either going to extend them or not. If Biden is there, he'll probably extend 75% of them. They want 100%. And not only do they want 100%, they want you to continue to cut the corporate floor to extend the individual rates. And they don't want to have a child tax credit

included, which allegedly is like the trade that the Democrats would offer should Biden win the election. So this is, it's all business at this point. It's just like, listen, you guys, you were a great gift to business last time around. So this time around, we're much more overtly comfortable backing you. That's how you see guys like Ken Griffin, who said, I would never vote for Trump. And he spent a hundred million dollars or whatever on Ron DeSantis. He's like, yeah, I could see it. You know, maybe I'll back Trump. This is a business transaction.

Like, you're cut and dry. And so that's, in a way, Trump's political genius is mobilizing a lot of these more, like, working class voters, or at the very least, like, the white working class voters. They're all coming out for him for immigration, for culture purposes. And then it's a really, really like almost a Reagan play. And at the same time, you almost explicitly align yourself at this point with big business to bring those two in. That's a very, very powerful political movement if you can get people past some of the other Trump nonsense. But for them, at this point, they don't care about the character stuff anymore.

They know that he's here to stay, and they're willing to make the trade. And probably a good one, right? If you see what happened in 2017. I mean, he has dropped, like, if you go back and listen to the rhetoric in 2016, the way he really positioned himself, and it was always a farce we saw by the way he governed, but he really did position himself. And at that time, you didn't know as a more populist figure. I mean, the trade deals were really central to the discussion. Drain the swamp, like all of that was really core. That is all gone. There's no semblance of it left whatsoever. Instead, you just get report after report of the, you know, hey, I'm going to sell American foreign policy to Miriam Adelson for $100 million. Hey, you don't like the Palestinian protests?

I'm going to crush them. I'm going to deport them. I'm going to set that movement back 30 years. Hey, you want your tax cuts? No problem. Vote for me. Give me $25 million and I'll make sure that you get your tax cuts. Hey, you want to be able to frack and drill and have absolutely no regulations? No problem. Vote for me. It's very direct. It's very overt. And so, yes, if you can keep the working class coalition that you started to realign, you know, starting in 2016, and you can add in all the billionaire class, that is a very powerful coalition. I guess the question, the problem is, it's not like the Democrats are offering their own, like, populist opposition to that. So there's no one playing in the lane, really, of like working class material politics.

And one of the things Ryan and Emily covered this fantastically in CounterPoints yesterday, we've seen now a couple elections around the world, obviously it's not analogous, America's its own beast, that really showed the power of those material politics. The overwhelming victory in Mexico for Claudia Sheinbaum, the shocking setback for Modi in India, which was very much, you know, driven by economics and lower caste really turning on him because he was only delivering the sort of cultural bullshit. And they're like, but I also need my wages and I need a job. So we've in South Africa, the elections there also were a warning sign about, you know, material politics and how important that is. We just don't have a single player in terms of the two main parties that is even attempting

to go in that direction. That's what I was going to say. You know, if the Biden campaign were intelligent, they would say all the things I just said, but they don't have that capacity. They're too busy quibbling with the Wall Street Journal over whether Biden is too old or calling him like convicted Don or felon Don. As I've said a million times, and as we're about to get to, if you want to win young people back, if you want to bring black people back, young Hispanics, the number one reason all of these people are even considering voting for Trump is they think he is a major shakeup to the system and they apply that to their own lives. One of the most important issues which nobody ever talks about, housing affordability, what

can we actually do about it, and how central this is for voting issues. Let's put this up there on the screen. So I hear a lot of Republicans like, oh, these Gen Z folks, they're obsessed with trans and all this. Their pronouns, et cetera, et cetera. And some of that is true for people who are online. But it turns out that they're just like the rest of us. This is a new survey from Redfin.

Housing affordability is the Gen Z top voting issue, outweighing abortion and the economy, although I would put it with the economy. More than 9 in 10 adult Gen Zers say that housing affordability is important when considering who they will vote in their upcoming presidential election. It is the top issue by ranking from that new report from Redfin and that Gen Zers quote, were more likely to rate housing affordability as an important factor in their vote than any other issue that they were asked about, including the economy, abortion, guns, preserving democracy, and foreign wars. This is from 3,000 US homeowners and renters that they just conducted in February of 2024. Why I think that this is so important is that if you look at the breakdown, and this actually is Gen Z specifically, but I'll include

everybody. Gen Z, this is the ranking. Housing affordability, 91%. Strength of the overall economy, 82%. Education, 82%. Then guns and abortion. So the culture issues are four and five that are in that ranking. If you shift over to millennials, you can actually see that this, quote, strength of the overall democracy, education, housing affordability are all top three. They're actually roughly tied. It's like 89% and 87%. We're quibbling within a percentage point or so. Housing affordability begins to drop only amongst Gen Xers

and amongst boomers from fourth and almost sixth, specifically whenever it comes to the boomers. The younger you are in this country, Gen Z in particular, because they're at the very entry of the housing market, and they're probably the ones getting squeezed the most by all this rent inflation because they've, you know, they have to had to come in where I at least had some roughly cheaper rent maybe 10 years ago. But nowadays, I mean, they're walking in and just getting hit right off the bat. Put this up on the screen just to illustrate how disastrous things are right now. The median mortgage payment in the United States is currently at a record high of $2,894 per month in May of 2024. That is a 14% increase from just 2023.

It's a 23% increase from 2022. And wait for this one. It is a 78% increase from 2021. A 78% increase for the median monthly mortgage payment from 2021 in just the span of three years. No wonder you should be freaking out. That is straight up unattainable. That's almost $3,000 a month. That's 36 grand a year, roughly after tax income that is coming out. If you want to try and not break the rule of it shouldn't be more than a third of your take-home pay or whatever, good luck. Hope you make a hundred grand.

You know, it's like, and then if you do make a hundred grand, you're very likely not living in a place where you can get anywhere close to that median. You are living in one of the top 10 metro areas and you're going to be ponying up a million bucks for a house if you're even lucky to be able to afford one or you better have rich parents. Good luck to you. I mean, a 78% increase just from 2021. That is wild. And listen, one of the things I found interesting in the Redfin survey of people's

issue priorities. So when you get to Gen X and boomers who benefited when they were coming into adulthood from much more affordable housing, certainly for the boomers, less so for the Xers. But still, they rank preserving democracy above housing affordability. And obviously, that's the pitch that the Democratic Party is really leaning into that along with abortion rights. But the preserving democracy, that's been central for Biden. It was central in the last campaign. It's central for him now. And listen, the bottom line is you can't really expect people to care that much about preserving democracy if they feel like democracy hasn't been

good for them. They're just not going to prioritize that highly. You know, the way for people to really care about democracy is when they see the democracy delivering for them and their families. Then it's like, okay, this is a great system. This is something that's worth fighting for and worth preserving. But if all you see is your concerns getting ignored and asset prices going up and up and up year after year after year in a way that benefits people who already own those assets but completely screws people who are shut out of ever owning those assets, then yeah, you're going to prioritize other things and you're not going to be as impressed with the like, but Trump argument this time around. And that's exactly what we're seeing.

I mentioned the asset prices. This is related to this, put the Wall Street Journal thing up on the screen, which shows one of the major bifurcations in our economy, because it really is a tale of the haves and have nots. Americans overall now have more investment income than ever before. Booming economy, rising household wealth help some consumers to keep spending. So people who have houses, people who have 401ks that are flush with investment cash, people who have stocks, who have mutual funds, who have bonds. Those people are doing very well. And effectively, not to get too much in the economic weeds here, but we've had decades where a lot of economic policy has basically been dedicated to increasing and increasing and increasing asset

prices. Which again, is great if you already own stuff and it's terrible if you don't. And you basically been dedicated to increasing and increasing and increasing asset prices, which, again, is great if you already own stuff and is terrible if you don't and you would like to one day have a house, for example, and be able to get into the asset ownership economy. And we never talked about that as inflation, right? It was seen to be totally separate from what people are paying at the grocery store and those sorts of transactions. Well, first of all, they're not totally separate. And second of all, when you create this huge divide between the asset ownership class and everyone else, that just continues to spiral out of control. And we have more indications of that that you can put this up on the screen.

The world has never had as many rich people as it does right now. The world's richest have never been so wealthy. So according to a new study, the number of high net worth individuals rose by 5% last year. So yeah, again, if you've got a lot of stocks, if you've got a house and you're seeing the way those prices are spiraling and spiraling and spiraling, this is all working out pretty well for you. But if you're Gen Z, if you're millennial, if you're, you know, Gen Alpha when they come along as well, assuming this trend continues, this is a really dire situation. And you have so little hope of achieving the level of stability and comfort and just like middle class lack of precarity that your parents may have benefited from.

Yeah, absolutely. You really see a real shift too. Also, I kind of hate stuff like that too because people will – there's a lot of neoliberals out there who will be like, see, we're living in the best time. They're like, world's richest have never been so wealthy. The vast majority of this new wealth is coming from China. You know, I just listened to this great series. It's called The Acquired Podcast. Shout out to The Acquired Podcast. It's called the acquired podcast shout out to the acquired podcast

It's like a history of companies and they did Hermes It sounds like this thing, you know interesting in terms of history of luxury goods over 50% of their business now is just from China Like all of their growth is China and then the other 10% is Japan If you look at a lot of this stuff that's getting rolled up It is at the direct expense of the American middle class and multi-billionaires are getting created overseas. There was a guy named Donald Trump. He used to talk about this back in the day. Not so much anymore. Not as much anymore. Yeah, I guess if he did, maybe it would help him out. But what we see is very important is that overall fundamentals of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, the genuine American dream

post-World War II order, it has eroded to the point of it basically being dead with the combination of high interest rates, extremely high prices, and a very, very middle and soft job market. Now, again, I want to explain there because the Biden administration plays tricks. Oh, we have 4% unemployment, et cetera. When you look at the wages and you look at the level of underemployment, specifically with a lot of these Gen Zs, and you combine household debt, credit card debt, and student debt on top of that, it's the rawest deal since basically from the beginning. Let's also put this up there again on the screen just to see people for swing voters. Amongst swing voters,

policies that could be Biden, part of Biden's second term, swing voters are split on which would make them vote for him. But what you see increasingly is that the economy and the high cost of living and anything that could actually address that is wildly popular. The most popular in this survey is raising taxes on the wealthy at 23%, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, increased border security at 17%, expansion of Medicare to vision, dental, and hearing at 16%, increased protections for abortion at 16%, crackdown on corporate price gouging at 16%, limit the sale of assault weapons 12%, cancel student debt for more borrowers 11%, increase funding for- so you see a mix and a smattering of culture.

But you know at the very, very top, you've got raising taxes on the wealthy, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. I mean it's very clear what the impetus and the things that could actually bring people out to vote for you. And you could do it in such a way where you don't have to touch anybody's household balance sheets or any of these things. I really encourage people to go and to learn about things like the step-up basis for multi-gajillionaires and for the carried interest loophole. I mean, that one alone in terms of, or high-frequency trading tax, any of this stuff, if you adjust that even marginally to like 1%,

right now the carried interest is zero. So let's say we put like 5%. We're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars that are unlocked immediately. Nobody on earth except for a bunch of people on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley would feel that. And yet, you know, it's smeared by a lot of those people in the same way as if you're going to some doctor's house who's making 300 grand and be like, all right, doc, it's time to pony up 10 more percent of your income. That's what the sheer reality of how the ultra wealthy get away with paying effective tax rates of like 5% to 10% through manipulating the tax code is one which has been lost from the national discourse. And it's really a tragedy. But at the very least, people do intuitively understand that you can do that and you should, you know, in some cases, while actually still not touching even the middle class, upper middle class way of life at all. You don't have to. It's very interesting what just happened in Mexico and the Mexican economic model under AMLO because it is a direct contradiction of all of the, you know, all of the talking points of neoliberalism.

You know, the idea of like rise and tide lifts all boats. So if we just keep growing the GDP, if we just, you know, keep shipping tax cuts to the rich and to corporations, and that's going to cause GDP growth to rise, that's going to be good for everyone. Well, the Mexican economy, it hasn't been growing gangbusters. I mean, it's been fairly anemic in terms of GDP growth. But the policy, a variety of policies, but one of them in particular, which was the sort of aggressive hikes of the minimum wage, which really delivered for a vast majority of average Mexicans, made it so that even under relatively anemic GDP growth, people felt like, but this is working much better for me.

That is so directly contradictory to the logic that has prevailed here for my entire life and your entire life, certainly. So I thought that was an extraordinary example. And obviously, not only was it good for average workers there, but obviously it was extraordinarily good for AMLO and now his successor in terms of electoral politics. So, you know, if you look at these surveys, it's not a mystery. The number one thing that people say would shift them to Biden is if he raised taxes on the rich. And he's got a wide open lane because you've got Donald Trump out there meeting with billionaires and saying, I'm going to cut your taxes. I did it last time and I'm going to make sure that we do it again. So the lane is open if anyone wanted to actually take it. And I think the housing one,

I mean, we've talked about this ad nauseum at this point because it's just so obvious. It's just so clear. And there, I want to be fair, there are some Democratic proposals that are out there that kind of tinker around the edges. But in terms of someone really taking hold of this issue and really running on it aggressively, it just doesn't happen. And part of it is because you have a lot of powerful interests and a lot of boomers who vote a whole lot are very interested in keeping those housing prices high

and continuing to see an escalation in their own net worth as asset prices continue to inflate and inflate and inflate. So very interesting survey, very revealing of what people's actual priorities are and what could move the needle. Shocking, shocking, isn't it? I mean, yeah, look, and I'll return to what you said about Mexico. And I mean, this is, again, is a very counter to a lot of the way that Americans think. And this is empirical. Crime under AMLO has gotten out of control. There have been insane cartel killings and all that. He's still one of the most popular presidents in the entire,

he's one of the most popular leaders in the world. I'd also point back to Modi. One of the things that people always misunderstand India, the original Modi, 2014 Modi, it had nothing to do with culture. It was about the broken economic consensus of the Congress party. There was this whole program called Bharat Rice, where people were getting free food. 800 million

people were getting free food from the government. There was also a direct attack at corruption. He himself was viewed as unassailable. He's not married. And part of the thing is in India, it's very common to have like nepotistic arrangements. So his lack of children was like a big selling point. Yeah, exactly. There's no, there's no familial network. He can like spread the money around. He was seen in the early period as a real economic savior. Then what happens after COVID? You have massive inflation. You have all these shocks to the economy. You have some of this crazy stuff going on with Adnani and company. And they literally, they really forgot, you know, some of their early roots. And that's what happened with a lot of these low-cast voters who then return to the Congress party. And now with the new coalition, he's going to have,

if he wants to win any popular election again, or BJP does, they are going to have to return to that devaluation that happened early, where they tried to target a lot of the corruption, where they really tried to go after inflation. They have to stop necessarily targeting like rich FDI to come in and actually try and rise some of the wages and things like that. So let that be a lesson, too, in terms of what things abroad can teach us here in the country. Yeah, I mean, it seems like they really misjudged their own electorate. And they thought it was like, if we just deliver you this like Hindu nationalist cultural piece, that will be sufficient. And, you know, it looks like they were really rebuked on that. Yeah. Well, and also, look, it's a very different country to poll.

Half, you know, there's a huge portion of the population doesn't even read. Like it's a tough place to actually gauge like what the hell is going on. People speak all these different languages. I don't know. I'm by no means an expert. This is just from the people that I trust who cover India from what I've been able to read. But broadly, what it came down to is that they had the choice on like what to really emphasize going into the election. And in going with that, they thought they had done enough on the economic front that they could do some of the cultural stuff and fuse that together to win an overwhelming popular majority. But they've significantly misjudged how a lot of poor,

lower caste Indians were going to see what they viewed as an abandonment of that economic cause. So by returning, but in the coalition government where they are right now, they're definitely going to have to return to their roots. Or what we were watching is for years, everyone said, oh, the Congress party in India is dead. It's dead forever now. Definitely not true. Now, you know, Rahul Gandhi and all these people, they're making a comeback. I don't necessarily want to see that. So you guys better get your act together if you want to return to that big consensus that everybody thought that you had in India. All right, let's go to the internet section. I've been laughing about this for two days straight

because it is just the most perfect story. A gift of altruism perhaps turns into a curse. Let's put this up there on the screen. So there's a remote Amazonian tribe, which very recently was given access to the internet by Starlink and Elon Musk. It was viewed as a gift. There was some other donor who was the benefactor who gifted it. He gifted it. It was an Elon Musk Starlink. To the Marubo people, which is deep.

I'm going to mispronounce this. It is, quote, huts scattered hundreds of miles along the Itu River deep in the Amazonian rainforest. They speak their own language. They take ayahuasca to connect with the forest spirits and they trap spider monkeys to make soup or to keep as pets. They have preserved this life for hundreds of years through isolation. Some villages take up to a week just to reach. In September, they were given access to high speed internet. And this is a 2,000-member tribe that is deep in Brazil. Well, it appears that since September, things have not been going so well, according to

the elders. It seems that many of the younger folks are now hooked, quote, on porn and on social media. Some of the quotes in here are just fantastic. So here's some of the elders who are talking. When it arrived, everyone was happy. But now things have gotten worse. Young people have gotten lazy because of the internet. They are learning the ways of the white people. They say the Marubo are a very chaste tribe who frown even upon kissing in public.

But now, ever since the arrival of the internet and of pornography, quote, young Marubo men have been sharing porn in group chats. I love how they already have group chats and have already observed more, quote, aggressive sexual behavior. The elders say we are very worried young people are going to want to try it, he says, of kinky sex acts that they have been exposed to on the screen. Everyone is so connected. Sometimes they stop talking to their own family. They also talk about how social media and others has increased the amount of screen time that a lot of people are spending. And they are forgetting that they don't live the type of lifestyle you and I live, Crystal. They live an actual subsistence life. They're like, hey, man, you got to go fish. Oh, we're not eating. You gotta get your ass out there because

we're old. You're the ones who are supposed to feed us and you need to go catch everything. It's a relatively communal society. So this is like the perfect example. What happens when technology rolls in? It's a tale as old as time. We've got an indigenous way of life. There's actual balance with nature. And then what happens? Oh, the Russians come in and they happen to leave a bottle of alcohol there and a piece of metal and boom, 10 years later, everything goes to shit. Every single time you read about something like this, it's almost never a positive development.

And yet, we can see in the most extreme way what this has done on a macro level to our overall society. So that's why I wanted to cover it. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot. First of all, whose crazy idea was this? You can't, you can't open the fire. Like they got to start with some flip phones, some dial up, you know, you got to ease into this stuff. You can't just go full internet starlink at high speed access. We had years to build up some sort of a tolerance to this stuff. It have antibodies. It's true.

One of the things they talked about is people getting scammed. Because think if you live in, like, this village and you know everyone and you have these communal relationships. Like, people have to be honest with each other because you have to see these people face to face. You rely on them for your own, like, life and ability to hunt and do the things that you need to do to survive. So the idea of like this random person on the internet is lying to me and they're scamming me must be so foreign. You see this with elderly people too. Like the things that we're sort of inured to and we'll see right off the bat is just a scam.

Oh, totally. Older people, because they grew up in a different time when that type of scam wasn't prevalent. They don't have the same defense mechanism. You have to develop those things over time. So, yeah, I think, listen, it's the New York Post. This may be really overstated. No, it's from the New York Times. No, no, no. There's an underlying report that's correct. I do want to say there's like, you know, I'm a little bit skeptical of some of the nature of the reporting, but I have no doubt that this has like turned their, you know, traditional lifestyle upside down. And I also have no doubt there's no putting

the genie back in the bottle because as much as we know this technology comes with a million downsides that I'm struggling with my own kids and my own life, whatever. We also know it comes with like some really cool stuff. And it's like, you know, I'm not looking to get rid of my smartphone and I'm sure they're not looking to get rid of their internet access altogether either because it has had positive benefits as well, right? They talk about how they've been able to save lives. People get bitten by venomous snakes, and now they can get help more quickly. They can actually bring someone in to help people survive. They talk about how it's expanded the horizons of their young people also, where, you know, they have aspirations that they never would have been able to have before. And that can be a beautiful thing as well. So, you know, it's the double-edged sword. Of course, we were talking

about India in our previous segment. I'll mention this. So I was recently in India. The way technology and mobile payments is taken off is incredible and so much to the benefit of the poorer classes in India. I watch them have cheap access that they can go on the street. Imagine there's like a cow and a donkey walking by and you go to a guy who's sitting in a bamboo chair and you buy a SIM card off of him, which has 200 megabytes of data for a hundred rupees or something like that. And they have automatic, which is like a dollar just for everybody who is watching. Then they put it into their phone and they've got automatic like 5G plus internet. Half of these guys can barely read, but the ability for the cheap internet and access and all that, it's opened up job opportunities. It's given them the ability to not have to rely as much on cash. They pay each other through

verified payments because corruption and scams are a big problem in India. My grandparents are very old. They're over 90 years old. They literally can WhatsApp the corner stores for what they want. The corner lady comes to their apartment door and then he pays her on what? I'm watching my 94-year-old grandfather pay this lady on WhatsApp. There's no cash or anything exchanged.

He doesn't have to leave his house. I mean, there's a lot of benefits, right? And this is in a very, very poor place. You watch how technology changed things instantly. Even villagers in the middle of nowhere whose parents literally cannot read are learning how to read off of YouTube videos in the middle of nowhere. It's shocking. I mean, they don't even have clothes on their back and they're learning how to read on YouTube. So like I said, there's a huge amount of benefit to this stuff. But what you watch is also the exacerbation of a lot of the worst parts of the internet and of what the damage that it can do to a society that doesn't have well-established norms and things around it. So, if anything, what it highlights to me is for policy and for institutional and social norms to be formed around, let's emphasize the best parts.

The best parts of the internet are communication, connection. I mean, we wouldn't exist. This show would not even be possible 10 years ago. But we have to put guardrails and things around parents, society, schools, et cetera. How do we keep this stuff from the worst downsides? I highly recommend the Jonathan Haidt book. I think he's got a phenomenal list there of things, how you should think of a parent around smartphones, and specifically with schools. It's obvious we should ban smartphones from schools. Just no question. I agree with that. I absolutely agree with that. We can put the next piece up on the screen, this study that just came out, which if you're a parent, none of this will surprise you.

Internet addiction alters brain chemistry in young people, this study that just came out, which if you're a parent, like none of this will surprise you. Internet addiction alters brain chemistry in young people, the study finds. I mean, it just, it is an addictive behavior. And, you know, I see this with my kids and it does, I think, tend to, in my experience with other, you know, parents and kids that I know, it tends to be the boys that have more of the addictive tendency towards the internet. My son, if I let him go, he would never, I'm not kidding you, like he would never step away from it. My daughters, they don't have to have the same level of concern and limitations because after they do it for a while, they want to go do something in the world. Like it doesn't have that quite that same sticky, addictive pull.

But what they found is that it will lead to a decrease in functional connectivity in parts of the brain involved in active thinking. That's the executive control network of the brain responsible for memory and decision making. And it fuels other addictive behaviors. So, you know, this is really profound for young people who are you know their brains are developing and you know you're setting habits and behaviors and neural networks that are going to need to serve them for their entire lives and part of you know part of what we've done is because we've really opened the internet up to just whatever is going to serve capital, then you have companies that their whole

business model is based on how do we fuel this addictive cycle? And, you know, no kid is going to be prepared for that. And as an individual parent, like you're the odds are stacked against you because of the way they're trying to literally manipulate the brain chemistry of your kids. So it is a very difficult situation. You mentioned the banning smartphones from schools. 100% agree. My son is going into middle school. We went to the middle school orientation. He's going to be sixth grader next year. Big deal for me. I'm not ready for all that. Anyway, putting that aside, the one thing that I think it was the vice principal who's in charge of, you know, disciplinary issues said is, please, I'm begging you, parents, do not send your kid to school with a smartphone. Yes. He's like, you will not believe the things

that I see. You will not believe what your kid might say on the messages they'll send, the photos they may, the things they may do on the smartphone, like things that you never would have imagined, language that you never could have imagined, the way that interferes with their schoolwork and interferes with their personal relationships. He's like, please, please, please do not send a smartphone with your kid to school. So I think that part to me is very clear. Well, as a former 4chan kid, I can imagine it. And I definitely don't want, I don't want those kids as a former 4chan kid, I can imagine it. I definitely don't want those kids. When you're a kid, you tend to be a little naive about these things. As a kid who was on 4chan and read it way too early, I don't recommend it. But no,

there are a lot of studies on this. I highly recommend there's a bunch of New York Times and Jonathan Haidt write-ups about schools that have banned smartphones. If you've ever been to a Joe Rogan show, you have to put your phone in the yonder bag. That's another thing that a lot of schools are doing. So you can bring this phone to school, but they put the phone in the yonder bag. They unlock then, but apparently some kids are bringing two phones. So look, these kids are going to figure it out. They have phones too that are, I mean, they're almost basically like I mentioned the flip. They're almost like that. Oh, like the call mom, call 911. Yeah, where you really, yeah, it's very limited. They can't load apps.

They can't access the internet. There might be a few limited, like a map app and like a few limited things on there. And they can call and they can text, but that's really about it. And you've got access to it. Like, so there are tools out there for parents, but it's just, yeah, it's a very difficult, very difficult landscape. And if it's just you and the kids are seeing what their friends all have access to, and it's part of the social fabric now of that generation, it is a difficult, difficult situation. This is an iHeart podcast.