Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/11/23: Trump Crushing DeSantis In Florida, Zuck's Threads Hits 100 Million, Morning Joe Tells Americans Shut Up, Disney Parks Empty, Biden Abandons Grandchild, Obama Lectures Gen Z, Sound of Freedom Film, Teamsters President On UPS Strike

Episode Date: July 11, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump crushing DeSantis in Florida primary polls, DeSantis brands Trump as Pro Gay, Twitter traffic plunges as Threads hits 100 million users, Elon begs Mr.Beast to post videos on Twitter, Morning Joe tells Americans to Shut Up about the Economy, US faith in institutions hits all time low, Disney Parks empty after price increases, The View defends Biden abandoning his Grandchild, Krystal looks into Obama lecturing Gen Z on Climate Despair, Saagar looks into the media smearing the child trafficking film "Sound of Freedom", and we're joined in studio by President Sean O'Brien of the International Teamsters to talk about the impending UPS strike.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 Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do.

Lots of interesting things we're taking a look at this morning. We've got some new polling out of the Sunshine State in the GOP primary. Not good news for Ron DeSantis. Also some interesting polling out of Iowa. So we bring you up to date on all of that. New developments in the threads versus Twitter war. Looks like Twitter has actually been kind of immediately hurt by the advent of threads. So we'll get into that as well. We also have quite an interesting piece written by Joe Scarborough, of course, multimillionaire MSNBC host, assuring everyone that actually the economy is great and America is doing wonderful. Please stop complaining. We also have some updated numbers about the way

America feels about our institutions and trust in institutions. Not good news there. Some updates on, this is an interesting story. So apparently, attendance at theme parks, in particular at Disney World, are way down. So why? What exactly is going on there? We will dig into that. And we've got an update for you from our friends at The View defending the fact that Joe Biden will not even acknowledge the existence of his seventh grandchild. What does that say about the man who really portrays himself as a family man? Also, I am personally very excited to welcome into the studio this morning the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Of course, they are facing a potential huge strike, one of the largest in American history of UPS workers, if that goes through.

So I'm going to talk to him about where negotiations stand right now. But we wanted to start with the very latest in terms of the GOP primary. I'm really excited for that one in particular, the EUPS interview. But let's also talk a little bit about Ron DeSantis. Now, one of the things, Crystal, that we talked here about before is that for DeSantis, he has a two-pronged strategy. Number one, the guy has got to win Iowa and he has to win New Hampshire.

But also, the death knell of any presidential candidate is if you can win your own home state. Ted Cruz proved his viability in the 2016 race when he was able to win the state of Texas. John Kasich also was able to win the state of Ohio. And when Rubio lost the Florida primary to Donald Trump, he decided to drop out because it showed that even though he represents that state,

if he loses to Trump, that means you cannot be the nominee. And unfortunately right now for Ron DeSantis, things are not looking good. So, right, let's go put this up there on the screen. This is the latest poll for the 2024 Florida Republican primary from the FAU University that shows GOP likely voters. And the numbers are devastating for Ron DeSantis. Trump currently stands at 50 percent, up 20 points over DeSantis, who has about 30%. After that, everybody drops off dramatically. Ramaswamy, Scott, Christie, Pence, Hutchinson, Haley, pulling between 1% and 4%. However, the biggest problem, I think, for DeSantis

in his own home state is the head-to-head poll. Even if you remove all of the other GOP contenders, Trump actually increases his support to 54% with DeSantis only gaining about 7% in the aggregate. Now, obviously, look, it's one poll, but FAU is, you know, it's a pretty high quality poll in terms of its past record in the state of Florida. And it also does show that, you know, in the past, it showed DeSantis doing well in the gubernatorial primary. He's not really biased against him. It just does pick up. It reminds me of the diner scene that we played here from Fox News when they visited some Florida diner and every single person was voting for Trump. Even the lady wearing a DeSantis shirt was like, yeah, I like Ron, but I'm voting for Trump. So, I mean, listen, it's just one of those that underscores again the level of love that Trump has within the GOP primary that, you know, reality is just beginning to stare a lot of people in the face. Yes.

What, six weeks or so into the Ron DeSantis campaign. Yes, indeed. And yesterday we covered the analysis of the words that all of the different GOP candidates were leaning into. And the one that really jumped out for Ron DeSantis that was different from the other candidates is Florida. He talks about Florida all the time. He talks about his record in Florida, the fact that he was able to pass this slate of legislation that is on the conservative wishlist, but also the fact that he's such a winner in Florida and that he's so beloved in Florida and that he's been such a good governor of Florida.

So I think for him, since he has in particular built his case around this state, the fact that he is losing quite handily to Trump at this point in his own home state is additionally devastating, even more so than it is for your run of the mill candidate who is, you know, losing their own home state. I was thinking of Elizabeth Warren, too, like it really was a sign of the death knell when she wasn't even winning in her home state of Massachusetts. But I think for him, it is a little bit extra because he talks about it so, so much. And the fact that you have not only in the, you know, wide open race with all the various candidates that he's losing by 20 points,

but even when you say, all right, if everybody gets out and you have some consolidation behind Ron DeSantis, Trump is still beating him by roughly the same margin. So again, it's one poll, it's one little indicator, but if you aren't winning in your home state when supposedly your theory of the case is I'm such a great governor and people love me so much, that's why you should make me president of the United States. It's a tough look. One of the people who's been backing Ron DeSantis, Eric Erickson, he's a conservative radio host. He's actually been openly saying he's in a number of group chats, email lists, all of

whom are dealing with the ongoing threads of frustration from the Ron DeSantis campaign. Perception is settling in that something needs to happen, but everyone has a different opinion on what to do. And, you know, there's been a lot of interest right now in Casey DeSantis, Ron DeSantis' wife. Let's go and put this up there on the screen about how she herself is now beginning to hit the campaign trail actually without Ron DeSantis. So the Florida first lady is launching, quote quote mamas for DeSantis at a first solo event in Iowa. Can she help her husband close the gap in the polls with Trump? This was from the Daily Mail who took notice of this and reported the piece out. The reason why it is important is that from all of what we know, both publicly, privately also, I've heard the exact

same thing, is that DeSantis really doesn't trust anybody except for his wife. She's truly his sole true counselor in terms of a close confidant. She was one of the people who encouraged him and pushed him to run for president, saying that this is your time, encouraging him after he won the gubernatorial election, has been warning him off a lot of campaign advisors, snakes, and others. He keeps very, very close counsel with her, and he trusts her completely. There's very few people that he does him dispatching her on the campaign trail is being read by the Trump folks as a sign of desperation. It's like, Oh, you need your wife to bail you out. I don't really think necessarily if that's fair or not, but I do think that her pursuing solo campaign events, that is something that very few campaign spouses do in primary

elections, not necessarily in the general election, but in the primary election where we are right That is something that very few campaign spouses do in primary elections. Not necessarily in the general election, but in the primary election where we are right now. I can't think of a single event that like Heidi Cruz did by herself in Iowa or Melania. I think they had to drag her out even for the joint appearances. Michelle probably did some back in the day for Obama. I think Michelle did some. I'm not sure if she did in the primary or not. I haven't gone back and looked at that. But at least in modern memory, it is certainly kind of

a departure, I guess, from the norm. And it's like I say, you can read it really whichever way you want as a sign of desperation or as just pulling out all the stops. The problem, though, is you're pulling out all the stops, you know, this far out away from actual primary day. I also do think that is a problem. Yeah. I mean, they're clearly scrambling, you know, between this and between the, that weird LGBTQ ad that they embraced. And, you know, it just, it just feels like they are turning through a lot of ideas, throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks. I can tell you, I watched a little bit of her Iowa event, her Mamas for DeSantis event, and she's very talented.

Maybe she should be the one. Well, she's actually a former local TV host. No, she's good. I agree with you. The thing is, Ron, I think it's true that he is kind of an introvert. He's kind of awkward, person-to-person interactions, a little uncomfortable in his speeches. They feel very kind of canned, you know, in his interviews. He does fine as long as he's got his talking points. She felt a lot more natural and comfortable up on stage. So

I can see why they're leaning into putting her up front because she's certainly very capable in that regard and, you know, able to carry her husband's message. But, you know, people aren't voting for a first lady. Yeah, they're voting for you. Exactly. And that's, you know, generally always the problem with trying to get the wife to save your campaign. I've also taken notice, you know, kind of the scrambling of what you're talking about in these increasingly desperate attacks against Trump, like the best attacks against Trump where he said he was going to do X and then he literally didn't do it. But now they're trying to flip things around. And DeSantis himself actually made this point in a Fox News interview where he effectively tried to

blame Trump for not lashing out at Twitter over censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story. And the reason why I think it's so convoluted is he didn't have anything to do with that. So he's trying to almost insert himself into a situation which had no impact, like actually on him or even really on any GOP primary and say he would have handled it in a tougher way. I found it a very, very convoluted and almost bizarre way of saying that he would have handled something differently. Here's what he had to say. What can you do about it to straighten things out, given the fact that the Americans are sick and tired

of the corruption they see in plain sight? We will end the weaponization of government. And that's, of course, a new FBI director on day one. That's a difference between me and Donald Trump. He says the jury's still out on FBI Director Wray. I think you need a new start on day one. We're going to clean house at the Department of Justice. And, you know, I look back at like the Hunter Biden censorship, which was a huge, huge deal to happen

in the 2020 election. And yet, you know, those were Donald Trump's own agencies that were colluding with big tech. I would never allow that to happen. I would fire those people immediately. And in fact, in Florida, we've signed legislation that prohibits all state and local government officials in our state from colluding with tech companies to try to censor the political speech of Americans. So again, I think that on the merits, he has an important point. But the problem I think that on the merits, he has an important point. But the problem I think that he comes back to is he's like, Trump wasn't strong enough in going after Trump's opponents. And it's like, well, hold on a second here. You know, for Trump,

you're still making him the central character. And also, whenever it comes to this whole like, I'm signed the bill, I actually did the work. Again, I'm coming back to almost like an Elizabeth Warren type campaign of like, you know, this whole like doing the work meme that used to abound really at that time. This is something that appeals, I think, to a lot of policy wonks and, you know, people like me who actually pay a deep amount of attention. But that is just not how the average voter conceives of anything that happened in that time. And if anything, they're like, yeah, they censored that story because they're so afraid of Trump. Why is nobody so afraid of you? That's why I love Trump. Seriously, that's how a lot of that is going to be interpreted.

Well, we gave him a hard time early on when he wouldn't even say Trump's name and he was very skittish about attacking Trump. Now he is going after him a little bit more, staking out some clear positions, mostly to his right. But I think we are seeing in the polling and especially in DeSantis' favorability ratings why that was such a perilous prospect and why he's in this impossible situation. Because obviously you have to go after Trump. You have to give people a reason to, you know, move off of the guy that they want to vote for and that they really like and that they've supported for years and years at this point. But at the same time, when you hit him, you get a lot of blowback. And so, you know, he used to have a much higher favorability rating that has started to ebb even among Republican primary voters. And I do think part of that

is because it is hard to go directly up against Donald Trump in a Republican primary. You know, I've said this for a while now. There's all kinds of critiques you could level at the DeSantis campaign, missteps, things they maybe could have done different. But given who their candidate is, given the landscape, I just think it's an impossible puzzle to be able to put together. It just, like, I don't know what I would suggest to him to do because you attack Trump, it's bad for you. Don't attack him. Then he's just going to stay where he is. The only thing he really has going for him right now is, like, to pray that something weird happens.

And he ends up as, like, the last man standing because I think that's what it would take. Right. I mean, listen, called it a Gordian knot at the beginning. And I think it really does vindicate a lot of that. Let's turn specifically to Iowa where things are taking a little bit of a nasty turn. First, let's put this up there on the screen.

Only really highlighting even more of DeSantis' problem for his need to win Iowa. The latest poll from the American Greatness, which is a MAGA-friendly organization, but I should note has had very high quality polls, specifically from the GOP in the past, shows Trump beating Ron DeSantis by a full 23 points in the state and actually, quote, bounced back to 44 that he had in the May survey, while DeSantis actually lost five points from the original May survey. Interestingly enough, Senator Tim Scott is the only person with another marginal increase, now stands at full 7%, actually. So the full ranking is as such, Trump at 44, DeSantis 21, then Haley, Ramaswamy,

Hutchison, Scott, Pence, and others all basically taking the rest with undecided also leading the pack at 14%. But again, you know, 44%, very near an outright majority for Trump in the state of Iowa and DeSantis needing to not only just make up a few points, but literally double and still not get to the place where Trump is, that is an issue. I also think we need to hammer home, Crystal, what you were talking about. The DeSantis camp has really settled on trying to attack Trump as some sort of cultural leftist. And this actually really came to fore with some new mailers that people are seeing in Iowa. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. As you can see there in front of you, one of these mailers, uh, for those who are just listening

says, quote, Donald Trump stood up for marriage equality and trans rights. And the other one says, thank you, president Trump. Trump celebrated gay marriage victory, Mar-a-Lago party with log cabin Republicans. The one that is on the left there about marriage equality and trans rights shows like one of those black power fists covered in the gay pride flag and also says, contact President Trump at 45office.com. Tell him to keep fighting for LGBTQ rights. It's paid for by, quote, advancing our values, which is a super PAC. So again, this is one of those like shadowy organizations, but it clearly is picking up this attack after the DeSantis campaign kind of fired

out against the former president and is trying to portray Trump again in some sort of, uh, some sort of cultural leftist. Uh, I am very curious. I mean, I know that you and Emily talked a lot about that ad. I mean, I don't know. It's complicated because on the one hand, like, look, many of the GOP base is very fed up with like gender ideology and specifically gender ideology towards children. That said, there are several polls that show that even older boomer Republicans support gay marriage. So I don't really know why gay marriage is included in this mailer. Also, though, let's be fair. Iowa is a very conservative state. They've got a lot of Catholics. They've got a lot of evangelicals. If you were to

have a population that does still hold a position against gay marriage, it probably would be some of them. Ted Cruz won the state of Iowa specifically by marshalling all of these evangelical voters in his Cruz camps and all that other stuff. So it's a viable political strategy, but it does read as a bit of a sign of desperation. Yeah, I would say so. I mean, listen, we don't know for sure this came from the disastrous camp, but it certainly is like echoing the messaging that they have been telegraphing through a variety of their social media posts, etc., etc. But, you know, the problem, the problem is that in that poll we just showed of Iowa voters, among

Iowa voters who consider themselves very conservative, Trump is actually beating DeSantis by even more. He's winning an outright majority, 54 to 21. And we saw polling previously that showed, like, people, if you ask them, okay, who's further to the right, who's more conservative, they'll say Ron DeSantis. And then it's like, okay, and you're very conservative. So who are you voting for? And they're still like Donald Trump. I just don't think that the Republican base is really going to buy that Donald Trump is a cultural leftist. I just don't see that

happening. And that's the thing is your attacks have to have some grain of truth or they have to feel viscerally like, OK, there's some there there. Otherwise, it just falls flat. So, you know, this is probably a small scale effort. This little kind of tricky mailer that purports to be, oh, good job, Donald Trump, that you were in favor of gay marriage or whatever. And obviously it's sent to a Republican base that they're thinking is going to read that and be like, oh, I don't like that. But, you know, in a certain sense, it also undercuts DeSantis's electability argument. That's the other thing in this Iowa poll is when you ask voters, who do you think is more likely to beat Biden? Trump comes out on top there. Trump comes up out on top even among voters who have a favorable impression of Ron DeSantis. Trump comes out on top among voters who think,

who like both Trump and DeSantis. Those voters are still picking Trump. But yeah, I just don't think that this attack has a lot of legs because, you know, people have lived through years of liberal press freak out over Donald Trump and him being very effective at owning the libs and generating outrage and all the right people hating him. And I just don't think that they're going to really buy this direction. It also reminds me of the New York values, that famous moment in the 2016 campaign, which look,

I mean, at the time it was a novel, right? You're like, hey, this guy literally supported gay marriage and abortion. Who does he think he is running in a primary? And Cruz tried this attack against Trump to try and paint him as not a real conservative, real Republican in the race. And guess what? People didn't care. They didn't care at all. They actually increased their support for him, showing that in many cases, a lot of these voters aren't nearly as ideological as they purport to be on paper, which is something I wish I could continue to underscore to people that people don't vote in terms of policy checklists and in terms of making sure that they're all fully aligned on things. They really vote in terms of how they feel. Trump, though, is internalizing the problem in Iowa, even though he does remain on top

in the fact that the Iowa political architecture is not necessarily nearly as behind him as they once were. Put this up there on the screen. Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa has been floating some basically like alliance with Ron DeSantis, and DeSantis continues to name check her. He says, quote, in a truth, I love Iowa, protected and expanded ethanol, got $28 billion from China for our farmers, ended the death tax on farms, made the best trade deals in history, introduced the world to our farmers, and kept Iowa's first in the nation status. I opened up the governor position for Kim Reynolds. When she fell behind, I endorsed her.

I did big rallies, and she won. Now she wants to remain, quote, neutral. I don't invite her to events. DeSantis is down 45 points. Now, as this pundit is noting, he is now openly attacking the popular governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds. But here's the thing. If anybody could get away with it and still be popular, his name is Trump. And this also shows you that the real bind, I think, that Kim Reynolds and many of these Iowa officials are, people like Senator Joni Ernst. Trump didn't show up to her event, but he doesn't ever seem to pay for any of these things. He skips the Des Moines what a fair or whatever that DeSantis makes a show of going to. But then the poll comes out, show him at double digits. Yeah. These ground literally. Yeah. These Iowa politicians and all

these others, you know, Terry Branstad and all these people who used to work for him, they still have yet remained, you know, kind of distant from Trump in terms of their support. But at the end of the day, and you know, many of them are trying to kind of push DeSantis behind the scenes. But as you can see, too, if he gets even an inkling of you remaining neutral, he will full blown just attack you. And that's a problem for you. Yeah. Whenever it comes to GOP primary voters. I mean, that's the thing is Kim Reynolds hasn't even really picked a side. She didn't do anything. Even though, I mean,

I guess she's been showing up like she was at that Mamas for DeSantis event or whatever. She would endorse DeSantis if she could. If she felt like it wouldn't be

a sort of death wish, political death wish. She clearly favors DeSantis but wants to stay neutral because she, you know, thinks that that's the smartest decision for her politically.

But yeah, the normal rules of politics just don't apply to Donald Trump and they never have. But wants to stay neutral because she, you know, thinks that that's the smartest decision for her politically. But yeah, the normal rules of politics just don't apply to Donald Trump and they never have. And, you know, anyone who thought like I'm going to rack up endorsements from this popular governor, that one, or Kim Reynolds is going to appear at my like women's women for DeSantis event or whatever. And that's going to be the key. Or who thought like DeSantis, I'm going to go through a checklist of conservative policy priorities and pass them through the legislature. None of this stuff is going to be, is going to work. That's just the bottom line. And, you know, we've seen this in the past too. Even, look, he's attacking DeSantis, who's popular in Florida with Republicans, and he's going up in the polls. He, you know, went aggressively against Brian Kemp, who still was able to win reelection, but I guarantee you he's probably up in Georgia as well.

Iowa, same thing. Do I think it's going to hurt him even a tiny bit to go after a governor who Republicans like? No, because they may like her. They probably like Trump even better. You know, Brian Kemp is actually a great example because Brian Kemp, despite being viciously attacked by Trump, he never actually responded and he never made it about Trump. He was just like, I'm a conservative. I've been standing up for you guys. He never answered any of the critiques and he never put Trump's name in his mouth. By doing that, it was smart because he basically gave people a choice. He says, look, I'm not against the guy. We know we have this difference on all of this, but I'm not running as some sort of anti-Trump Republican like Chris Christie.

And there's a reason, by the way, why Chris Christie has the lowest approval rating of any Republican primary aspirant, and it's because he directly takes Trump on. The more that you go against him, you can try and have some distance between you, but if you're saying his name and trying to draw this contrast, people read this as an attack. I'll just end with this. DeSantis put out a tweet trying to capitalize on the divide with Kim Reynolds. He says, quote, Kim Reynolds is a strong leader who knows how to ignore the chirping and get it done. She earned a landslide reelection because she delivered big results and is poised to deliver even more for Iowans in the special session. So he continues to court her. He basically doesn't open his mouth without saying, like Governor Kim Reynolds in Iowa, which is the smart play. And he needs to

continue to go all in on Iowa if he wants to have any chance of then winning New Hampshire and having a chance in Super Tuesday. People just really overestimate how much normal voters like really love these governors. OK, they voted for her. Yeah, they don't like Democrats, and she was the Republican, so they voted for her. But are they, oh my God, Kim Reynolds, she's amazing. I would do anything for Kim Reynolds. Whatever she says goes. I highly doubt it. Yeah, smart. I highly doubt it. All right, let's talk a little bit about threads. I want to give everybody an important update. Let's put this up there on the screen. Mark Zuckerberg revealing yesterday, Instagram's threads has now surpassed 100 million users, blowing out

expectations far more than anybody thought whenever they launched. The reason why this is important, Crystal, is what we told everybody yesterday, which is that at the last November, whenever Twitter was forced to actually tell everyone how many users they had, they listed some 260 million monetizable daily active users. That was actually from Elon Musk at the time. However, it is important to even question that 260 million figure because as Elon famously tried to get his way out of that actual deal, he kept saying that as much as 5% to 20% of those

people may be bots. So that actual number may be lower. Regardless, getting to 100 million after just a few days in terms of your users and signups is a blowout victory, considering that Threads has almost none of the same functionality outside of the mobile app that Twitter has. You can't use it on desktop. It is still like your following page. Everything is controlled by the algorithm. It doesn't even have like proper DMs. And yet, apparently, the carryover and the ease of signup from Instagram, bringing your followers on, has been a major victory. Now look, at the same time, we've seen this thing before.

I was one of those people who thought Clubhouse might work, turned out to be a total flash in the pan. So I've seen this type of hype before. But, you know, Threads has now reached 100 million faster than ChatGPT. Consider that. In terms of the level of cultural impact that ChatGPT was having at the time,

I've increasingly been trying to use Threads, like check it out, see how people are using it. I'm really interested. So first and foremost, in terms of I've talked about before, I think that the photo functionality on threads is far superior. In terms of the cropping, I actually tried tweeting out a photo yesterday. It was fantastic. The load time on videos and other things carrying over again from Instagram's core functionality seems really good. The things that it still needs properly to fix are the retweet function or the rethread function or whatever. It doesn't have the ability to quote tweet.

It doesn't yet seem to have the same political discourse and all of that. But I am seeing like little niche things begin to pop up. Health and fitness people in particular who I follow seem to get a lot of functionality. I could see that. Out of threads right now. I could definitely see that. I mean the play it seems like from Zuckerberg is we're going to make a Twitter competitor, but we're going to try to keep the like vibe of Instagram, which if you guys aren't on Instagram, it's a much nicer, friendlier culture. Then Twitter is like nasty and snarky, and you can famously post like the most anodyne thing and people will still find some way to be mean to you. That's just like the way Twitter is for whatever reason. And so yesterday we talked

about how the head of Instagram was basically saying like, look, we don't really want news and politics here. And since the feeds are all algorithmically driven, so they're putting in front of you what they want to serve, they have a lot of control over what takes off and what gets suppressed. In a lot of ways, it's way more opaque than, you know, the type of control that if you have the Twitter feed set up where it's just, you know, a firehose chronologically of the people that you're following over on threads, they have a lot more control and you have a lot less visibility into how they are making the decisions of what you're going to see and what you're not going to see. So it seems like the direction they're going in is they don't really want it to be the place for news and politics because news and politics is divisive. It's controversial. It's a pain in the ass for advertisers, so they'd rather not deal with it.

Exactly. And if they want to keep the, like, happy, friendly vibe of Instagram, which is genuinely nice. Like, Kyle's not on Instagram, and every time I show him a post and, like, all the comments underneath are like, way to go. You're so great. He's like, what is this place? This is crazy. So, I mean, I think in order to try to keep that vibe, they're just basically like, we're not going to do politics. And I think that that really kind of sucks in terms of whether it's going to be a success or not.

Who knows? But just to give you a sense, 100 million users, that's how many U.S. TikTok users there are. I mean, these are giant numbers. This is like already puts it in league with some major social media competitors and we're like not even a week in. So I do think the fact that you had so many people who could port over so easily from Instagram was, you cannot understate what a huge advantage that was because you instantly come in and have people to talk to. You already have

engagement with your posts. Whereas when you're starting from scratch over on Mastodon or Blue Sky or whatever, and you're in there and you feel like you're talking to yourself and no one even knows you exist, it takes a while to really get over that hump. Especially if you've built up a following somewhere else, it's hard to just give that up and go to a different platform. Exactly. And already we're beginning to see this cut into Twitter's margins. Go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Twitter traffic is down some 5% on the launch of threads. This is from Cloudflare data by the CEO, Matthew Prince, and is also backed up by independent analyses that CNBC looked at. Guys, please put the next one up there on the screen.

CNBC describes it this way, quote, Twitter traffic is tanking as Meta's threads hits 100 million users. They not only showed the level of drop in the overall traffic, but they say that Twitter traffic was down 5% for the first two full days that Threads was available and that web traffic is down a full 11% compared with the same days in 2022. Now, look, let's also be

honest. This is a small sample size. We only have a couple of days here. The Twitter team is actually firing back. The new CEO, Linda Iaccarino, I think that's the right way to say it, says, quote, don't want to leave you hanging by a thread, but Twitter, you outdid yourselves. Last week, we had our largest usage day since February. There is only one Twitter. You know it and I know it. Elon replying, cumulative user seconds per day of phone screen time, as reported by iOS and Android, is the hardest to game. I think we may hit an all-time record this week.

So time on app. Look, first of all, I just want to say this. I think all these metrics are fake in terms of, like, user seconds, cumulative screen time, all of that. The probably one that matters the most is time on app. That's what Zuckerberg and all of them always focused on whenever it came down to Instagram versus TikTok. So, you know, I am calling on everyone to release those figures. I doubt that they ever actually will. Let's get the Twitter files going on that. Yeah, let's get the Twitter files and the thread files and all of that stuff happening here. But overall, I think what we can say is, is threads the Twitter killer? Way too soon to tell. But overall, I think what we can say is, is Threads the Twitter killer? Way too

soon to tell. Very likely though, I don't think that it will be because it is clear that their strategy is, we don't want all the divisive stuff. We want all the monetizable stuff. They will port over health and fitness, sports, all of these other, you know, influencers, people like LeBron that they have great relationships with over from their Instagram partnerships team. And they'll be like, all right, Elon and Linda, you guys can take all this other crap, deal with censorship problems. We don't want anything to do with it. We're going to sit here and laugh all the way to the bank. Not a bad strategy. However, as a user, it's not great because at the end of the day, you know, the internet selects for monopolies. That's why it is, you user, it's not great because at the end of the day, you know, the Internet selects for monopolies.

That's why it is, you know, it's easier to use whenever you're at one place where everything is. So now what? We're going to have two apps. Like when you want to check in on culture, let's go to threads. When you want to check in on politics, let's go to Twitter. That's a pain in the ass from your and my perspective. But I've also come to accept, like, maybe that's a good thing. I actually, you know, maybe not one platform does deserve to have everything, but the really unfortunate part

is it wasn't a real startup that was able to come in and gain a hundred million users. It was an existing, you know, one trillion dollar social media company, but it does show you quite a bit of savviness that Mark Zuckerberg has. He's basically doing to Twitter what he did to Snapchat with the invention of Instagram stories. And it took Snapchat years to be able to catch back up. Yeah, that is true. I mean, this is something Zuckerberg at this point has a horrific record in terms of innovating new products, like the whole metaverse thing. Yeah, total disaster, like 100% flop disaster. That sort of vision isn't there, but he does have a pretty good track record of seeing what is working in the marketplace, replicating it, and being able

to grab market share and have an impact in that way. So he does seem to know how to do that piece. Yeah, I can see a world where news and politics basically stays over on Twitter because Zuckerberg suppresses it on threads and just doesn't really become the thing over on threads. And you have this sort of like bifurcation. You may also have some like ideological bifurcation where more right wing people stay on Twitter, where more liberal or left wing people migrate to threads or other platforms. So I could see that happening as well. But, you know, for Elon, if Twitter becomes more we use it for news and politics, especially I use it for news. I don't really look at any of the cultural stuff, but that there is a lot of that on Twitter as well.

So if Zuckerberg is eating into that piece, which is the most easily monetizable, that's a real problem for him from a business perspective. And I think that one of the things that Elon wants to do, which may create a better platform in terms of some of the key values that he claims to espouse, like freedom of speech, is to move it from dependency on advertising revenue to dependency on subscription revenue. But we also have to say thus far, he's been wildly unsuccessful at that, partly because of his own foolish missteps and basically antagonizing some of the core part of the creator base on Twitter and make it so that people out of spite do not want to pay your $8 no matter what you do to try to coerce them into

doing it. In fact, at this point, you know, things like the rate limit where you can't view more tweets than 600 a day or whatever unless you pay for the checkmark, etc. It doesn't make people want to become a blue checkmark. It makes them even more like, screw you, I'm going to see what's going on over on Threats. So I do think that this kind of is a perfect storm because at the same time you have this new product, which seems relatively well-designed and easy to port over onto and all of those things comes into existence, is at the very time when Elon is making some of his worst and most foolish decisions and doing everything he can to make the Twitter user

experience miserable and push people off of his own platform. Yeah, I do think it is a big problem. Let's turn now to what Elon is trying to do in response. Elon trying to make a play into both video and to try and create some sort of rev share in the same way that YouTube has with their YouTube ad partners program. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Elon effectively begging, I guess, Mr. Beast to try and bring some of his videos over onto Twitter. Mr. Beast tweeted out, quote, new vid, which shows some new views that he's been getting over on the platform.

Elon says, post to this platform too. Earnings per view should be competitive with YouTube. If not, we will adjust, which means, I mean, he's trying to increase the level of video content that we're going to see on Twitter. But this is a very difficult game. And I don't think yet that they fully have internalized what they're looking for. Because YouTube is the giant that it is, not just because of rev share, not just because of the ability to post videos, because of the algorithm. The recommendation algorithm is the golden key to YouTube.

It is what increases the time on the platform. It's what gets people interested. People who are watching this video are not the same people getting recommended the The previous video you and I just did about Ron DeSantis. True. In many ways, we owe our entire careers and success to recommendation algorithms, and that is because of the extraordinary ability to match videos that you may also be interested in. It's not just about the views that you are earning on the platform. It is really about the ability to recommend and keep content that people wanna continue and stay watching.

This has always been a core problem for video on Twitter. Video on Twitter has always been best when it's very, very short bites, whereas the entire MrBeast strategy, Crystal, is built around retention. Beast's videos are literally like genetically engineered in a lab to keep you watching as long as humanly possible,

juice the retention rate to increase his overall recommendation. Obviously, he uses Twitter, but he's not the main thing for what he's known for. He's an international celebrity for a reason specifically also built on the YouTube algorithm. So this does, I think, show a little bit of a misunderstanding of what you need to build for Twitter to actually be a viable video platform. But I also think that at the end of the day, what makes Twitter good in terms of the doom scrolling and all people like you and I or others to actually want to post and create video specifically for the Twitter platform. Yeah, that is very true. Also, I was chuckling because the second Mr. Beast video that he had listed there, Train versus Giant Pit. I got to watch it.

My son was literally just watching yesterday. Spoiler alert, the Giant Pit wins in the end. But, yeah, I mean, people aren't on Twitter to watch long-form video. That's just not what the platform was ever built for. It's not what people are geared to go over there and do or primed to go over there and do. They're primed to scroll through, you know, these short snippets. I even hate the advent of, like, the longer tweets because I'm like, this is not what Twitter is. I do hate them as well.

And I don't think I'm alone in that. I see a lot of backlash against the, like, long-ass essay forum tweets. So, yeah, it's not what the platform is built for. There's nothing built in to make you aware that there is a Mr. Beast video on the platform if that was ever something to happen or that Tucker Carlson just, you know, released his latest show. So, you know, to me it seems like a bit of a miss. We have a little bit of those Tucker data. Let's put this up there, please, on the screen. There was a lot of discussion around this. It actually shows you some of the video view stats for the video that was played for more than two seconds. This is another reason why I actually warned a lot

of people not to overemphasize the actual overall view count, because as you and I know, there is a massive difference between scrolling past a video and watching two seconds of it and watching, let's say, four and a half minutes or something. This shows you some of the decreasing numbers on the overall view count. And I do think that it gets back to the fundamental mismatch of the Twitter platform and of what Tucker specifically is trying to do. Tucker is basically effectively doing what all of us are doing, which are these longer commentaries with actual video elements in them spliced in, a monologue, which you need to sit and consume and take some time. That is just not

built for the Twitter platform. It's something that's built for YouTube. Now, contractually, he's kind of boxed, I think, in a way where that's really the only venue where he can reliably post. So, you know, I guess that's fair. And it's not like he has to worry about money. But it is a problem, I think, for trying to cast the platform as the next big thing. You know, I talked a little bit about this with Glenn Greenwald, and we both kind of shared our unvarnished thoughts. And I was like, listen, you know, Glenn, you are on Rumble, and we're YouTube and, you know, on podcasts and all that for a reason. Like these platforms are designed for this. We go to them to watch stuff. That's just not what we do whenever we go over to Twitter. So I've always said you can't change people's behavior. You have to meet

them where they are. So, you know, I'm not going to go on YouTube and trying to get you to go read my tweets. Why would we ever do that? That's just not really what it's designed for. Right. And I don't think it's the right way. You know, I see the Daily Wire and all these other people being like, oh, we're exclusively going to be posting on Twitter. And I'm just like, call me in six months and tell me whether you're actually making any real money or converting anything off of that because I just don't think that that's going to happen. Yeah, and even those view numbers for Tucker, I mean, that's pretty fake because two seconds of watching a video does not really count as a video view. And so, yeah, how long do people sit and engage with that content?

And I do think his first show when everyone was like, oh, what is this and what's he going to say and what's going on with Fox or whatever, I do think millions and millions of people sat and actually consumed that entire video. But it does not surprise me whatsoever that there's been this dramatic fall off. I think that, you know, it was a really foolish move ultimately for him to throw his lot in with Twitter, not only for the reasons that we've been describing, the fact that when people go onto that platform, they are not in the mindset of let me sit and engage with content for minutes and minutes and minutes. They're in the mindset of let me scroll through and get these little

quick bites and, you know, snarky replies or whatever. But also because Tucker's audience is like a bunch of boomers that aren't on Twitter, that don't know how to use Twitter, that even he was sending out emails to try to like walk them through the process of even finding him on this app. So, you know, meanwhile, and meanwhile, Fox News is actually recovering from the very significant decline in ratings that they saw right after he left. They seem to be recovering and riding the ship. I mean, they're in the same managed decline state as all the other cable news networks. But in the end, it seems that the analysis is, at least in terms of him going to Twitter, Fox News has actually come out the better side of

this. And he has seriously hobbled his own relevance and career by his choice of platform. I think he needs to get out of that, whatever that deal is possible and get on YouTube. You know, he went on a Russell Brand show, got millions of views on YouTube. It's like, that's where you belong, you know, or not even you Rumble, whatever, you know, any of these places that you got to get to a platform, a podcast, the ability where people actually consume longer form content, because that's where the strength is. I just saw the news. Maybe we'll talk about it in our next show that he's going to be moderating a candidate forum, you know, with Blaze Media and all that. So maybe that heralds like a little bit of a change, but we'll continue to monitor and we'll see. But why don't we talk about

Joe Scarborough now? Yes. So let's switch to another cable news topic here. This is, I just, this is extraordinary. I couldn't even believe when I was reading this piece. So Joe Scarborough, of course, multimillion dollar cable news host, very wealthy guy, has been in the game for a long time, decided to pen this essay, chiding anyone who would have anything critical to say about the United States of America. Let's put this up on the screen. His headline here is, America is doing just fine. The United States deserves a robust defense. And let me read you a little bit of this because I really enjoyed this. Uncle Sam deserves a modern day Atticus Finch to argue his case before the American people, but he doesn't have

one. The usual suspects who once regularly deliver garrulous Eric Stratton style defenses of all things American are now scattered to the winds by the tumult of Trumpism. Neither the Capitol riot nor a barrage of indictments have stopped these hucksters from slavishly siding with Donald Trump and his attacks against the same American institutions that conservatives once defended against enemies real or imagined, whether the dirty hippies who tried to levitate the Pentagon or the commies on the church committee. Trump conservatives really are having their own hippie moment turning against American institutions because God forbid we critique American institutions. Because, God forbid, we critique American institutions. That would be horrifying. The opposing council's bench will likewise

be unhelpful because it is packed with a motley crew of progressive politicians, left-wing think tankers, and journalists who are far more comfortable prosecuting claims against American greed, U.S. imperialism, and ruling class dominance than mounting muscular defenses of America. Now, I would say I wish that our nation's journalists would do more critiquing of American greed, U.S. imperialism, and ruling class dominance, but God forbid, again, that we have any critique of any of those things instead of just uniformly mounting what he describes as a muscular defense of America. He goes on, Zagri, you have to love this, to talk about, you know, how great things are under Joe Biden and his leadership. And of course, he leans into everything

we're doing with the Ukraine war has been great and good and, you know, no mention of cluster bombs and us being complicit in potential war crimes there. None of that. But the one critique that he does have is that the pullout from Afghanistan. Right. Now, that was the real problem. But don't worry, they've already righted the ship. So no need to complain about that either. And he concludes with this. Despite the blather that cable news hosts spit at you daily, your country is doing pretty damn well, which is also hilarious because, I mean, number one, he's a cable news host,

one of the most prominent cable news hosts in the freaking country. Number two, if you tune into his network or you tune into CNN, what you will hear over and over and over again is actually how wonderful things are under Joe Biden, how the economy's actually great, how everything's just fine, how his leadership is so brilliant and wonderful, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I don't know what world this man is

living in. I think it's just a real look. It's not just a blind spot. It's actually that they have to do this like justification of where we are in order to prop up the structure of which the vast majority of people are fundamentally against. We know this from every political leader that has been doing well in modern memory, you know, for the last, what, Obama and Trump and Biden really were all kind of quote change candidates really in their own way from the previous status quo. Nobody was ever voting for keeping actually what we had in place. Second, though, look at any poll like the one we have, we can put just right up here on the screen. There has never been more dissatisfaction with national economic conditions,

with faith in American institutions, with a complete lack of faith in overall higher elite institutions like college education. I just saw a poll come across the desk that says that 36% of all-time low people approve of colleges, all-time low number of people approve of institutions, which we're going to talk about in a bit. People feel like they're doing worse off than ever, their inability to achieve the American dream. And this is really propaganda that I often see put forward by defenders of the neoliberal establishment who really helped architect it because they rely always on fake metrics. And this is always a big problem that we see. And we were talking previously, there's a big wonk war right now about whether we're doing well or not.

And they always rely on things like what he points in here. It's like America's universities are best in the world. I'm like, yeah, but what's the overall trend? They're going down. They're not doing well. What is the overall trend right now in terms of American views throughout the rest of the world? I kept telling you the sea chains I saw in Indian attitudes towards America, I'm still flabbergasted. When I visited India 10 years ago, people either wanted to move here or they didn't care about America. Now, the overall elite opinion has turned 180. They're like, you guys are a bunch of moralizers. You don't shut up in terms of lecturing us. We are an independent country. You think you could come and tell us what to do, whose oil to buy, and all this? Who do you think we are? We're the most populous nation on earth. You, Joe Biden,

and all these other people can screw off. We're going to do whatever we want to do. Hearing the same thing from Brazil, and we know this also, from all across the non-Western world, this is the attitude that pervades about the United States and about its overall decline. We're entering a very dangerous period, I think, in geopolitics. And I think that's the problem that he does is he's trying to cast some sort of Reagan-esque, you know, view of the United States around both our economy and our place in the world when we actually see retrenchment everywhere. And the worst thing is that his answer is to triple down on all of the things that brought us exactly to where we are when in that retrenchment we need both humble and big ideas here at home to get our population to a point where we can be you know united and all that and also to think about the way that we carry ourselves abroad so that we don't go back into you know some

horror horrible state of war and you know multi-polarity or even more multi-polarity from where we are right now that's that's you know, I just see, like, it's almost like a boomer level of, like, America, right or wrong. And I always just look at it like, look, I think Americans are awesome, and I think America is doing badly right now. Well, it reminds me of it.

He probably said some of the same stuff during the Bush era. Yeah, he definitely did. The whole, like, Iraq war, like, you can't criticize our leader, blah, blah, blah. It's not patriotic to be critical of the President of the United States, and you need to back Bush no matter what. I mean, that was a big strain of argument, if you could even call it argument from the right at that time, which again, I'm sure he

was partaking in. It is so low IQ to not be able to comprehend that you can be a patriot, you can love this country, you can appreciate many of the core values, you can celebrate some of its best parts of history and the progress that has been made, and you can also look across the landscape and see some real problems. And see some real problems, by the way, with the elite class, Joe Scarborough included. I also feel like, can you imagine him writing this during the Trump era? No. Yeah, exactly. If Donald Trump was president, can you imagine him being like, how dare you criticize America? This is a, yeah, it needs a muscular defense and actually everything

is going really great. I mean, this is just complete 100% partisan blinders where it's like, since my guy's in charge, everything's fine and everyone needs to shut up and get on board. Really, honestly, all the same fundamentals that he points to were the exact same under Trump. I mean, if you're like, hey, our universities are the best in the world. Okay. I mean, it's been that way for 40 years. It hasn't changed really all that much. I think what he gets to is this attitudinal thing of which I believe was the best thing about Trump. I think Trump was the most honest person in a generation of politics when he said, our American carnage is over. I believe that the American carnage speech is still one of the most important ones ever delivered

because for the very first time, somebody was like, you know what? Things aren't all that rosy. Yeah. And that's what people wanted to hear. You know, what's funny is um, so I'm covering my monologue today the interview that Obama did with Hasan Minhaj which was mostly just like the questions were mostly very fluffy But he did have this one question that I really liked and that spoke to something that I've been trying to put my finger on For a while which is he he basically begged Obama to for once in his life be emotionally honest because he has this whole thing of being like so removed and, you know, so detached from all of it. And what he argued is, you know, Trump in particular, but a lot of Republicans, they lie and misstate a lot of things, but there's a level of emotional honesty that people respond to. Whereas Democrats, progressives, whatever,

they may be right on the facts, but there's like a level of emotional dishonesty. And I think that this article is very like fits really well in that mold. You can't just gloss over everything. You can't pretend like it's unpatriotic to and throw out like you're a dirty hippie if you dare, if you dare criticize American greed or imperialism or ruling class dominance, as he puts it. So it's also very easy to say when, you know, you are doing just fine, your bank account is full, you have no financial woes or worries, you know, in the world, your children, same deal. Very easy to have this view from the station that Joe Scarborough finds himself. And that's just not what people, you know, even if you listen to Joe Biden, I mean, he's not making his pitch based on, oh, the economy is great.

They will say some of that. Yeah. But at the core, it's we are going to fight against these Republicans who are nuts. That's the only reason that they're trying to get people. Really. I mean, and let's look at the midterms, too. What's the number one reason why Dems came out? It ain't the economy, it's abortion. It is a negative reason. Negativity and the influence of that for voting is not even an indicator of the positive view that Scarborough puts forward. So anyway, I think that's it. Let's go to the next one. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about how Americans do feel about this country we live in and the institutions governing this country country we live in and the institutions governing this country that we live in. The picture is pretty dire. Put this up on the screen

from Gallup. Historically low faith in U.S. institutions continues and effectively they don't find much change year over year. It's pretty flat in terms of public confidence in 11 of the 16 institutions that Gallup tracks annually. They had seen significant declines. Presidency in the Supreme Court suffered the most. The share of Americans expressing a great deal or fair amount of confidence in these had previously fallen 15 and 11 percentage points respectively, and those numbers have basically remained unchanged. Now, they do go on to note that the survey was conducted before this latest slate of Supreme Court rulings came down. Those, of course, impacted affirmative action, college loan

forgiveness, LGBTQ plus Americans, their rights and how they intersect with religious values. So possible that the Supreme Court ratings change a bit after those. But generally speaking, Americans felt pretty bad about these institutions. They continue to feel pretty bad about these institutions. And, you know, to tie in the Joe Scarborough conversation and some of this like wonk fight that's going on, there's this very anti-populist, very elitist attitude of like Americans are just confused. They don't understand how great our institutions actually are. They don't understand how well things are really going in the economy. They just don't get what a great leader Joe Biden actually is. And if they just, you know, if we just got rid of the

misinformation and the bad actors and we just were able to message properly and get the word out about how actually good their lives are, then they wouldn't feel this way about any of these things. So, you know, when I look at these numbers and trust in our institutions, on the one hand, it's sad because you would like to have institutions worthy of trust. On the other hand, I look at it and I think it's a sign of societal health that there is a recognition that these institutions have failed, that in many instances they have been corrupt. I mean, just look at some of the things we've been covering with the Supreme Court and the level of deep, just institutionalized rot and corruption, which has

been accepted now for years and years. I think it's a sign of health and a positive development that Americans have accurate views of these various institutions. Yeah. So the all-time low, I think this is really interesting, for several institutions was actually hit. And let me read you what they are in 2023. And I think these are all correct. Big business, large technology companies, public schools, Congress. Those are the places that hit it in 2020, the police in 2023. Now, if you look at the rest of them, many were also hit in 2022. The presidency, the criminal justice system, television news, the US Supreme Court, newspapers, church and or organized religion. As you said, Crystal, I think it's a sad story. I wish that people had more faith in all of these well-established institutions in American life, which genuinely had some good in the past.

But a core theme of our show is about the corruption of these institutions at the expense of some of the lowest and most vulnerable amongst us. And I think it is correct that the vast majority of people should turn on these institutions and should question whenever they say, hey, this is why we need a tax break. This is why we're doing so well. And this is the actual consequence of really decades, not only of partisanship, but of our economic policy. And it actually, as I talked about previously, the American carnage speech, and really, you know, many of the campaigns of the 2016, the successful ones, was the pointing to the actual ills which face us into these institutional numbers. And then look, I'm not saying Trump did anything about it, but he acknowledged the problem. And really, you know, the smartest Democrats I see are also willing to acknowledge it as well. I'm no fan of Chris Murphy or anything,

but I was fascinated to see him try to wade into like masculinity discourse and what can we do about faith in institutions and all of that. You know, Buttigieg, you know, well, look, I think he's an incompetent fool, but even he can read the tea leaves around. If you want a future, you have to be able to speak to the deep, like the deep despair, I think,

that falls all the way from upper to middle class. That's another, or upper to lower class. I think that's a key part here of the story, which is these institutions we're talking about here are not at like 50%. For example, big business has a 14% approval rating. That's stunning. That means the vast majority of people are against it. Large technology, 26. Public schools, 26. Think about what a death knell that is for public education. Public education was at one time one of the shining lights of the way that Americans felt about the shared institution that was federalist, local, state, federal connected. They felt a real connection to that. For the vast majority of people to turn against public schooling, that is not a good thing. That means that they literally have no trust in the ability for these institutions to carry on their legacy.

And it explains school voucherization, the rise in public schools, and many of the pushes away because they're like, we don't trust you at all. And again, I only want to sit here and just vindicate that and be like, I agree, you shouldn't trust them. I mean, I want to see an alternative. But, you know, for many of these that I see on the list, I think you're a fool to put any of your faith in any of them. Yeah, I think the big tech example is a really is an interesting one, because I guarantee you the numbers during like the Obama years when, you know, it was very up, there was a lot of tech optimism, right? And these companies were seen as like the good guys and they were on the vanguard and they were like part of these democracy movements and whatever. It is a better state of affairs, in my opinion, for people to

understand the problems with these massive tech monopolies that have so much control over our public discourse and over all of our lives. I think it's a good thing that the bloom is off the rose, so to speak, and people have a more clear-eyed view of what some of the, yeah, benefits, but also challenges and problems and the way that it has been corrosive to society. So I think it's a good thing that banks have seen trust fall off to 26%. I think it's a good thing that television news trust is at 14% and big business trust is at 14%. Because when I look at these numbers, I feel like, all right, they can only hold back the waters for so long before the dam breaks, before there is some movement or some candidate or some combination of things that breaks through and changes things for the better. Because you can't,

you just can't sustain this distance between, you know, the happy talk of Joe Scarborough and the, you know, Beltway wonks and whatever, and the reality of how people view the country, the institutions, the economy, and the prospects for their lives and the lives of how people view the country, the institutions, the economy, and the prospects for their lives and the lives of their children. Yeah. I mean, you know, and also whenever I look at the chart, there's a very clear story here. The last time that we had even, you know, moderately high level of confidence in major U.S. institutions was 2003 and 2004. What happened? Oh, I forgot. The Iraq War. Interesting.

Yeah. Shocker. People dropped their amount of faith in U.S. institutions. And then also there's a sad story. The modern high is 36% in 2020. Why? Because of the feeling of let's all come together during COVID. Then none of those institutions actually did anything for us and they fell apart and broke. And now we're at the all-time low. The last time that Americans had confidence in the presidency was before Vietnam. I mean, can you blame them for not having confidence? And, you know, afterwards, they're not wrong to continue to drop. So I think I see a consistent and a proper story, which is genuinely small d democratic.

And I think that there is only one actual way to fix any of this, which is enacting good policy, good politics, and to try and shift away from where we are right now to get to some sort of consensus. But that's way, way harder, you know, easier, I think, said than done. How dare you criticize America instead of offering a muscular defense, Sagar? Yeah, I can give it a great defense, you know, compared to somebody else. That doesn't mean that I can't look inward as well. Yes, indeed, of course. All right, so this was a fascinating story.

We were both kind of interested in this. Apparently, attendance at Disney World is way down. Put this up on the screen. This is from the Wall Street Journal. So the way that they measure this is kind of interesting to me too. They measure the wait times on rides, like the average time you have to wait in line in order to get on rides at Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom. And at each of those sub-parks of Disney World, wait times are way down on the July 4th weekend, which, look, it's hot as hell in Florida during the summer. So people actually prefer to go Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's.

Those are the real peak season at Disney World. But July 4th, you know, over the summer when people are on vacation, this is also a really key time for the park. So to see such a drop off from 2022 and then they go back to 2019 pre-pandemic is pretty fascinating. I'll read you a little bit of the Wall Street Journal analysis. They say that former Disney finance chief Christine McCarthy indicated they anticipated lower demand. That sounds like cope to me for the second half of the year because Disney World's 50th anniversary celebration had ended. They also say, and this seems to me to be more honest, they kind of intentionally thinned the park's crowds because they upped the cost of everything to make it more of like a luxury experience, I guess,

and sort of like thin the herd so that people can pay more and wait less in line, and they feel like that's going to work out in terms of their bottom line. They also point out that some of this may be industry-wide, so not specific to Disney. Crowds, they indicate, were also relatively light at Universal Orlando. The average wait time there was 28 minutes on July 4th. That's down from 38 minutes in 2022, but it was more in line with 2019 levels. So there does seem to be something kind of specific going on here in terms of Disney World. You found this, Sagar. Disney Fanatic, there's the whole world of, like, Disney trip planning and Disney World blogs. This one, Disney Fanatic, put this up on the screen,

talked about a podcast where a Disney History Institute analyst explained that families are being hit in terms of the ticket prices, that they are pricing out their primary audience, which is middle-class families. In the past, this analyst said families would make multiple trips to Disney Park after a successful first trip, and now families are unable to gather the funds for even that first trip, making follow-up trips unlikely. So that's some of the information.

I'm sure people out there will also be like, oh, it's because they went woke. Maybe. It's possible. It's possible. There's some political piece of this as well where conservative families are more ideological or like, I don't really want to spend my dollars there. I'll do something different. But I think it's more likely that the increase in ticket prices and food prices and all of those things are probably to blame. The big and sad question is, is they did take a revenue hit? Because the reality is, is that if they can make it effectively a

premium product, you can have less people and you can make a ton more money. One of my favorite business books of all time called Disney War, I forget exactly who wrote it, the same person who wrote Den of Thieves. It'll come to me in a second. But that book actually outlined kind of the path to profit and the giant that Disney is today

via Michael Eisner and eventually the takeover of Bob Iger, who has now returned as the CEO. And the really sad part is that a lot of it just comes down to bilking people who are trying to take their families. And I'm talking about, like in the beginning, parking used to be free at Disney World.

Now it's like $50. They actually doubled it. Tickets used to be like $3.50 or something like that. Walt Disney correctly had a vision of bringing to life the characters which he was able to put on the screen and making it a centerpiece of American life. And he succeeded, you know, in that vision. And then really what happened is they monetized as much as humanly possible as the IP to turn Disney into the multi-gajillion dollar company that it is today.

But the problem that I see really in this is, where is the middle class experience now? Like, what are you supposed to do when you are a middle class person and you want to provide a family vacation, which is, you know, ticks the boxes and give people the experience? I was talking with my parents when we were in India

and they were calling the first time they took me to Disney World. Apparently I tried to bite one of them. So that's me. You tried to bite one of them? One of my parents, one of my parents, because I was talking with my parents when we were in India, and they were recalling the first time they took me to Disney World. Apparently, I tried to bite one of them, so that's me. You tried to bite one of them? One of my parents, one of my parents, because I was tired, and I was too hot. I didn't know you were a biter. Apparently, I was. I don't think any people who watch the show will be surprised by that.

I don't know what it is about kids and biting. I don't really get it. You have to, like, train children not to bite. Yeah, I don't know. Some kids are more, anyway. Every preschool, this happens at least once a year. Anyway, yeah, I remember my first trip. We went to Disney World once when I was a kid.

We did a road trip down from Virginia. It was right around my sixth birthday when I was in kindergarten. And I still remember parts. I mean, I was a little kid, but I still remember parts of that trip. Disney World is really like the iconic seminal middle class vacation. It's almost like it's almost like a bedrock of what you feel like as a middle class parent. You should be able to provide for your kids. But I would my question wouldn't be, OK, what is the middle class experience now? It's where is the middle class?

Yes, because the reason why Disney and many other companies, too, by the way, are leaning into our we're going to we're going to move up the food chain. We're going to offer this more premium, more expensive experience is because those are people that still, you know, those are people have money. Those are the people who have expendable income. And so when you have this huge split and massive income inequality and all of these things, if you're just looking for like, where are the people with the revenue that I can squeeze out? It's increasingly not the middle class. It's certainly not the working class as people are pushed up and, you know, against the wall and many times over the cliff, it's those upper middle class families that are doing better, that they may have issues with housing costs or whatever, but they're in the higher professional classes and they're able to afford the Disney vacation

and not look twice at the way they're getting price gouged at every single turn and the way hotel costs have escalated and the way that concession costs have escalated, et cetera. So there was a concept a number of years ago that came out of the economics profession of the plutonomy, where a number of analysts were advising companies that, hey, if you want to maximize your revenue, this is the segment of the market you need to go after because everyone this is the segment of the market you need to go after because everyone else is getting squeezed so much. They just aren't going to be able to provide you with the revenue and the profit generation that you're going to be looking for. So Disney following a lot of broader economic trends here, I think. Yeah, I think you're right,

unfortunately. And let's put this also up there on the screen of what you found, which is kind of mound-boggling. 18% of Disney-goers have racked up debt, but, quote, most have no regrets. Let me just go ahead and plug a Dave Ramseyism. Please do not go into debt whenever to go on vacation. No matter what said vacation is, it will put you behind, and it definitely is a problem. You should only go on vacation if you can afford it. I don't know. People don't regret experiences. They don't regret experience. They don't regret childhood memories. Okay, but that's not where it's 28% credit card interest, okay? But again, I'll just channel Ramsey there. Yeah, look, I mean,

if you want to put yourself in that situation, it's your money. You decide what you want to do. I do think, though, what this is generally showing is the level of expense that which people have come to expect a normal vacation comes to the conversation that we're having around parking, the fees for parking, the fees for tickets for so much of this behavior, where the inability to really access a normal vacation at a modest price for like a family of four, that's very much disappearing. And I guess I'll give a plug, even though this is not in my interest because they are getting more crowded. National parks, they're not free, but they're

pretty close whenever it comes to the admittance fee and all of that. And it remains probably one of the only really accessible things that a lot of people can do with their children these days, which is a good thing, but I also think it's sad. Great Smoky Mountains, amazing. Favorite place, Great Smoky Mountains. Oh yeah. I haven't been to that one. I actually would like to go. Absolutely amazing. Highly recommend. And just one last thing to underscore how it probably is the cost that is driving these trends. They found in that study, most people had been to Disney World. Most people who had gone to at least one theme park had gone to Disney World. But of the people who had not been to it, they said the top reason for not going was because of the cost. So for people who are

making the decision to forego, they're not including it in their vacation. There were some percentages that was just like, I just don't like theme parks. But 48%, the top reason was it's too expensive. So I think that says a lot. Big problem. Big problems on the horizon. So you guys may know Hunter Biden has a child that he is providing child support payments to, but just reached a settlement with the mom to never take the Biden last name for this child. And his father, President Biden, doesn't even acknowledge that this child exists. He frequently says very specifically he has six grandchildren. Well, if you included this child,

who is his grandchild, that would be seven grandchildren. And Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, obviously liberal, oftentimes Biden supporter, actually just penned a column quite critical of the president for his treatment of this seventh grandchild. The ladies of view decided to weigh in on this in their own special way. Let's take a listen. Maureen Dowd is saying it's bad for the child that the president has not acknowledged her. So I kind of think, well, she should be catching at the son, whose baby it is. It's not the president's baby. So I don't know what you think, but I'm throwing it out there. I agree with you completely.

It shouldn't have been directed to Joe Biden. It should be directed to Hunter Biden. It's five children, not four, Hunter, because this is not Joe Biden's baby. And I think it's very hard for Joe Biden to be a grandfather to the child if his son is not being a father. He can talk to his child. He can advise Hunter. But look, what is what is absolutely evident to me is that the right wing and the MAGA world has decided to weaponize Hunter Biden against his dad. Yeah. And everything and anything Hunter does or does not do is going to be weaponized. I have to tell you, this story actually affected me

way more than I expected it to. Let's go ahead and put Maureen Dowd's column up on the screen. She talks about this little four-year-old girl in rural Arkansas who's growing up there, learning to ride a camouflage pattern four-wheeler alongside her cousins. Some days she wears a bow in her hair. On other days, she threads her long blonde ponytail through the back of a baseball cap. When she's old enough, she'll learn to hunt just like her mother did when she was young. She says the girl is aware that her father is

Hunter Biden. Her paternal grandfather is the president of the United States. She speaks about both of them often, but she has not met them. Her maternal grandmother describes her as with smart and funny. Listen, this is a president who has made family central to his political brand. I mean, and I think that's part of what the American people have really responded to with him. You know, it's his empathy. It's the way that he centers his family and the tragedies that have befallen his family. Even the way that he has embraced Hunter despite a lot of struggles with addiction and, you know, major roller coaster there to say the least. I don't know how you just disown this child. I just don't know how you can morally

justify that in any instance. And, you know, this is like a normal family in rural Arkansas. The dad who's kind of the patriarch there, this is the child's grandfather on his mother's side, her mother's side. He owns a gun store. I think he went hunting with Don Jr. Like he seems to have some Republican leanings. So who cares? So what? And to me, it comes across, especially the piece about how hard they fought to make sure that this child cannot have the Biden last name. I mean, it really smacks of classism. It smacks of just elitism, like you aren't worthy enough and the circumstances of your birth are too tawdry for us to even acknowledge that you exist and certainly not to welcome you into the family. I don't think it's defensible and I think

it's grotesque that The View tried to defend it. Oh, it's sick. I mean, look, obviously Hunter is the one here most to blame. I mean, he knocked up a stripper and then basically banished her, you know, refused to pay. She literally had to sue him for child support and for support. So let's put the deadbeat, repulsive behavior aside. He's not the president, so that's fine. But the president is the person, as you said, who puts family at the center, the loss that he has experienced throughout his life as a testament to his character and how he conducts himself on a daily basis. And he refuses to acknowledge, you know, the grandchild that he has by birthright, you know, in Arkansas. And then do we really believe that Hunter was the

person who wasn't the, you know, just the only one pushing that she wouldn't be able to use the Biden family name? Like we know that he was obviously intimately involved in this. And you know, Fox News' Peter Doocy has asked him about this grandchild before and he's flown off the handle, calling him a classy guy and all this stuff. I'm like, well, look, you know, you're pursuing one of the most classless acts that I've seen, you know, from a person who is a head of state who's effectively shunning somebody who is your grandchild through absolutely zero fault of their own. This is a four-year-old who is full knowledge of you as their grandparent and of your father. And if your son chooses to be a deadbeat dad, that's one thing, but it is a absolute choice on your behalf

in order to not publicly embrace this person. And I also think, look, America's messy and, you know, our divorce rate speaks to that. And there's, I think there's a lot of problems and all that, but most Americans would feel nothing but deep empathy towards you for embracing this child and for saying, no matter what family is family. We don't care about the circumstances. Mistakes have been made and all of that, but he's an 80-year-old man. Do you really want to go to your deathbed knowing that one of your grandchildren who is related to you by blood has no relationship with you? And then also then for have this publicly be a thing and to still retrench in that position is the height of disgust for how a person conducts himself in this way. And it's not just about Biden. It's about, you know, Jill Biden,

the entire first family, and that the way that they have behaved here, this is Kennedy-esque in terms of the way they, you know, rally around Ted after Chappaquiddick and all that, and the way that they keep these things, you know, very internal and try and keep the shame and, you know, and they go after those who, you know, are victims of their own personal behavior just to try and retain some public image. It's so unfair, really, to this family. And you're right. Families can be messy. Family, you know, this is obviously not something that, you know, Hunter really wanted or Joe Biden really anticipated. But this child is not responsible for the way that she came into the world. It's not her fault who her parents are. And so, you know, I also was thinking about

Sagar. Remember when after Beau Biden died and Hunter ended up in a relationship with Beau's widow. And actually, Joe and Jill acknowledged that and, you know, put their stamp of approval on that. That was also very messy and also rather tawdry. But, you know, apparently they found the characters in that relationship highborn enough for them to acknowledge. So that's why I really feel like this just smacks of a deep sort of classism and condescension. And the piece that Anna Navarro said, I guess in particular, bothered me about like, well, this isn't really on Joe. They should be asking Hunter about it. And it's like, okay, but Hunter's not the president of the United States, number one. And number two, how many grandparents are out there in America right now who have,

you know, been in difficult circumstances with their kids and they have stepped up for their grandchildren in spite of whatever is going on with their children. There are a lot, a lot, millions of grandparents who have stepped in to fulfill that role. So to completely absolve him of this, I just, again, I just, I just genuinely don't understand how you can do it. And yes, the Republicans are doing everything they can to weaponize Hunter, no doubt about it. But that does not change the reality that, number one, this is Maureen Dowd, hardly like a Republican operative here. And number two, this child is his grandchild. And the basic human decent thing to do is to welcome and celebrate her and have her be part of the family. You're absolutely right. You know, think about all the millions

of people out there with very similar circumstances who had crack-addicted children, who may have fathered children out of wedlock and all that, and they stepped up. Go to West Virginia. The number of grandparents who are raising kids, their grandkids, listen.

Where I'm from, it's a very common thing as well. I know a lot of people. That's why I said if you act in the right way, you actually could have some empathy. But, you know, look, he's chosen to conduct himself this manner. I think it's absolutely disgusting. Crystal, what are you taking a look at?

Well, former President Obama has emerged once again to lecture us all on our failings and to bemoan the state of the world, a state that he himself co-authored as president for eight years, of course. Here he is in an interview with Hasan Minhaj explaining the advice that he would give to his daughter Malia on the despair she feels about climate change. Malia comes to me, she says, you know what? She's 24. All our friends, sometimes we talk about climate change and we just feel like there is no way we're going to be able to solve this. We're looking at the science. It feels as if we're on a trajectory that we're going to sail past this two degrees centigrade benchmark, where after that, potentially things are getting cataclysmic. And so I'll be honest with you, dad, a lot of my friends, they just feel as if, what's

the point? Because the world's burning, and there's nothing I can do. And I said to her, well, she asked me, what should I say to them? And what I said to her is, look, we may not be able to cap temperature rise to 2 degrees centigrade. But here's the thing. If we work really hard, we may be able to cap it at 2 and 1 half instead of 3, or 3 instead of 3 and 1 half. That extra centigrade, that might mean the difference between whether Bangladesh is underwater. It might make the difference as to whether 100 million people have to migrate

or only a few. And these incremental changes matter. That matters. It makes a difference. And these incremental changes matter. That matters. It makes a difference. And it's worth fighting for. And you can't descend into nihilism and not try to save those 100, 200, 300 million people. It matters. That's a lot of people. Now, there are about 100 enraging things

about all of this and they are all classic Obama. The most maddening has got to be the way he always removes himself from the action, blessing us with his wisdom, but never, you know, actually doing anything about the problems that he identifies. Even as president, he basically did the same thing,

unwilling to get his hands dirty in political struggle, but very happy to dispense sage advice and analysis. Here also, as is his custom, Obama completely absolves himself of accountability for his own record of climate action avoidance at what, in retrospect, was obviously a really critical time. The centerpiece of those efforts was cap-and-trade legislation, which passed the House and got hung up in the Senate in Obama's first term. Please recall that Obama had a big House majority and, for a time time a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

Once cap and trade became politically polarized and bipartisan support dropped from it, Obama just abandoned it and really never looked back. Instead, he vacillated between some small-bore efforts like the virtue-signaling Paris Climate Agreement, which lacked any sort of legal force of law, and actively destructive policy like continuing oil and gas subsidies, backing fossil fuel projects around the world, and leaning hard into the new fracking boom. Here, so you will recall, is Obama bragging to a Texas audience about his role in Drill Baby Drill. I know we're an oil country and we need American energy and by the way, American energy, and by the way, American energy production, you wouldn't always know it, but it went up every year I was president. And that whole, suddenly America's the biggest oil producer and the biggest...

That was me, people. I just wanted you to... That was me, people. Climate activist Bill McKibben put it this way in an interview with the Obama Oral History Project, quote, no matter how much I liked him, it was very clear he could care less about any of this stuff at some deep level and was not willing to sacrifice or suffer any political pain in order to raise the issue. I think you could say that about a number of issues during the Obama era. Now, how does that reality square with Obama's admonition to young people that they've got to fight and work really hard to try to limit temperature rise, a struggle that he absented

himself from in office and has failed to join as a private citizen, preferring instead to fill his role as global brand and swooping in at key moments to enforce a Democratic Party status quo. His post-presidency deserves, in my opinion, as much scrutiny in some ways as his presidency. Here he is, a wealthy, beloved, connected, powerful global figure who has dedicated his life to popping up in interviews such as this one to demand that we limit our political imaginations and enforce a worldview that says incrementalism is the very best that we can hope for. That's what really comes through in the little negotiation he has with himself and his theoretical advice to Malia on what level of temperature increase that we should try to settle for.

The fact that thanks in part to his own failures, we will surely blow past the two degrees mark as hand waved away, even as he acknowledges that every tick upward is potentially devastating for vast swaths of humanity. Just to give you a little bit of a sense here, one analysis found that temperature rise of 2.5 or 3 degrees, which Obama floats, could slash global GDP by a quarter. But if incrementalism is all that's on offer, you have to accept that temperatures will just continue to rise, and we should just fight really hard to limit the war's displacement and death that will surely result. I'm sure he and his family, of course, will be well insulated from all of the chaos. To me, though, in some ways,

the most interesting part of this interview came in a question from Minaj, because he put his finger on something that's been bothering me for a while. Listen to how he practically begs Obama to actually be emotionally honest just for once. What I'm trying to get out of you, actually, I'm actually just going to say it.

Emotional honesty. Yes. Because when you first came into office, when I was Sasha's age, you were like Ted Lasso season one. Folksy, optimistic, cheerful. And now some of these kind of like Vox.com talking points feel like Ted Lasso season three. Oh, man. Predictable and at times forced. Wow.

Let me give you props. That's a tough forced. Wow. Let me give you props. That's a tough review. But I want to give you props. Yes. Remember that moment where you were like caught the hot mic and you're like, Kanye's a jackass. The other one seems like a perfectly nice person. She's getting her award.

Why would he do that? He's a jackass. And everyone's like, yes, yes. There's these moments of emotional honesty where there's such deep resonance because the American public feels gaslit and lied to. I will say this about the other guy who was in office. He was a factual liar, but emotionally honest. He was always who he is. Yeah, but I think progressives sometimes can be factually accurate, but emotionally dishonest.

Now, Obama doesn't really respond, of course. He just swears he's being who he really is. And listen, maybe that's true. But we should not allow politicians like him or Biden or so-called progressives to get away with claiming an issue is existential and then meekly crying about the parliamentarian or how mean the Republicans are or the difficulty of working with Joe Manchin. It is, at its core, deeply dishonest. It's emotionally manipulative.

Not to mention, the stakes are really pretty high. Just a look around the world right now. We just had a string of days that were the hottest in history, and the Southwest is getting roasted with relentless triple digit heat pushing 120 degrees. Historic Canadian wildfires are suffocating much of the US with dangerously poor air quality levels on what is now a pretty regular basis. Meanwhile, extreme floods just hit New York and Vermont, much of New England, in what is being described as a one000-year tidal wave of water that has already caused massive damage, chaos, and led to at least one death.

Obama can, I'm sure, recite these statistics and more quite ably in a soothing tone of deep concern. And then he will implore young people to take action because, gee, someone ought to do something about all of these problems. Sagar, it's classic Obama. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue because, gee, someone ought to do something about all of these problems. Sagar, it's classic Obama. 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, whenever I travel, I try my best to check out from the news completely. But I confess, only two things actually piqued my interest while I was gone. Affirmative action, which I touched on yesterday. And then rumblings about a movie that I had not heard of, Sound of Freedom. From what I could gather, it was doing very well in the US, despite expectations. But only upon my return did I decide to look into it. Not only in the movie, but an increasingly shrill and elite effort to stop people from watching the movie.

And why? So to begin with, what is The Sound of Freedom? Well, it's a movie loosely based on the life of Tim Ballard. He's the founder of an Operation Underground Railroad, an organization dedicated to combating global child trafficking. Ballard previously served as a special agent in the Department of Homeland Security to combat child pornography and child endangerment, but left to start his own organization after he says he found bureaucratic red tape that frustrated his ability to try and save children in developing countries. The film dramatizes efforts by Ballard and his organization to

infiltrate child sex trafficking organizations abroad, but bust them, then save the kids, and press lawmakers to pass laws to make it more difficult. Overall, the film has been a shocking, dramatic success so far, some $40 million at the box office in a few days, and has come close even to the latest release of the Indiana Jones franchise. So the question arises, why is there even a controversy around this movie at all? Well, apparently, child sex trafficking as a topic itself has now been very politicized in the eyes of these media organizations, effectively being linked in a mention whatsoever with the QAnon movement. Now, criticism of the movie effectively says that it dramatizes the problem of child sex trafficking globally

and feeds QAnon conspiracies by validating it as a reality. This was effectively the criticism that CNN brought on its air regarding the movie. Let's take a reality. This was effectively the criticism that CNN brought on its air regarding the movie. Let's take a listen. And this film is being marketed to either specific QAnon believers or to people who believe all of the same tenets as QAnon, but claim they don't know what it is. And The Sound of Freedom does focus on a real issue of sex trafficking. But that theme, it's sort of like that kernel of truth that feeds the QAnon conspiracy theory. Tell us how those two things work together. Sure. And the most durable and the most believable conspiracy theories are not entirely false. There's something in them that

is true and the rest of it is false. But the believers point to the one true thing and they say, oh, you don't believe that this particular thing is true. In terms of child trafficking, we know trafficking is real. We know it has real victims. No one is denying that. But these films are created out of moral panics. They're created out of bogus statistics. They're created out of fear. And with something like Sound of Freedom, it specifically is looking at QAnon concepts of these child trafficking rings that are run by the high level elites and only people like Tim Ballard and only people like Jim Caviezel, and by extension, only people like the ticket buyer can help bring these trafficking rings down.

Okay, so the criticism is actually simple. The film is being marketed towards QAnon believers or those unwittingly are buying into QAnon who watch the movie. But in the same breath, they do acknowledge, of course, that child sex trafficking is real, but that the idea that elites participating in it is ridiculous. Well, perhaps they have not heard of Epstein's Island, but below all of this, I find myself asking a simple question. Why are the CNN, these other liberal media organizations, spending so much time going after one of the most basic movie ideas of all time, based on a true story.

Rolling Stone took the same tactic in the review of the movie, saying Sound of Freedom is a superhero movie for dads with brain worms, and described it as, quote, a QAnon-tinged thriller about child trafficking designed to appeal to the conscience of a conspiracy-addled boomer. The review evidence for why the movie is QAnon-adjacent is that some people on some QAnon boards are heralding the movie and once again took aim at the movie for validating that child sex trafficking is a big problem in our society. They write, quote, there is visible suffering all around us in America. There are poor and unhoused, people brutalized, killed by police. There are mass shootings, lack of health

care, climate disasters. And yet over and over again, the far right returns to these resorted fantasies about godless monsters hurting children. I mean, once again, is anyone saying that any of those problems are not real? Are they just even saying that by watching this movie or supporting it, that child sex trafficking is the biggest problem that we face? Or are they just saying it's a problem ignored or not paying enough attention to in society? The Guardian also parroted the same line in their review of the film. They called it QAnon adjacent. And once again, they are the only ones shoehorning anything political into this interpretation. They readily admit that Taken, a film already made starring Liam Neeson, invented this genre and that the film seeks to replicate its very success.

To prove QAnon connections, reviews focus on the star of the film and his past comments, but they seldom find any specific example overtly in the movie tying it to a conspiracy. In my opinion, you do not have to be a crazy person to believe child sex trafficking is a problem, and it shouldn't be a political statement, actually, to go on an entertaining film trying to highlight this subject. I particularly found it funny that Rolling Stone described the movie as the dream of boomer dads and described the plot as some sort of white savior complex, considering that the current data released so far by a variety indicates ticket buyers to this film are, quote, predominantly female and that a full one-third of the audience so far is Hispanic. Someone should

ask these female Latinos what they think of that criticism. And in fact, I actually think this demographic validates something important about the film. Vulnerable children in developing countries are preyed upon by wealthy people both in country and who travel abroad specifically to indulge in these disgusting fantasies. Anyone who has ever been to Thailand or walked the streets of Bangkok or Phuket like I have knows what this film describes is a very real and gross phenomenon. The large Hispanic audience from the film may even have personal experience with this issue, considering that Latin America remains one of the global hotspots of child trafficking today. Furthermore, the real line that the media appears to be going with is that any discussion of elites and child sex trafficking by definition validates every QAnon conspiracy ever. And first of all, it's as if they want to pretend,

as I said, that Epstein never happened, and that we still don't know all the people who were involved there. But second, why does someone somewhere believing something wacky invalidate what before QAnon has always been acknowledged as a pervasive problem plaguing US law enforcement globally. Broadly, the success of the film does speak volumes. It is running on par at the box office,

as I said, with Indiana Jones, undeniably already called a summer box office hit, with effectively zero mainstream promotion and strength only from online support and word of mouth. Hollywood pros are already saying it is especially noteworthy that it hit the top five in a time reserved for the biggest blockbusters in all of Hollywood. And at the end of the day, people want to be entertained and they also don't want to be told what to think.

So maybe things in entertainment will be okay after all. I'm curious what your sound of freedom take is, Crystal. What do you think? I mean, listen, liberals are annoying, okay? But film is political. Conservatives freak out all the time about various mainstream movies. There's a whole Barbie map controversy right now. Oh, that's about South China Sea.

Little Mermaid, the main character being black. So I think that there is a lot of conservative freak out about movies. And I would also say, listen, I haven't seen the movie. You haven't seen the movie. I'm not going to opine on the specifics of the movie. The dude that it is based on is at best a fabulist and at worst an outright fraudster. His organization has been caught in any number of lies. Just to give you one particularly disgusting example, they highlighted this young girl who they called Liliana, who they said was trafficked across the border at age 11. They said that they freed her from her hell of being trafficked and raped 30 to 40 times a day. Liliana freed herself. This organization had nothing to do with her, didn't even know her until two years or something after she was able to free herself from her own hell.

And some of the key details, even her age and the circumstances under which she was trafficked, she came across the border with a romantic partner, for example, were completely, you know, invented. And that's not the only circumstance. Journalists went along with them on one of their raids, and I think it was in Haiti, and found that actually some of the kids that they were trying to save from their own hell, they were being trafficked for the first time that time because they had actually inadvertently created demand for sex trafficking through their tactics. Other people who work in the space say that they go about this in like a horrible way. They don't keep track of the women and girls that they, you know, work with after the fact. They were under investigation by the state of Utah for lying to donors and potentially abusing some of these trafficking victims themselves.

That investigation, I will say, has been dropped. But just let's be clear, the dude that this is based on, there are a lot of questions about who this guy is, what he actually did. And he also has, like it's public that he has this plan to use his prominence in the sex trafficking world to bolster his own profile and potentially run for political office. So anyway, that's what I'll say. I think everything you just said is completely fine. I just don't think it has anything to do with the movie. And so it's like the movie, I guess, is based on him. But, you know, what are we talking about? I haven't seen the movie, so I can't say.

And you haven't watched it either. So I don't know how you can say that definitively. Well, I mean, it's based on his life. But the point. Well, yeah, I guess. Look, at the end of the day, it's a dramatization, quote unquote, like based on a true story. So I think all of that is true. I think all that criticism should remain there.

But I'm saying that what effectively is being said is that the movie itself is QAnon based. Now, this star, Jim, what's his name? Kaz, whatever. I can't pronounce it properly. Yeah, he definitely said some crazy stuff. He's like spoken at QAnon conferences and stuff like that. Q has spoken at QAnon conferences. All of that, 100% true.

However, you know, once again, like in the movie, like that's not actually what's being done. So I think we should look at these things on their merits. The fact that the movie is doing well doesn't appear to really – I mean, at the end of the day, how many times do we talk about QAnon and the tiny slice of the U.S. population? Millions of people have gone and seen it. Already people were going to go see this film. It had nothing to talk about QAnon and the tiny slice of the U.S. population? Millions of people have gone and seen it. Already people were going to go see this film. It had nothing to do with QAnon. They just heard about them. Here's the other thing that bothers me

about the promotion of the film, which is that they've been pitching audience members on to buy tickets, buy them ahead of time and trying to persuade them that they're going to be part of this fight and that they're doing something like noble by buying these tickets and that they're really going to aid in what is a genuine, legitimate, horrific problem here and around the world. And, you know, I think that that is incredibly emotionally manipulative and misleading as well.

Well, here's the other answer, and that's a great follow-up piece. Did you actually use this money to do anything about this problem? Right. Or are you doing it for self-aggrandizing purposes? Well, you won't get straight answers from them because they've been caught in any number of lies. I think that's a 100% fair question. I think all the points that you just brought up are exactly the things they should talk about. And yet, what are we talking about instead?

They're like, anybody who even goes to see the movie is some QAnon nutjob. And I'm like, these are all far more legitimate, I think, lines of inquiry whenever it comes to it. So anyway, I thought it was interesting in terms of the discourse hall here. And actually, our discussion was far better, I think, than most of what we're seeing in Gar- But yeah, I guess that's kind of far from the course, right? That's what we do. We've got a great guest standing by, Sean O'Brien. Let's get to it. So as you guys know, because we've been covering it on the show, there is a potential massive strike looming at the end of this month. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen.

This would involve 340,000 UPS workers who are organized under the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. This was the very last update that we got. After marathon sessions, UPS negotiations collapse around 4 a.m. UPS walked away from the bargaining table after presenting an unacceptable offer to the Teamsters that did not address members' needs. We are very excited to be joined in studio by the international president of the Teamsters union, Sean O'Brien. Welcome, sir. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. So just give us an update here. Why did negotiations collapse?

What are some of the key sticking points at this point? Yeah, so we've been negotiating since January. We have 44 supplements that are area conditions for the master agreement. And we've got all those done. And then we started negotiating the national master agreement towards the end of April. Made a lot of progress. Made a lot of changes favorable for our members. And things were going well. And then once we got into economics, that's when it started to fall apart. And we're not that far apart as far as getting the deal done. 95% of the contract has

been negotiated. But when it came down to talking about wage increases, rewarding people with longevity, just rewarding our teams to members. UPS took a position at one point that they had no more. Towards the end of it, we have no more to give. And I'm like, what does that mean? And so we just have no more to give. I said, so there's no sense in moving forward then, right? And they left.

But, you know, the sad part about it is that, you know, our members, they worked through the pandemic. They provided goods and services to this country with total disregard for their safety and the safety of their families. We actually transported, our members transported vaccines when they weren't even eligible for them, making sure other people had them. And, you know, the bottom line of ups's balance sheet they made 100 billion dollars everybody got paid through covert except for our members when you think about it the shareholders got paid the executives got paid the ceo got paid and rewarded and they never touched or forwarded a package so you know it's a little bit frustrating especially um you know the earnings that ups has been making as a result of the hard work of our 340,000 Teamsters.

And it's frightening when you see our part-timers, it's actually embarrassing for UPS when part-timers are living in poverty in some of the big cities, they're on subsidized housing. So it's time for UPS to do the right thing and reward these folks. I mean, there's no argument here. It reminds us a lot of the railway situation.

The people who literally make the country run and the people not getting paid while the big executives are. So let's talk actually, I think, about that because we're talking here about the economic conditions and more. Like give people a sense of what you're asking for, very basic fairness in terms of compensation. Look, I mean, UPS has had double digit earnings, they doubled their profits, doubled their volume and the reality is our members want to be rewarded. And UPS is going around telling people, well, the full-timers make $93,000 per year with

$50,000 in benefits. And that may be true, but that $93,000 a year is not an easy task. They're working 60, 65 hours per week. It's a very demanding job. And our full-timers, regardless what they make, need to be paid more. UPS has set the industry standards, but that's only because the Teamsters Union is a conscience. We've fought long and hard for decades to get the conditions and benefits. UPS is not giving them to our members out of the kindness of our heart.

And the part-timers, I mean, everybody sees their UPS driver in their neighborhoods, but they don't understand that without the part-timers who some are working two or three jobs to make ends meet, without the part-timers, those packages don't get loaded or unloaded on those trucks. So they're the unsung heroes of this battle, of this fight, and they need to be rewarded. And look, this is something that UPS has the opportunity to do, to be the model employer throughout the United States, to show and demonstrate this is how you treat and reward people that make you the success that you are. And this is a small issue. What percentage of

the 340,000 are actually part-timers? Because I know it's a significant part of it. Well, it's over 50%, probably 52%, 53%. And 100,000 of those UPS part-timers are making less than $20 per hour. Wow. That's a hard job. And UPS, you know, hasn't been consistent either with all their, you know, tweets and all their little press releases. One minute they're saying they make over $20 an hour. And then the next minute they're saying they make $5 less than $39 an hour. So the one thing, we've been consistent in our

messaging. And UPS, look, if they want to get a deal, all they have to do is pick up the phone. Can you talk a little bit about the context of how we got here? You were recently elected. A key part of your campaign seemed to be promising you would take a more aggressive stance on these contract negotiations. I know members voted overwhelmingly to authorize a potential strike. So can you talk about some of the concessions that were made in previous contracts that led you to this place of being willing to walk away and really pushing hard for what your members deserve? Well, the one thing that we have done as administration is we've listened to the people that are responsible for us to be here. That's our rank and file members. Those are the people that, you know, we work for. They don't work for us. So that's been

a different approach that we've taken as a new administration. And the last two contracts have been concessionary. UPS have gotten tremendous flexibility. They had a two-tier wage system. There was a lot of stuff that, you know, we needed to change, and our members weren't happy. So we've been focusing on not just the UPS, with every contract negotiations. You know, we're not working beyond expiration dates of contracts. We're out there. And the good thing right now is because of when we ran the changes we made in our Constitution, now it's mandated that rank-and-file members are on the negotiating committees for all these national agreements where they are our best testimonials at the table.

You know, it's great when an employer can tell a story. And I always say employers' stories are compelling but highly inaccurate. But there's nothing better when you have someone that's working in that industry that knows the trials and tribulations every day and can actually give true testimonials, that is amazing and it's helped us tremendously in all these negotiations. Can you talk about morale within the rank and file, their willingness to stand up for a fair contract here? Because there's a lot of talk right now about the great resignation is over, about some kind of diminishing willingness amongst labor to not only just strike, but just kind of stand up

and try to get what's theirs. What's the attitude right now? Well, the attitude is our members are fired up. You know, they know what they did for this company, what they did for the country during the pandemic. And, you know, they want to fight. They want to fight. And look, at the end of the day, I don't think anybody wants a strike, but I keep telling people, and this is the truth, that if there is a strike, it's because UPS caused a strike. This is gonna be a self-inflicted wound. They know what they need to do for our members.

They know what they need to do for their employees, and it's time they do it. What happens next in the negotiations? What do you think are the odds that you get to a deal or that you go out on strike? That's strictly up to UPS. I mean, we're willing to sit down, we're go out on strike? That's strictly up to UPS. I mean, we're willing to sit down.

We're willing to talk. And it's, you know, like I said, when 95% done on the contract, all the supplements are done. Now it's just about the money, the economics. And the problem is, and I don't mean to cut you off. The problem is that UPS is so focused on Wall Street, they're forgetting about Main Street. Main Street are the people that we represent, the people we have the privilege to work for every single day. And they need to reward Main Street. Everybody else is getting paid that hasn't even touched a package or forwarded a package. Yeah. How does this impact broader labor movement and just workers in general?

I think what it's going to do, and I'm excited about it, I think we are going to be the template on how to fight big business, how to take them on, and how to win. And I think this is going to invigorate the labor movement even more so. I mean, you see these young workers at Starbucks. You see these young workers all over the country looking to organize. And that's refreshing to someone like me and the Teamsters Union because, look, I'm a fourth-generation Teamster, and there's nothing better than young people being involved. And people want to take on the boss now.

Yeah. Tell us about Amazon. Put this up on the screen. Guys, there were some experts who were saying this is kind of a prelude to future Amazon fights. I know you all have been doing some organizing at Amazon locations around the country. It would be huge. Obviously, Amazon, huge workforce. They've really

degraded work and pay conditions among warehouse workers in particular. What are your plans there? Oh, we have to organize Amazon. There's going to be no question about it. And that's why, you know, UPS, in collaboration with negotiations with Teamsters over the years, we have collectively set the standard as high as we can. And we want to maintain that standard as far as when you're working in this business, loading trucks, delivering packages. We've set that standard. And we've got to make sure that we continue to set the highest standard.

But we need to take this contract as a template and bring it to these Amazon workers who there's no doubt they have 110% turnover ratio. There's no pathway to a full-time career. We need to take this contract and say, this is what you get when you become a Teamster member. You're going to get health and welfare. You're going to get pension. You're going to get job opportunities. But more importantly, you're going to get dignity and respect in your workplace. I think that's the most important thing. And finally, last question for you. You know, we've been tracking the fact that public sentiment is at all-time highs, practically, in terms of support for labor

unions. You have, you know, not just Democrats now, but a lot of Republicans coming back around. I'm talking about rank-and-file Republicans, not necessarily the ones in Washington, D.C., but in favor of organizing, in favor of labor unions, because they see the way that worker power has been diminished over decades. At the same time, private sector union density continues to decline. So what are the sorts of things that need to be done at the federal policy level in order to enable the burgeoning grassroots labor movement that we've been tracking here across the country? Well, I think the government needs to not reward bad employers.

Like Amazon has a $10 billion contract for the cloud. If they're not treating workers, they have the highest violations in OSHA. The government shouldn't be rewarding bad employers, but we also should be looking at how we can make it easier for people to organize. You know, you talked about the PRO Act and you talked about, we talk about that all the time, but- Are you disappointed the president sort of dropped that? Talked about it at the beginning and I haven't heard about it in a long time. And he's still given Amazon contracts. Yeah, well, the president has done a lot for labor. And sometimes we focus on what have you done for me now? I mean, look, at the end of the day,

we need to find a path to let people organize easier without retaliation or retribution. Union busting is a $500 billion per year industry, and the government needs a crackdown on that. Yeah. I mean, that's the bottom line. People nowadays should be able to join a union free of any threats, retaliation, but the American people should be entitled to a middle class wage and living. And that's not happening right now, but hopefully we can change that. Well, very grateful for your time. Good luck in the negotiations. We'll be watching closely.

I hope you'll come back and keep us updated. Yeah, keep us updated. I definitely will. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Appreciate it. We'll see you guys later. Have you ever thought about going voiceover?

I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy. But to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

A lot of times, big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways. Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. Small but important ways. From tech billionaires to the bond market to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chastin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father?

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