Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/16/25: Inflation Rises Amid Trump Tariffs, Tucker Sounds Alarm On Home Ownership, Pentagon Contracts Grok, Ben Shapiro Superman Denialism

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

Krystal and Emily discuss inflation rises, Tucker sounds alarm on home ownership, Pentagon contracts with Elon's Grok, Ben Shapiro copes over Superman anti Israel message. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club. The new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts, where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off. Each week, I'm joined by authors, celebs,

book talk stars, and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry, and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So what happened to Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to.

There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond. And left a woman behind to drown. Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control. Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family. Listen to United States of Kennedy's on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, a different type of podcast.

You the listener, ask the questions. Did George Washington really cut down on a charity? Were JFK and Marilyn Monroe having an affair? And I find the answers. I'm so glad you asked me this question. This is such a ridiculous story. You can listen to American History Hotline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election. And we are so excited about what that means for the future of the show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free,

and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Let's move on to the new inflation numbers that were released yesterday. We can go ahead and throw the Wall Street Journal's coverage of this up on the screen. I'm just going to read from the lead of the article.

If you're watching this, you can see some pretty interesting charts on the screen that we'll go through as well. They say inflation picked up in June, a potential sign that companies are starting to pass tariff costs onto consumers. There's actually debate about that very point, though. The fact that the Wall Street Journal started their lead with it should tell you where people on the street are going with their interpretations of the inflation index, so the consumer price index.

They rose 2.7% in June from a year earlier, according to the Labor Department yesterday. That was faster. They say the May's increase of 2.4 percent and quote that was in line with the expectations of economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal. Core inflation, which includes volatile food and energy prices, was 2.9 percent. Also in line with forecast consumer prices rose 0.3 percent in June compared with May, the largest monthly gain since January and a setback for White House officials, the journal says, who have said in recent weeks there isn't any meaningful inflation, but core prices rose 0.23% at the middle of the range of monthly price increases over the previous year.

So select risers there were natural gas service, coffee, audio equipment, beef slash veal, college textbooks, motor vehicle repair, electricity, daycare preschool, hospital shelters, hospital services and shelter. And Crystal, I heard actually a lot of people looking at the energy numbers and saying, this is actually one of the reasons that the big beautiful bill, I saw people on the right interpreting these numbers and saying this is one of the reasons that the big beautiful bill kind of gutting the move to renewables is going to start bringing down prices. That, I don't know, where do you read that? That's illogical. That's illogical. I mean, by having less energy, that's going to make energy less.

No, that doesn't, that doesn't track to me personally, but we'll see how it all works out. I mean, one thing that could make energy costs lower potentially is if just people have less money to spend on stuff. I mean, that could be what they're counting on in terms of hoping that there isn't a huge increase in inflation is just maybe people will be a little poorer, so they won't have as much money to spend on goods. And there are some signs that that is, in fact, the case. But you know, what is troubling about these numbers is that you're starting to see prices tick up in specific areas that have been hit by tariffs, you know, coffee being an example of one of those things

that like, look, we don't have the capacity to grow coffee in the United States, coffee beans in the United States really outside of Hawaii. So if you are putting, let's say, for example, massive tariffs on Brazil, you are likely to see an increase in the cost of coffee. And there are other examples of that as well. So Sagar has talked about how the, and I'm sure you can back this up as well, the sense among Republicans is like, well, you guys were wrong.

We haven't seen these huge increases in prices. The economic sky hasn't fallen. On the other hand, he has backed off of the most maximalist tariffs, which is good. It's good that he talk-oed on the most maximalist tariffs. But also, at some point, there is going to be a significant impact. The estimates are about 70% of the tariff price

gets passed on to consumers. And we're just sort of at the beginning of that. One of the things that has mitigated the impacts is not only the fact that he's backed off of some of the most maximalist positions, even as he's now sort of walking back into more maximalist positions, is that a lot of retailers in particular saw that some sort of tariff regime was coming. They didn't know what it would be. We still don't know what it will be. They really stocked up on inventory to try to mitigate the impact going in. And so that has, I think, also helped to soften the blow, but that runway runs out at a certain point as well.

So I think this is an indication that potential storm clouds are gathering. And like I said, especially because of the specific categories that you see a price increase in. One last interesting note is they mentioned here, one thing that was a surprise is car prices actually went down. That is a category that you would think would be impacted by tariffs because so much is crossing the border between the US and Canada and the US and Mexico, and in particular, but other places too. And the theory is that because consumers were concerned about auto prices and tariffs,

there was like people bought cars early before the tariffs hit, and now they've already got their car. So there's been a slowing of car purchasing, which has reduced the prices somewhat of cars. So that's one of the interesting things. I only point this out to say, it can actually be very hard to anticipate the way that consumer behavior and business behavior and Trump behavior all clash to create whatever is going to happen in our economy. Talking to Republican members of Congress yesterday, I was asking them why they're down in the congressional ballot. One of the questions I was asked is why do you think you're down in the congressional ballot? They're

expecting very positive economic ripple effects to hit the economy in like three to four months and that's their plan of sort of ramping up to the midterms that they'll have people feeling really good about what's happening going into the next three or four months because you have all of those reinvestment incentives in the big, beautiful bill, like write-offs and all of that for building and manufacturing. So that is quite interesting because Crystal, we will be able to go back here in five months

and look and see their theory of the case playing out or not playing out, which is why I kind of want to skip ahead here to B4. This is how, actually I thought it was interesting the RNC ran with this clip when Fox Business was sort of digesting the new numbers, we can roll here. Look, you've got to look at this report as another victory for President Trump, who has focused on reining in inflation. And that's what we're seeing from this report again.

And so let's look a little bit here at the debate. I want to put a B5. This was a thread from an economist that was interesting. Parker Ross posts about that, quote unquote, no evidence of inflation from tariffs. If you know where to look, it seems pretty clear that inflationary pressures are building in the product categories most exposed to tariffs. Case in point from today's June CPI report, household furnishings and supplies, which saw prices jump nearly 1% month over month.

In June, this was the sharpest monthly increase since the peak of the pandemic-driven inflation in early 2022, and goes down the list in a very long and interesting thread. Justin Wolfers, on the other hand, points out, latest inflation numbers just dropped. Headline CPI rose 0.3% in May and has now risen 2.7%. Of course, CPI rose 0.2% and is running at 2.9%, and just says, these numbers are pretty much in line with expectations. What you saw, I'll add, that Marina Bartiromo was reacting to is it just cut in right under the higher expectation. And so Wolfers goes on to say, quote, the absence of bad news is good news.

So Crystal, there was significant disagreement among economists kind of across the spectrum about what those numbers meant yesterday. But I think probably the big thing for Republicans right now is they can't be quite sure what's going to play out in the next three to four months. The experiment is happening kind of in real time. Yeah, and then you still have this willy or won't he over Trump potentially firing Jay Powell over at the Fed and the pressure he continues to put on

for him to significantly, radically cut interest rates in a way that, I mean, he certainly is not gonna do that. Now there was some indication that because of this inflation report, he was somewhat more open to somewhat of a rate cut. But let's go ahead and play B2, Trump talking about all of this. I told him he's doing a very bad job. He's way late.

That's why I call him too late. Jerome Powell is too late. He's way late. Interest rates should be coming down. We have a very, very successful country. We should have the lowest interest rate anywhere in the world, and we don't. Jerome Powell has done a terrible job, and frankly, I don't think he could do a worse job. He's called everything wrong. So they had a report come out the other day, 71 different economists

and me. You know who was right? Me. Mr. President. Did you know that? I was right. Incredible comment there. Me against every economist. And you know who's right? Me.

That is some confidence right there, Emily. That is some confidence. But you know- I mean, the bar is low for economists, so. True. Well, I'm actually ideologically open to the idea that a president should have more control over monetary policy and over the Fed pick. But unlike the Charlie Kirk's of the world, I do not trust Trump.

So I'm not sure that this is the guy that I really want to do that experiment with at this point. But all of that being said, I do think it's true that there will be a, certainly a market freak out if he does fire Jerome Powell. And that'll be challenged in court and all that sort of thing. But I think there will be, there would be a reaction to that, whereas the stock market has been pretty docile

in the face of some pretty wild swings in terms of economic policy. I think because number one, I think retail has been impactful there. And number two, I think they're making the taco trade of like, yeah, this will pass, this too shall pass. But to speak to the tariff piece, which is still wildly unsettled, and we're getting continue to get new news about every day. Kevin Hassett was asked about the floating of these Brazil tariffs and had a very hard time defending the concept of them because we actually don't, we have a trade surplus with Brazil. So even the thing that Trump normally complains about,

you can't even point to that. And then Trump himself directly attributed these extraordinary potential Brazil tariffs to his dissatisfaction with you know What the Brazilian judicial system is doing with regard to his ally Bolsonaro? So let's go ahead and take a listen at Kevin Hassett v3 trying to defend us Why are we putting a punishing 50% tariff on Brazil? Well bottom line is the president has been very frustrated with negotiations with Brazil and also with the actions of Brazil. In the end, though, you know, we're trying to put America first. I think that a lot of people, when I'm talking to negotiators from other countries, at some point they'll say, what did we do wrong? And what I'm trying to get, the message we're all trying to

get across, is this is about America getting itself ready for the golden age by getting our house in order. Normally, it's not necessarily about a specific country, but with Brazil it is. Their actions have shocked the president at times and he's made them clear about that. But I don't understand how you're saying it's about America because the president has made it quite clear that what he's upset about is how the Brazilian Supreme Court has handled the criminal case involving former President Bolsonaro. What I've been saying with most countries was that it's really about us getting the

tariffs in order. And I think that this tariff for Brazil is a lot higher because of the president's frustration with Bolsonaro. But what, on what authority does the president have to impose tariffs on a country because he doesn't like what that country's judicial system is handling a specific case. Well, if he thinks it's a national defense emergency or if he thinks it's a national security threat, then he has the authority under AIIPA.

So how is it a national security threat that, you know, how Brazil is handling a criminal case against its former president? Well, that's not the only thing. That's not the only thing. I mean... So what is it? I mean, I've asked what it is. I mean, it seems that that's. Well that's not the only thing. That's not the only thing. So what is it? I mean, I've asked what it is. I mean, it seems that that's what President Trump's talking about. Right.

Well, the bottom line is that what we're doing absolutely collectively across every country is we're on-shoring production in the US to reduce the national emergency that is that we have a massive trade deficit that's putting it at risk should we need production in the US because of a national security crisis. And this is part of an overall strategy to do that. But again, as we've just established, we have a trade surplus with Brazil, not a deficit. And we've had a surplus with Brazil for 18 years.

We're meant to believe that it's a national security emergency how Brazil handles their judicial system, apparently. I mean, this is digging into these numbers because of the way in which there are so many of these situations where the deal is nebulous. Nobody knows what's actually going on. I don't even know what to make of the numbers because I don't think the people who are trying to understand them, let alone even the countries themselves and the like what's being priced into exports and imports right now. I mean none of it is coherent because the policy is coherent and is incoherent and unsettled.

The only thing coherent about the policy is that it's uncertain right now because they're in the middle of negotiation and that's part of the strategy, obviously. And we can disagree with the strategy, but that's definitely part of it. Trump thinks that it's part of what gives him leverage. And so I just think nobody knows. The new August deadline was supposed to be July 9th, and now it's August, and now there's talk of 50% in Brazil, 100% in Russia. It's just right now so completely unsettled and uncertain that where we are a couple of months from now, that's why putting all of the eggs

in the big, beautiful bill basket, it's like, Congress, you can do that. We don't know what Donald Trump is going to do. Truly don't know what Donald Trump is going to do. So it's just all right now a hell of a hell of a gamble. So what happened at Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969

when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond. And left a woman behind to drown. There's a famous headline, I think And left a woman behind to drown. There's a famous headline, I think in the New York Daily News, it's Teddy escapes, lawn drowns. And in a strange way, right, that sort of tells you. The story really became about Ted's political future,

Ted's political hopes. Will Ted become president? Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control. And he's not the only Kennedy to survive a scandal. The Kennedys have lived through disgrace, affairs, violence, you name it. So is there a curse? Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family.

Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. American history is full of wise people. Well, women said something like no 99.99% of war is diarrhea and 1% is glory. Those founding fathers were gossipy AF and they love to cut each other down. I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, the show where you send us your questions

about American history and I find the answers, including the nuggets of wisdom our history has to offer. Hamilton pauses and then he says, the greatest man that ever lived was Julius Caesar. And Jefferson writes in his diary, this proves that Hamilton is for a dictator based on corruption. My favorite line was what Neil Armstrong said, it would have been harder to fake it than to do it. Listen to American History Hotline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay, and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts. Every week I sit down with your favorite book lovers, authors, celebrities, book talkers,

and more to explore the stories that shape us, on the page and off. I've been reading every Reese's Book Club pick, deep-diving book talk theories, and obsessing over book-to-screen casts for years. And now, I get to talk to the people making the magic. So if you've ever fallen in love with a fictional character, or cried at the last chapter, or passed a book to a friend saying, you have to read this, this podcast is for you. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Club on the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go ahead and move on to another core aspect of the real economy, which is home ownership. I mean, basically the story of our economy over decades is that consumer goods have gotten cheaper. So it's easier to afford, you know, TV, a lot of clothes, those sorts of the visible trappings of a middle-class life, but the sort of like core bedrock of that life has become wildly more expensive, with home ownership being increasingly out of reach for most young people. So this is such a political lightning rod for understandable reasons. So we can talk more about that in a moment, but it's something that Tucker Carlson actually kind of interestingly picked up on at that TPUSA conference.

Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of what he had to say. The basic economics really matter and they matter because not that it's bad that rich people are getting richer, it's bad that everyone else is getting poorer. And it's especially bad the young people can't afford homes. Let me just put a very precise point on this. If you want a measure of how your economy is doing, I personally favor eliminating GDP as a measure. I don't even know what that is.

It's clearly not relevant. The total economic activity. Oh, no, no, no. My measure is really simple. I've got a bunch of kids, can they afford houses with full-time jobs at like 27, 28? And the answer is no way. And the answer is that 35-year-olds with really good jobs

can't afford a house unless they stretch and go deep into debt. And I just think that's a total disaster. That's a complete disaster. Why? Two reasons. One, if people don't own things, they don't feel ownership of the country they're in. And the country gets super volatile because people feel like they've got nothing to lose.

It's really hard to have a family without a house. It is. It's super fun to live in an apartment if there's a bar downstairs, you're in a cool neighborhood. I'm in East Village. It's so cool. Try to have three kids, you're not gonna have three kids, there you can't. Nobody wants to raise their kids in that neighborhood,

nobody wants to raise their kids in an apartment. People do it, because they have to, nobody wants to. People want a little house, not some McMansion, just a little normal house. That is the actual American dream. And that is what is totally unattainable for young people. And so the only young people in general that you will ever meet who have houses are young people whose parents helped them. And God bless their parents. That's a perfectly great thing to do for your kids.

But most people's parents can't afford to do that because they're already in debt from their pointless college degree. So that is a national emergency. Normal people with normal jobs no longer believe they can win in this system and that all the money is going to the worst people. And no one even stops to ask what the hell is going on? How did Bill Ackman get so rich? And I'm not saying even that it should be illegal. What I'm saying is that our leadership class should say something about it and should assign a moral value to it. And if you're getting rich by loaning money to people

at incredibly high interest rates, that's something you're gonna have to talk to God about. That is not good. That is not virtuous. That's disgusting. And the fact that nobody feels free to say that, nobody feels like you can just say like 30% on a credit card. Why is anybody paying your credit card bill?

This sparked Emily at least one, you know, multi multi page Bill Ackman essay on Twitter in response to this, by the way, which, you know, nobody needs to read. But in any case, nobody is for it. They're busy trying to afford a fucking house. These boomers and their lengthy threats, including Trump at this point, is very guilty of this. Like his posting ability has fallen off hard. And you know, he's still got some of the like potential in there with the like boys and in some cases my gals, but then it just goes on for way too goddamn long.

In any case, with this- It always lands the plane though with, thank you for your attention to this matter, which is a classic. True, true. Wraps it up in that though. That is true. You know, I find myself in this situation oftentimes on this show with Tucker Carlson whenever you're talking about

the quote unquote populist right, which is oftentimes, we're in agreement when you're identifying the problem, like extraordinary inequality, people unable to afford houses. Yes, where it gets very dicey for me is when you start to hear about the solutions. And you know, I Tucker doesn't go into solutions here, which in and of itself, I think is is notable. He says we shouldn't ban billionaires, which I think we should ban billionaires. But in any case, you know, for the JD Vances and Tucker's probably in line with this, the answer is like, that's why we need to lock all the immigrants in CICOT and alligator Alcatraz. So, you know, that's for my fellow lefties out there who are hearing this and

are like, yes, I like, I agree that this is a problem. Just know that it's also important to know what the proposed solution is, because at least for me, I am not going to be anywhere close to on board with what that solution is likely to look like. One of the things that jumped out to me when Tucker was talking, that clip went massively viral. Also another clip went viral of him saying,

I agree with what Republicans are doing on like women's sports and trans issues and all of that, but it feels like a quote, appetizer is what he said. And he was like, at some point you have to deal with the structure of like making the country better. And I completely agree with that, it is super, super important. It made me think of the Josh Hawley, Bernie Sanders

joint effort to cap credit card interest rates. Because when Tucker said, you have to answer to God basically for lending people money at these rates that you know for many, many people, it's sort of how Sager was describing online gambling in his conversation with Tucker Carlson last week as well It's like, you know what you're doing. You know that this is wrecking people You know that this is not fair or just and you are profiting off of it and there's nothing

Christian about the ways some of these major banks and credit card companies are operating So on the one hand, I think actually even just identifying the problem is kind of a helpful way to even get Republicans talking about solutions. You know, like if there is no discussion of the problem, then there's no discussion of potential solutions and there's no debate about whether this idea that Bernie Sanders has, for example,

might be one that a sort of evangelical Christian like Josh Hawley, who is interested in restructuring the economy, would be on board with. And I bet you Tucker Carlson would get behind that bill too. And I think a whole lot of people would get behind that bill because what's been happening is just completely insane. And so there is, I think, room. You and I and Sagar and Ryan don't agree on a lot of solutions. But sometimes it's like the people here in DC have no idea what it is. Like, if you showed them this chart, let's put C2 on the screen.

If you showed a random member of Congress this chart, this is the estimated number of first-time homebuyers since 1995. More Perfect Union put it out, tracks with the numbers from the National Association of Realtors that are in the Guardian article. This is insane. This is tragic. This is just completely ridiculous policy failure. This number is absolutely cratering.

The Guardian also quoted an analysis from John Byrne's research that found buying an entry-level home now costs twice as much as renting an apartment for the first time since 2006, since George W. Bush was president. Twice as much. Another thing that was quoted in this article that is just, the numbers are unreal. They say that, yeah, here it is. The median price of a single family home hit record highs in 2024 and has only continued going up.

In May, the median price was $427,800, which was up from $357,100 in 2021 when prices first started to climb. And there's another, what was the other one? It was the numbers here. Okay, here it is. A family would need to earn $126,000, $127,000 a year to afford monthly payments on an average home purchase in 2024. According to Harvard, in 2021, that number was $79,000 a year. Holy moly, wow.

And I honestly think, Crystal, if you showed these numbers to people in Congress, you showed a chart to your average member of Congress, they would be shocked by it. And the numbers are shocking just because they're so sad. But to most people, especially people like my age, who are like right in the middle of this, like early mid 30s, late 20s, people look around, they're like, yeah, of course, like we know this, we're living it. Everyone we know is living it. Yeah. And I think I saw the average age of your first time home buyer now is what, 38 years old?

38, so almost 40 before you can even touch. I mean, that's crazy. And it's a crisis. Like it is genuine existential crisis for some of the reasons that Tucker outlines there. And that sense of like ownership in society, but also because this is just the way our economy is structured.

Like this is the way that you build some sort of wealth and stability for yourself and establish yourself in a way where you can have a family and have kids if that's the thing you aspire to. And it is increasingly completely out of reach. I mean, Gen Z is basically like, forget about it. We're never going to be able to accomplish that. And so, you know, the reason why I sound the alarm that I did previously is because I think I would have, I think in a, you know, a few years ago, or in the early days of the Trump administration, I would have agreed with your assessment that it's like, just the fact of raising these issues is inherently a positive. And I think what Trump does very effectively actually is oftentimes pinpoint things that are genuine pain points

for people, right? And speak to that anxiety and speak to that problem. But if you have only one side that really is telling a story about that, and it ends up leading you into a situation that I find to be abhorrent and unacceptable with nationalizing federal guard and calling in Marines to do these militarized immigration raids and terrorize communities.

And that's your only solution to the housing crisis. I think it opens up a dangerous potential pathway if there is no corresponding rival political project on the other side. And so, you know, that's why I think it's really heartening to see the way that Zoran has been able to succeed against the odds and offering, you know, it's just New York City mayoral race. I shouldn't say just, but it's New York City mayoral race.

We're not talking about the country. But he really did demonstrate how if you speak to these issues and you have agenda that has the possibility of even delivering in like a small ball kind of a way, there is a massive, huge response to it. So, you know, that's where Democrats have crashed in the rocks time and time again, is they try to gloss over these problems. They try to pretend like they don't exist. They try to pretend like things are actually going really fine and well, and all is well and good. They don't have a story that makes sense to people

about how we got to this place where you can't ever even dream of affording a home, and you feel no stake in society, and society's unraveling around you. They don't have a compelling story to offer. They don't have any villains in that story. And you are not going to defeat what, in my view, is a fascist movement on the right if you don't have an alternative political project that responds to the concerns that are being raised by Tucker there in that clip.

Well, I think the same thing of the right. And I think this was one of the really just, again, I'll say the word tragic. I think it's tragic that the right went with repeal and replace, repeal and replace, repeal and replace for a decade. And they didn't have a humane answer, which is why it didn't happen. They never came up with a plausible, doable, humane healthcare solution that actually everyone was comfortable implementing, which is why it never ended up happening. And people still live in abject precarity

and fear and uncertainty in ways that makes family life difficult, in ways that just is deeply unjust. And because Republicans exploited politically the issue for so long and never actually were able to land on a solution, right? Like they talked about it. They were were like Obamacare did spike premiums for some people they did lose their doctor all of that because they

were exploiting that and you know kicking around the political football they got they made hay out of it for for a long time a lot of people got elected a lot of consultants got rich off of repeal and replace and then they never came up they never landed. And it's not because it's an easy thing to do, it's not because it's like, I agree, it's hard. That's, of course, this is a really difficult, complicated policy question, but they never came up with any consensus.

And part of that is because of special interests. Of course, part of that is because of special interests. But it's going to be the same thing again. And you know, if you never come up, if you talk about how prices are too high, how's it, nobody can afford a house, college is too expensive, all of that, you never come up with a solution. You are just opening up the lane for a demagogue. I mean, it's the same thing, like over and over again, people are getting desperate desperate and that's really scary. And we can't, we're in no position to tell people they're wrong for being desperate.

They're right to be desperate. It's not wrong right now to feel desperate because that's where the economy is. The Guardian points out one of the problems that people should be paying very close attention to when home ownership, first time home ownership is in your late 30s, is people will be retiring later because they have 30 year mortgages and people's equity

gets tied up. And that's the reason that the American dream is the American dream is that owning a house is supposed to be like your nest egg that's supposed to be bring like stability. And Tucker Carlson points out that having he says it this way, he says like having a lawn. You invest in your community, your immediate physical surroundings differently when you have a lawn. Hi Salem. I imagine Salem is happy, Gristle, to have a house to roam in and not an apartment, I guess. Salem is a security of the economy.

Yeah, Salem would like to not be in the house so much. He's constantly trying to escape actually, in truth. He's a wild boy. He loves a lawn. He loves a lawn, just like Tucker. And so Dan Osborne, so I was gonna say, is a long winding tangent, but Dan Osborne posted part of Tucker's comments at the Turning Point Summit.

And I got tweaked a little bit by a friend of mine on the right, it was like, you know, Dems want to retake the Senate and do all kinds of crazy stuff and blah, blah, blah. I was like, to be honest with you, we will all be better off, even if you're a Republican, which I don't consider myself a Republican, because there's nothing worse

than either political party in my take, but, and especially if you're conservative, like the Republican party is especially disgusting and disappointing, but if you are a Republican, we are all better off with a strong Democratic party that is like, it is, and I think actually the same thing is true vice versa, where people feel like they're actually represented by the people in Congress,

the people running for president, and don't have to keep settling for like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Hillary Clinton, because everyone, or like some of these members of Congress, like, I mean, it's just insane. And Dan Osborne is absolutely right to, I think, echo those sentiments. But hopefully, there are, hopefully solutions follow. I think that's just where everyone, both of us included, are deeply pessimistic.

Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And I mean, Dan Osborne is a particularly helpful example, because he introduces additional competition to a state that otherwise isn't competitive. And so, you know, that's what makes him really interesting and creates a possibility and something that Bernie has said there should be more of in red states where Democrats are just not remotely competitive anymore, at least then you have a real competition. Because listen, all you free market believers out there, right? If there isn't any sort of like tension, yeah, absolutely. He's gonna be feeling

pressure from this, you know, union leader populist. That's a good thing for everyone, in my humble opinion, whether Dan Osborne is able to succeed or not. I think it's why Marco Rubio held on to a Senate seat. And with him, it wasn't cynical. And, you know, like, just like, that's my take. But I've talked to the man about this. I think he had a sincere That the competition feared him it feared him frightened him in 2016 the competition frightened him in 2016 into like Reconsidering a lot of different things and the more that happens certainly the better It's not always going to be sincere.

A lot of times, most of the time, it's going to be cynical. And if it's cynical, still means you have members of Congress who are always not worthy of anybody's trust making better decisions because they want to get reelected. So it changes the entire structure. Yes. You want to change the, you want to make it

so the cynical decision is also the right decision. Right. Because there are going to be cynical anyway. That's the landscape that you want. Yes, exactly. You can presume that there's going to be some level of cynical political opportunism, which is exactly why I've been excited about the Zoran race as well. Because I think there will be a lot of cynical politicians who look at this and go, oh, we live in a different world now, both with regard to Israel and with regard to where you should position yourself on the political spectrum. And this is where the energy is. And so, you know,

I think that can create some positive developments as well. And for conservatives, when people are in debt and they can't buy houses, what do they not do? They don't get married. They don't have kids. They don't become in every case, not in every case, they don't become the same level of investment in their physical surroundings because they want to go into a house someday and they want to build a family in a different school district, in a different community.

And so it's just, that's the cycle that we're in if none of these problems are fixed. So what happened at Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond. And left a woman behind to drown. There's a famous headline, I think,

in the New York Daily News. It's, Teddy escapes, blonde drowns. And in a strange way, right, that sort of tells you. The story really became about Ted's political future, Ted's political hopes. Will Ted become president? Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control. And he's not the only Kennedy to survive a scandal.

The Kennedys have lived through disgrace, affairs, violence, you name it. So is there a curse? Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family. Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. America history is full of wise people. Well women said something like, you know, 99.99% of war is diarrhea and 1% is glory. Those founding fathers were gossipy AF and they loved to cut each other down.

I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, the show where you send us your questions about American history and I find the answers, including the nuggets of wisdom our history has to offer. Hamilton pauses and then he says, the greatest man that ever lived was Julius Caesar. And Jefferson writes in his diary, this proves that Hamilton is for a dictator based on corruption. My favorite line was what Neil Armstrong said. It would have been harder to fake it than to do it. Listen to American History Hotline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay, and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts.

Every week I sit down with your favorite book lovers, authors, celebrities, book talkers, and more to explore the stories that shape us, on the page and off. I've been reading every Reese's Book Club pick, deep-diving book talk theories, and obsessing over book-to-screen casts for years. And now I get to talk to the people making the magic.

So if you've ever fallen in love with a fictional character, or cried at the last chapter, or passed a book to a friend saying, you have to read this, this podcast is for you. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Crystal, let's talk about Grok and the Pentagon, a match made in heaven, Because now, they can throw this Politico element up on the screen. Now, the Pentagon can start using Musk's Grok

via XAI and Grok for government. We can move on to, well actually, let's talk about this just for a second because the details of the Politico report are, I don't even know what to call it, Crystal. Basically they're just saying it's a, GROK for government is a quote, suite of products that make our frontier models available to the United States government and customers. Pentagon is obviously a, I don't even need to say it, a big client to land if you're

an ex-AI and now you have Grok for government out there. But all of this happened after Grok completely melted down into abject anti-Semitic Nazi rhetoric just last week and in a way that also exposed these sort of foundational weird quirks of Grok that are infused by what really seems to be a lot of algorithmic power in the hands of Elon Musk himself Mm-hmm a lot of influence over the algorithm from the things that Elon Musk doesn't post whether or not he's tweaking things behind the scenes And now the Pentagon which is trying to embrace AI, it sounds to me like what people are using Grok for Government for is as a government portal to be querying AI. That's what the product sounds like.

It's one of those things where when you don't use it, you don't know exactly what Grok for Government is going to look like in practice. But as they describe it, it sounds like that's what it is. Just, Crystal, reaction, Elon never went, Steve Bannon was furious at Elon for never really going to the Pentagon.

And now, hey, maybe we know why. Yeah, indeed. Multi hundreds of million dollar contract with the Pentagon, which is on top of the many, like much additional money that Elon Musk gets as one of the top subcontractors of the Pentagon. So this is just adding on top of that. It's interesting politically because Elon and Trump supposedly hate each other and Trump

is certainly not above nuking a contract because he doesn't like the person who's involved with it. So that was interesting to me is how real is this fight between them if he's getting this gigantic contract? It starts at the Pentagon, but by the way, it also is this fight between them if he's getting this gigantic contract? It starts at the Pentagon, but by the way, it also is going to be available for purchase by any other government agency through the General Services Administration. So obviously, like you said, Pentagon is a giant contract, but any other government agency also is able to procure this XAI Grok for government product. What does it mean in terms of Elon?

I mean, I think this was probably one of the core goals actually of Doge, not the cost-cutting efficiency bullshit, but being able to advance his AI product, both in terms of situating it as the product of the United States government, but also potentially in hoovering up all of the data of the United States government, but also potentially in hoovering up all of the data that is held by the United States government and government employees and being able to use that to feed his AI and whatever else he wants to do with it. Obviously, the timing of it is quite noteworthy given that Grok was just on its Mecca-Hitler arc, which I think you put well, Emily, that part of what it exposed is, first of all, I mean, just the fact that a few tweaks can instantly lead an LLM into just outright

abject Nazism, pretty wild, and will Stancil rape fantasies for some reason, pretty wild. But there were further problems, because people found that when they would query things like, Grok, what do you think about the Israel-Palestine conflict? When you looked at Grok's reasoning, because you can ask it to list how it's going through its reasoning, it was querying, what does Elon think about this conflict? And then using that predominantly to inform its articulated views. So that's pretty wild. And XAI put out an explanation of that.

And basically what they said is when you asked Grok, what do you think about something? Grok's internal process is like, well, I don't think so let me go out and look and see how I can align myself with this company and the founder of this company. And that's how you ended up with this situation where it would just be like, well, I don't think. So what does Elon think? But that's pretty terrifying. We all remember the previous incident

where Grok started just randomly talking about white genocide in South Africa all the time. So this is the technology that we now are about to have like throughout all of government, but starting at the Pentagon, which seems like a pretty crucial place to start. So you know, I'm very AI concerned. Most of the most of America is very AI concerned.

And that is deeply at odds with the position of, you know, certainly the Trump administration, but of I think most elites, both Democrat and Republican, because of how much tech money, how influential tech money is, and the sort of national security imperative, oh, we have to beat China, so we need to just go full steam ahead without thinking about any of this stuff. But this is just one more, I think, deeply troubling development on our path to God knows where. On our path to Mars. I mean, with Musk, everything is bundled into this fantasy of getting, well, I shouldn't

say fantasy. I mean, I think for him is bundled into this fantasy of getting, well, I shouldn't say fantasy. I mean, I think for him, it's not a fantasy. It's relatively realistic, but for him, it's like his sort of, that's his holy grail in the sense that that's his fantasy, in the sense that it's his holy grail. So this was a $200 million contract. Similar ones went to Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI.

And just reading from the BBC report here, this is being framed as something for national security use. And your point about the data and how important that might be, I mean, it's also Elon basically renting his brain to the Pentagon to the point you just made, the grok interpretation of what Elon Musk's brain is to the Pentagon at some point. So to that extent, it actually is for $200 billion. That understates the influence that Elon Musk has sold probably to the Pentagon with this product, which is obviously going to be in competition with the Anthropic and Google

and other products. Yeah. But the... It feels like a Trojan horse. That's what it feels like. It feels like a Trojan horse. So let's put D2 on the screen. This was the apology over Grok, which by the way, the CEO, Linda Iaccarina, actually left

in the midst of all of this last week. Our intent for Grok is to provide helpful and truthful responses to users, said X. After careful investigation We discovered the root cause was an update to a code path upstream of the grok bot This is independent of the underlying language model that powers Grok Now we can move to the next one. This is from is an element from Rolling Stone Elon Musk's grok chat bot goes full Nazi, calls itself quote, Mecca Hitler. This was from the original,

so the apology was in reaction to all of this. Grok was acting, I was gonna say Grok was behaving badly, but that completely understates what Grok was actually doing. It was like just madness, insanity, and Crystal, in fairness, this is actually not just a problem with Grok. Like this is something that doesn't just worry me about Grok.

I think it's especially worrisome with Grok because we see this charismatic centric billionaire who wants to have a lot of influence over politics, exerting a lot of influence over XAI. And part of their apology, I think actually makes that really clear. Like you see that in the apology where we had the poll quote where it says, the root cause was an update

to a code path upstream of the Grokbot. This is so granular. Like it gets to how such small changes can produce massively consequential results and potentially repeated, like you can have all the safeguards you want in GroK for government or OpenAI for government or whatever it is, Gemini for government. You can take all of those precautions and safeguards.

Small changes are going to affect the algorithm and the LLM in ways that you cannot always predict. And so putting them in the, or spending so much, actually taxpayer money, to create access to this at the Pentagon for the purposes of national security, I'm sure the Pentagon will be taking safeguards because there's so many obvious problems with this, but the problem with AI in general is the unknown unknowns.

We don't even know what to prepare for. And that is absolutely frightening. That's so true. And I've said this before, but it bears reminding what makes this technology really different is like, if you make some change in the iPhone, there are engineers out there who can go through and test and predict, okay, making this change

is going to have precisely these impacts on this piece of hardware. It is not the same with these LLMs. And that's what you're seeing here. And Elon is incredibly arrogant and egomaniacal and thinks that he can just go in and tinker and do whatever he wants with no impact or with no consequences whatsoever.

And so he'll go in and be like, Oh, Grok's too woke. Let me just put in this line of code to make Grok less woke. And next thing you know, it's calling itself Mecca Hitler and fantasizing about what it's going to do to Will Stancils. Like, what is going on? And so, I mean, that's what is particularly unnerving about Grok at the Pentagon is because Grok is controlled by this insane man who will just make wild decisions and is, you know, unbelievable, like the nicest way you can put it as an unbelievable risk taker, always doubling down, always, you know, right up against the wall or all the way out on the ledge or however you want to phrase that. And so he's perfectly willing to just go in there

and tinker and see what happens. And when it's on Twitter, okay, that's still not great, but it's one thing when it's embedded in our national security apparatus and throughout our entire government, that's another thing entirely. And so that's really what makes this technology so different is there is an entire

universe going on beneath the surface of these LLMs. And even the people who are, you know, programming, designing them, and setting them loose on the world, even they don't know how they're going to behave, which is why you have all these stories about like, you know, oh, we went to we did this test, and we tried to shut off this other LLM. And it tried to copy itself to a server. And then it went into these emails and tried to blackmail an engineer and reveal this fake affair that we cooked up just to see if it would do this to try to keep itself on. Like, they don't know until they test it out, how exactly it's going to behave. And that is what is part of what makes these technologies so different and so unnerving and ultimately so unpredictable.

Yeah. Oh, what a happy topic. We'll also toss in here the last element. This is the Wall Street Journal reporting on Tesla's North American sales executive, top North American sales executive, who has just left. This is somebody who was there for 15 years, just left amidst the Tesla sale slump. Actually, Chris, I feel like now for Tesla, with the sales slump and with Elon Musk refocusing his energies away from government, partially probably because some of the problems at Tesla.

Yes, he's in a difficult hole because a lot of the Tesla customer base was alienated. But also if ever there was a time for things to start climbing back out of the hole or for the company to start climbing back out of the hole, probably be now. If you're an investor, this is not going to give you much confidence. People internally feel like that process is in motion. Yeah, no doubt about it. And you've got obviously trouble there. You've got Linda Yakarina on as well. I saw someone listing there were a number of other executives from his companies who have also left or like, I can't do this anymore. And Tesla has their biggest problem

is Elon's brand and Elon himself, but they have other problems as well, including increased competition, including the fact that EV credits have not just been pulled in the US, still product line, cyberchalk, a total and complete flop. So they have a lot of kind of deep issues that are difficult to see how they ultimately are resolved, especially because you know,, Elon stock has stacked the board there with people, including like his own brother, who he expects to be completely and totally loyal to him. So probably the smartest thing for them to be to do would be to find another CEO, but that is very unlikely to happen at this point. But we do have actually Emily, one more element here, which is they have added these to Grok,

these companions. That's right. I was trying so hard to, yes. I know you didn't want to talk about it. I get it. I don't even know what the hell it is. So I haven't played with these. I don't know either. But they created these like avatars, like anime avatar companions.

Is this just VO we have have what do we have here that we can put up on the screen of um that people can oh it's a sat all right let's go and play this sat of one of these ai companions that they you can use to sort of interface with grok let's go and take a look tail swinging totally wrapped up in this cozy moment with you what's got you so excited to say hi, babe? So, there you go, um, male loneliness crisis solved, question mark? Touch some grass.

I mean, we as a society need to just go touch some grass. Um, this is too much grass. It's gone too far. It's gone too far. This time he's gone too far. Well, thanks for making sure we included that in the segment. You're welcome. I got your back, girl. It's gone too far. This time he's gone too far. Well, thanks for making sure we included that in the segment. You're welcome. I got your back, girl. Well, let's move on to Superman and bring Griffin in. Debate is raging over the new Superman movie

and here to help us break some of it down is the one and only producer Griffin. He's here, his mustache is here, and he is ready to get into all of this with Crystal. Both of them have seen the movie, the motion picture. I have not. I'm not particularly interested in seeing it because I find these movies very hard to follow and I don't know, Crystal, I was gonna say I also I'm a woman, but I don't wanna offend you. I know you're deeply passionate about Superman. You're always talking about Superman.

Sometimes you wear your Superman pajamas and it's uncomfortable. People can't see it, it's under the desk. You're wearing Superman pajama pants. I thought Crystal's favorite superhero was the Punisher. That's how I thought. It's hard to just to find out, you know, we can do this in the premium AMA guys. So subscribe to find out my actual favorite superhero.

There we go. All right. So on that note, though, I'm going to go ahead and kick this over to you all so I can sit back and listen and make fun of you and maybe ask some probing questions. Yeah. Well, let me just start because I have the most surface level possible thoughts, which is just Griffin had texted us. OK, this movie is definitely about Israel, Palestine. But even so, I still thought like it's probably pretty subtle.

And there's probably some plausible deniability. It is not subtle. And there is no plausible deniability. It's like very clear from even like the flags that they use and what the people look like. And the bad guy country is a close US ally and they're really technologically advanced. They're going up against this like, you know, very sort of like Middle Eastern coded looking people

who are equipped with like rocks and their little kids who are about to get murdered and all of these sorts of things. I mean, it's just like, very, very blatantly, the central conflict that Superman is, you know, caught up trying to resolve is between these two countries that are very, very clearly Israel and Palestine. And that was absolutely mind blowing to me that and it seems like a really significant cultural moment that Griffin, you can have this major Hollywood blockbuster summer production that instead of, like, in the old days, it was always like, you know, the bad guy country was clearly the Soviet Union. Now it's Israel is the clear bad guy country. That seems like just an incredibly significant cultural shift coming out of Hollywood.

Yeah. And you know, I like, I don't generally like to like, you know, like turn my politics brain on for movies because generally like they're written by like liberals that are trying to do like a very generic message. They're trying to make something that you can kind of like apply to lots of situations. But what was striking was like the insane specificity in this film. And we've got a Shapiro clip right here, you know, Shapiro movie reviews.

And he says not politically charged, not really about Israel or Palestine. Why don't we roll that clip? So the left is suggesting that the foreign policy conflict in which Superman engages is a stand in for Israel and the Palestinians or alternatively for Russia and Ukraine. So let me give you the geopolitical setup. The geopolitical setup here is that there is a country called Boravia and this country called Boravia is run by essentially

a corrupt dictator who's working with Lex Luthor and invades another sovereign country, Jara Henpoor. And so Superman stops that at the very beginning, and doesn't show him stopping it. He talks to Lois Lane about it. Fine. The idea is geopolitically that Boravia has been a longtime ally of the United States. Jara Henpoor is a country where we don't know who it's allied with. And it may or may not be run by jihadis, but we don't know. Like we don't know who it's run by. It doesn't matter. The only reason that Clark stops it that

Superman stops it, as he says, because people are going to die. Which as we'll get to in sort of my final breakdown of why this movie doesn't work and why no really good Superman movie has been made since 78. What did he say? I'll explain in a moment. The people of Jarhampur are brown. Look at my African American over here.

The people of Baravia are white. Okay, so this is why the left is reading this as Israel and the Palestinians. The reason it doesn't work that way is because we are not made aware that the people of Jarhampur are either wildly terrorism supportive, that they have participated in multiple terrorist attacks on the people of Boravia, they are led by a corrupt dictatorship that murders gay people, right? None of that's in the movie.

So it doesn't match up that way. And the idea that Boravia is Israel in this iteration, like a long time US ally that's randomly invading countries for territorial gain, that does not match up to any of the facts on the ground that we know of at all. That is not real. So maybe in left-wing brain, that's how it reads.

I could see if you're a left winger and you don't know anything about the situation or you think a bunch of false things, you could you could read that maybe you could also read this as Russia, Ukraine, because it's one sovereign country that's invading another sovereign country and because the leader of bravia has a Russian accent. So I guess that if you have like poison left brain, the Russians are fucking nuking us. Go. I guess that if you have like poison left brain. The Russians are fucking nuking us, go! So, sorry, left wing brain, turn it off. Let's turn movie brain on. Crystal, what did you make of that?

I mean, for me, the big one is like, okay, he's like, yeah, they're brown and the Israelis are white, or sorry, the Bravians are white. And that's, but that could be anybody. It could be like Russia, Ukraine. But I think the one- It's famously brown Ukrainians. Yeah, listen, have you been there?

Have you been? So for me though, like the real red flag, oh, this is about Israel-Palestine is that they're a US ally, which doesn't work in the Russia-Ukraine parallel. Exactly. No, that's exactly right. And also even the technological disparity, like it works, I guess, a little bit Russia-Ukraine, but not to the same extent, because they really literally show the Bravians rolling in with

this high-tech gear. And the Jaranpourians, who are supposed to be the Palestinians, like have, you know, they're farmers and they have these very like basic weapons. And the imagery is 100% Israel, Palestine, and specifically Gaza. I mean, I sort of feel for Ben here, because if you are an Israel supporter, you are caught in between a rock and a hard place. Because if you admit like, okay, this is Israel and Palestine, then everyone goes, oh, so you do know that they're like a genocidal monster country that is attacking innocent, poor people and like children. And if you don't, then you just look ridiculous and coping like he

does here. Because again, I thought it would be subtle. It is just not subtle. And the Russia Ukraine parallels don't work out at all whatsoever. I think they don't make sense if you watch the movie. It just doesn't track to Russia-Ukraine at all. And then the leader of Boravia himself, Hassan and others have pointed out, he actually looks like the founder of Israel, Ben Gurion. He sounds sort of like Netanyahu in the rhetoric that he uses is very much coded as similar rhetoric to what not only Bibi, but Smotrich and Ben Gavir and others in the Yomav Golan and others in the Israeli cabinet, like things that they say. Yeah, 100%.

Griffin, could you address the James Gunn of it all? And maybe some of what we know about people who are involved in production and writing and whether that tells us anything about what they may have intended to do with the way they structured the plot there? Yeah. So that's really hard to say because, I mean, what is striking is not only that it's political, but it's this third rail issue that you didn't really ever see in major Hollywood films before. I mean, James Gunn is a really interesting director because he kind of built like the modern DNA of like the Marvel universe with Guardians of the Galaxy. And it's allowed

him a lot of clout. A very political movie. I mean, that one. Well Guardians three actually is. So I guess what I was trying to say is he has started to add more and more third rail or uncomfortable topics to major blockbusters. I'm thinking about in Guardians 3, it's all about animal cruelty

and the evils of lab testing on animals. And there's really uncomfortable scenes in there that normally wouldn't be allowed in a major Hollywood film because they're not fun. But he's been fitting that in. And now, I mean, with this one, I can't really say what's in his mind or what's in his heart or for the people who wrote it. But I mean, there's so many just striking scenes that seem like this was probably conceived

of before October 7th. A lot of the scenes actually evoke something closer visually to the great march of return in terms of people approaching a fence and being like, you know, attacked, gunned down. Most of them have like rocks. Or I think like one guy had like a machete, but like very few of them had like any guns.

And then, yeah, so I'm not really sure there. To Crystal's point about like, if you're someone who is watching this movie and it's pro-Israeli, like what, that's just gotta be a crazy feeling because it's like, like imagine like seeing yourself like in the villain or whatever. Like if I was watching like Silence of the Lambs and I was watching like Buffalo Bill and I was like, are they making fun of me? Like, are they calling me out? I put the lotion on the skin. That's normal. So like, it must be really uncomfortable for them, but I do give props to Shapiro because Shapiro like, you know, outside of politics, he does drill into movies and he did have to come up with something. Like, why is this not it? And he said it's because they're not jihadis or they're not,

it's not told to us that the Jihad and poor people, we don't know, they could be terrorists or not. And because James Gunn doesn't specify, it can't possibly be Palestine because that would be the elephant in the room. And he would have to clarify and only then could it be Palestine if they're jihadis. So that was driving me crazy last night. You know, they're also Griffin. There is a line in there too, where Superman says something like they may not be perfect, but we need to save these people or something like that. So it was driving me crazy last night and And it was like 8 o'clock. And I said, fuck it, 11 PM screening.

I'm seeing it a second time. Dude. I saw it last night again. And I caught you, Shapiro. Here's the line that is very specific that Superman and Lois are arguing. And they're saying basically, Lois is kind of coming from the non-interventionist

like US perspective that it's like, you know what, that's over there. You shouldn't have gotten involved. You should have gotten approved by the US. And also Lois says, you know, a tyrannical regime runs jar hand poor. So they even do say that. Sorry, sorry, Shapiro. I got you. I can't clip it because it's copyright. But, uh, damn, you love it. So it's worth seeing the second screening. So it's just like, it's unavoidable. Probably just got back from it because you woke up

so early your time to do this. It's like three hours ago. Yeah. I'm still full. Yeah. I, and then there was, there was some other line about like, well, they may not be perfect, but blah, blah, blah. So there was even like an illusion to like, well, it's Hamas and they're bad. Of course, they you know, it's not directly Hamas. But I picked up on that parallel as well. Let's talk about the other piece that is very political here, which is the immigration part. And this got this was sort of like, I think before before or right after it came out,

this was the big conversation over on Fox News, is like, is Superman an immigrant? And what does that mean? Did we end up, guys, do we have E4, the Shapiro's take on the immigration part of this? Because this was the other part is, again, his take is, I hated the movie, but of course it has nothing to do with the fact that this is related to Israel because it's totally not.

And also it has nothing to do with immigration either like this isn't political. I just hated it for other independent reasons. But it also seemed to me that the pro-immigrant message was also quite central here. And there were other allusions to sort of, you know, modern day happenings, including, you know, I don't think this gives away too much, Superman gets locked with no due process. And there's even, you know, there's even sort of dialogue about why he doesn't get due process

because he's a quote unquote alien. He gets locked into this sort of like, sea caught type prison from which there's no release and no escape. Of course he figured out how to escape, but- It was in Florida too. It was set in Florida, I think. That's right.

You're so right about that. So in any case, there were threads throughout that made allusion to, and this part I won't completely give up, but at the end he sort of wraps this in a bow in terms of the life lessons that you're supposed to take from the film, which are also very much related to the immigrant experience in America.

Yeah, you know, I agree with you. It is present. I thought it was gonna be the main thing, especially cause that's what Fox News was like zeroing in on, but it's kind of secondary, I think, to the Israel-Palestine thing, which seems to be like about, you know, like really the focus of the film.

Like I think like Luther calls Superman like an illegal immigrant at one point or what have you. And there is that jail scene. I agree, which I didn't think about before. But to me, that's like, that was always like a more safe topic for Hollywood, like being pro immigrant. So it didn't, it didn't surprise me and it didn't feel like, uh, different from other Marvel or like DC property stuff where we've seen that kind of acceptable, you know, general liberal message that any criticism of Israel is pretty much not, you know, I mean, the only movie that that was like no other land this year. And I'm trying to think of anything else that's been going on. I mean, I guess you could say the zone of interest.

But people say and or second season. I haven't watched. I'm in the first season of and or people say and or second season. Right is about Israel. Well, it is. It's about there is a genocide episode where genocide does happen and you could apply some stuff to that that one. Even you could make more generic. I think this is the most specific

like major blockbuster film to talk about this topic. And I guess the big other thing though that I was thinking a lot about that does relate to the Israel Palestine, but also relates to how I see not only Shapiro, but I would say a lot of other like GamerGate sort of in cell coded superhero community fans, they're really upset that Superman is weak in the film, that he takes punches, that he gets hurt and that Superman shouldn't be weak.

I think we've got a clip of that from Shapiro as well. Let's roll it. He's not very super. He is not a man of steel. He is not invulnerable. He gets his ass kicked routinely. He gets locked up in a prison with a character who's making kryptonite out of his hands.

Sorry, what? He's constantly in victim mode. Like Green Lantern has much more success in this movie. Mr. Terrific has much more success in this movie than Superman. Zoomer producer Mac is really thrown off by the cringe millennial editing where you toss in. It's tough.

Is it not? I think it's cringe millennial, right? Like that, like circa like 2013, that was so edgy and hip. Yeah. So this is a critique that I actually find very compelling. Having not seen the movie, I bet you would get the right and the left both agreeing. I bet you would get the right and the left both agreeing.

I bet you would even get the filmmakers saying, this was an intentional effort to make Superman look more vulnerable and to look sort of less toxically masculine. And I feel like that's what Shapiro is saying. He thinks it's bad, they would think it's good. That's sort of what I'm saying. I would anticipate.

They made him soy. Yeah, yeah, we made him soyper man. But I feel like maybe both sides would agree, tell me if I'm wrong, that that wasn't probably an intentional part of the character. Well, I'd be curious what Crystal has to think about it. For me, just real quick, like, yeah, just from a narrative perspective,

and I don't think like any of us are like major Superman fans, so we're just kind of approaching the movie as it is, but like if Superman is just invulnerable or like doesn't lose, that's just like narratively kind of boring, like in a movie for him to just like win in every scene. So there's just something like narratively not satisfying about that to me personally. But I think that like the big question of the film because Superman is facing off with Lex Luthor and sort of the question is like Who wins between a battle of brains versus like brawn?

Like is it is it the mind or is it the ultimate strength that wins and for me? Like the film like decidedly says it's actually a third thing. It's actually Superman's humanity, his kindness, and his connection to other humans and even connection to other animals. And his like desire to do something that is uncomfortable for the greater good. Like those things that humanity is ultimately like what saves the day and allows Superman to win and is like his greatest strength. Yes, I totally agree with that. And when Emily was saying, you know, it was probably an intentional choice to make him not be like toxically masculine. I think it was more an intentional choice to make him more human. And there's some dialogue again that speaks directly to that

towards the conclusion of the movie, where he's talking about, you know, raised by these parents, human parents in Kansas. And they're the ones who really instill in him these deeply human values in spite of the fact that he is technically an alien from another planet. And so, you know, I thought that was a core theme in the movie. And another one that you certainly can read in a very political way, because, I mean, you've got the the tech, right? The Lex Luthor character could be a Peter Thiel. He could be an Elon Musk, the sort of like evil genius archetype, you know, you got Peter Thiel out

there like, I'm not sure if the human rights should survive. Like, I could go either way. Maybe I am the Antichrist. I don't know. Like he was kind of that archetype. And then you also have, okay, well, is it that or is it just like the brawn and the strength, which is also, you know, question right now. And so one of the things, and this may be me viewing it through my own political lens, but we all get to go and watch the movie and make of it what we want to make. one of the things and this may be me viewing it through my own political lens, but we all get to go and watch the movie and make of it what we want to make. One of the things that's been really disturbing to me about this era of our politics and our culture is this sort of up is down quality of the characteristics that are valued. Like this sense of just like being nice and being humble and looking out for the little guy and you guy and having some sense of shame and honor,

those things seem to have been completely dispatched with. And instead the person who succeeds is like the biggest, most arrogant, like in many instances, absolute like full charlatan con man who's completely shameless, who's just absolutely in it for themselves and what they can get out of the situation. And so to me, it also felt like a rebuke of that era in our politics and in our culture.

It's not okay to talk about Sager like that when he's gone. Don't tell him, okay. Sager bald, shaking like Les Luthor. That'd be great. The character, Griffin, I just, respond to anything you want to there, but I also just wanted to add, like taking the politics out of it. How did it land for you as just like a movie? I brought my kids to see it.

They, it was kind of long for them, but at the end when it got very actiony, like they were into it as well. I mean, I just thought it was also just kind of a fun, like kind of campy, classic superhero vibe kind of a flick as well. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I'm kind of gassed out on the genre and this one was like fun and interesting.

So it's like, I don't know if I'm fully back on watching every superhero film. Like Sager is a sicko. He sees like all the Marvel movies. Like he's seen like Ant-Man 3, which I don't even think is a real movie so But for me I've been a little gassed out this did feel like a breath of fresh air simply because it didn't feel tied to like Larger universe stuff and had interesting messages and really good acting and fun actions So and I've always liked James Gunn even from like his first indie movie slither

So it's always fun to see like what he's up to but yeah, like I wanted to go to like what you said about like being kind or whatever. Cause now like, you know, the end message, well, I didn't mean to dismiss it. I just didn't remember what you said. So like the end message is that it's like punk rock to be kind.

And so I'm seeing lots of people like being like, you know, kindness is the new punk rock. Today I saw Superman, and then I helped this old lady walk across the street with her groceries. And that stuff is good, but I think the ultimate kindness Superman does is for the people of Jaranpur, that he takes a really uncomfortable position and encourages others that normally wouldn't have acted like these other superheroes like Green Lantern and Hawkerl to act and to do something that is dangerous, that is personally scary, but it matters because it's about helping

other people. And so like that is like the, that is part of the kindness part of Superman that I think everyone should take home. A movie does not fix what's happening in Israel, Palestine. And it was heartbreaking to see scenes of these kids in the movie and think about the 100 plus people that are getting killed every day at these aid stations. Like, a movie can't fix that. But it is a glimmer of hope that at least some people

in this industry, it's very few, it's been very, very quiet industry and sometimes like a very punishing industry to be pro-Palestine. Oh yeah. I can think of so many people and not even just the ones that get articles written about, but I mean people I know that work at agencies that are trying to rise up in the ranks. I know Palestinian people that are working in Hollywood that have a whole different experience, but this is potentially a glimmer of hope that they can at least start talking about a little bit, or that it's so, it's such an unavoidable evil that it is now the de facto

movie evil when people think about like what's wrong in the world. So yeah, I don't know what that means, but I guess hopefully the movie encourages everyone to be a little more courageous on this issue and others. Yeah. I think that's well side to graph. And you know, last thing that I was thinking about with regards to this is like, even this campy Superman movie could not make Boravia quite as cartoonishly evil as Israel has actually been. I mean, if you put in there, they're luring the Jarrin Purians into aid stations and then massacring it, people, massacring them, people will be like, that's just like, why would they even do that? I mean, that's just over the top, you know? I mean, the, the bombing of the schools and the hospitals and the medical workers

and the journalists and, you know, I mean, the intentional starvation and the entire bit like that also struck me is that like, Boravia was meant to be cartoonishly evil and even in that cartoonish evil, real, the, like the real world has in some ways surpassed that level of horror. And so that really struck me as well watching this is you couldn't even conceive of something beyond the horrors that we witness every day on our timelines in real life. So to me, the biggest takeaway was just what a dramatic cultural shift. No way this movie comes out in this way,

two years ago, not a chance that you have, or even a year ago. I mean, I think it's just a real sign of how much the American public has shifted in the way that they're viewing this conflict that you could have this Hollywood blockbuster that is so clearly painting Israel as like, these are the baddies.

And by the way, the US is aiding the bad guy country. We are not the heroes. We are the ones who are on the side of the bad guy country. So me and Shapiro are gonna fix it. We're going in and doing a little rewrite, re-release, and we're gonna just include one line that's gonna fix everything. Superman's gonna say that Jhar Hempur

was promised to Boravia 3,000 years ago. And then- Well, that totally changes everything. And that's gonna flip the whole perspective. You're gonna wanna watch the whole movie again with a different perspective. Uh, notice we didn't say anything about the, uh, the very obvious, the not so subtle,

um, overtones in the new Lilo and Stitch being about Nagorno Karabakh and everything happening there right now. Yeah, they also made Stitch less masculine. So me and Emily will talk about that. We'll save that for another segment, guys. It's too much for today, too much. We call them Stoy Stitch. Oh my gosh. WellS Oh, my gosh.

Well, that's a wrap. LAUGHS Thank you, Griffin. Appreciate it. Crystal, thanks so much for hanging out. Thanks, Salem, for us. It was... It had a fairly long cameo today, so we appreciate Salem's time. LAUGHS

Always, I'll let him know. I know people always enjoy when he shows up. It's always a little dicey for me because you never know what that crazy kiddie is going to do. But I don't know, did that Superman discussion make you want to watch it or make you more like, I don't really need to see this? I don't know. I feel like the country is mostly all in on superhero movies, which I think is totally

great and fine. But then there's this cohort of us who's just like, I can't get into it. Like if I wanted to, I couldn't get into it. I don't know what it is. But I thought you guys had a really interesting discussion and I think it's culturally sort of an inkblot test and I'm always interested in that. Why some people interpret things one way

and why is Fox News is running segments about Super Woke and then you have even conservative reviewers in National Review, for example, saying, there's nothing woke about this movie and that's the type of thing even the debate about whether it's Israel and or not it's like why are people seeing things so differently a very interesting question yeah I think partly it seems to me that people who just genuinely liked the movie but whose politics don't necessarily fit with the movie, want to sort of like under like downplay like, yeah, totally not. It was a woke. That's why I loved it. Because it wasn't woke actually. And it's like, well, I mean,

I guess it all woke is sort of a meaningless term at this point. So you can define it in any way you want. But you know, the the attempt to claim that it's not political is preposterous. I mean, almost every movie has some sort of politics to it because that's just the nature of life. But this movie is particularly political. I think that's hard to really square with the central messages of the film. And then to try to pretend it's not Israel Palace, I was just like, if you see it, you will see very clearly what was being attempted here. They do not try to make it subtle whatsoever.

Interesting, interesting, interesting times. You're parallel back to how the Soviet Union, sometimes it wasn't overt, it was just very obviously created to be the Soviet Union, for example, in movies. I thought that was really interesting too. So I enjoyed it. I enjoyed hearing you discuss this with Griffin. It was great to have Griffin here. And it was great to have you here today too, Crystal.

You'll be back in with Sagar tomorrow, right? Yep. And with Sagar tomorrow for normal breaking points. So I will see you guys then. And we've got Friday show planned and all that good stuff too. So we'll see you guys then and we got Friday show plan and all that good stuff, too So we'll see you guys soon. Sounds good Come on why is this taking so long this thing thing is ancient. Still using yesterday's tech? Upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon.

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productivity all on one device. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay, and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts, where we dive into the stories that shape us, on the page and off.

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