Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/17/23: Ukraine Bombs Crimean Bridge, DeSantis Sheds Staff, Winners and Losers GOP Fundraising, Tucker Carlson Rips Mike Pence, Hollywood Strike, Twitter Payments, California Woke Math, Hollywood Replaces Actors w/ AI, EV Prices Collapse w/ Doug DeMuro

Episode Date: July 17, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss DeSantis campaign tanking, new GOP fundraising numbers, Tucker Carlson rips Mike Pence on Ukraine live at a Turning Point event, Biden struggles on 2024 fundraising, SAG joins WGA in historic Hollywood strike as Ron Pearlman attacks Bob Iger's comments on the strikers, Twitter begins payments for creators who post on the platform, Saagar looks into California doubling down on "Woke Math", Krystal looks into the Hollywood Strike and how executives have been using AI to replace workers on all levels, and we're joined by Car YouTube Expert Doug DeMuro to talk about Used Car Prices and the future of EV vehicles in America.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.

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

What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. We have lots of fundraising numbers, which are always a little bit revealing what people are saying versus the reality of the campaign. And kind of the big headline here is Rhonda Sanderson a little more cash trouble than one might expect and actually having to lay off some staff.

So we'll break all of that down for you. We also had some interesting interview moments with Tucker Carlson and a variety of the GOP candidates. So we will bring you those highlights or lowlights depending on how you look at it. Also some reporting on Joe Biden and what is going on with him. Apparently you still have donors who are like, we don't believe that he's running. Well, we'll see. Still evaluating their alternatives. Personally, I think it's a lot of cope, but we will see what happens there. We also have updates for you on that complete Hollywood shutdown. Some pretty extraordinary comments from Bob Iger of Disney, also Ron Perlman in response to everything that's going on. We also are excited to have in the show a used car expert from YouTube to break down what the hell is going on in that market overall,

and also specifically with electric vehicles, which I think is going to be pretty exciting. So we are very much looking forward to that, Sagar. That's right. We have one administrative announcement. As a celebration for hitting one million, we are doing a limited edition made in the USA Union Breaking Points dress sock. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. That's actually me personally modeling it. Please don't come after me for not shining my shoes, okay? I'm sorry. It's a difficult task.

You missed your calling as an ankle model. I certainly did. Yeah, like the hand models in Zoolander. Anyway, we are releasing these to our premium subscribers. First, we expect them to sell out pretty quickly. We did a limited edition run. I guess if they do well, maybe we'll make some more. So it's available, shop.breakingpoints.com.

Premium subscribers, it is at the top of your email. For everybody else, you can also sign up, become a premium sub, and then get access as well, breakingpoints.com. There's a tab as well on our website. But we've got some breaking news out of Russia and Ukraine this morning. Why don't we take a look at that? Yeah, so before we jump into the full show, I just wanted to give you an update on a couple of developments that are happening this morning. Why don't we take a look at that? Yeah. So before we jump into the full show, I just wanted to give you an update on a couple of developments that are happening this morning. So you'll recall that Kerch Bridge that connects Russia and Crimea that was really a symbol of Putin's sort of takeover of the peninsula

that had been struck before under suspicious circumstances or uncertain circumstances. Well, now this morning we have Ukraine claiming responsibility for a new attack on that key Crimea bridge. I'm reading here from CNN. They say Ukrainian security official has claimed responsibility for an attack on that bridge linking the annexed Crimean Peninsula to the Russian mainland, a vital supply line for Russia's war effort in Ukraine and a personal project for President Vladimir Putin. The nearly 12-mile crossing known as the Kirch Bridge is the longest in Europe, holds huge strategic and symbolic importance. Monday's attack on the bridge was the second since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine after a fuel tanker exploded while crossing it in October. A source in Ukraine's

security service told CNN this attack was a joint operation of that security service and Ukraine's naval forces. They spoke on condition of anonymity. So obviously, it's a huge development in terms of the conflict, the war in Ukraine. It also comes, as there was an announcement this morning, you'll recall, there was this deal that was struck between Russia, Ukraine, and other forces to sort of guarantee grain shipments and ensure their safe passage to try to keep the stability of grain prices so food prices worldwide don't spiral out of control. That deal has fallen apart. Russia has withdrawn from it. So that is, you know, also a very significant development in terms of some of the fallout effects around the globe. But Sagar, obviously, you know, anytime

this bridge, which is really key and very important to Russia in particular for supplying their troops, anytime something happens here, it's a big deal. Yeah, it's especially a big deal, like you know, anytime this bridge, which is really key and very important to Russia in particular for supplying their troops, anytime something happens here, it's a big deal. Yeah, it's especially a big deal, like you said, because Ukraine is not doing very well right now and they're counter-offensive and they need all they can to try and disrupt the supply lines that are heading to the Russian front. So this is one of the major thoroughfares. They've already established rail service back on the bridge. Actually, some of the video that we can go ahead and put up there right now, you can take a very quick look here at how it looks as of, well, I guess morning Russian time from the damage. So all current actual traffic in terms of car traffic on the bridge has been suspended for the time being, even though the initial attack, Crystal, was far worse in terms of the damage, it did not disrupt the entire bridge the way that this one did. Rail service will provide some of a

lifeline to the Russian forces, and obviously they're going to try their best to get this done. But it does show you, you know, as Ukraine actually falters in their counteroffensive in the conventional battlefield, that they're going to have to look to try and disrupt supply lines and others deeper, both here in this case inside of Crimea, possibly as they inside of Russia. We'll bring you some extraordinary comments I think tomorrow from the top Ukrainian military commander, but the widening of the war, the continuing of the war, the cluster munitions and all that point actually in this same direction. It's really just like World War I all over again. I think that one of the things that this attack underscores and the willingness of Kiev to take immediate responsibility for it is, you know, everybody expects at this point that the last attack was also the responsibility of Kiev.

But at that point, they would not claim responsibility. That's true. with the attacks that they've engaged in on Russian soil, with drone strikes even on the Kremlin, with some of the sabotage and the assassinations that they've engaged in on Russian soil, and everybody's sort of acknowledging, yes, Ukraine is behind these attacks in some shape or form, there is an increased level of boldness and audacity where they feel perfectly comfortable acknowledging an attack on what is, you know, civilian infrastructure that is also used for military purposes. And you did have two people who reportedly, according to Russian sources, were killed and their daughter wounded in this

attack. So that's everything we know. That's everything that we got so far. So we'll keep everybody updated. As I said, I think we'll do a little bit more on Ukraine tomorrow. Let's go ahead to the GOP fundraising numbers, as Crystal alluded to. There's a lot to get into with all of the candidates, but the major and the top story here remains really the diminishing campaign of Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida and his need to turn things around if that's even possible. It's going to put this up there on the screen. It was reported on late Saturday night as all of the numbers became clear, quote, DeSantis campaign shed staff amid a cash crunch, quote, fewer than 10, so aka 10. Staffers

were let go Thursday. According to a person familiar with the campaign, they leaked it almost immediately to Politico, saying that many aides who were involved in event planning and in other deemed non-essential parts of the campaign were dropped from the DeSantis campaign. And actually, Crystal, in a really interesting turn of events, they almost immediately sent their resume over to the Ron DeSantis super PAC. Although, as a friend familiar with campaign finance a lot tells me, you do have to wait 120 days before immediately jumping from the campaign to over to the super PAC, meaning that in this case, they do expect to be at least not employed by the campaign or be able to return to the apparatus for a period of four

months, which is pretty stunning when you consider that. That's a long time in campaign time. The headline here is just so obvious. I mean, you know, having to drop staff almost immediately after launch in the first quarter, despite not the worst fundraising haul, is a really bad sign. And it does also show a burn rate of nearly $1 million per month. The problem that the DeSantis campaign has right now is not only are they trying to fundraise for the GOP primary, Crystal, but they're also earmarking in the case that they somehow do win the general election. So they have some of this cash that they were able to raise they're having to set aside. Of the existing pool, the burn rate remains high enough that they felt that they had to offload payroll, which was their biggest expense so far in this.

And then the worst part, which I know that you can break down here, is that he has tapped many of his donors for the maximum amount. So the large top line figure that DeSantis has gotten is not one that is going to be sustainable in the long run. So if you've already tapped your big donors and you still have to fire staff, you don't have enough to move forward, you're not in the best position right now as a campaign. Yeah. I mean, on the one hand, the DeSantis people would look at the top line and say, hey, he raised a lot of money. He raised more money than almost any of the other contenders. However, if you dig a little bit beneath the surface, you see a few problems. Number one, very high burn rate. And that's a big problem. And that's why he's shedding staff, because we've seen this so many times before the Hillary Clinton, multiple Hillary Clinton campaigns come to mind. Actually, the Trump campaign last time around comes to mind

where you're just burning through cash. You just assume that there's going to be an endless money spigot. You staff up with way too many people, create way too much bureaucracy, and you blow through money way too quickly before most voters, frankly, are even really paying attention. So they're trying to trim back because they see the writing on the wall in terms of just they need a sustainable pace of operations. And then the other couple of pieces that Sagar's pointing to here is when you have money coming in directly to the campaign, there is a maximum amount you can give for the primary, and there's a maximum amount that you can give for the general election. So if you have given the total max of primary plus general, you have to reserve those funds that are meant for the general election.

You have to set those aside. You cannot spend them in the primary or else you'll be in violation of campaign finance law. And then the other piece that I think is really important here is that there's a very low rate of grassroots small dollar fundraising ability, which actually I'm a little bit surprised at because I do think Ron DeSantis, he's well-liked within the Republican Party. I do think he has some base of support. But what we're seeing across the board with all of these fundraising numbers is actually there's a lot of grassroots fundraising fatigue. All of the candidates are seeing lower grassroots fundraising numbers. Joe Biden in particular, he's never been a grassroots fundraising juggernaut. We're going to talk more about that when we get to the Democrats here. But the fact that Ron DeSantis doesn't have this

well of enthusiastic grassroots fundraising support, I think it's also indicative of a campaign that has had more success with the donor class at this point than it has with the actual Republican base. Look, at the end of the day, the guy's only got 15% of his money coming in from small dollar donations. That's just not the sustainable path to actually be able to make payroll when you have such a high level of staff. DeSantis himself being confronted with this on Fox News, which we've covered a lot here, has really taken a turn against the man. Here's what they had to say, and here was his response. The governor doesn't do retail campaigning. He's not going to be able to go to Iowa. And then, you know, yesterday I'm out there doing events. You know, we have 30, 40 people at

some of these things, shaking hands, answering questions, doing all that. They're like, oh, well, he can do it. 30, 40 people. That's what we're bragging about here in Iowa. I don't know, Crystal, 30 to 40. That's not the checkbox that we're going with. That number should be 300 to 400. And you really shouldn't be putting a man of Ron DeSantis' stature in a room of less than what, like 200 people? If you're Asa Hutchinson or any of these other smaller candidates, then maybe. But if you are him, you really should not put him in a position where it can look like he's being embarrassed Let's also put this Washington Post piece with a pretty deep dive into the DeSantis campaign up on the screen and as they say quote the long slog inside the early struggles and the effort to rebound as we have already noted the

initial launch on Twitter with Elon Musk was itself Created a lot of media problems for the candidate just simply because it was like literally a failure to launch. These fundraisers were convened at the Four Seasons Miami and then they had to wait for him because of the delay. None of it actually went up to schedule. Then the initial launch interview on Fox News itself probably should have been what he did the entire time and then a traditional speech. But from that point forward, he has found his negatives drawn up with GOP primary voters. He has seen his poll numbers continue to decline in almost every single GOP primary poll that has been held. Iowa polls that have since come out don't show him even

close to neck and neck with the candidate, nor does the New Hampshire race. He's largely been able to only fundraise from big dollar donors that are able to max out, not having built up a small dollar donation base, of which translating effectively the online energy to normal people who are actually willing to take their credit card out and say, I affirmatively want you to beat Donald Trump. So when you combine all of those three things together and really just the slide after launch, which you almost never see happen, you almost always see some sort of bump happen post-launch and have energy. So we combine all of that and you just see very,

very difficult runway right now for Governor Ron DeSantis. And you have basically all the media has decided right now is the moment to write their like playbook is up with DeSantis and disarray. I saw a Bloomberg piece this morning. We just put the Washington Post piece up on the screen. Fox News obviously has moved off of him. And Republican donors are kind of holding their fire if they've supported him in the past and evaluating their options. There were some quotes in that Washington Post piece from donors who said that one donor who co-hosted an event for DeSantis described hearing sentiments such as, what's going on? And does he even have a chance? The donor said he was trying to get other rich Republicans to give to DeSantis, but most wanted to keep their powder dry after his

lackluster beginning. Remember, the donor class, I mean, you know, their only ideology is like protect themselves from taxes. So they want to be on the team with the winner. And they're worried about, OK, if it looks like Trump is going to win, we don't want to piss him off too much. We want to be able to maintain our access. Or if there's some other candidate, maybe a Tim Scott or somebody else out there that we can convince ourselves has a better chance, maybe we, you know, maybe we play both sides. Maybe we just stay out for a while and wait and see what happens. So if you're Ron DeSantis, and we know now from his fundraising report that he's really dependent on these large donors and they're starting to back away and the

media is starting to write your obituary and you don't have that, you know, widespread grassroots support, it's, you're in support, you're just in a tough place. There's no other way around it. So that's how things are looking for him this morning. And it's always interesting how they just flip a switch on these narratives and all of a sudden, it's just like total media. Like, okay, the writing is on the wall here. Obviously, we've been seeing warning signs literally from the beginning with this campaign. But I do think probably the trigger is when you have to lay off campaign staff. It's undeniable. You can't spin it. And for the DeSantis campaign, despite really shunning a lot of legacy media, let's go and put this up there on the screen, he will actually be

sitting down with Jake Tapper, apparently, for an exclusive interview on Tuesday. Tapper says, quote, we have a lot to talk about. So I'm curious to see how it goes. Megyn Kelly apparently gave him some advice and said it publicly, saying that she thinks he should go on MSNBC and should fight. So let's see. I think it's a good idea. Let's see how he does. I want to see it. Because here's the thing is, he had this very play it safe strategy. It's almost like a prevent defense. But it's like, dude, you're losing. You don't play prevent defense when you're behind. So he was very reluctant to go in any at all adversarial spaces. He went with, you know, the Murdoch properties that at least previously were a hundred percent as supportive of him and getting total softball questions. You got to take some risks. You got to shake it up. You got to show people. I do think that's

something that the Republican base could respond to if you're going in and you're mixing it up on MSNBC or in Lefty podcast. Listen, we'd love to have him here on Breaking Point. You know, we've got the offers out there for literally any of the presidential contenders. We would love to host them on this show, but he needs to just get out there, take every interview he can and, you know, show show what he's made of. Prove to the GOP base that he's the fighter that they really are still looking for. It's time to get those dollar numbers up. Let's go to the next part here. This is some really interesting stuff around the GOP actual other candidates than DeSantis. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. We've got a very

good graphic made by our team that actually breaks a lot of this down. So what do we know? First, let's start with the cash on hand figure as of June 30th that they had to file. Donald Trump has got $22.5 million cash on hand. Tim Scott, shocking, I guess everybody else, has got $21.1 million. It's nice to be the big dollar donor's favorite candidate. And some of that he moved over from his Senate campaign, just so people know. And Joe Biden's got $20 million, $20.1 million cash on hand. Ron DeSantis, $12.2 million. Vivek Ramaswamy, $9 million. Noteworthy, though, that in the Ramaswamy camp, he actually personally loaned some money over to his campaign. His actual individual dollar figures, probably more like $2 million. Now, in terms of the actual money raised,

keep in mind that this money raised does include loans in some cases from the candidates. Ron DeSantis, 20.1 million. Biden, 19.9 million. Trump, 17.7 million. Burgum, 11.8 million. Ramaswamy, 7.7. As we said, though, both Burgum and Ramaswamy had personal actual contributions to their own campaigns. So $7.7 million in the case of Vivek Ramaswamy, who's a very wealthy individual. And then Doug Burgum as well loaned himself $10 million. So the real figure is quite a little bit less. But what can we learn, I think, from these? Number one is we'll do an entire thing on Biden here in a second, but it's not exactly like things are going well.

But two also comes not only from the not only comes really from the actual overall figure and the cash on hand. As you saw with DeSantis, he raised quite a bit of money. But as we previously just said, he tapped out the big donors and his cash on hand is very low because he didn't have the overall coffers to be able to come in. So that's why his burn rate, whenever it remains so high, he's got to offload that as much as possible. Tim Scott, of course, had large amounts of money that he was able to roll over from a Senate campaign, something that's legally allowable under FEC law. But the overall actual individual donations that came in for him, not exactly even close to the same. Nikki Haley already, we did an entire segment in the past about how she effectively duped

a lot of campaign reporters by trying to report far more that she'd actually raised than was real. And I think that it's pretty obvious here. We've got effectively a three-candidate race at the very, very top of the spectrum. Joe Biden, obviously, the sitting president. Then you've got, on the other hand, you've got Trump and you've got DeSantis. But DeSantis is so far behind. While he is technically, I guess, in the big leagues, he's still running very, very far behind both of those two majors. Another noteworthy number from the campaign finance reports is a really low figure from Vice President Mike Pence, former Vice President Mike Pence, who only raised $1.2 million. And think about it.

This man was literally vice president of the United States. He's been in politics for a long time. He has a lot of contacts. He is well-networked. He has been working the donor lines for years and years now. So for him to only raise $1.2 million, that is a really, really sad show there, showing for the former vice president.

I think that one was really noteworthy. And the other piece to watch with this is we are coming up, it's only about a month until the first Republican primary debate, which will be fun. I'm excited about that. I'm sure we're going to do big coverage here. We're just starting to work on our plans for that. But you have to get 50,000 people or sorry, 40,000 people to donate to your campaign in order to make the stage.

The polling threshold is actually quite low. It's like one percent in three major polls, something like that. So almost all these candidates will be able to achieve the polling metric. So it's that donor metric that is going to be really tough. And we already see some very innovative techniques being employed in order to try to achieve that result. So Doug Burgum, who again, wealthy tech executive, he is promising donors, he will give them a $20 gift card if they contribute just $1 to his campaign. So there's some sketchiness around exactly the legality of that, but that's the direction that he is going in. Vivek has also has a sort of creative approach here. He has people signing up to fundraise for him, and then they get a 10% kickback on any funds that they raise for his

campaign. So you already see that the race is on to try to game those numbers and be able to meet that donor threshold. Of course, former President Trump basically saying he's not really planning on engaging in the debates. Yeah, he didn't say it effectively, but, you know, he did give an interview to Fox News that aired yesterday where he was like, well, you know, Ronald Reagan didn't do any debates, which, you know, is not true. But what he did in 1980 in terms of the debates in the primary challengers and all of that. But I consistently think, I mean, look, we have no idea what he's going to do. He may actually do it and he likes to keep everybody in suspense. He may just show up, you know, at the very, very last minute and decide. But because Chris Christie is trying very, very hard to make the debate,

Trump is really somebody of superstition. He understands what Christie did to the Rubio campaign back in 2016. He's leading so far ahead. I think to him, he's like, why would I put myself in that position? Let everybody else squabble for my scraps while I remain on top. For DeSantis, I really don't know. I mean, honestly, because he will be the number one on the stage, should he actually choose to participate with everybody else, well, I think it's going to be an issue because everybody's going to be gunning for him.

You're going to see Ramaswamy going after him. You're going to be seeing Tim Scott, Nikki Haley. All of them have chosen to fire against him rather than against Donald Trump because he's so popular. Yeah. The other governors on the stage, guys like Burgum and all of them, look, they may be irrelevant whenever it comes to polling, but they have an ego thing going on. Be like, wait, I'm a governor too. Why am I not getting the same respect as Ron DeSantis? So they will also choose to go after him. So I think overall, you know, it's going to be a tenuous situation for DeSantis. I don't think he really can afford

to step out. And if he can hold his own, I think that'll be great. And then for Trump himself, well, you know, I do think it'll be tough. I think it would be tough for him to go on the stage and subject himself to attacks ego-wise because I just don't see himself doing that. So for him, he's almost certainly going to set out. Although we don't know. It's possible. I mean, you never know with that dude. I sort of agree with the logic of year ahead. You don't need to risk it. Whereas DeSantis needs to risk it. And, you know, to play devil's advocate here, perhaps it's elevating for him to be the center of attention and be the focus of all the attacks. And if he's able to handle that really well, maybe he actually does himself some good by

subjecting himself to the rigors of the debate. And, you know, we've seen many times before these candidates, when they get into a debate situation, it makes them better candidates. I think that people, you know, like Biden and Trump, who were thinking of just staying in the basement and not really going out and campaigning that much, you get rusty, right? You got to get out there and do your reps and get practice. So I, listen, I personally think everybody should be required to debate. I think it should be a baseline standard for democracy, but that's not the world we live in. So Trump is probably going to sit it out. We'll see. For DeSantis, you know, listen, maybe he could do himself some good there

on the stage. I do, you know, do you think Sagar, it all feels so inevitable? Like it feels so much like, all right, we're heading for the Biden-Trump rematch. And it's hard to imagine what's going to push that off course. Doesn't it just seem like there must be some curveball that's going to come at us? It's going to shake things up because it always does. Yeah, I hope so. I think, listen, you know, we cover the news. I would like for it to be interesting. Biden and Trump is the least interesting thing I think that could possibly happen. I don't know. We know exactly what we're going to see.

Here's the problem with Kerbal. Who knows? I don't know what it's going to look like. It could be terrible. So it's not one of those fun things that could necessarily happen. But I do agree that things do seem so predictable. It does feel like the writers need to throw something in to get things interesting. The big problem, I think, for the debates is if Trump's not there, who cares? I mean, I'm sure you remember this. The 2015 GOP debates, those weren't political events. That was a cultural event in America. Millions, people should go back and look at the ratings

versus almost all previous ones. The very first debate, and Trump didn't, you know, he delivered. If we're thinking in terms of YouTube metrics, he certainly grabbed people's attention and kept retention throughout because what's the very first thing he said? He said, I've only called, what did he say? I've only Rosie O'Donnell in terms of calling women pigs or fat or something like that.

And then refuses to raise his hand saying that he won't commit to supporting the GOP nominee. He got people glued to that screen. He turned it into a genuine media event. You know, Rand Paul, he's like, why is Rand Paul even on this stage? That was just debate number one. And there were these events over and over and over again, which were very beneficial, I think,

to him in the long run and turned it into a circus, which overall helped his poll numbers. Without that Trump factor, I do think it will be difficult to actually get people to even watch this thing. You know, I do think it will be difficult to actually get people to even watch this thing. You know, I'm going to throw a hot take out there, which is, I don't think Chris Christie is going to be the GOP nominee, but I think he's going to be more consequential than we are expecting, just because there is something compelling about the dude is

out there. First of all, I've always thought he's a genuine political talent. I think of everybody outside of Trump, I think he's the most politically talented of the candidates in the Republican field. And there is something compelling about someone who's just willing to go out and say it and not pull punches and not do all this weird, awkward, like, well, I love Donald Trump, but I just think we should move on for reasons that I'm unwilling to state. The fact that he just goes out there, he throws his punches, he says what it feels like, he really thinks. I do think that he will consolidate the actual anti-Trump part of the GOP base. Now, that's not a huge percentage, but in certain states,

it could be a significant percentage of the Republican electorate. I just saw a New Hampshire poll that had Christie moving into third and he's in double digits and he's leapfrogged over a number of other candidates who are ahead of him in terms of fundraising and media attention, et cetera. And I certainly think in terms of the debates, like if I was Ron DeSantis preparing for these debates, the person I would definitely be most wary of would be Chris Christie, because we know what kind of damage he can do when he goes on a tear. So he would be the person that I would be most aggressively preparing for and figuring out how I could parry whatever attacks he might throw at you. I think you're right. I also think Ramaswamy is a, I think he's a dark horse.

Yeah, that's true. He's comfortable on his feet. Very comfortable on his feet. He is very, because he has a legal background, he is very good at almost legalistically working through different things. And I've watched him do it a couple of past in CNN panels, like arguing over charges against Trump, of course, in that famous debate, I guess, against Don Lemon.

But I think that his ability to try and throw something out of left field, like some sort of pledge that sounds interesting, but I think that his ability to try and throw something out of left field, like some sort of pledge that sounds interesting, but it's one that the Ron DeSantis campaign won't want to back themselves into a corner or something like that. I really could see it. He does it sometimes on Twitter where he'll issue pledges and things that candidates should take, which many candidates don't do because they don't want to put themselves on his ground. So I could very much see him kind of boxing Ron DeSantis, possibly rhetorically at the very least. I mean, I saw someone on Twitter, I'll just steal their take, that it tells you everything

about the Republican primary, that the candidate in the Republican primary who has the most online energy is Vivek Ramaswamy, whose whole thing is basically being like, Trump was great. So that tells you where the bulk of the Republican base actually is. And, you know, he does have a lot, especially of online energy behind him. I was frankly surprised he didn't have higher grassroots fundraising numbers. I thought he would have a pretty good grassroots fundraising hall, but the overwhelming majority of his contributions actually came directly from his own bank account. I agree. Yeah. I mean, listen, the problem with Twitter is that it is a self-contained

universe. It's one of those things which is real until it's really not real. And I think that every time that it's not real is whenever we extend into actual electoral politics. There are so many millions of people who engage with the political system in a way that is very difficult for all of us who kind of live in this world to conceive. I mean, I've said this before. I know I shock some of our viewers, but if you watch our show every day, you are absolutely at least in the top one or 2% of political consumption in the entire US,

a huge outlier compared to the general population. And if you watch the news or even really check in with the news on a day-to-day basis, you remain probably in the top like five to 10%. The average person in this country does not think about politics really at all. They barely knew who the president is. Every once in a while, it infiltrates an Instagram feed or comes in via culture, but it is one of those which remains very, very distant and off. So you always have

to think about that person, not about the people sitting at this desk or the people who are watching this show. And what percentage of even the online support for Vivek are people who are like, but I'm voting for Donald Trump. Like, I like you because you like Donald Trump and I also like Donald Trump, but I'm voting for Donald Trump. I mean, based on the polling, it seems like there's a good chunk that are in that category. Absolutely correct. Let's go to the next part here. A really interesting event, the Faith and Family Summit sponsored by Blaze Media, which they got a big coup for them,

actually, considering that Glenn Beck is their major media personality. They're like, no, let's get Tucker Carlson, actually, to do it. So Tucker, I guess on the heels of firing from Fox News, got to sit down with some of the GOP candidates. There were two particular exchanges that Tucker really decided to go in against. One was former Vice President Mike Pence, not on Stop the Steal, but on Ukraine and on religious freedom inside of Ukraine. Number two also was with Tim Scott, also hitting him for his stance on Ukraine, kind of holding him to the Tucker, no more nationalist standard and the more Trumpian standard on the issue. Here's what he had to say. You are distressed that the Ukrainians don't have enough American tanks. Every city in

the United States has become much worse over the past three years. Drive around. There's not one city that's gotten better in the United States. And it's visible. Our economy has degraded. The suicide rate has jumped. Public filth and disorder and crime have exponentially increased, and yet your concern is that the Ukrainians, a country most people can't find on a map, who've received tens of billions of U.S. tax dollars, don't have enough tanks. I think it's a fair question to ask, like, where's the concern for the United States in that? Well, it's not my concern. Tucker, I've heard that routine from you before, but that's

not my concern. I'm running for president of the United States because I think this country's in a lot of trouble. I think Joe Biden has weakened America at home and abroad. And as president of the United States, we're going to restore law and order in our cities. We're going to secure our border. We're going to get this economy moving again. And we're going to make sure that we have men and women on our courts at every level that will stand for the right to life and defend all the God given liberties enshrined in our Constitution. Anybody that says that we can't be the leader of the free world and solve our problems at home has a pretty small view of the greatest nation on earth.

We can do both. Tim Scott was also pressed there on Ukraine. Crystal, I'm pretty sure he meant to say, that's not my concern whenever it came to Ukraine doesn't have enough tanks, but it's a pretty bad enough look whenever you're being pressed there on the actual weather America cities and they should be receiving some sort of increase. But this goes to show, I think, that Tucker did remain one of the only forces that was willing to press mainstream Republicans, I don't know from what direction,

but from, I guess, a more anti-war direction, more skeptical direction whenever it came to aid towards Ukraine. And that this is a very rare line of argumentation that we have seen yet for some of these candidates. So I was interested, actually, to see from Mike Pence. I actually think it would be a bigger deal if Mike Pence was doing better in this race. He didn't actually, I will say this, Tucker was, I think, a lot kinder to Ron DeSantis, even though DeSantis has been a little bit more wishy-washy on the

issue of Ukraine. Interesting. So I did certainly take note of that. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I guess here's my sense of how the Ukrainian war will play with the Republican primary voters. I think there is a chunk of them that is this is a really important issue for them and that like basically all of the people who will be voting on Ukraine war in the Republican primary hold the Trump position and hold the Tucker position. So that's why there's, you know, in a space like this, this is like niche activist kind of a space. So you can't take too much from it and you can't extrapolate too much from it to the broader GOP base. But I do think to the extent that there is a group of voters in the Republican primary who are voting on Ukraine, and I do think that that group exists, I think they all have the Donald

Trump position. So if you aren't clearly in that position, you're basically like cutting yourself off from whatever, 10% or 15%, I'm just pulling these numbers out of thin air, of the GOP base that is really, really focused on that issue. So overall though, the polling from the Republican, even from the Republican base, it's fairly mixed still on Ukraine. It's not the overwhelming numbers that it feels like when you're watching that audience react. I think there's more of an issue for, I mean, Mike Pence has a lot of issues in this race, but I think more of the issue for him is he just feels very sort of like weak. It feels easy for him to be humiliated. It feels like he was humiliated by Trump for four years of the presidency.

And he doesn't have the kind of like fighter, strong, whatever vibes that it feels to me like the base is looking for. I think you're right. And you know, I think, look, I mean, I've always said this about Ukraine. We spend a lot of time covering Ukraine here because we think it's important

to like the geopolitical situation. But like neither of us, Crystal, would ever delude ourselves into thinking like, yeah, this is the most popular issue. I can guarantee you if we wanted to be, quote, more popular, we would spend way less time actually talking about Ukraine. In the allusion to what we were talking about in our previous block,

about people who actually consume politics, last time I checked, foreign affairs ranks at 0% in terms of the most important issue for people whenever they vote. So once again, just always try and internalize like where you are versus the general population. Most people don't think about Ukraine to the extent that they do. They're like, yeah, we should help them, but they don't know anything about cluster munitions

or anything about what's actually going on there. They couldn't tell you who, what Crimea is. They could barely point to Ukraine on a map. They think Putin is bad. That's basically the extent to which they think about the conflict. So whenever it does come to this, it probably is more important in these types of interviews for pressing them on the policy that they may enact whenever they are president. And then second, as you said, to the extent that a GOP primary voter is thinking about this at all, they are only thinking about this as Pence taking a different position than Trump. They're going to think of it as Trump

coded, not really about Ukraine and the aid itself. Although maybe, you know, some people, whenever they're looking at this, same, I really think with Tim Scott. So it's an interesting issue always to think and to look at, you know, politically in terms of how it will actually code in the primary. But overall, I don't think it's going to be the most important issue. It really, Trump is the center of gravity. That said, you can see Tucker did talk about his, what they, people are calling the defenstration of Mike Pence there on the stage at a turning point action conference. And the crowd actually went wild in terms of the pressing of Mike Pence and about humiliating him on the stage. Here's the response that they gave.

I won't attack anyone on personal grounds or by name. It's tempting. I will say it's tempting. Whoever said do it, you're the devil on my shoulder. Do it! I've spent my whole life... No, no, no, no! But if I could make some general observations, which I think are more edifying than just, like, savaging Mike Pence... I think... Which I'm not going to do.

Because that would be wrong. And it would be wrong because it's too easy. And the easy things are not rewarding, are they? You don't feel good when you beat your five-year-old in soccer or ping pong. Like what? Crowd has no love there for Mike Pence. And look, let's be clear. It's a turning point action conference.

These are all Charlie Kirk people. These are all MAGA people. So they're all predisposed, you know, not the kindest audience, I guess, towards Mike Pence anyways. But, you know, it does bear it out in terms of the way that a lot of people do feel about Mike Pence in the primary. Yeah. And it reminds me of the vibes during that 2016 GOP primary where, listen, it was fun to watch Trump, Savage, Jeb Bush and these other, Marco Ruby and these other like weird losers. And, you know, that's how the Republican base feels about Mike Pence. Some segment of them were literally running around the Capitol calling for him to be hung on January 6th.

So not a lot of love for him there. And so, yeah, they're enjoying watching his moment of public humiliation. And, you know, even though, listen, Mike Pence and his answer to Tucker, I think he was talking about, like, my concern is not that there aren't enough American tanks in Ukraine, but it really, he really could have done a better job acknowledging that, yes, I think there's a lot of pain in America that needs to be addressed. And he actually, in a lot of ways, Tucker gave him a wide open chance. He really did. To pivot off of Ukraine, an issue where he knows with that audience in particular, he's going to be at odds with them.

Two, here's what I want to do with regard to the domestic economy. And here's what I want to do with regard to my plan for revitalizing these cities or whatever it is that Mike Pence wants to do. I really don't even know. But it was actually a great political opening for him to be able to pivot to some of those areas where he might be more in step with the Republican base. And so it also just shows a level of, you know, political inartfulness and inability to move, think on your feet, be nimble in a difficult situation ultimately. Yeah, I think you're correct. All right. So let's get to the Democratic side of the equation here. We already teased a little bit that Joe Biden's fundraising also had some question marks attached to it.

Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen from The New York Times. You know, a little bit of similar vibes with the DeSantis campaign in that he raised a good amount of money. He raised more than $10 million, actually in 36 hours from wealthy Democrats trips to Chicago and New York netted millions more, as did fundraising events around Washington, they write, proving the party's big donor class is fully committed to Mr. Biden's reelection campaign. However, the small-dollar online money spigot that helped Mr. Biden smash fundraising records in 2020 has not yet turned on. And there are ample signs that it may be months before it does. I would say that there may, there's a question mark whether it ever does. They raised 10.2 million from small donors between the Biden campaign and the Biden victory fund. Those are those who gave $200 or less during this quarter. And for context, that's about half of what Barack Obama and his reelect

was able to get from small dollar donors during the same time frame. Now, I will say something that is a benefit to Biden that is different from DeSantis is he's not really doing anything. So his burden rate is very low. They're not really spending money at all. And again, to be clear, like Joe Biden has a lot of money, big donors on the Democratic side. They're all in for him. They're continuing to raise a lot of money from him. He has the advantage of all these different like party committees and whatever. So it's not just what he brings into directly into his campaign. So he's got a big war chest. Money is not likely to be a big problem for him. I think

it's more indicative of the fact that there is just negative excitement for Joe Biden, even among the Democratic Party faithful. The best you'll get out of people is like, I think he's done a pretty decent job. That's about it. And especially among young voters who in many ways feel betrayed by some of the promises that he has failed to deliver on and his approval rating has fallen off a cliff among that demographic in particular. There is little online enthusiasm for him and there is next to no grassroots fundraising support for him. And so we've been saying this for a long time, but their theory of the case is just 100%. You don't have to be excited about Joe. We're just going to get you energized about what the horrific alternative is. We're going to try to consolidate the anti-Trump forces within,

you know, within America, regardless of where they fall on the ideological spectrum. And their bet is that even with a high level of dissatisfaction among some core Democratic constituencies, that they will ultimately come home and vote for Biden because they do not want four more years of Donald Trump. I actually thought it was really interesting, Crystal, to benchmark him against past presidents. So four years ago, in terms of the money raised by Trump and his joint fundraising committees while he was a sitting president,

35% of that money came from donors who gave $200 or less. For Biden, only 21% of funds to his campaign came from small donors. It also can benchmark him against former President Obama from the last time that he was running for reelection, only $10.2 million in small dollar donations, as defined as those who gave $200 or less. That figure is half of the 21 million President Obama's campaign raised during that same period in 2012. So I think if you benchmark him against Obama and Trump, also consider this, adjust for inflation, that's even more pathetic in terms of how much inflation that we've had over the last 10 years. So just think about that a little bit whenever we're benchmarking him to Obama.

And the reason why that figure really stood out to me is Trump, obviously, you know, he's like a god of small dollar donations. He's really up there in a league of his own with Bernie Sanders. They're two of really the only two to play the game at such a high level, getting average normal people to not only one or two times, but multiple times shell out lots of money on their behalf at a very wide scale. Trump's genius, I guess, was being able to do that and get billionaires to donate to his campaign. For Biden, whenever you're looking at this, consider the level of enthusiasm, if you can even call it that. We were both, I guess, involved in politics at the time, Crystal. Not that many people were into Barack Obama in 2012, and he was still able to raise $21 million at that time in small dollars. I disagree with that. I think there's a key difference between Biden and Obama in that period. Even in 2012, you know, as the hope and change, like some of that

had worn off, Democrats still freaking love this guy. That's true. They did love him. I mean, even in 2012, you know, I was at MSNBC at the time. So I was at the like beating heart of pro-Barack Obama media and the Democratic base really loved this guy. And they still do. I mean, in spite of, you know, all of my, you can see my monologues on him to see how I feel about him. But the Democratic base still really loves Barack Obama. Barack Obama is an extraordinarily talented politician. Joe Biden never had Barack Obama levels of enthusiasm. He certainly doesn't have them now. And he doesn't have Barack Obama levels of talent, He certainly doesn't have them now and he doesn't have Barack Obama levels of talent especially at this point in his career. So I think the other thing that I was thinking about is remember that

Barack Obama campaign got off to a really early start and was very effective at defining Mitt Romney out of the gates. They spent a lot of money early. There was a lot of hand-wringing about their burn rate, something we're talking about Ron DeSantis with today. There was a lot of hand-wringing about their burn rate, something we're talking about Ron DeSantis with today. There was a lot of hand-wringing about that with the Obama campaign. But they ran these incredibly, brutally effective economic populist ads against Romney, defining him as the caricature of the out-of-touch rich guy elite. And that caricature stuck. Mitt Romney did his own damage, reinforcing that caricature at basically every turn. And now with the Biden campaign, it's the polar opposite. And in some

ways it makes sense because listen, we already, we know who Donald Trump is, right? Mitt Romney was kind of squishily defined to the American public. So they thought that it was a real opportunity to go in like, we're going to define who this guy is on our terms, and we're going to fight this campaign on our terms. It worked really well. Here with the Biden campaign, their bet is everybody already knows Donald Trump. People feel however they feel about him. There's a lot of people who really hate this guy. And so we don't need to spend money early to define who he is and what he's all about and try to set the campaign on our terms because he does enough and his indictments will speak for themselves as well. So then you also have the fact that, unlike Barack Obama, Joe Biden is not, especially now, a very talented politician. And so they think

it makes sense to basically not campaign right now. There are concerns, though, about this strategy. I found this report from CNN quite extraordinary. Let's put this up on the screen. So even at this late date, the headline is slow pace of Biden's reelect campaign feeds Democrats 2024 anxiety. Even at this late date, you apparently still have top Democrats and donors who do not actually believe that Biden is going to really run for reelection, even though he's launched his campaign and he's raising money and he's at least done some minimal campaigning and securing certainly of union endorsements. They lead off this piece saying the conversations keep happening. Quiet whispers on the sidelines of events, text emails, furtive phone calls as top

Democrats and donors reach out to those seen as possible replacement presidential candidates. Get ready, they urge in conversations that aids to several of the people involved who described as CNN. Despite what he has said, despite the campaign that has been announced, President Joe Biden will not actually be running for reelection. They feel like time is already running out and that the lack of the more robust campaign activity they want to see is a sign that his heart really isn't in it. Now, I have always thought, even before he really made it clear that he was running for reelection, I have always thought at the end of the day, Democrats would have to get on board with Joe Biden because they have a Kamala Harris problem, because he's in the White House and because he wants another four years, too, by the way. So I continue to think that these people, this is all wishful thinking and like, you

know, presidential fanfic more than anything. But it does show you that there is deep concern among, you know, Democratic Party elites that Joe Biden's heart isn't really in it, that he's not campaigning, and that they may have a real problem come general election time, even if it is against Donald Trump. Yeah, I think, you know, the point that you made earlier is just the best one. At the end of the day, it's not going to be about money for the sitting president Donald Trump. Yeah, I think, you know, the point that you made earlier is just the best one. At the end of the day, it's not going to be about money for the sitting president and Trump.

Everyone will have plenty of money. This is going to be a multi-billion dollar election in terms of all the outside groups. It really is just a metric of how many real people are really enthused about this? Not many. And that, you know, is always going to remain an issue. But for the donors,

there is and remains the fanfic, as you said, the idea of the, you know, the West Wing type President Bartlett just coming in to swoop, take over and finally... Drooling over Gavin Newsom or whatever. Newsom is the perfect Bartlett type candidate. You know, the uber mensch liberal who's able to like sweep in and finally deliver all of the promises that they've been unable to get since the Bill Clinton era. Never ends up happening, though, in terms of the promises that they've been unable to get since the Bill Clinton era. Never ends up happening, though, in terms of the actual president, but doesn't stop them from dreaming.

True. Liz Smith, Pete Buttigieg's former campaign manager, she's quoted in this piece. I think she puts her finger on the pulse of what the Democratic elite are thinking. She says, what motivates people is less love of their party, but hatred of the other candidate. A lot of enthusiasm will come for voting against Republicans. That is what they're betting on. But you also have long-term Democratic fundraiser who said, I'm not sure which is harder, getting people to focus on the campaign or getting people excited about it. If Trump wins next November and everyone says, how did that happen? One of the questions will be, what was the Biden campaign doing in the summer of 2023? So they think the strategy makes sense to kind of sit back and let Trump hang himself

and the indictments play out and conserve their cash and keep their guy out of the spotlight. To be honest with you, I think they're probably right about that strategy. But I, you know, the best news that the Biden campaign has gotten so far is the fact that the economic numbers, inflation cooling, like that, that looks a little bit better, even as people are still really not feeling that in terms of their everyday lives. But I got to tell you, I think they got big problems coming up. I think they've got big problems for 2024. I think that the fact that you've got a few potential third party candidates, I mean, we already know we've got Cornel West in there that you may have this new labels candidate. You know, it only takes just a little bit off of Joe Biden or even, you know, the independents who didn't like him and didn't like Trump and voted for him.

Like just a few of them to go in the other direction for him to be on the other side of an election loss. And I just I think they got a lot of problems. Yeah. I mean, this is where age comes back to bite you. Like, yeah, fight like your life depends on it. Act like it, man. This is the most important job in the entire world. You got to go, you know, literally go, like, die trying. Either fight or die trying, you know, in terms of winning.

That's how the best politicians have always acted. I've read, you know, previously Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, two people who won the greatest electoral victories in modern American history. They thought they were going to lose up until the end. They still literally obsessed over the details up until election day. That's what it takes for people who are actual winners. Yeah, no, I think that's right. So we'll see how it all plays out. We wanted to give you an update and some pretty spicy footage coming out of folks involved in the total Hollywood strike.

Now you've got the writers and the actors joining together, first time in more than 60 years, to completely shut down all Hollywood productions. Pretty extraordinary event. I'm actually covering in my monologue how there's a lot of tie-ins here with AI and the future of technology that are really relevant for everyone. But there was a studio executive who was quoted as saying their end game with the writer's strike in particular is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and start losing their houses, which is a disgusting thing to say

about anyone that you're literally admitting you want to make people homeless to force them into a bad deal. Actor Ron Perlman had some thoughts on this before I throw to it. Warning, if there are children in the room, there's some spicy language here. So just a little, you know, trigger warning, et cetera. Let's hear what he had to say. The motherfucker who said we're going to keep this thing going until people start losing their houses and their apartments. Listen to me, motherfucker. There's a lot of ways to lose your house. Some of it is financial.

Some of it is karma. And some of it is just figuring out who the fuck said that. And we know who said that. And where he fucking lives. There's a lot of ways to lose your house. You wish that on people. You wish that families starve while you're making $27 fucking million a year for creating nothing.

Be careful, motherfucker. Be really careful. Because that's the kind of shit that stirs shit up. Whoa! Yeah, going all in there. Now, Asaga, he did walk it back a bit and clarify his comments. Yeah, what did he say? And actually, the clarification is also phenomenal.

He says, I don't wish anybody any harm. I hope the a-hole who made that comment also doesn't wish anybody any harm, but when you start going around and saying we're not even going to bargain with these effing dickheads until they start effing bleeding and their families start bleeding. I mean, if you want to talk about some of the shit that makes people so cynical and so pissed off with our current climate, I mean, this strike is just sort of a symptom of a struggle that's way bigger than the strike itself. It's a symptom of the soullessness of corporate America, how everything has become corporatized in this country. So, yeah, I'm being very clear. I never mentioned one name. I don't want anybody to get hurt,

but stop with the bullshit because all you're doing is you're effing killing what's beautiful in this country by putting a price on everything. Amen, sir. Well, yeah, an interesting, interesting posture there by Mr. Perlman. And I think it was backed up really in their view by Disney CEO Bob Iger, who gave one of the most extraordinary interviews in modern media history. You may think I'm exaggerating, but this interview set off a firestorm, both in terms of his response to the screen actor strike, but also in terms of some candid admissions that he made on the state of television. Here's what he had to say. Well, I think it's very disturbing to me. We've talked about disruptive forces on this business and all the challenges that we're facing and the recovery from COVID, which is ongoing. It's not completely back. This is the worst time in the world to add to that disruption. There's a level

of expectation that they have that is just not realistic. And they are adding to a set of challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive and dangerous. So they're not being realistic? No, they're not. Why not? I can't answer that question. Again, I respect their right and their desire

to get as much as they possibly can in compensation for their people. I completely respect that. I've been around long enough to understand that dynamic and to appreciate it. But you also have to be realistic about the business environment and what this business can deliver. What do you do in the interim then? Does AI start to write a lot of scripts?

It will have a very, very damaging effect on the whole business. And unfortunately, there's huge collateral damage in the industry to people who are support services. I could go on and on. It will affect the economy of different regions even because of just the sheer size of the business. It's a shame. Certainly an image there to be sitting

in the mountains of Sun Valley, Idaho, outside 6 a.m. in the morning as a mere billionaire CEO of the Disney company who tells people that it's not a good idea and there's of course going to be damaging strikes. I think we'll probably talk a little bit more in the future about what he said about the challenging business environment.

But we did also want to give you the response from the Screen Actors Guild to Bob Iger's comments. Here's what they had to say. What did you think about Bob Iger's comments yesterday? I found them terribly repugnant and out of touch, positively tone deaf. And, you know, I don't think it served him well. If I were that company, I would lock him behind doors. That was Franz Drescher. She's the president of the Screen Actors Guild. Also, though, I will say it's just extraordinary, actually, to see a major Hollywood actress call out Bob Iger directly.

That is just not really how it's done. Look, I don't work in Hollywood. I know some people who do. This is what they have told me, which is that, in general, you almost never call out studio execs, CEOs, and all those people by name because not only can they control

all the movies that they make, there's only a couple of studios that actually exist. So it only takes one or two phone calls to effectively nuke your entire career. And it does seem, so the seriousness which she is undertaking, really the task of the strike, we had the Oppenheimer actors actually leave the red carpet in the UK right as the strike was authorized because technically they would have broke it. So there's a lot going on. We've got Mission Impossible in theaters right now, Indiana Jones, a lot of promotional events,

and all of those were supposed to be happening and are going to be canceled. So Iger is not wrong that this will have major ramifications. Yeah, sure. I'm not saying he's correct about what they should capitulate to, just that the effect is already happening. It's monumental, no doubt about it. I mean, the part that everyone was rightfully pointing to is he's like, it's not realistic, their demands.

And then her viewer's like, OK, what do you mean? He's like, well, I can't say. Like, OK, then, you know, how unrealistic are their demands really? And listen, I get it with Hollywood. They're not in some ways the most sympathetic group of people. But remember that the overwhelming majority of members of this union are not the like Hollywood stars and starlets that are, you know, household names throughout the country. A lot of them are journeymen and women, actors who are just like trying to make rent and try to make it month to month, who depend on things like, you know,

being extras in films, who depend on residuals from that, you know, commercial they did, being able to sustain them while they're going to auditions. So for many people who are working in this industry, and certainly for the writers who are on strike as well, it's not the glamorous life that you may have in mind when you think Hollywood. And ultimately, these issues of labor fighting back against capital. I mean, this translates to all sorts of industry across the country. And the fact that they have a union, that they have the ability to strike, that they have some level of cultural prominence too,

really elevates some of these key issues. But, I mean, corporate greed is universal across the country. So there is a lot here that does actually translate to other industries, other workforces, and is relevant for all of us. I know. I think that's important, which is, yes, the most visible people often are like multimillionaires and all that. But one of the reasons why, at least as I understand it, they're so willing to fight hard on these issues is because once upon a time, many of them were also struggling actors and they relied on SAG for health insurance, for guaranteed compensation, for residuals and all these other things that they don't necessarily have to rely on anymore. But when they did and they were starting out, it was a very important thing for their career.

And it helps people who are coming up through the pipeline. So that's why I think it's important too. Typically, Hollywood politics are very like lib, identity-based sort of like surface level. And so it's also kind of cool to see these sort of economic populist themes about corporate greed coming to the fore from people who do have a lot of cultural cachet. So I do think that part is important as well. All right, let's get to the very latest that is happening over on Twitter with Elon Musk. This is an interesting turn of events. I'm actually curious what Sagar has to say about this one. Put NBC News up on the screen. So Elon has been sort of teasing that he may launch some sort of a program so people can actually make money on Twitter. It appears they have now rolled out what

is at least a sort of pilot program in this regard. The headline here is Twitter has started paying some creators like Andrew Tate and the Krasenstein brothers for generating ad revenue. It appears that outside of the Krasenstein brothers who are like, you know, very resistance Democrat, whatever, a lot of the creators who are being paid are on the right. So you've got in addition to Andrew Tate, you've got Benny Johnson, you've got the Babylon Bee and Wokeness. I think Tim Pool was getting payments as well. So far, it appears to be very ad hoc. Like these people, I don't know how they were selected exactly, but the idea is there's going to be some sort of a program that you can enroll in and apply to so that you also receive payments based on who is replying to your tweets and sort of how much

energy you're generating around your tweets. Elon had a little bit to say about this. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen because, again, it all ties into his blue Twitter checkmark play, which is, you know, now they're not really verified. It's you pay for the checkmark. He says that the payouts are not exactly per impression. What matters is how many ads were shown to other verified users. So other people who pay for the check mark, that's what really counts here. Only verified users count as it is otherwise trivial to game the system with bots. Sagar, your thoughts?

Look, I just have to be honest. This is so obviously ad hoc and just not keeping in any sort of real market competition whatsoever. Because the thing is, Crystal, as you and I know, we don't make our living, luckily, because of our direct subscription program, but we do make money off of CPM ads that are served on the internet. And there is just literally no way that the amount of dollars that we are talking about here even remotely lines up with the actual market rate for CPM impressions, especially, I know, I'm sorry that I'm using ad type lingo. We're talking here about the amount of dollars that you can charge per 1,000 views of this alleged ad. We are also talking here about, I know what

we make on YouTube, and it's not even close, apparently, to the rate that they're showing here. The problem that we have is that we are talking here about one of the lowest forms of ads in terms of an ad served on Twitter that you can easily scroll past, not in an environment like Spotify when people are listening and our ads are served dynamically there, or when you're watching our YouTube video. If you don't have YouTube premium, you don't have a choice. Your ass is sitting down. You got to watch at least, what, 5, 15 seconds or whatever of that ad. That's a very, very actually valuable ad. And I know what those pay. And it's not even close to the rate of what this is. So in terms of the rate that he's talking about, it does seem that they're trying to put their finger on the scale here. At the same time, it's not actually that much money.

Elon had previously tweeted they're only going to spend about $5 million over a certain period, undefined time period, which they'll be paying out. I don't think it's a surprise that they are paying it out, probably to their most voluble users of Twitter blue, because it comes at the time that Threads just launched and they want to make sure that people are using it. I don't know if I'm special, but I actually started getting ads on my feed from Twitter saying your account was eligible for payouts. Oh, for real? Because I was wondering, maybe it's me. I don't actually tweet that much, so I'd be surprised if I was able to generate the right amount of impressions. Actually, we can find out live. Let's see.

But the ad actually that was served to me, let's see. Yeah. So in terms of my impressions, I guess I had 1.8 million impressions in the month of July so far. I don't think that's actually enough. I guess I did hit it in June. We had 11.5 million impressions on my account. They said that 5 million or so was the actual number that you were supposed to hit for your profile. So yeah, I guess I did technically qualify, but they are serving it to me for why I should pay $8 a month for, you know, I may get, you know, X amount or whatever dollars to be clear would not go to me. It would go to the business. But the point being in for all of this is that they're trying to use it, I think, as a monetary tool to incite people who may qualify for the program to actually sign up, especially at a time when many

people are choosing to decide whether they should post on Instagram threads or not. But the reason I would be skeptical is, Crystal, you and I as business owners, we don't care about one-time payments. We care about consistency. We care about, are we going to get paid every month? Not just because we need to get paid,

but because we have multiple people who work for us right over on the other side of that wall to make sure we can hit payroll and all the other expenses. So is this a one-time thing? Is this going to be consistent? And this is why Elon not telling us the actual rates that are being paid here and inventing some scheme where it's like only ads serve to verified users. That's just, it doesn't track to me as a real market competition-based platform of which every other advertising-based business is run, especially on the internet for social media. Yeah, it feels a little desperate. It feels like, all right, Threads is actually taking a bite out of my creators and my traffic and whatever, and I'm worried about the threat that is coming from there.

So let me do something to try to entice creators who in many ways, he's very antagonistic towards to try to entice them to stay on this platform and commit to this platform. But the fact that his decision making has been so scattershot, so all over the place, so ad hoc, he announces one thing, he changes it, goes back on it, whatever. You know, it's already a big gamble when you rely on any of these platforms for your revenue, which is why we have got, you know, very strategically tried to make sure that we have multiple streams of revenue and that ultimately we really depend on you guys and not any tech guy, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or anyone else for the bulk of our revenue. Because any of these platforms can change what they're doing at a moment's notice. On YouTube, you will recall a while back, this was before we were in the game, they got nervous about political content and they just decided to pull all ads from political content just like that overnight.

They could do that again at a moment's notice. So it is always a risk when you're deciding to depend on any one of those platforms. So when you add on top of that the layer of just erratic behavior and decision making and nothing seems thought out, there's no policy in place. There's no like clear program. It just adds an additional level of nervousness that is not much to induce a creator to really say, okay, I'm gonna make my living here. I'm gonna depend on this platform. I'm gonna invest my time and my efforts and my creativity

into being a creator here because I think this program might pay out for me. Like, I just, I think it would be foolish for anyone to bet that this would be anything sustaining for them over time. No, you're right. I mean, to give you an example of how capricious this is, I did a monologue about the sound of freedom, I think last week. As of right now, it's got 525,000 views. You and I have not earned $1 off of that video. That video should have earned us like a decent sum by in terms of creator math. And you know, if you're a normal

person, you don't have you're a normal person, you don't have access to the direct subscription program that we've set up here in order to support our business. That takes a lot of work to get that amount of views. You know, you never know. It's like a one-off hit every once in a while, probably one of our most popular videos of this month. And we did not earn a single cent. So that is why you never want to rely on these people for the dollars on this program and why we're so lucky to have you all of you over here. All right, so what are we looking at? Well, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously referred to states as the laboratories

of democracies in our federalist system. In my opinion, it's a great system, usually. Different states have different needs. Different states have things that they can try out that may succeed or fail. We can scale them for the entire nation if they do. The downside of that though is that in some cases you have to sit by and watch as some states, as cherished as they may be, chose to go down a very dark path. For all the attention that is paid to the school policies of Florida, it is always remarkable to me that the nation's most populous, most important economic state, California, gets a free pass from the media as it radically transforms its entire education system in the pursuit of a terrible goal. Equity. We have discussed this concept ad nauseum here, but to define terms properly once again is important. Equity is the desire to equalize all outcomes between races.

Equality of opportunity seeks to give each person the same opportunity to succeed without determining their outcome. Equity has been the go-to solution for California elites in trying to address racial disparities with disastrous outcomes already. The city of San Francisco over the last several years pursued a so-called Algebra for None program which limited opportunities for high-achieving students in the eighth grade to try and give everyone a better shot at learning math. Years into the program now, the results are unambiguous. The policy did nothing to address racial disparities, only sought to

limit the opportunity available to high-achieving students. Rich students simply just had parents pay for outside tutoring, which means taxpaying citizens with kids who were ready for algebra in 8th grade were actively penalized by their government. Since obviously this worked so well in San Francisco and was so obviously a failure, the state of math classrooms and encourages, quote, teachers to make math culturally relevant and accessible for all students, especially students of color who have been traditionally marginalized in the subject. Okay, so we're talking about making math culturally relevant. I think I know where this is going. The new framework for teaching math effectively discourages organizations or instruction on individual standards for math. Instead, the framework outlines, quote, big ideas in mathematics for each grade that are designed to drive instruction. In theory, this actually

sounds nice, but in practice, when I actually look deeper, it is clear not only to me, but the heads of major math departments and prestigious math departments all across the California university system that this moves away from objective metrics and actual learning. The new curriculum encourages teachers to make math more of a venue to talk about social justice and to get students to find a quote, sense of belonging and in some cases to sell math to students as a way to, quote, examine inequities and address important issues in their lives and communities. Effectively, they're trying to sell math to kids as a way to look at racial disparities, which is, I guess, true, but should

also probably just be sold as a tool that is able to do pretty much anything that requires metrics and help you understand it. Furthermore, California is doing a bait and switch here. They are trying to sound reasonable, but they're very nefarious whenever you look into it. California schools are loosening admissions criteria, telling high schools that they would consider applicants who skipped Algebra 2, which originally was a cornerstone of math instruction and a baseline for people who wanted to continue in the university level. In place, schools in California are now saying that, quote, data science is an acceptable replacement. But the reason why the schools in

California are pursuing data science as a replacement is, quote, an equity issue, aka it sends more students to college. How? The reality is that the coursework itself appears to be less challenging and apparently creates less racial disparities. So it is the desirable solution. We arrive once again at a place where in the name of equity and equal racial outcomes, we are dumbing down standards for everyone and potentially making higher level math even less accessible to those who move through the California public education system. In fact, eight black faculty members argued to the University of California system in May of 2022 that pushing data science over Algebra II as a requirement, quote, will harm students from such groups by steering them away from being prepared for STEM majors.

Why? Because they will not have access to the basic skills to keep up in class and will simply drop out. They will incur more student debt or they will waste their time. And of course not, they will actually not fulfill the desired outcome, which is more people of color allegedly in these jobs and positions in these fields. The toughest part about all of this racial obsessed equity advocates in California is they are mixing important rhetoric with race and poisoning the well. On the one hand, they are not wrong. Data is obviously very important in our current society. When is the last time that you needed to, quote, divide by a polynomial? Did you

really need to do that? Or did you need to understand large data sets, their interaction with the world to actually get ahead? I totally get that on a conceptual level. The problem is that the curriculum they're putting forward seems like an awfully convenient way to get more desired minority groups into the University of California education system. And it also seems that by the talking point is to instead cover for a new affirmative action regime. Furthermore, to the black professor's point who dissented from this decision, the single most important thing that publication can do is give people a chance.

Rich kids will always be fine, as they were in San Francisco. No matter what the school is, what they're doing, they will have tutors, prep courses, and they will have a culture that emphasizes learning. Public education should remain a place that demands rigorous standards in the name of both preparing better citizens, but also giving opportunities to ascend to higher social strata that people would never have had the chance if they did not attend that school. Asian kids of

doctors and engineers, they've got no problems continuing those fields. But people of other races whose parents barely completed high school have no idea what to do. It is the public education system's job to give them an actual opportunity and not think less of them by dumbing down standards and setting them up to fail or, just as bad, punishing high achieving students by actively discriminating against them. We are taking a major step back as a society if we go down this route. A hundred years ago, public education was a joke for poor people, while the elites ensconced themselves in boarding and finishing schools. There was little to no opportunity to actually ascend social rank, absent very few outliers.

The more public education becomes untenable for people with means, they will simply exit the system. They will segregate themselves further and diminish the cross-class mingling which is vital in our society and diminishes the ability to do better in life. Maybe that is the plan after all, but if it's not, we need to turn towards this equality of opportunity to give everyone an actual equal shot instead of trying to equalize everyone. I'm curious what you think, Crystal, you've got kids in the public education system. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue,

become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, the first major war has broken out between human beings and artificial intelligence. Now, this opening skirmish is at the core of the complete Hollywood shutdown as actors have now joined writers on the picket lines. This strike, which is the first of its kind since Ronald Reagan was head of the Screen Actors Guild,

as Sager pointed out, it's extraordinary for its breadth and for how it will impact all of our favorite shows and movies. But while the grievances are at their core, typical workers' concerns are for wages, working conditions, and fair treatment, The way that tech is upending this entire industry has emerged as a key concern for both the writers and the actors that are involved here. Just take a listen to SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher on why their members overwhelmingly felt compelled to strike. The entire business model has been changed by streaming, digital, AI. This is a moment of history. That is a moment of truth. If we don't stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble. We are all going to be in trouble. We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines and big business who cares more about Wall Street than you and your family. In an interview on MSNBC, she went into even greater depth about some of the specific

AI proposals that the union had so recoiled at. Just take a listen. There are things that they want to have our background performers work one day for and get scanned for AI, and then they own the likeness of the person digitally, and they could use them over and over again. What is going to happen to that hardworking background person? They're going to be out of business. This is the kind of thing that's happening all over the world. The issues that are being brought up are so novel, and yet in some ways the struggle is the same as it ever was. So just to give you a little bit of context here, according to the Actors Union, Hollywood studios want to be able to scan actors in order to create AI replicas, which those studios could then use for whatever they want, literally forever. Now, if that's true, that proposal would completely destroy the livelihoods of many actors

who depend on background work in order to make ends meet. It would basically be the end of movie extras. Remember, the overwhelming majority of actors are not the superstar, multimillionaire celebrities that become household names. They are more likely to be the background actors who are living paycheck to paycheck, but who are still a key part of making your favorite show or film. Now, the studios did push back on this characterization, saying the current proposal would only allow the AI scans to be used on that particular production for which the background actor is employed. Even that would be really disastrous for them. And apparently this tech is already being deployed in the industry.

Actress Lena Hall wrote on Twitter, quote, so Snowpiercer season four did a full body scan and full range of emotion capture of all the series regulars on the show, not ever telling us the real reason why. Now I know why, and it's really disturbing, because I did not consent. Writers are also striking in part over AI concerns. They fear that in a world where streaming networks are desperate to churn out just as much content as they possibly can as quickly as possible, studios could turn to AI to cut writers out of the process as much as they can. According to The Independent, quote, members of the Writers Guild of America, WGA, shared concerns that producers may seek to use AI to write scripts or at least use the technology to complete unfinished screenplays

and have also urged production houses to agree to safeguards around its usage. Screenwriters fear AI could be used to churn out a rough first draft with a few simple prompts, and writers may then be hired after this initial step to punch such drafts up, albeit at a lower pay rate. These concerns expose the techno-optimist lie that AI will create more jobs than it destroys. Thousands of background actors could be put out of work. How many coders will it take to program their likenesses into the background? Handful maybe? And the job of writer might remain, but it will be degraded so that they will effectively be assistants to the bots, cleaning up the drafts that AI turns out. And what's true for this industry is going to be true for many, many more. Because bosses are always going to look for ways to use fewer workers. Workers are expensive. They have rights. And

there's at least some limitations on how much you're allowed to exploit them. Bots? They never talk back, they never need time off, and they require no humanity. If the country only cares about profits for the top, human beings could become truly disposable. That's to say nothing of the way that Hollywood has already been degraded and stripped of beauty, risk-taking, and creativity by the demand to place the safest, most market-palatable bet. Now, you may not think that this fight has a lot to do with you other than creating an

annoyance as your favorite show production is delayed. You may think that these Hollywood stars and starlets have nothing in common with you and are privileged to even have the ability to complain about all of this. And you know what? There's some truth to that. After all, it is their prominence, combined with their union power, by the way, which is the only thing that even gives them a chance to push back on any of this. But this is just the beginning. Automation has already come for blue-collar America. Now it's coming for white-collar workers, too. Everyone now has an interest in seeing the shared threat to their livelihoods and supporting one another in these struggles that will draw new lines in the sand of what is acceptable and what is immoral in this new landscape. Bottom line,

technology should benefit human beings, not destroy their lives. Because in this future that we are just catching a glimpse of, it's not that people will become wholly irrelevant. It's that the gulf between the haves and have-nots will become ever greater as the owner class separates more and more from the labor class. It's that every last sector of our lives will be colonized, commoditized for profit. And if this brave new world can come for Hollywood stars and starlets, what chance do ordinary people ultimately stand? And I think this is a very telling saga of where all of these fights are going. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints.com.

Joining us now is Doug DeMuro. He is a car YouTuber, a very popular host of his channel over there, which we'll have a link on the description. Doug, it's great to see you. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Absolutely. So we have an audience very interested in used cars. We've been tracking it in terms of the economy. It's a key benchmark, really, of the ability for middle class life and others to have accessibility. Let's put this up there on the screen. We have some interesting price movement in the used car market. Used EV prices actually collapsing, Tesla being the reason why. We know this is a space that you are particularly very interested

in. What's your sense of the used car market and how it's interacting with EVs right now? Well, I think the used car market in general finally seems to be slowing down a little bit after a long, long time, as everyone has seen, of crazy prices and enormously high demand and low supply, frankly. But electric vehicles specifically do seem to be falling more than others. I think there's a lot of different reasons for this. One big factor is Tesla, who's of course like the biggest electric vehicle provider still, the biggest manufacturer. They've had some price cuts as supply has more caught up with demand. They've kind of lowered their prices of their new vehicles, which has in turn driven down pricing for used vehicles

as people could just go buy new ones. But I think there's more factors at play also. Gas prices are not what they were six months or a year ago. They've come down a little bit. That helps some relief. That provides a little relief. And I think supply and demand are finally catching up a little bit. Of course, there's interest rates, a lot of different factors. Yeah. Can you take us through a little bit of the story of the broader used car market? Because this ended up being a really key driver of inflation. It was something that we have been tracking here really closely because these prices, both of new and used cars, but used in particular, were really out of control. Was it just supply chain issues or what was the story of what was going on there?

If I were to sum it up in sort of the biggest component of it, I would say that supply chain issues was certainly the largest factor. You know, when COVID happened, a lot of automakers shut down production facilities, thinking that no one was going to buy their cars. And then production facilities were kind of forced to shut down because they weren't able to produce during COVID because of, you know, people being close together, et cetera. And that really put automakers behind when then interest rates went way down and demand went way up.

And so when demand is really high for new cars and the new cars don't exist, of course, people then turn to used cars to go and buy them. And that drove used car prices absolutely through the roof. And so that was a big factor. But then you have the other factor of you've had basically two years of very limited new car production. And so we're seeing in terms of, you know, lease returns coming back and trade-ins, there was just like almost a hole for the 2020 to 2022 model years where there weren't as many cars made. And that's going to have a ripple effect on used car prices for a while, even though we're starting to see it kind of taper off. Right. Doug, something, some of my favorite videos that you have done is about assessing

the worth of an actual car. Some of these are supercars, which are definitely fun to aspirationally watch. I'm sure that's why they're so popular. But what goes into assessing the worth of a car, of a normal car that you or a normal person might drive? Somebody who's like, I need something to get to work back and forth. How do they have to think about it in this changing market right now? I guess it's kind of based largely on how much do you need or want a vehicle at the moment, right? When parts are really cheap and supply is huge and you can get a great deal, some people think nothing of, hey, I've had my car for a year, so I'm going to go trade into a different car, whatever. It's 10 grand off. It doesn't matter. But in today's world, it's more

like, oh, my God, cars are so expensive and interest rates are so high. I don't want to trade up my car unless I've been in an accident and desperately need a new vehicle or my family has grown and I need a van or an SUV. And so, you know, in terms of assessing like what a car is worth, it almost becomes a question of what it is worth to someone. And it becomes a question of what, you know,

their personal circumstances. Is it really worth paying $1,000, $5,000 over the sticker price for a Honda Odyssey? You know, people made those decisions a couple over the sticker price for a Honda Odyssey. People made those decisions a couple of years ago out of necessity. Yeah. And what are some of the factors that are contributing to prices now coming back to earth and being more in line with whatever normalcy is? I think that there's a lot of different factors now. I think supply is finally catching up with demand. Automakers are kind of back producing again. And a lot of, not all, but a lot of car companies have been able to bring things back to a relatively

more normal inventory level. So new cars are more available. But I think actually a huge component of it, just like in housing, is interest rates. You know, it was one thing when you could go and finance a car at 0% or at 1%. A lot of people, again, thought not much of doing that. When things are 7%, 8%, when automakers are offering deals at 5%, then it becomes a little bit less, it becomes a little bit harder to go and justify that to yourself. And I think that's having some downward pressure on the car market as well. Yeah, and one thing we've tracked is all sorts of personal debt measures are up. Credit card debt is massive at this point. Are you seeing the same thing in terms

of car financing? I've generally heard that that's been true, that car financing and car debt has been sort of at higher, higher levels. I mean, sticker prices of cars have continued to go up. And as we saw over the last couple of years, there wasn't an enormous amount of deals to be had in the car world. So people were financing larger and larger percentages of cars in terms of like their values. And so I think that that certainly has happened as well. My last question really focuses on electric vehicles. We've seen an explosion in the market. Even anecdotally, I see Rivians on the road now. I see some BMW electric cars. I've seen a Kia, the Hyundai, the Tesla, obviously. As we see increasing penetration along with what we're

seeing in terms of subsidies and all that, what's your general sense of where the EV market will go? Do you think that we'll see the price continue to come down, become even more accessible to the middle class and the lower middle class? How far away are we away from it becoming a standard vehicle that a normal person will consider, even as their first car with limited finances? That's a great question. I mean, I think that's one of the big questions right now in the car industry in general, because as you're kind of implying between BMW and Rivian and Tesla, most of the electric cars that have been on the market so far have been higher end vehicles. And so, yeah, will they become more mainstream? Sure. When will that happen? I think that's like the big

question. It's certainly coming down more and more between the Model 3s and, yeah, the Kia EV6, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 cars in the $40,000 to $50,000 price point, but it's still not ubiquitous. And I think the charging infrastructure is a component of that. When are people going to be able to get chargers to street parking, to apartments, that kind of thing? That's a factor. But I think it'll be still some years away before you see just full widespread adoption of electric vehicles. I don't think we're quite there yet. Yeah, I think that the charging infrastructure to me is the biggest piece. I have an electric vehicle, so does Sager, but I would not want to only have an electric vehicle because for long road trips and things, I just, you know, I would be nervous about being able to make all of that work.

Doug, so great to have you. Thank you so much for your insights. We really enjoyed talking to you. Yeah, we'd love to have you back, Doug. Thank you. Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having me. All right, guys, we'll see you later. We've got a fun candidate interview coming up, which we'll post later today for our premium subscribers. I think you're going to want to take a look at that. So check your inbox. We'll see you guys later. this is an iHeart podcast