Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/26/21: Biden's Polling Numbers, Tucker Spying Confirmed, Pentagon Budget, Cuomo Let Off, Hunter Biden's Art, Renewed Lockdown Hysteria, Media Silence, Vaccines, and More!

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

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to participate in weekly Ask Me Anythings, and you don't need to hear our annoying voices pitching you like I am right now. So what are you waiting for? Go to breakingpoints.com, become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Frissel? Indeed, we do. We got all kinds of stuff for you. We got Tucker news. We got military industrial complex news. We got Cuomo news. We got Hunter Biden news. All of that to get into. We also have Derek Thompson on. Really thoughtful guy, writer at The Atlantic to talk about vaccine hesitancy and what would actually work to get people vaccinated. Obviously,

super important topic right now. But we wanted to start with a big check in on the Biden administration. We're now six months officially into that administration. And there are some worrying signs, at least for them, of how the public is perceiving their performance at this point. Let's start with the mood of the country. Measures of optimism, and we can put this tear sheet up on the screen, measures of Americans' optimism about the country's direction over the next year have dropped nearly 20 points since May. A majority now, 55% of the public say that they are pessimistic about the country. That is very, very different from the basically one-third of the country that said that previously back in May. So you've had this huge shift in terms of how Americans are feeling about the direction of

the country. We have more polls that I want to bring you, but I want to pause on that one, Sagar, to start with, because, you know, the obvious explanation here is that when Biden came into office, there was this sense that we've gotten through the pandemic. We've got the vaccines. It's over. Like, you know, it's've gotten through the pandemic. We've got the vaccines. It's over. Like, you know, it's all over but the shouting. We're going to get shots in arms. Things are going to be reopened.

And a lot of that has been true. But now you see the numbers spiking from the Delta variant. You see that we have sort of plateaued in terms of being able to get more people vaccinated and significantly increase those percentages. And so I do think that that is the context for why there's a lot more nervousness now about the direction of the country than there was previously. I do. And I'm talking about this in my radar, but I personally think that they really have nobody but themselves to blame for a lot of this, which is that they are not embracing that original mood of the country. In many ways, they're almost clinging to some of those old pandemic restrictions, mindsets, masks. I'm talking about Fauci. But that is actually what I think is contributing to that alongside what we have is lackluster economic recovery, which is bifurcated. But also,

just generally, what you can see here is that the 26-point drop, it's not partisan. It's not that Republicans and independents are the ones who are feeling bad. It's literally everybody, Democrats, Republicans, and independents. Optimism is uniformly down basically amongst all of the groups, at least from a percentage point. And I think that that matters because even though Biden has what here is a 63% approval on the pandemic, I remember whenever we were talking a lot in 2020 about polls before the election, one of the things that Trump people would always point me to was, do you still feel like you were better off than you were four years ago? And even at the height of the cases, November, October of 2016, I like 55% of people were saying that. And they were saying that is a good proxy

for how people feel. And on the other hand, this is the converse, which is that, yes, Biden might have a high approval of the pandemic and more. But if you have lack of optimism, then you're just somebody whose message doesn't seem necessarily like with the American people. And I got to say, Crystal, if I were to point to a single number, which could like presage Trump's second election, whatever his second run may be, if he does want to run, it's something like this. Are you talking about next time he runs? Yes. I think that Trump is uniquely positioned as kind of this figure to talk about lack of optimism, about character, about make America great again. One of the interesting things was that keep America great never really resonated in the same way

as kind of like a revanchist, revisionist message. And I mean, I'm looking at this number and I see people like Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, lackluster type of energy, lack of optimism about the country's future. You can very quickly see how that could be, not necessarily exploited, but how any Republican

or whatever that does meet of a more pessimistic message might be able to rise up. Look, it's also been only six months. We have three years and six months to go. So, you know, take all of that with a grain of salt. But I would say these are probably, if I'm the White House, this is what I'm freaking out even more so than vaccine numbers right now. Well, and his strongest numbers are still on handling of the pandemic and the economic recovery. However, those numbers have dropped significantly. So you see his handling of the pandemic, he receives his lowest marks yet. It's still at 63% approved, but it previously was up all the way at 70% on the economic recovery. He's similarly seen a decline of about seven points.

And, you know, those are the key metrics that were really boosting and bolstering his approval rating. Going to be key, not just, look, re-election is a ways down the road. We don't know if it's going to be him or Kamala or maybe somebody else. But midterms, you know, are not good usually for the party in power. You've got to really buck the trends and have a president and a party that's quite popular that's doing a lot for the American people. And these numbers are continuing to slide as Delta surges. And the other thing that I would say here is, you know, I mean, in part, it's a honeymoon period.

In part, there are things that are out of his control. I really do think that there's only so much you can do to persuade and cajole and whatever the American public to get vaccinated.

We have the highest rates of vaccine skepticism of like any major country outside of Russia. It's just sort of like... Beat the Russians. And there's nothing really that new about that

strain in america so you can't pin it all on the biden ministry it's all their fault this is you know an old sentiment within this country um but also during that time when his approval ratings were a lot higher and when sense of like how he's handling the economic recovery and coronavirus were much higher was also a time when he was doing a lot more than he is now a lot more action you know when you first came in, you got executive orders. You got, we're doing the relief bill. We're getting the shots in the arm. You heard a lot more from the administration.

Then they decided, you know, look for the next thing. Let's try to do the bipartisan infrastructure package. That thing seems to be completely falling apart. You've got maybe a reconciliation bill. Still a lot of question marks there. So I also think the other one simple thing is Delta variant is surging, case numbers are rising, people are feeling a little skittish about that.

The other thing is they're just not doing a whole lot of a lot at this point. No, I agree. And I mean, we said this in the beginning, which is that after they pass that economic recovery package, then they started looking ahead to the infrastructure package and they started talking about reconciliation. I kind of knew he was done whenever they said, yeah, that's September

deadline. I just don't think that's going to happen. And I was like, it's four months away. What is going on? And look, in legislative time, that actually isn't a lot. But Americans don't want to live by legislative time. They want to live like the rest of the country with actual time. And that's the problem. And you can actually see amongst independents, he is really beginning to tread water. So our friend Ryan Godersky, he actually tweeted this out from the same poll. Let's put it up there on the screen. So you can actually see exactly there on the sliding scale. Now, don't take the partisan number seriously. Always look at the independent number. So 62% of independents, they support the Biden response to COVID-19. Okay, that's good. As long as that's the top. 54% support the withdrawal of US troops

from Afghanistan. Okay, good. 49% right there at the economic recovery. That is very precarious. Then crime, 39%. Gun violence, 34%. And immigration, 35%. So basically underwater on every single important issue in the election, except for the response to COVID-19 and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. And Crystal, what I would bet more than anything is that a year and a half from now, November of 2022, that the response to COVID-19 is basically going to be a more, not a forgotten issue numbers necessarily, but like a number three issue. And I would bet I would go all in for economic recovery. I think crime, no matter what you want to say, is going to be a big issue because the Republicans are going to make it an issue. And I do think, you know, given rising crime rates, there has to be a big debate in the country and immigration, especially

if they have to remove the CDC guidance, which they're not allowing adult male, well, mostly not allowing adult male migrants into the country. When you start to see flood of like single-aged adult males, you know, come across the border and they can no longer use that, well, then, you know, we're coming right back to it. So I look at this chart and I can extrapolate generally into the future. And I would say this is very not good for the White House and especially for the Democrats whenever it comes to that election. One thing that we've become polarized, another thing that we've become polarized is even what people rate as their most important issues. So if you look at Republican voters, they will tell you already that immigration and crime are some of their top

issues at this point. And when you think about a midterm, and that may never be the case for Democrats, ultimately in the midterm election, I mean, they're going to vote in a partisan way. Republicans are also going to vote in a partisan way. So mostly what you have to think about is what's the turnout going to be. And so if you have an issue that, you know, is very emotionally animating, which the issue of immigration definitely is, especially for the Republican base, that can be very fertile ground for the Republican Party for the midterm election, because it's all about how jazzed up and freaked out and angry and whatever can you get your base to get them to go to the polls? So on the Republican side, I see very clearly, you know, where the sort of energy and animating force is going to come from to turn their voters out.

On the Democratic side, it feels a little bit like 2010, which is when I ran for Congress. Great timing on my part. And there just was not a lot of energy on the Democratic side to show back up to the polls. It was the same sense of mission accomplished. We got Barack Obama into office. Let's pat ourselves on the back. We've, you know, vanquished those bad old Republicans. Back then it was George W. Bush. Now it's Donald J. Trump. And so we can go back to brunch and we don't really need to worry too much about this whole like organizing and voting thing. I feel a lot of that energy right now.

I think you're right. Similar amounts of like apathy on the Democratic side and agitated, you know, anxious anger, all of that energy, which turns people out to the polls on the Republican side. I do want to pause on that withdrawal from Afghanistan number because I do think it's really worth celebrating, frankly, that even with the media's overwhelming push to convince Americans that it was a disaster to take troops out of Afghanistan, in fact, the women and the children and the Taliban and terror and whatever, that this is a terrible idea and bringing out, you know, John Bolton or whoever to tell you that we should be there forever. Still, even with that overwhelming sigh up that the media has been conducting on Americans for 20 friggin years now, Americans are still like, we want the hell out.

President did a good job on that. And I also think that there's something to be said for the fact that of all the policy issues that are out there at the moment, that's the one where Biden has been the most clear and the strongest. That's true. And people like respect that in a leader. And when they're looking especially, you know, for someone to follow and some guidance of what direction, when you're really clear and you're really strong, know we're getting out. This was what we went in to do. We did that. We've been there way too long. I don't care what you say.

We're out of here. People do sort of respect that. So the fact that you have a majority, 55%, in spite of that media psyop, still saying that we should be getting out of Afghanistan, I do find that rather encouraging. Absolutely. On the other hand, it took 20 years, and many Republicans still switched the moment that Biden came into office. Yeah, oh, absolutely. So, I don't know.

And Democrats switch the other way. Right. So, I'm looking for the blackest pill I can find. Look, at the same time, you know, tracking with the polls, this one also caught my eye in vain of the six-month check-in. Let's put this up there on the screen, which is that the Gallup tracker notoriously, look, you could think what you want about Gallup. It was actually okay-ish during the Trump years, but it's on the daily tracking poll, so it is important. He just hit the lowest approval rating that he's had to date since he was in office. It still remains at 50%, though it's down six points than whenever they took it just not that long ago. So I think that the important thing there is that what you

generally see in the numbers is everybody's like, yeah, Biden's doing a good job with COVID. But then you look at the economy and they're like, no, no, no. They're like, I'm 50-50. The Republicans are split. The Democrats are, yeah. The independents are like, yeah, I'm not 100% sure. Then you look at some of the other issues. It's the same thing. On the infrastructure package, they don't really see. A lot of people just don't get it. the infrastructure package, they don't really see, a lot of people just don't get it. They're like, I don't understand why it takes so long. Fair. I don't understand. Yeah. And you said this once, which is infrastructure isn't cash in pockets. It's cash to contractors and then contractors have to go and build stuff. You don't really

see it 100% and it may not necessarily impact your life in exactly the same way until the end result comes, right? Like we all love the highway system after the highway is built. But before that, you're like, I don't really know what I'm missing. So that's part of it. And generally, what you just see is, I think, this lackluster feeling of what's next, which is that Biden came in, he had this executive order, and they passed the COVID stimulus bill. And then they're like, okay, now reconciliation. Americans are like, I don't really know. What's that word? What? Parliamentarian? What is that? Why is it taking so long?

And what about all these other issues that we were going to talk about? Also, you know, I can't hire somebody or I, you know, don't have any money or actually unemployment benefits are expiring in September. What's up with that? Eviction moratorium. People have really pressing issues before their lives. And there's not a real sense, I think, that Washington is doing anything about it. But there's no sense of urgency. Yeah. And that lack of urgency, or at least focusing on the pandemic, this is another thing, which is that

if you're vaccinated, the pandemic is over for you. And so for half adults in the country, people are like, okay, it's great that you're focusing on the pandemic, but I've got all these other problems that are happening. I did want to do one caveat, which we both love the story from Politico, which is that, you know, we just talked about polls. Pollsters were recently surveyed, and a poll of pollsters says it is impossible to say why the 2020 polls were so wrong. So anytime you hear about polls, take that with a great, a big grain of salt. Well, and as we look towards the midterms, literally take whatever the polls are saying the Republican performance will be and add four points to it. I mean, maybe more, honestly, literally. So that was, that was, um, they were off by an average of four and a half percentage

points at the national level. The state level was even worse. They were off by over five points. And by the way, this wasn't just a Trump effect. In fact, the Senate and governor's races, they were off by an even bigger margin of six points. This was the worst performance for pollsters in 40 years. Okay. 40 years. So whatever the polls ultimately say about which direction the midterms are going and etc., add four to the Republican performance and then you might be in the ballpark. You know, probably add five, maybe add six, but definitely give the Republicans more points than the pollsters are giving them credit for because the best theory that they can come up with, and I think the best

theory that we've been able to come up with, is not just that Republicans are less likely to answer pollsters, but also that resistance liberals are super eager to answer pollsters. They love to talk on the phone. And maybe, especially during the pandemic when they're stuck at home, they're available, they're able to answer the phones, et cetera. So I actually, I think there may have been an effect on both ends of that. backwards to try to get two Republicans on board, that ultimately what they really should have done is actually do the right policy so that people felt the effect, so that you had the economic recovery that you really needed at that point that wasn't anemic and lackluster. It felt for a minute like maybe there were some people in the room that kind of got that. Now there's been a complete reversion of the mean. They're back to this old

90s era Bill Clinton thinking that says essentially the less you do for people, like the less waves that you make, the more likely they are to come out and vote for you. And I think we're seeing in real time the folly of that type of put aside what's, you know, whether the policy is good, bad, or indifferent, the folly of thinking that politically the right thing to do is to not deliver for people. Bottom line is good policy makes for good politics. If you're putting money in people's pockets, if you're creating jobs, I mean, if you did a big infrastructure push, not this like measly thing that they're contemplating with Republicans, which still, which actually seems like it's on the verge of falling apart. That could create a lot of jobs that could really juice the economic recovery that can

make sure that, you know, everything was humming going into the midterm elections, twiddling your thumbs and hoping that Lindsey Graham or whoever is going to support your bill. Nobody cares about that. No one cares the process by which it gets done. They just care about how it ultimately gets done. And so I think that old like quagmire thinking from the 90s and the 2000s has come back. It's feeling more and more like the Obama era. And it feels more and more like we're heading into a 2010 kind of a result. Yeah. I mean, basically going shot for shot,

what happened with Obamacare. We'll see what happens. I don't know if it'll take necessarily as long as Obamacare did, which famously passed, what was it, like Christmas or whatever, back in late-night December vote. It may take until September, October, really have no idea, but whatever it does, it does feel very, very similar in terms of both the politics and the eventual outcome. So I would be scared if I were them. Speaking of slavish devotion to the national security state. Indeed. I just got some more money. Some great bipartisan love going on in D.C. This is incredible. OK, throw this tear sheet up on the screen. So in an almost unanimous

vote, Republicans and Democrats came together in a closed-door markup of the annual defense budget and decided that, yeah, you know, the Biden administration, they asked for $715 billion. We're going to go ahead and bump that up. We actually want it to be $740 billion. And again, passed almost unanimously, 25 to 1 in this committee hearing. Elizabeth Warren was the single lone vote against this. And, I mean, this is incredible for any number of reasons. First of all, in this Politico story, you've got to love this. parties touted the investments that this bill with their additional funding that they just went ahead and put in here, that that bill would make in weapons programs and installations in their states.

The final bill authorizes $778 billion in total for national defense programs and boost funding for major weapon systems. So, again, I want you to note that language. They're not touting how essential this money is to, like, protect and defend the United States. They're touting it because of what it's going to mean in terms of military installations and investments, which you should read as, like, more money to defense contractors, essentially. So they're not even really pretending this is about national defense and making sure that we're all safe or any of that. It's also just incredible, you know, the type of things that get complete bipartisan support and also the type of things

that you have to pay for and the type of things that they're just dying to throw more money at. We're in the midst of this huge debate about the reconciliation bill and the infrastructure package and the way that conservatives are trying to whittle that down is by attacking the pay force and demanding that every penny in that infrastructure package and reconciliation bill is ultimately paid for every single penny. And yet when it comes to defense spending, they're like, 25 billion, we want to give you a little more. This wasn't enough. Well, let's throw you a few more billion here. Which is actually in violation of what the, and this is the key to the story, which is the

headline is the Senate Democrats defied Biden in their vote to boost Pentagon spending. And it wasn't even close. And as you point out, the extra money is going towards the F-35 program, a, you know, one of the gigantic boondoggles of the 21st century, and pretty much a shining example of why the military industrial complex not only costs more money, but is actually worse at its job than it was in like 1959 or 1960 or whatever, whenever Eisenhower was giving that speech. At least those planes actually flew pretty well.

These apparently don't, which that's one part of it which always drives me nuts. We're paying more for technology which is worse and is actually less safe for the people who have to climb into these planes. All that being said, you look at what's happening here, and it is very indicative around where bipartisanship converges. And if this was something principled around like, look, we're going to do this because there's one particular program

or we're coming out of Afghanistan, we need to plus up in order to modernize. I'd be like, okay, you know, I'm all here. We want to give our service men and women a raise. You know, we need to make sure they've got the right health care. How about that? Yes, actually our current health care system for the Pentagon I think costs $125 billion. And as anybody who's ever worked with the VA knows, it doesn't work that well.

There's a whole lot of questions. USAA, better GI benefits. I'd be 100% for all of that. But that's not what's happening here. The plus up, as you point out, was also driven by a lot of people who are up for reelection. So Mark Kelly is one of those people, former naval aviator. He said the budget buildup was needed to meet military requirements that didn't make the spending request. And those military requirements and more, of course, he's from Arizona, where because of John McCain and all of that, there is a lot of military spending in the state of Arizona.

Tim Kaine was the same one. He's like, well, we need it, you know, because they want to build a new Navy destroyer. The Navy's had their eyes on the destroyer for a long time. It's a pretty controversial program even within the Navy. Well, Norfolk, Virginia, right? There's a lot of jobs and a lot of stuff down there. And he happens to be a senior armed services Democrat who represents the shipbuilding-heavy state. And he says that the Pentagon needs more buying power.

And so they can say that that actually is one of the better things. You'll love this, too, which is that he says that the Pentagon will have better buying power because Biden halted the Trump administration effort to stunt billions from the border wall under military. So he's like, we can use all this new money to buy more shipbuilding materials, which will all come to Virginia. It's a scramble. That wasn't enough. The wall money wasn't enough. You need more on top of that. Exactly. You need more money on top. And so the money all gets appropriated. And really what it is, it's a scramble in order to use control of the Senate and of Congress in order to distribute funds to their states.

So really what it is, it's like a patronage game. And whenever you're locked into this mindset, whenever you change chambers, everyone's just going to keep going up and up and up to get more stuff in their districts and more. And the main point I want to say is you can be for the US military and even a good modern fighting force and recognize that the current way that we fund that fighting force is insane in terms of the amount of dollars per what we actually get. I remember looking at this thing about these new Navy ships, which are radar defeat and all of this, but it costs like a million dollars a round in order to fire their new guns. What kind of,

what is that? How did this happen? And it was like, well, we were going to build 26, and then we only built three. And the gun is really modern and cool, and so you can't change, apparently, the ammoondoggles of the post-Iraq age on this would blow people's minds in terms of what we have spent on Iraq, on Afghanistan. I remember there was one story we spent a couple hundred million dollars building like one gas station in Afghanistan. Oh, and by the way, the Taliban controls it now. So awesome. Or power stations in the same thing, trying to build and bring power. And now the Taliban charges people for the power there that we built. It's just, there's so many stories.

There's also a great point to that, which is like, you know, when we go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, of course, and the politicians, oh, we got a significant, we got to up the defense budget massively. You know, nobody even questions that. Of course, the Bush administration pioneered like we're not going to pay for that. There are not going to be any additional taxes. Nobody's going to feel any pain from the fact that we're having this massive explosion in the military budget. But it's not like once you leave those places, they bring it back down like it only ever goes up. We're leaving Afghanistan. And yet they're still like, we need more, more, not just more year over year, but like Biden increased the budget, but it wasn't it wasn't enough. The rate of growth wasn't fast enough for us.

And you're absolutely right. It is just a patronage game. Like you shouldn't look at this as having anything to do with care for our servicemen and women, certainly, or protecting our national defense. It is a patronage game, and it's one that you know you're going to be able to get bipartisan support on. So if you're trying to funnel money to your district for political reasons, this is the surest and easiest path to do it. So it creates its own logic and its own momentum, and it's very, very hard to stop. I don't think that there's any way to get around having that, like, patronage situation as part of our politics. I would just like the patronage to go towards something that's not war-making, that's like, you know, has actual benefits to the citizens of the country,

not just making new war machines for the sake of making new war machines. So that would be something that I was interested in. But just incredible to see bipartisanship in action here at the Beltway. Oh, 100%. Hey, so remember how we told you how awesome premium membership was? Well, here we are again to remind you that becoming a premium member means you don't have to listen to our constant pleas for you to subscribe. So what are you waiting for?

Become a premium member today by going to BreakingPoints.com, which you can click on in the show notes. Speaking of, you know, slavish devotion to the national security state. Indeed. You just got some more money. Some great bipartisan love going on in D.C. This is incredible. Okay, throw this tear sheet up on the screen. So in an almost unanimous vote, Republicans and Democrats came together in a closed door markup of the annual defense budget and decided that, yeah, you know, the Biden administration, they asked for $715

billion. We're going to go ahead and bump that up. We actually want it to be $740 billion. And again, passed almost unanimously, 25 to 1 in this committee hearing. Elizabeth Warren was the single lone vote against this. And I mean, this is incredible for any number of reasons. First of all, in this Politico story, you got to love this. They say, on Thursday, senators from both parties touted the investments that this bill with their additional funding that they just went ahead and put in here, that that bill would make in weapons programs and installations in their states. The final bill authorizes $778 billion in total for national defense programs and boost funding for major weapon systems. So, again, I want you to note that language.

They're not touting how essential this money is to, like, protect and defend the United States. They're touting it because of what it's going to mean in terms of military installations and investments, which you should read as, like, more money to defense contractors, essentially. So they're not even really pretending this is about national defense and making sure that we're all safe or any of that. It's also just incredible, you know, the type of things that get complete bipartisan support and also the type of things that you have to pay for and the type of things that they're just dying to throw more money at. We're in the midst of this huge debate about the reconciliation bill and the infrastructure package and the way that conservatives are trying to whittle that down is by attacking the pay force and demanding that every penny in that infrastructure package and reconciliation bill is ultimately paid for every

single penny. And yet when it comes to defense spending, they're like, $25 billion, we want to give you a little more. This wasn't enough, well, let's throw you a few more billion here. Which is actually in violation of what the, and this is the key to the story, which is the headline is the Senate Democrats defied Biden in their vote to boost Pentagon spending, and it wasn't even close. And as you point out, the extra money is going towards the F-35 program, one of the gigantic boondoggles of the 21st century, and pretty much a shining example of why the military-industrial complex

not only costs more money but is actually worse at its job than it was in like 1959 or 1960 or whatever, whenever Eisenhower was giving that speech. At least those planes actually flew pretty well. These apparently don't. Which, that's one part of it which always drives me nuts. We're paying more for technology which is worse and is actually less safe for the people who have to climb into these planes.

All that being said, you look at what's happening here and it is very indicative around where bipartisanship converges. And if this was something principled around like, look, we're going to do this because there's one particular program or we're coming out of Afghanistan, we need to plus up in order to modernize, I'd be like, okay, I'm all here. We're going to give our servicemen and women a raise.

We need to make sure they've got the right health care. We want to give them a raise, yes. Actually, our current health care system for the Pentagon I think costs $125 billion, and as anybody who's ever worked with the VA knows, it doesn't work that well. There's a whole lot of questions. USAA, better GI benefits, I'd be 100% for all of that. But that's not what's happening here. The plus-up, as you point out, was also driven by a lot of people who are up for re-election.

So Mark Kelly is one of those people, former naval aviator. He said the budget buildup was needed to meet military requirements that didn't make the spending request. And those military requirements and more, of course, he's from Arizona, where because of John McCain and all of that, there is a lot of military spending in the state of Arizona. Tim Kaine was the same one. He's like, well, we need it, you know,

because they want to build a new Navy destroyer. The Navy's had their eyes on the destroyer for a long time. It's a pretty controversial program even within the Navy. Well, Norfolk, Virginia, right? There's a lot of jobs and a lot of stuff down there. And he happens to be a senior armed services Democrat who represents the shipbuilding-heavy state. And he says that the Pentagon needs more buying power. And so they can say that that actually is one of the better things.

You'll love this too, which is that he says that the Pentagon will have better buying power because Biden halted the Trump administration effort to stunt billions from the border wall under military. So he's like, we can use all this new money to buy more shipbuilding materials, which will all come to Virginia. It's a scramble. That wasn't enough. The wall money wasn't enough. Exactly.

You need more money on top. And so the money all gets appropriated. And really what it is, it's a scramble in order to use control of the Senate and of Congress in order to distribute funds to their states. And whenever it's so, really what it know, it's like a patronage game. And whenever you're locked into this mindset, whenever you change, whenever you change chambers, everyone's just going to keep going up and up and up to get more stuff in their districts and more. And I, the main point I want

to say is you can be for the U.S. military and even a good modern fighting force and recognize that the current way that we fund that fighting force is insane in terms of the amount of dollars per what we actually get. I remember looking at this thing about these new Navy ships, which are radar defeat and all of this, but it costs like a million dollars a round in order to fire their new guns. What kind of you? What is that? How did this happen?

And it was like, well, we were going to build 26. And then we only built three. And the gun is really modern and cool. And so you can't change apparently the ammo or whatever. So it costs a million dollars a round. You're like, what? I mean, you think this is useful in terms of fighting a war

or in terms of production, in terms of keeping people safe? The boondoggles of the post-Iraq age on this would blow people's minds in terms of what we have spent on Iraq, on Afghanistan. I remember there was one story we spent a couple hundred million dollars

building like one gas station in Afghanistan. Oh, and by the way, the Taliban controls it now. So awesome. Or power stations in the same thing, trying to build and bring power. And now the Taliban charges people for the power there that we built. It's just there's so many stories. There's also a great point to that, which is like, you know, when we go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, of course, and the politicians, oh, we got a significant, we got to up the defense budget massively. You know,

nobody even questions that. Of course, the Bush administration pioneered, like, we're not going to pay for that. There are not going to be any additional taxes. Nobody's going to feel any pain from the fact that we're having this massive explosion in the military budget. But it's not like once you leave those places, they bring it back down. Like it only ever goes up. We're leaving Afghanistan. And yet they're still like, we need more, more, not just more year over year, but like Biden increased the budget, but it wasn't, it wasn't enough. The rate of growth wasn't fast enough for us. And you're absolutely right. It is just a patron for us. And you're absolutely right. It is just a patronage game.

Like, you shouldn't look at this as having anything to do with care for our servicemen and women, certainly, or protecting our national defense. It is a patronage game. And it's one that you know you're going to be able to get bipartisan support on. So if you're trying to funnel money to your district for political reasons, this is the surest and easiest path to do it. So it creates its own logic and its own momentum, and it's very, very hard to stop. I don't think that there's any way to get around having that patronage situation as part of our politics. I would just like the patronage to go towards something that's not war-making, that has actual benefits to the citizens of the country towards something that's not war making that's like you know has actual

benefits to the citizens of the country not just making new war machines for the sake of making new war machines um so that would be something that i was interested in but just incredible to see bipartisanship in action here at the beltway oh 100 and speaking of patronage i'm very on my transition you are uh there's Got the segues down today. I do. And this is a really, really troubling story, all jokes aside, which is that you guys remember we covered a lot of this on Rising. All the way back April and May of 2020,

something was going on in New York State with Governor Cuomo and nursing homes. Essentially, the order was to nursing homes that they had to accept patients who had coronavirus. What ended up happening is that accepting many of these patients, and which had to do with funding and scheme, which we'll outline and we'll get to, it led to mass outbreaks within these nursing homes, which were the epicenter of the virus and the number of deaths. For many years, thousands and thousands of elderly people in New York State died. Then there was an investigation by the Justice Department. The feds asked for numbers. Cuomo and his team explicitly hid what those actual numbers were in order to, A, help their book sales for their new book they were writing,

and B, they didn't want the Trump administration to expose the data, which showed that they were responsible for thousands and thousands of elderly deaths. And I don't want to say that it's their fault necessarily in that, look, there was a lot going on. They didn't necessarily know what they were doing. But if you are responsible for a decision, you should say, I take responsibility for this decision. I was a leader. I messed up. And there's a lot of funding, though, questions as to why exactly none of that happened. And an investigation by the Justice Department was started, and many others were looking into this, New York Attorney General, all of that. Well, the Justice Department informed Steve Scalise. Now, this is all according to

Janice Dean. She works at Fox News Channel, but she actually had a family member who died in one of these nursing homes. She's been a major activist against all of this. She released this letter. It's dated July 23, 2021. So let's put the letter up there on the screen, which is that the DOJ had told Congressman Scalise that they are dropping the nursing home investigations in all states, including New York. Now, look, it is important to say this isn't the only investigation, but the nursing home investigation,

which was being spearheaded by the Civil Rights Division and more, was something that a lot of the families of those who had nursing home or had deaths in nursing homes and more were hoping could uncover more information because it wasn't just in New York State. It was Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Jersey. And there's a lot of questions. I think at the very basics, we need a good investigation into how did this happen? Because look, like you said, we are Delta variant, maybe another pandemic. We should avoid

these types of things. And it's just very sad in order to see the families really just left out in the cold. And look, there has to be a to see the families really just left out in the cold. And look, there has to be a question here of, was there political interference? I mean, this is being dropped under the Biden Department of Justice. Who signed off on this? The letter itself was written by the Deputy Assistant Attorney General, overseen by political appointees. All of the Department of Justice at the very, very top are people who are appointed by the president. So that's another big question that comes here. But overall, I think you can generally say this is a miscarriage of justice, in my opinion, for many of the people who lost a lot of loved ones in those nursing homes. Yeah. So the Department of Justice, they were looking into a civil rights investigation.

And in the letter, they specify that the Civil Rights Division has authority under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act to investigate allegations about a pattern or practice of unlawful conditions in certain residential institutions that includes nursing facilities.

And I think this whole investigation, the closing of the investigation, the way this handles, shows the way that political blinders ruin everything. The Trump Justice Department appears to have gone about this in a political fashion. They only targeted blue states with Democratic governors. So New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Jersey, Cuomo and Whitmer, of course, being primary sort of political targets of the Trump administration. And then the Biden administration comes along and

does the exact opposite thing in what certainly appears to be a very political way. The reason that this is significant, because as you mentioned, there are other investigations going on in particular at the state level. Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, who is a Democrat and seems to be taking this investigation into the Cuomo administration very seriously. That is ongoing. You also but you have FBI and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn trying to determine whether the state intentionally manipulated nursing home death data. You also have an investigation going on from Letitia James again into those sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo. Impeachment proceedings are on the table, so it's not like he's out of the woods. The reason why this is significant is because there's a lower standard for damages in these civil rights investigations than would be required under criminal law. So you had a better shot at getting some actual compensation, some actual

damages awarded out of the civil rights probe. Now that avenue is closed. That avenue for justice is now permanently closed. So that's why this is such a significant deal. And by the way, while I was researching this, the scandals, there was a period when we were at Rising where it was like every day it seemed like there was a new piece of completely damning information coming out, whether it was the sexual harassment, sexual assault allegations, or the revelations about the way that his family members, including his brother, got VIP treatment for COVID testing with their results hand done and ushered to the testing lab at a time when New Yorkers couldn't get tested at all. So

all of those allegations kept coming out. Well, they have continued to come out. So now there's a huge disparity between the number of COVID deaths, not just in nursing homes, but overall in the state of New York that the state is reporting versus what the CDC and the federal government are saying. So according to the Cuomo administration, there have been a total of 43,000 COVID deaths in that state. According to the federal government, the CDC, that number is 53,000. So disparity of more than 10,000 lives looks very much like, again, just as he was cooking the books with the nursing home deaths, that the Cuomo administration, all the things that, you know, Trump and DeSantis and whatever were accused of doing, it looks like they were doing. They actually did it. And there's, again, no media coverage. This investigation is dropped. The whole thing that he wanted from the beginning was for the media temperature to cool down, for everyone to stop paying attention,

so that he could just sort of slide by. You'll recall Joe Biden gave him basically exactly what he wanted and sort of said, let's take the time and see where these investigations go and play out. And now this absolute scandal is going under the radar with very, very little attention out of like, you know, local New York state media. Yeah, I really do think it is a total like miscarriage on what has happened here. And you can see, which is that the money shot is what you pointed to. The state data differs from the federal data. And, uh, you know, what was it? Letitia James even told us back in January that the investigation that they had found that nursing home data had been undercounted by as much as 50% at the height of the pandemic. 50%. So maybe the state investigation and more will continue.

Maybe, you know, Letitia James does seem like a very serious individual who takes, you know, her job seriously and has moved forward and, you know, with a lot of integrity, I think, on many different things. So we'll see. But I, you know, in general, the feds are the ones that could actually make this happen. And if the Biden department wanted to actually show some real independence, going after people who really did screw up in COVID, there is just no objective way. And you can say that Andrew Cuomo was not chief among some of the worst actors here and that he has worked tirelessly to shield his reputation, the media, Chris Cuomo, all of that. And then in general, he gets a free pass. And I think that's wrong. And Andrew Cuomo was a longtime ally of Joe Biden. They had a close relationship. Biden went and spoke for him when he had a tough primary

battle and all of that. So they've had each other's backs for a long time. And I guess they're going to continue to have each other's backs. That's right. All right. Speaking of Biden corruption. Scratching backs, Biden corruption, all of that. Okay, this transition, love this one. So Hunter, Hunter just the guy who cannot quit. We brought you previously in many, many different ways. You can take that for a lot of ways that you want. Hunter Biden, we brought you previously the story around his art sales.

And the reason why this matters, Hunter's taken up art after a stint in rehab. God bless him. I hope it works. I hear it does wonders for many people in therapy, etc. Well, the problem is Hunter wants to sell that art for a lot of money. This poses ethics problems for the White House. So the White House has stepped in, and what they came up with was this cockamamie scheme in which the buyers of Hunter's art will remain anonymous to the public and ostensibly, according to them, anonymous to the president and the first lady and the first family. So the theory was, is that yes, even though Hunter could receive, you know, well upwards of a million dollars for some of his art, that it wouldn't matter because they would remain completely anonymous and therefore there could be no corruption, no

quote, quote, quote. Well, now because Hunter and the Biden family, once again, are in charge of setting their own ethics problems or ethics regulations. Hunter, let's put this up on the screen, is poised to meet with the buyers. So Hunter is expected to meet with potential art buyers for the anonymous sale. So this raises a lot of questions around whether he's anonymous. Also, the whole point was that it would be ridiculous to assume that some sort of favoritism could not be at least implied if you're going to pay the president's son up to $500,000 for a single piece of art and then have the president's son not mention that to the president.

So what we have a situation here is that the buyers will remain anonymous to you, to me, to the media, but will not be anonymous to Hunter Biden himself, the recipient of large sums of money for his art, and who's going to stop Hunter from telling his dad. This is blatant and outright conditions for corruption. Walter Schaub, who was the ethics guy under Obama, has been blasting Hunter and the Biden White House for this. And he was a longtime resistance figure, so don't expect any special treatment necessarily whenever it comes to the Biden administration. And it's pretty much just the most flagrant violation here of real ethical norms I've ever seen.

Look, Hunter is an American citizen, and I guess at the end of the day, he can sell his art if he wants to. But if we want real transparency, release the goddamn names. And when the names come out, maybe it's some sketchy Russian guy. And if his pipeline gets some special treatment

in three years, we're gonna say, hey, you got some special treatment after you bought Hunter's art. But now, we, the public and the media don't get to know, but Hunter does get to know who's buying his art. And that is just the shadiest arrangement I've ever seen in my life.

Well, and this isn't hard to figure out what you should do. You should disclose everything, make it all transparent. Instead, they tried to go in the opposite direction of like, oh, nobody's going to know. And now we find out, I mean, let's be clear. This is a direct contradiction of what the public was initially told how this was all going to unfold. When Jen Psaki got asked about this, she said, and I quote, I think it would be challenging for an anonymous person who we don't know and Hunter Biden doesn't know to have influence. So that's a protection. Well, now Hunter Biden is going to know.

So this supposed protection, which was always weird from the start and perplexing, why not just make it all transparent so that journalists can do their job and look into, like, okay, this person gave Hunter money. Did they get any special favors from the government? That would be the obvious direction. Instead, you went in this weird, like, no, we're going to cloak it all in secrecy. And now we find that even that was not true at all, like, not accurate at all for what is actually going to happen here with Hunter meeting these people. Yeah, I mean, it's an obvious pathway to corruption. Walter Schaub, who you mentioned,

what he said is that we're essentially outsourcing government ethics to some random art gallery owner who, by the way, has some, I mean, I don't want to pick on this. I know nothing about him. He does have like kind of a criminal, a couple things on his criminal record and whatever. I mean, look, we don't want to pick on this. I know nothing about him. He does have like kind of a criminal, a couple of things on his criminal record

and whatever. I mean, look, we shouldn't be relying on any one individual to make sure that the government is acting in an ethical way, especially someone who is unelected and completely unaccountable. So you have that layer.

And then Schaub said, is Hunter Biden going to walk around this art show with a blindfold on? It just goes to show you the focus is not on government ethics. The focus is showing the child of a president can cash in on the presidency. Again, this dude was the head of the Office of Government Ethics during the Obama administration. So this isn't some like weird right-wing guy. And look, the Trump administration was disgusting in terms of

corruption and ethics and cashing in on them, and they continue to. We just saw a story, his super PAC has taken in like $75 million and hasn't paid a penny of it towards the stuff that he promised, the election reforms that he promised that he would engage in. So it's all a grift and a scam over there. Biden comes in and says, I'm going to be different. I'm going to restore the soul of America. We're going to, we are going to go in a different direction. We're going to have the strongest ethics regulations in place that anyone's seen.

And immediately you saw that that was only ever sort of, you know, very surface level. They put in these restrictions like you're not allowed to work in the administration if you'd been a lobbyist. Well, if you're a registered lobbyist, sure, but if you've been a consultant doing almost exactly the same thing, no problem. We want to try to make Neera Tanden the head of who's going to get these ethics waivers. Like on every single item, they haven't conducted business in any different way from how any other corrupt administration has conducted business. So this whole idea that they were going to be completely above board and it was going to be transparent, you're going to be able to feel good about government again, that is clearly out the window. And this is just like the most sort of potent shining example of how they fall in from that ideal.

I think that's it. It's very basic. And, you know, for all of the talk, it has just been return of normal. You talk about, you know, the lobbyist Steve Ruschetti, the deputy chief of staff of the White House. His brother is raking in millions of dollars. And the guy has the gall, his brother, who owns a lobbying firm that Ruschetti used to co-own, he says, quote, I do not lobby my brother. I just lobby all the people who work for him and who are around him. Oh, okay.

I mean, you know, taking a call from the boss's brother, that's definitely not a conflict of interest. He's getting money from Amazon now. Big pharma. His lobbying contracts have jumped way up. Wait, you think that's just an accident? Yeah. No, you're right, Crystal. It's freaking philanthropy. Wait, you think that's just an accident? Yeah, no, you're right, Crystal. It's fucking philanthropy.

Okay, yeah, that's, yeah, everybody can, it's philanthropy, right? They're just like, ah, this Reschetti guy, you know, he's just such a nice guy. He just really upped his game.

We're just going to pay him, you know, he upped his game since the Trump era. It's a meritocracy. That's what this whole thing is about. Look, this is all fake, which is that you have to admit that this is wrong.

And the problem that we have is that people selectively care about this stuff whenever it's Biden and whether it's Trump. It was gross whenever Trump had a hotel literally here in D.C. which foreign diplomats used to brag about. And then they were like— Yeah, the big show of going and staying at— I've said that before. The worst part of the Ukraine call to me is when zelensky is like we stay at trump tower mr president great hotel and i was like ew man gross and then you know the saudis and emiratis they all throw their uh big christmas parties i mean these people are more money than god they know exactly what to do uh and then jared and his brother the Kushner Company, hawking visas to Chinese elites in China, Ivanka and Nordstrom.

I remember when Trump once tweeted about Ivanka's Nordstrom brand from the POTUS account. And I remember just being like, is this a joke? Like, what is this? It's the most repulsive thing. And we've normalized it so that then everybody just fights about it amongst themselves instead of being able to just say hey this is shady as hell and it should stop by the way i have a book recommendation i recently read a book about art it's called boom the rise of the contemporary art market there's a couple times the reason why this is important is art is no longer about art the art market it is about a way for billionaires to store wealth in these warehouses in Switzerland where they never even

see the art. It just stays in this vault because the moment it leaves the vault, they have to pay taxes on it. They don't even display it. It is one of the most notorious ways in order to launder money and in order to keep money tax-free. So that is the world which Hunter is now engaging in. It's one of the dirtiest industries on the entire planet. And any banking regulator can tell you that. I was going to say the money laundering in the art industry is really rife. Because if you have dirty money and you need to clean it, you need some store of value. The great thing about art is like who's to say what it's worth?

Exactly. So you can pay these exorbitant prices for it that really aren't justified based on like the merit of the art or whatever. But nobody's going to blink an eye because it's all so incredibly subjective. So that's what makes it

an ideal vehicle for money laundering. That's right. Wow. You guys must really like listening to our voices. Well, I know this is annoying. Instead of making you listen

to a Viagra commercial, when you're done, check out the other podcasts I do with Marshall Kosloff called The Realignment. We talk a lot about the deeper issues that are changing, realigning in American society. You always need more Crystal and Sagar in your daily lives. Take care, guys. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, many months ago, before vaccines were widely available and polls showed how much of the U.S. population was vaccine hesitant, I warned on rising. one of the primary drivers of anti-vax sentiment were the public health authorities themselves,

who in February and March were constantly vacillating on whether pandemic restrictions could be lifted if you got vaccinated. Till I was blue in the face, I said, the primary incentive for getting vaccinated is quote-unquote going back to normal. If you still have to wear a mask and stay locked down, what was the point of getting vaccinated in the first place? The hall

monitor instinct of many of these authorities waned slightly as people got vaccinated and just said, screw it, this thing is over. People started living their lives, going on vacation, going to bars, and more. But now, with the rising number of Delta variant cases, it seems like the whole world has lost their damn mind again. Media hysteria crossed the stock market for a day. White House says Facebook is killing people. Fox News is apparently also killing people, even though Black Americans are the least likely of a population to get vaccinated. Los Angeles County is bringing back indoor mask mandates, even though that's against CDC guidance. The mass panic set by the media is slow rolling us back to more pandemic restrictions at a time when they could not be worse for an actual public health outcome.

Take a look at this from the New York Times. The top story yesterday on their website was, as cases rise amongst unvaccinated, U.S. cities wrestle with mask mandates. Within the story, it acknowledges that vaccines protect you from the worst outcomes of COVID and that those who are unvaccinated are the primary ones at risk of death. And yet, again and again, we see the media fight to reimpose mask mandates and pandemic restrictions, effectively lobbying the CDC to reverse their guidance on masks. Worst of all, they have now one of the most cynical actors on their side in this crisis, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who had this to say about bringing back mask mandates.

Health officials in places like Los Angeles County, which is, you know, one of the first that came out and said, regardless of what broader recommendations are, we feel the better part of VAWA is that we have so much infection going on with this Delta variant that it's prudent even for those people who have been vaccinated to wear masks. And I think we're seeing and will see more and more of that because we certainly are seeing a surge in cases with the Delta variant, which is now dominating in this country, 83 percent. And in some places in the country, it's as high as 90 percent. It may sound reasonable, but it is not at all. Effectively, what Fauci is saying is this. It's understandable for local authorities who are seeing high levels of community spread in low vaccinated areas to bring back mask mandates. This actually makes zero sense because it reinforces the canard that many unvaccinated point to,

that they truly do not believe pandemic restrictions will ever be lifted whether they get vaccinated or not. Reimposing mask mandates and, God forbid, any sort of lockdown situation in the winter will send the message that vaccination didn't really change anything and will only harden those who may be on the fence about getting vaccinated in the first place. The message to get vaxxed to those on the fence is really simple. If you get this, you will not die from COVID, and there will be no pandemic restrictions. But even worse, this sends a terrible message to those who were on the fence about getting the vaccine in the first place. Millions of people lined up to get their shot with the

promise that you'd get the shot, and this is over. Asking vaccinated Americans to wear masks now, and even to lock down in the future, is asking them to have more regard for the health of the unvaccinated than they have for themselves. At this point, the vaccine is free and widely available. If you want it, you can get it. And if you don't, that's okay. You made your choice. All of us will live with that. Bringing back punitive measures to punish everyone is both unfair and counterproductive. Something that has driven me crazy about this entire discussion is watching the elites of this country try to start a blame game instead of actually trying to fix the problem. Shant Misrobian, he put this particularly well, quote,

all of the people trying frantically to figure out how to get people to take the vaccine are literally the same people who built their entire careers by alienating half of the country from every major societal institution. That's it. Exactly. Take a very close look at the Americans who aren't yet vaccinated. The most authoritative profile that I've seen so far is from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Now, take a look at this poll. Kaiser distinguishes the unvaccinated into two categories. Those who are a definitely not, those who are in a wait and see group. Of the wait and see group, aka the still persuadable, they are more likely to be black, Hispanic, split politically, most likely to have a high school degree, and nearly 43% of them are likely to make less than $40,000 a year. In other words, these are working class people. The people who

were hit hardest by pandemic restrictions, the people who lost their jobs, the people who had the worst time with the American healthcare system, who are not ruling out vaccination, simply saying they want to see in things, wait and see how things work out. Instead of bringing back mandates and lockdowns, which will only hurt them again, the key is to have voices who they trust telling them about getting vaccinated. Even just a nationwide PSA of a bunch of people who are on the fence explaining why they were and then talking about how they got the shot and now they feel great. But doing such work would be acknowledging a central truth.

Those who are not getting vaccinated hate the people in charge of getting people vaccinated. Those people, because they are vain, would rather bring back policy that punishes everyone and keeps their control rather than actually reaching out to the groups on the fence and acknowledging their own failings. Look, I hope I am dead wrong about all of these warnings, but something is in the air and we should stand up against it if we actually want to help public health in this country. And Crystal, actually a friend of mine flagged this for me. One more thing. I promise. Just wanted to make sure you knew about my podcast with Kyle

Kalinsky. It's called Crystal Kyle and Friends, where we do long form interviews with people like Noam Chomsky, Cornel West and Glenn Greenwald. You can listen on any podcast platform or you can subscribe over on Substack to get the video a day early. We're going to stop bugging you now. Enjoy.

All right, Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, you will be shocked to learn that trusted media, relevant to what we've been talking about, has fallen to a new all time low. Majority of Americans now say they do not trust mainstream news. Details here also pretty revealing. In particular, 58 percent, so almost 60 percent, think that most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public.

Gee, wonder why they think that. Well, let's take a look at what that bedrock of democracy cable news has been up to recently over at CNN. Over the past week or so, they broke the bombshell news that Ron DeSantis' PAC is selling Don't Fouchy My Florida merchandise. They had on the illustrious John Bolton to call Donald Trump a fascist. They covered updates to the Subway sandwich menu and Trump's former doctor getting upset with reporters. Over on MSNBC, they dug into how awesome Biden advisor Ron Klain is. They also talked about the debate over the term Latinx, the presence of a literal white privilege card on some accused would-be bomber, and also the DeSantis, don't

vouch you my Florida merchandise. Fox News, they had on a teacher who believes critical race theory is dangerous. Tucker mocked a new pregnant man emoji, apparently. They covered AOC selling tax the rich t-shirts, and they did their own segment on DeSantis' Don't Fouch You My Florida merchandise, because of course they did. Now, I want you to think about this. These networks spend millions on hosts, on reporters, on sets, on producers. And this is what they choose to do with those resources. War criminals and invented culture war and uncritical Biden standing and Trump derangement and AOC derangement and apparently Ron DeSantis' arrangement as well. But even more telling is what you will not find on any of these networks. So as we've covered multiple times here, 1,100 miners are on strike right now in Alabama. Those miners have now been on strike for nearly four months in what is truly historic action. In fact, it is the first widespread miner strike in four decades.

Pretty noteworthy, especially given the number of workers involved, the fact that some of the picketers have been intentionally struck by cars, and because also of the involvement of major private equity players. And yet, not one of these networks has uttered a single solitary word about this strike over these many weeks and months. Not the supposedly unbiased CNN, not the supposedly progressive MSNBC, whose workers are actually attempting to unionize right now as we speak, not the supposedly pro-working class Fox News. In fact, the news media writ large, they don't really pretend to care about unions or labor in general much anymore at all. Back in 2015, when the New York Times labor reporter Stephen Greenhouse took a buy-on at that time,

it left the Wall Street Journal as the only remaining large paper with a dedicated labor reporter. That means that the historic teacher strike wave, dramatically undercovered, that the current strike at Frito-Lay gets almost no coverage, that the Teamsters' efforts to unionize Amazon also get next to no attention. So if you can't see these battles, then you don't know that other workers are struggling in ways that you might also be struggling. You might not know that having a union does give you the option at least to fight back. The workers who are bravely fighting for more, they're left to do so on their own,

without the benefit of any public pressure on their greedy corporate overlords. Now, here's another good example of what the media chooses to cover and chooses to ignore. Wow. Wow. So you may well have seen that viral video of a shoplifter brazenly filling a bag in a San Francisco Walgreens while the store's security guard looks on recording a video. Shocking scene for sure. This man was later arrested, by the way. Well, while there was wall-to-wall sharing and no fewer than 309 articles written about this one shoplifting incident, there was not a single mainstream article about a much larger heist. Walgreens was forced into a $4.5 million settlement in a class action lawsuit filed against them by their workers, who alleged the company was stealing their wages. You can see that here, according to FAIR. These workers said that Walgreens rounded down employees' hours on their time cards, required employees to pass their security checks before and after their shift without compensating them for time worked, and failed to pay premium wages to

employees who were denied legally required meal breaks. You tell me which is the bigger story, more likely to impact your life, one man's brace and crime spree, or corporate America's brace and robbery of millions of American workers to the tune of literally billions of dollars every single year. But of course, that story is more complicated. It would actually challenge some of the media's advertisers, their donors, their subscribers. Better to punch down or do a culture war or bring on a war criminal to opine on a corrupt buffoon. Got one more for you here. You may recall that the entire city of Flint, Michigan was poisoned in a truly horrifying act that was compounded by a criminal cover-up.

The intrepid Jordan Cheriton and Jen Dyes, they just uncovered new bombshell evidence of that cover-up. Phones of key players involved in the crime and the cover-up were wiped clean of messages and other data before investigators had a chance to glean exactly who knew what and when. One would think that somebody in establishment media might care about this critical new piece of information for understanding how exactly, again,

an entire American city was poisoned. You won't be surprised to learn, however, we heard not a peep. They were too busy reviewing T-shirt prices for their DeSantis Fauci merchandise. Folks, I am afraid I've come to the conclusion that there is no rescuing or reforming the media. Your contempt for them is 100% merited. Cable News in particular, it just combines the worst of capitalism with reality shows,

with corruption, and is truly just a cancer on the nation. But I do have a little bit of good news. It's also kind of a house of cards. Could collapse at any moment, to be honest with you. Not just from their ratings collapse, which of course I do love to see, but a new study shows that the ads that are the lifeblood of this bloodless media are completely ineffective. All these people paying to sell Viagra and gold bars or whatever between cable news rage panels, they are wasting their money. 80% of the brands that they studied were actually losing money by placing ads on television.

That means that the whole hellscape economic structure underlying all of this medium has already crumbled. Players involved, they just don't know it yet. So in conclusion, cable news is a scam programming model resting atop a scam revenue model, busterist by a scam political dialogue. And we will all be better off when the whole dishonest gig is up. Isn't it amazing that not one segment on the minor strike?

Yeah. We've got a great guest standing by. It's The Atlantic's Derek Thompson. Let's get to it. Can I put in a word about the history of advertising as a real estate and attention merchants? Go ahead. I love that book. And my favorite anecdote from that book is that the concept of advertising supported media was invented in the United States by Benjamin Day, who was the founder of the New York Sun.

Benjamin Day is the father of the penny paper, right? So before the penny paper, I guess papers cost like six cents, which was a lot in the 1820s. And he said, no, no, what I'm going to do is I'm going to price the paper below what it actually costs. I'm going to sell it at a loss, but then I'm going to sell the audience that I captured at a loss as its own product to advertisers. So he creates this sort of dual business model where you get both subscription revenue, the pennies that you pay for the papers and the advertisement. Within one year, he was running a nine part 16,000 word series on men on the moon. So it took about 300 days between the invention of advertising in American media and the invention of fake news in American media, which goes to show that once your job is to essentially just

sell audience as a product, you're not beholden to any sort of truth. You're only beholden to the North star of maximizing audience and fiction outsells nonfiction everywhere. It outsells nonfiction in cinema. It outsells nonfiction in books, It outsells nonfiction in books. Fiction outsells nonfiction. And so the minute that you introduce this business model, you introduce this pure snake oil quackery. And yet there were no there was no like exposing of this industry because the news media is in bed with them, depends on them for advertising revenue. So it takes years and years for that entire corrupt industry to ultimately be exposed. So you can see directly like the corrupting influence of when you're taking money from actors who may be bad actors, the way that it impacts your coverage, you may not lie about it, but you're just not going to talk about it. Yeah. In a way that's actually, it's interesting that you put it like that. What you're doing is lying to your readers so that you can sell them to advertisers who will lie to your readers,

right? It is like this sort of double sandwich, this like, you know, club sandwich of lies that you're selling to your audience. The news is fiction in order to show them advertising that is also fiction. And Derek, you know, speaking of the news media and how people are influenced and all that, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on, given what's going on right now with the pandemic, you wrote this great piece back in February. We talked to you about it on Rising. Let's put it up there on the screen around what exactly works to combating vaccine refusal. So that was February. And I was curious, now it's July 26th, been almost four months, five months or whatever since you wrote that piece. What are your thoughts about where we're at right now with Delta around vaccine hesitancy? We've got like 49% of the US adults

who have not taken the vaccine. What tactics do you think will work, so to speak, in terms of getting more people vaccinated, both from the government, the media, and more? I think it's really important when talking about what works to get people who have been on the sidelines off the sidelines is to recognize that the population of people who have not yet gotten the vaccine or from the perspective of February had not yet gotten a vaccine is not just one group. It's really best thought of as a constellation of groups. One of those stars in the constellation is the anti-vax group. These are people who think that the vaccines are a conspiracy, and that can range from like, you know, it's got the microchips from Bill Gates to I just don't trust big pharma and there's no way in hell that I'm going to put this in my body.

That's a pretty hard no. I'll bet you can nibble around the corners of that no, but you're not going to convert 100% of the absolute anti-vaxxers. And they're about 15% of the adult population, 15%, 16%. It's going to be really, really difficult to get them. But they're not the entire group. You also have what's sometimes called the wait-and-see group. This is Kaiser, when they do their really gold standard of a poll of the no-vax population,

they call this the wait-and-see. And it's the wait-and-see where you've really seen progress. I think you've seen progress among the wait-and-see category for two reasons. Number one, they call this the wait and see. And it's the wait and see where you've really seen progress. I think you've seen progress among the wait and see category for two reasons. Number one, they have waited and they have seen the vaccines work, right? They don't just work in the US. They don't just work in states that are high vaccinated. They work in the UK. Look at the difference between cases and deaths in the UK dealing with the B117 variant. Look at Israel where deaths per day have fallen to one, two, I think, on a seven-day average. The vaccines clearly work, not just in the clinical trials,

but in the real-world trials that we are all participants in. The other reason why I think the wait-and-see group has nudged a little bit more toward the vaccines isn't just that they have seen that the vaccines work, but they've started to feel pressure around the cost benefit analysis that they're doing about these vaccines. So on the cost side, the cost of not getting a vaccine is higher in the face of a variant like Delta, right? Right. So all the news that we're seeing about Delta might be getting people to move off the sidelines. And then the benefit side, you know, I think you have a lot of media that has consistently and truthfully extolled the benefits of these vaccines, which don't just make it less likely you get infected, but contingent on getting infected, make it less likely that you get severe illness,

and then contingent upon getting a severe illness, make it less likely that you die. So on the cost and benefits side, I think that's worked really well, too. And I think that, you know, we need to just keep up the conversation. The last thing that I think we should really think seriously about doing, and this is starting to become really a theme in the media that I consume, at least, is we have to move the FDA's ruling here from emergency authorization to full approval. That's not only going to send a really strong signal that the government believes in these vaccines as much as they say they believe in the vaccines, but also it's going to allow state and local governments to mandate vaccines for, say, teachers and cops. Why do you think, Derek, that we have so many more

vaccine-hesitant people here than in most other developed countries around the world? I saw a stat that only Russia has more vaccine-hesitant people. And my own speculation for what it's worth is, number one, there's just something deeply embedded in American culture that creates this climate of skepticism towards any sort of institution. But we had Michael Brendan Doherty on from the National Review, conservative dude. And he surprised me by effectively making a case for universal health care. He was like, I think that part of why they have better uptake in the U. the UK is because they've got the National Health Service. And so it's not a profit driven thing. People have primary care physicians. Everybody is sort of in touch and contact in some way with the medical system. Do you think that there's something to that? I think there's

absolutely something to that. I would twin Michael's explanation with your previous explanation and say that they are both downstream of the same phenomenon, which is to sort of slap a term on it, Reaganite individualism. Yeah. So like Reaganite conservative neoliberarian individualism says a couple of things. It says, number one, you're all on your own. So you should think all on your own. You shouldn't trust experts. You should do your own research. There's some truth to that. I love the idea of people thinking for themselves. But if you take too much of that medicine, you start thinking that anyone who represents as an expert is wrong by dint of their expertise, which is effing stupid. What also happens that is downstream of Reaganite libertarianism,

conservatism, whatever I'm naming it, individualism, is that there's fear of government takeover. And because there's fear of government takeover in any industry, you don't have nationalized healthcare service. And because you don't have nationalized healthcare service, you have more people who live in precarity and more people who live in precarity, nervous about a new vaccine treatment might be less likely to want to experiment with that treatment less likely to want to take time off of work, afraid they might get sick and don't have healthcare if they have, you know, a strong reaction to the Pfizer and Moderna drug. So I think that both explanations are true. And they are rivers downstream of the large tributary

of Reaganite individualism, which is endemic in this country. I want to get back to something you said about FDA. I imagine there's going to be some pushback. We have some people who are vaccine hesitant who listen or who watch the show. And what they would say is, Derek, are you saying put political pressure on the FDA in order to incentivize people get vaccinated?

Just go into why it might send a good message and if it does meet the requirements, like is the FDA being too cautious? What do you think about all that? Well, of course, it should meet the requirements. Of course, the FDA should approve a drug if it meets or a treatment in this case, not a drug, approve a treatment that meets the requirements of an approved treatment. Absolutely. At the same time, I think that there's a bit of a mixed message when every institution in America is telling people that these vaccines work extremely well, except for the FDA, which is saying they are authorized and not approved

only for emergency use. That's the EUA, emergency use authorization. I think that sends two messages to people. The first message that it sends is that it's only authorized in an emergency. And there's a lot of Americans who in the last 16 months, 18 months, whatever it's been since the pandemic started, say this pandemic was never an emergency for me. I basically lived my normal life. So why should I take something that's only authorized in a scenario that I don't actually buy into? And second, I just think it makes it sound like there is still questions about this vaccine. And from what, like, we've never seen a real world trial of a treatment that has basically been administered hundreds of millions of times in vastly diverse countries. I mean, all over the

world, you see these mRNA vaccines being administered and immediately you see deaths plummet to less than one in one million. The vaccines very clearly are doing their job at ending the pandemic by the definition of bringing deaths per million under one in one million. And so I think that it's, I am eager for, I am anticipatory for the FDA to approve the vaccines officially, because I know it's going to happen. We all know it's going to happen. And I think that it would accelerate vaccination uptake now if it happened sooner rather than later. Yeah. So the number that I've seen is that 68.8% or somewhere thereabouts of adults have had at least one dose of a vaccine. And we know that having at least one dose does provide you with significant protection.

So what do we know about where herd immunity actually lies? Like what's the number we need to hit? Yeah. The reason that's such a difficult number to give is that the virus does not care about the national number. The virus only cares about what's around the virus, right? The virus, if, if, if I'm not vaccinated and my wife is sitting here and she's not vaccinated, the fact that 70% of Americans outside of this house are vaccinated has no interest to the virus passing between two unvaccinated, the fact that 70% of Americans outside of this house are vaccinated has no interest to the virus passing between two unvaccinated people. So that's why you have a lot of people talking right now about a pandemic of the unvaccinated for a variety of reasons, including Bill Bishop's theory of the big sort. Democrats tend to live around Democrats and

Republicans tend to live around Republicans. We've sorted by political ideology. Now, political ideology isn't the single variable that explains vaccine uptake, but it might be the best variable that correlates with vaccine uptake. So if you have a lot of, let's call them liberals and yes-vaxxers who are living together, they're going to be very protected in their vaccinated bubble. And then you're going to have a lot of Republicans who are more likely to be no-vaxxers, especially if they're under the age of 65, and they're living in an un-vaxxed bubble. And so what's happening right now is that you have a lot of virus, a lot of Delta variant that is spreading among the un-vaxxed bubbles and not among the vaxxed bubbles. That also goes to explain why a disproportionate share

of the hospitalized and the dead in this country are un-vaxxed rather than vaxxed. So to your point, there's no such thing as herd immunity nationally when we're so divided by ideology and by propensity to take this vaccine. Another area where division comes back to bite us. Derek, really appreciate all your analysis here, man. Such a smart guy. I know you're on book leave. We're all really excited. Hopefully you can stop by on your book tour back on the show. What's the book going to be about, Derek? Oh, the book right now is about the most exciting ideas in science and tech and how they can help us save the world. Basically, looking toward a future of tech we can be positive about rather than technology that makes us miserable as we stare into our phones.

That sounds so hopeful. Something optimistic. Something that we need more of on the stare into our phones. That sounds so hopeful. Something optimistic. Something that we need more of on this show in our politics. Appreciate you joining us, man. Great to see you, Derek. Thank you, guys. Absolutely. Alright, everybody, thank you so much for watching. You can become a premium subscriber today at the link down in there

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We heard you and we've got some really fun improvements that are coming here in the studio and we appreciate all of you and we'll see you all on Tuesday. So thank you. I have to say, initially I really preferred the old bricks, but by the end of the show now I do actually

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