Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/7/23: Trump Lawyer Spars With All Five Networks, Americans Oppose More Ukraine Aid, Republican Voters Turn On Anti-Woke, Wells Fargo Deletes Customer Funds, Lizzo Controversy, Jim Cramer Cries, Biden Sanctions Fail, Biden 2024 Debate w/ Michael LaRosa

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump's lawyer sparring with all 5 news networks over the weekend, Trump taking to Truth Social to threaten retaliation, new polling showing a majority of Americans oppose more Ukraine aid, Republican voters turn on Anti Wokeness politics, Wells Fargo accidentally deleting customer funds again, Lizzo streams collapse after fat shaming controversy, Krystal looks into Jim Cramer crying over class war in Autoworkers fight, Saagar looks into how Biden sanctions have failed while Putin's economy grows, and we're joined in studio for a debate on the merits of Biden 2024 with former WH Press Secretary for Jill Biden, Michael LaRosa.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Lots of interesting things unfolding here this week. We had the Trump lawyer on literally every Sunday show, so we will show you some of the highlights of that. We have Americans potentially having a change of heart with regard to aid to Ukraine, even as, of course, the political class continues to push forward. Republicans, the Republican base seeming to sour on wokeness. Some interesting poll numbers for you there.

Wells Fargo, once again, being the worst bank of all time. This time, apparently, they deleted some of their customer deposits, and this isn't even the first time that that happened. This is wild stuff. Unbelievable stuff. Lizzo, accused of fat shaming. That's quite a plot twist. We will get to the allegations, what the dancers are saying,

and also the impact already on her career. And we have a guy in studio today who is going to make the case why Joe Biden should be reelected. We'll talk to him about the economic numbers, how people are feeling and see what he thinks about all of that. Before we get to any of that, though, a little programming note. Tomorrow is back to school day for my kids. So need to get them off in the morning. So the show I'm going to do the show with Sagar, but we'll be a little bit late. Yes, it'll be a little bit later. She'll be coming in remotely, but we'll make sure that it's good. Thank you again to all the premium subscribers who have built this beautiful studio

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All right. Let's get to Trump and his various legal issues. So his lawyer in a sign of the fact that yes, they're going to make their case in court as best they can, but they also clearly see the political case as being essential to former President Trump maintaining his freedom. So his lawyer, John Lauro, went on every single Sunday show that is called the Full Ginsburg. You can go look at the history of that to try to make the case on behalf of his client. We've pulled some of the highlights of that. Let's take a listen. Former Vice President Mike Pence, he's taken issue with your contention that President Trump was simply asking him to pause the certification. Let's take a look. American people deserve to know that President Trump and his advisors didn't just ask me to pause. They asked me to reject votes, return votes, essentially to overturn the election. What's your response? Mike Pence will be one of

our best witnesses at trial. I read his book very carefully. And if he testifies consistent with his book, then President Trump will be acquitted for these reasons. Number one, Mr. Pence recognizes that John Eastman, who was giving legal advice, was a renowned legal scholar. Number two, Vice President Pence recognized that there were discrepancies and fraud in connection with the election.

He wanted it to be debated on Capitol Hill. Mr. Trump wanted it to be debated in the state legislatures. But make no mistake about it, based on what Vice President Pence will say, the government will never be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump had corrupt or criminal intent. And that's what this case is about. Well, what Mike Pence has said all this week is that what President Trump did was wrong, and he knew it was wrong, and he was pressing him to do something that was wrong. It was also pretty clear he never said it was criminal. He said it

was wrong. Never said it was criminal. There may be a difference. You may think that somebody is acting inappropriately under constitutional principles, but Mr. Pence, who's a lawyer, never said to Mr. Trump, I think what you're doing is criminal. The ultimate option that Mr. Trump asked for, President Trump asked for at the Ellipse speech, was merely to pause the voting for a period of time to allow the state legislature to vote. Many, many days before that, he was insisting that they would reject the votes. First, is there any condition under which the former president of the United States, your client, would accept a plea deal on these January 6th charges? No.

Will you seek a motion to dismiss? Absolutely, 100%. When? 100%. Well, within the time permitted, this is what's called a Swiss cheese indictment. It has so many holes that we're going to be identifying and litigating a number of motions

that we're going to file on First Amendment grounds on the fact that President Trump is immune as president from being prosecuted. President Trump believed in his heart of hearts that he had won that election. And as any American citizen, he had a right to speak out under the First Amendment. First of all, this protective order

that's being suggested by the Biden administration is an effort to keep from the press important non-sensitive information that the Biden administration has that may speak to the non-sensitive information that the Biden administration has that may speak to this isn't by the Biden administration this is by the special independent council and no no here for this reason no the independent council it's not independent it's special council has to get the approval of Merrick Garland in order to go forward when it comes to political speech you can not only advocate for a position,

but you can take action. You can petition. You can ask even your vice president to pause the vote for a period of time in order to allow the states to recertify. But you can't break the law, which is what this indictment alleges. You have to understand what the First Amendment says

and what it stands for. And all of the examples in this indictment are core political speech. Every single thing that President Trump is being prosecuted for involved aspirational asks, asking state legislatures, asking state governors, asking state electoral officials to do the right thing. In fact, even asking Vice President Pence was protected by free speech. None of that is illegal. Okay, so a lot there.

First of all, just to recap a little bit of what he said, and I'll get your reaction, Sagar. First of all, he says this case is about if Trump had corrupt intent, and he also talks a lot about the First Amendment. So he sees it as being very pivotal that Jack Smith and his team be able to prove that Trump either knew that what he was saying was a pack of lies or else any sort of reasonable person presented with all of the information that he had and all of the advice he had from, you know, Bill Barr to Mike Pence to various lawyers would have come to the conclusion

that what he was saying was a pack of lies. And so that's one piece. The piece about Pence is kind of interesting. He claims that Mike Pence will end up being one of their best witnesses on the stand. I find that a little hard to believe, given that Pence says at this point, you know, he was kind of waffly and a little wiggly about what exactly he thought about January 6th. At this point, he's made some pretty clear comments that what Trump did was wrong. Pence himself sought out legal advice to figure out if he was allowed to do that. He came to the conclusion, based on what he was presented with, that this was not something that you could do, that it would be against the law, unconstitutional, et cetera. So we'll see if Pence ends up being a good witness for that.

And he mentions there also this protective order, and there have been some legal developments with regard to that that we'll get to in just a minute. But you see him out there really making the case. And to me, the fact that he is on all five of these shows trying to make the case to the American people tells you they see it as much more critical to sort of win hearts and minds and try to win an election. They feel better about those odds than they probably feel about their odds in the courtroom. Well, they probably should, considering we've got a DC judge, a DC jury, and I guess we'll get to some of that whenever it comes to the judge. I do think it is still worth engaging a little bit

with the facts of what he presented. The most interesting one to me is about the state of mind, and Bradley Moss in our debate, which I encourage everybody to go and to watch, pointed out that trying to prove a defendant's state of mind is a typical but a difficult task often for prosecutors. That's part of the reason why if you guys read the indictment, you can actually see there's multiple times where Trump is presented with a list of people who presented him with the facts that he did lose the election. In that way, Crystal, Mike Pence, I think what they're saying might be a good

witness is that Pence can testify that, no, no, no, no, he really did believe it whenever he was pressuring me. The problem for Trump is that if they did, in fact, or Pence can testify when Trump said, quote, you are too honest, then being too honest would imply that you're going countervailing to the facts as he would know it. And then second, really going and rejecting some of the Sidney Powell claims in private before then embracing some of them in public. So those would be two key instances

where the prosecutors might try and prove that he did not in fact, or he did not in fact believe everything that he was saying. It is an interesting thing though, to try and prove somebody's state of mind as it coincides with free speech protections. It's another reason that they're saying, but overall, I think that your read of the whole thing is correct, which

is, look, they don't think they're going to win this case. They're obviously going to throw everything they got at it, but they're going to try and throw everything to the American people. And also, you know, look, they don't have an, they do have a decent case on appeal, very likely, considering that some of this is almost certainly going to get adjudicated by the Supreme Court. So they're going to lay that out there as well. But this is political. Anything with a political official, by definition, is going to fall into this realm. And I read it exactly the same way you did. Yeah. One interesting note on that piece about, you know, if this goes to the Supreme Court or not, some of the pushback, we didn't play it there from that lawyer, but some of the conservative pushback that I've heard is,

you know, some of these charges, it's sort of untested. This is a novel application of these laws. The civil rights one in particular, people have been pointing to. But even this idea of, OK, you were corruptly impacting a government proceeding, right, obstructing a government proceeding, official proceeding, that particular charge has been used against literally hundreds of the January 6th rioters. So in a sense, even though, you know, Trump's actions were not exactly the same as people who were trespassing in the Capitol and doing whatever those people did, you still have some sort of precedent of using this charge with regards to obstructing the counting of the

electoral votes on January 6th. And out of, I think there are 15 different judges who have handled cases that involve this charge with regards to January 6th rioters, and 14 out of the 15 found it to be an appropriate charge. It went up to a federal appeals court. The appeals court agreed with the government's interpretation of this. Now, that, of course, is not the end of the appeals process. That may end up with the Supreme Court. So that sort of litigation and those questions are ongoing. But at least some of these theories have been somewhat tested in court at this time. So Trump himself, of course, not remaining quiet either on the campaign trail where he's been railing against Jack Smith and calling him deranged and whatnot, but also very much on truth social,

going after basically everybody who is involved in this case. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. We've got a little sampling here. Probably the most noteworthy one, he put out this Truth Social, which actually showed up in a court filing. He says, if you go after me, I'm coming after you. Another one says, that I was then arrested by my political opponent who's losing badly to me in the polls, Crooked Joe Biden. It was a very good day. There's no way I can get a fair trial with the judge, quote, assigned to the ridiculous freedom of speech fair elections case. Then the last one, deranged Jack Smith and our highly partisan and very corrupt Department of Injustice could have brought this Biden opponent case years ago, but chose to wait and bring it right in the middle of my election campaign. It's got a little bit of a point with that one. I wish they would have

acted a little bit more quickly on this one. But anyway, that's where we are. So he's clearly, you know, he's doing his thing. He does doing what Trump does, going after everybody's involved, Jack Smith, the judge, Biden, of course, et cetera, et cetera. And it is having somewhat of an impact in terms of how this case unfolds. So we've got a little bit of kind of wrangling going on in the legal world as they try to settle what are the rules and the guidelines with regard to the discovery process and what's the timeline going to be, what are the dates going to be set, et cetera. So go ahead and put this up on the screen. There was a dispute between government lawyers and Trump's lawyers about when they would have to respond to this motion that was filed by the government. The judge denied Trump's request for additional time to respond to the DOJ's motion for protective order. And this all has to do, again, with the rules with regards to discovery and who can have

access to all of those materials. The government wants to request a rule barring Trump's lawyers from providing copies to Trump of discovery materials deemed sensitive. And they cited one of these Truth Social posts in their motion to say, listen, this guy shouldn't have access to this stuff because just look at how unhinged he is on social media. Yeah, this actually reminds me of the last time whenever he faced that problem, whenever he was attacking the judge. But I think it's the same thing that we kind of get to, Crystal, which is that he believes that the best chance is to prosecute this in the court of public opinion. He had that same issue with the Alvin Bragg case and some of the tweets that he had sent within that, which I know were also cited there. Many of his tweets also have come back to

bite him in the court. But politically, he has to be able to continue to speak out on this to try and not only drive his fundraising operations, but he needs to make a public case about whether whatever happens here in court, that it doesn't actually matter or it doesn't impact what he's running on. So I think that just really connects to it, attacking the judge, attacking the jurors, attacking the pool. All of that is just part of the political process, right? Because you're like, hey, this is illegitimate in its face before this thing even starts. Most Republicans already believe that. So now you have to try and target independent voters. We have a decent amount of polling on this. You and I were taking a look at around

the way people feel about this. They both feel it's political and that it's just. So that's always fun. Yeah. I mean, I actually understand that. I feel the same way. There is a Venn diagram there where you're like, yeah, I could see how someone gets there. I see it. Listen, it's the Biden DOJ and it's Trump. Like, how could it not be political on some level? And at the same time, you can look at what he did on January 6th and certainly in the build up to January 6th and be like, this also was wrong. So, you know, you can hold both those thoughts in your head. And I think that is where the majority of the American people are. I mean, the Republicans look 70 percent of them think that Trump won. Like they think this was all justified, which actually brings up what I think is an interesting point that some in conservative media have been pressing people on the Trump side of like, OK, so are you going to prove that? Are you going to actually bring, you know, the Kraken this time and prove that the election really was stolen? Because then like you're off the hook, then everything he did was completely justified. And so that's something to keep in mind is if the election really was stolen,

this is your golden opportunity to present to the entire nation your evidence that this election was unjust, something tells me they're not going to be going in that particular direction. One last piece about this, you know, the motions and the judge's decision here, put this up on the screen from CNN, why this is significant. You know, I don't know that the details of how the discovery process unfolds will end up being that critical. But the fact that the details of how the discovery process unfolds will end up being that critical. But the fact that the judge did deny the Trump team's motion to extend this deadline, I think, tells you one thing that may end up being quite significant, which is she seems, early indications are, she wants to move this case along. She wants to move this trial along. She's not going to put up with a lot of delaying and a lot of filibustering from

the Trump team, which, you know, their goal very much is to draw this out as much as possible so that they can potentially delay this and any sort of result from this trial until after election day. She seems to want to keep things moving. Well, we should keep it moving. As you and I've said, you know, if anything, the date needs to be set literally as soon as humanly possible. And in fact, in some cases, I know they were presented three options about when the next phase of the trial would begin and they picked the latest one. I'm just like, we have to get this resolved for the American people. And I, you know, I'm not really sure it's to Trump's benefit actually to keep this thing

dragged out. If anything, if you are going to get convicted or whatever, you won't kind of want that baked in from the beginning. It would be the best thing that ever happened to him from a primary perspective. But it's also interesting in terms of a political point of view. He does seem to be thinking of this as truly clinched. Just, I think it was yesterday, his super PAC released a first ad not attacking Ron DeSantis, just going after Joe Biden, which is one of those moves where you only do whenever you no longer think you have to run against somebody. So yeah, I mean, lots of interesting little signals. Don't know that he's really wrong. I think he's right. I think he's right. And we are now fully, we showed you the calendar last week of all the trial dates. And this is before we even haven't had the Georgia, Fulton County, you know, that

one come back, which is probably going to be additional charges for Trump. Like this whole primary season and the general election season is going to be dominated charges for Trump. Like this whole primary season and the general election season is going to be dominated by Trump in court, this motion, that motion, new indictment, new details, new discovery. I mean, that's what we're looking at. That's what this election is going to be about. That's what it's going to turn on. So it's not a surprise to me that he sort of feels like, all right, the Republican nomination, even this far out, is all but wrapped up. And my bigger issue is getting past Joe Biden and trying to push these trial dates off far enough so that I don't end up having to campaign for prison. Really sad, pathetic state of the country, but that's who we are.

That's where we are. America 2023. Let's go to Ukraine. There was some fascinating new polling that has come out on Ukraine in the first major sign that Americans, and specifically independents and Republican voters, but an overall majority are beginning to turn against increased aid to Ukraine. So we made some custom graphics here to try and break everything down. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. This is the first question. Should the U.S. authorize additional funding to Ukraine? Yes, 44%. No, 55%. That's the first time actually that we've seen that number. This is actually really interesting, and I want to keep this up here for a little while. What type of assistance should the U.S.

provide to Ukraine? 63% say intelligence gathering, 53% say military training. But then the majority drops off, providing weapons, 43%, and a stunning only 17% say participation in military operations. And I've been yearning for something like this for a long time, Crystal, because one of the way that the Ukraine hawks will try and hijack the debate, they're like, well, the vast majority of Americans want to support Ukraine. I'm like, yeah, but to what extent and how? Intelligence gathering, okay, sure. Even that gets a little sketchy whenever we're providing military targets inside of Russia,

but that's a whole other conversation. As you start to segregate it down, anything that involves actual participation in in kinetic events, people are like not only no, but hell no. And then in terms of even supporting the overall war effort with actual weapons and increased funding, Americans are really beginning to turn on that. So let's go to the next one. We have the partisan breakdown here. This is actually really interesting. We're talking about it before the show. Democrats on further support for Ukraine. Support for additional funding,

supermajority, nearly 62%. The US should do more, 61%. Go to the Republicans here. So then when we see Republicans on further support for Ukraine, vast majority, 71%, should not authorize funding. US has done enough, 60%. But then we go to the next one. And this is where things are really odd. I worry that this war will continue without resolution. Democrats at 82%. And then actually Republicans and independents at 73 and 75, respectively. So Democrats are worried that the war will continue without resolution, but are also basically united in wanting to actually authorize even more aid for the war in Ukraine. So politically, people are kind of all over the map. Democrats are worried, but they want to send more weapons.

But the big top line figure, independents, Republicans, overall majority turn against increased actual military aid to Ukraine. And that flies in the face of what the administration is doing. Just two weeks ago, Biden promised actually more aid to Ukraine because the $100 billion or so apparently has not been enough. He just said, quote, we will not waver. This was at the NATO summit. We are going to help Ukraine build a strong, capable defense across land, air, and sea, which will be the force of stability in the region and occur against any and all threats. I think the American people are beginning to come to terms with what the reality of this type of rhetoric looks like. $100 billion is more than we gave the Afghan National Security Forces over 20 years. And I think we all know how that

worked out. We've brought everybody's stories here about how even the Ukrainian military, which has been trained directly by the West, provided with weapons, has really faltered. They've had to revert to much more primitive tactics. And actually, just this morning, Crystal, I was reading a piece about the Ukraine. I talk a lot here about one of the reasons why it's going to be so difficult for Ukraine. I always say they don't have any industrial base. Well, they actually confirmed it. In the year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Ukraine did not produce one single artillery shell. Today, on the front line, they are using 90,000 shells per month. To put that in perspective, the United States,

with the full power of its industrial base, produces 24,000 shells per month, which is actually 10,000 more than we were producing in 2022, which means that the overall number of shells Ukraine consumes is some four to five times higher than the entire United States is able to produce per month. The Ukrainian ammunition chief even admits there is no way we will be able to produce that amount of shells, quote, four years, which shows you that absent charity from all of the West, their military and war effort collapses effectively overnight. And Congress and the American people are at a point where we're like, we have done enough here.

And I know this can sound very difficult, but people need to understand like the level of money that would be required to basically convert American industry to support the war in Ukraine would be astronomical. And it would be doing so for something which fundamentally is not of an actual core interest to the American people. So reality, I think, is really beginning to take its toll, both on the Ukrainian war effort sometime very soon in the future,

but really in the minds of people who are looking at this and being like, look, it's been 19 months here. You know, like, we gotta bring things to a close at some point. I think it's remarkable, honestly, that you find these numbers where you now have a majority opposed to further aid. In spite of the fact that you have a really very consistent media narrative in favor of aid, always in favor of more hawkish action.

So I do think it's always remarkable when you have the American people able to diverge with the consent that is attempting to be manufactured very heavily throughout mainstream outlets. So that's number one. Number two, the Democratic position here, it could seem a little perplexing on its face, where on the one hand, they're like, yes, absolutely, more aid. On the other hand, they're like, you know, I'm pretty worried this is just going to continue forever. So on the one hand, you would think like, well, maybe you should consider that we should take a different approach. Maybe there's a different, you know, tactic since this seems to be just continuing to draw on this conflict. But I think Democrats, more than any other group, they really do buy whatever the mainstream media line is, buy in large hook, line in singer.

I mean, they have the highest levels of trust in mainstream media outlets. And that's basically the messaging that you get from corporate press, which is that, you know, the way to bring this resolution to close, that the correct action here is just to continue to support them. And maybe they're going to win and take back all the territory. And that's our best shot. And so that's what we should do. And of course, there's also a lot of partisan loyalty of just, all right, this is what Joe Biden says. The right course of action is so we just we trust our guys. So we believe that this is the best way to bring things to a close, even though it's hard to see how that's really going to happen. The other thing to note is, you know, Democrats are fairly unified behind the Biden position. And I'm not just talking about

elite Democrats who are a hundred percent unified behind the Biden position, but the Democratic base fairly unified behind the Biden position. but the Democratic base fairly unified behind the Biden position. The Republicans have a pretty significant divide on their hands between what Republican-elected elites and even many of their presidential contenders and certainly the donor base, the policy that they support, versus the policy that now quite a significant majority of the Republican base supports. And this is again where, you know, Donald Trump, who just positions himself wherever he thinks it's going to be politically advantageous on most issues, he doesn't really have a sort of like core belief.

He just goes where his gut tells him is the right place to be based on his political needs and interests. You know, he really identified this split very early and, you know, very early in the primary season. Previously, he'd sounded these extremely hawkish notes being, you know, to the sort of to the right and to the more hawkish side of Biden. He's gone back and forth and wavered even within the primary. Occasionally he goes back to that kind of rhetoric. But by and large, he intuited that there was this divide between where the Republican base was and where Republican elites were and also intuited that that divide would continue to open up. And he positioned himself once again in the place that makes the most political sense for him. Yeah, I mean, he took look, he actually did the same thing on Iraq. Remember, there was that whole thing. It was like, well, he said he supported it on Howard Stern in 2002.

But no one can deny that he actually did turn against Iraq very early, like 2004, actually very early, I think in 2004. And just like Barack Obama, who genuinely was against the war from the very beginning, that was not a popular position at the time, but it ended up being a political savior in the long run. I also bet on that, frankly, you know, in the future, I was like, listen, you guys can, you know, put as many Ukraine flags in bio and out front of your house as long as you want. But great power conflict in a World War I style one always ends up basically catching up with reality. And that's basically where we find ourselves right now, which, you know, it's I think it's sad because it's terrible tragedy. Everything that we've been reading about Ukrainian casualties is a nightmare. I mean, they were not releasing their casualty figures, but even they are fully acknowledging that it is a very heavy loss.

You know, inside Ukraine, actually, we're not hearing everything about what's happening. There have been very viral blog posts, Crystal, of Ukrainian military bloggers kind of reflecting the sentiments of the rank and file, who said that their commanders are throwing them into the grinder with absolutely no concern for their lives. And these things are going very viral. So, I mean, inside Ukraine, I mean, think about it. Like when you've got 90,000 people in a pretty small country, you know, at least relative to the U.S., who have lost limbs, at that point, you all know somebody who's been wounded on the front line. You may probably be connected to someone who has lost their life and has been killed. Things start to get very real once you get to that level of death and of wounded in the population.

This happened, I keep coming back to the First World War, it's a very instructive thing. We had almost a near revolution in France after millions of Frenchmen were wounded or killed on the front line where they effectively demanded, they're like, look, we got to bring this, we got to completely change tactics and all that. And it's also the revolution in 1918 in Germany, which was really like a ground up revolution against the conditions imposed on by the war, which brought down the entire Kaiser regime. So look, you know, if you let these things go on long enough, who the hell knows what's going to happen? Russian revolution also, of course. And I would say like, let's avoid that scenario as much as possible because it's not like everything worked

out for the better. Yeah. When that happened. Yeah, certainly. There we go. All right. Let's go to woke. Love having that. What does it even mean? We're not the ones who are saying that. Trump, as we just said in our last one, is some sort of political Cassandra, always able to identify a lane. Calling out Ron DeSantis just months ago and some other Republican politicians for always talking about woke

and he doesn't even know what they mean. Here's what he said. It's gone sick. And I don't like the term woke because I hear woke, woke, woke. You know, it's like just a term that used half the people can't even define it. They don't know what it is. So funnily enough, I don't like the term woke because I hear woke, woke, woke. You know, it's like just a term that use half the people can't even define it. They don't know what it is.

So funnily enough, Trump actually did use the term woke in a truth just yesterday. But we'll let that slide on a political level, though. It seems that he might be on to something. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. This is the same thing that you and I identified, Crystal, as well. But it comes from inside several crosstabs of some new polls around whether Republicans are beginning to turn on, quote, wokeness and what exactly that means to the average voter and how they might actually turn against it. One of them is actually a quote

from an actual voter buried inside this piece. Can we put that please up there on the screen? That really does identify what she was talking about. For example, she says, quote, if you don't like what Bud Light did, don't buy it. Then she says, quote, if you don't like what Disney is doing, don't go. That's not the government's responsibility. But then there was even one who talked about book banning. And what they said there, Crystal, was that they both believed, what was it, COVID is a Chinese lab. Do you have the full one in front of you? She believes that COVID was not just escape from life, but an intentional bioweapon. So she's all in on that conspiracy theory. But then in terms of book bans, she says that, you know, it's gone too far,

that she lives in Iowa and there's a school district that's close to her. And she says, this is like burning books. So voters are complicated. You've got to love the American average voters. Very complicated. And but she loves Trump. So it's one of those where I think that when you put it all together, what we find is that people have very different and varied views as to what you would believe originally from the media. So let's go and put some of these charts that we have up there on the screen. As a Republican, I would rather support a candidate who, quote, will fight woke left corporations, only 38%, will leave corporations to support whichever they choose, 52%. Okay, interesting.

Let's go to the next one there, please. I am a Republican who, quote, supports gay marriage, 50%, opposes gay marriage, 41%. And then the next one there, what we can find is what is more important for a Republican candidate, quote, protecting individual freedoms, 51%, guarding traditional values. So I think when you put those together, I'm not going to toot my own horn, but some of us have been talking about a phenomenon called Barstool conservatism for a while, which specifically emphasizes like individual libertarianism in a much more like secular country and environment, which is more opposed to political correctness and to social transgenderism and CRT, then much more so they are than what

a traditional 2004 Republican would be. The more actually that you conflate those two things, the less popular that they are. I thought it was very interesting to see this very libertarian bent become the prevailing attitude amongst the primary voter as a Republican, not just amongst the individual electorate. But that's overall indicative of a lot of social trends. It reminds me of the part of the Megyn Kelly, Ron DeSantis interview that we played where she was challenging him on this exact same thing because he's threatening. Obviously, he's already embroiled in legal conflict with Disney. But then he was he's also threatening legal action against Budweiser because of their use of this transgender influencer. And he's like, oh, well,

their stock went down and that hurt our pension holders. And Megan was like, yeah, but you supported the boycott. So aren't you kind of like part of that stock going down? So she was really highlighting this divide within the Republican Party. And even more stark to me is they gave voters in this poll two different flavors of candidate, one that sounds more like the issues that Trump emphasizes and one that sounds more like the issues that DeSantis emphasizes. So they say when presented with the choice between two hypothetical Republican candidates, only 24 percent of national Republican voters opted for a candidate who focuses on defeating radical woke ideology in our schools, media, and culture over a candidate who focuses on restoring law and order in our streets and at the border. So now does Trump dabble in some of this like woke, anti-woke talk as well?

Yeah, as Sagar just pointed out, he's out truthing about it this morning. But in terms of the central focus of his campaign, you would say it's more about the border. It's more about law and order. That's always been sort of like his mantra ever since 2016. He's been leaning into that particular line of policy attack, whereas DeSantis, I mean, he threw all in on the woke thing. I kind of understand why he did it, even though it obviously has ended up being a poor choice, because the Republican Party in a lot of ways, especially the base, is divided along certain issues, certain economic issues, Ukraine war, you know, even in terms of like style and affect. The coalition that Ron DeSantis is trying to pull together is, in fairness, I think a very difficult coalition to pull together. It includes people who, you know, really despise Trump at this point and don't want anything to do with him. And he also has to try to win over some people who still really like Trump and, you know, but maybe might be open to a different candidate. To try to pull

that group of people together is very hard. So the place, the lane that he thought might unite the entire Republican coalition is on being anti-woke. So he's really made that his bread and butter, even leaving aside, you know, some of the things that he did earlier on in his gubernatorial career, certainly things that he did when he was in Congress. But it's just, I think there's been dramatic overreach, number one. Number two, it has rubbed up against this live and let live ideology that runs very deep, not just within the Republican Party, but within the American public in general, where it's like, listen, you're an adult. Go do what you want to do. Let's, like, you know, make your choices. As long as they don't interfere with me, I really could care less.

And also rubs up against this traditional conservative position of like, hey, businesses get to make their own decisions within their own companies. It's not the governor's I actually think it's generational. I think there's something very generational to it, where a lot of boomer Republican voters are much more libertarian minded in general. They came up in the Reagan era. They became Reagan Democrats. You know, they were Democrats who then voted for Reagan and kind of been Republicans ever since. The activist base specifically of younger Republicans who are the most pro-DeSantis people, I think you will mostly find out there, are very much kind of on board the whole like we got to use the government and weaponize it against corporations who we don't really agree with on a cultural level. So I think that because DeSantis is what, he's like 44 or something like that, of his cohort of Republicans, he's gonna be in more of that like-minded group. So there's something to that.

There's also in general, who are the people who are professional who don't like Trump? You have two sets. You basically have the group I just talked about who thinks Trump is too friendly to like gay interests and suckered up to what Caitlyn Jenner and didn't use the power of the government to actually transform conservative. And then you've got more like January 6th is the worst thing that ever happened in American history, like Liz Cheney types. So if you're a DeSantis, pro-DeSantis person, kind of a professional Republican apparatus, well, you're really going to be in that first category that I talked about. And those are the type of people who I can

tell you from personal experience, I know many of the people who work for him, many of the people who are on his campaign and who backed him from the beginning, they very much fall into the category that I just described. So I think it could be a staff driven thing, but listen, I mean, DeSantis also probably believes it. So you can't take that away from him. Look, I don't know what DeSantis believes. I think he's just, I mean, he's, he's shapeshifted enough in his career that I just really kind of feel like he positions himself wherever he thinks is advantageous is my view, but I see it as less generational and more class-based. I'm sure if you look at, I mean, if you look within the polls consistently, Ron DeSantis does better among college educated

Republicans than he does among non-college-educated Republicans who are still all in for Trump. And it makes sense. I mean, we see a similar divide on the Democratic side, where it's like, you know, more affluent, college-educated liberals, they're more concerned with the cultural value set. And the working class, you know, multiracial working class base that still supports Democrats, they are more concerned with bread and butter issues like, hey, how am I going to be able to pay the bills at the end of the month and health care, et cetera, and unions? So you see a similar divide. The issue says, obviously, the same on the Republican side. But you see a kind of similar divide where if you were non-college

educated and you think that immigrants are a real threat to your sort of livelihood and they're depressing your wages, et cetera, and you're worried about, like, safety in your community, like, these are very kitchen table bread and butter issues. They're much more closely aligned with a sort of material set of values than if you are college educated and you're doing pretty well in this world and you've, you know, you got your house and you got your family and you're doing all right, then maybe can afford to worry about like what Bud Light is doing with their marketing spend and what's going on in the schools and, you know, college education system and what the media is doing, et cetera. It's a more sort of luxury set of priorities that you're able to hold if your material needs are already met. So I see it as more of a class divide than really a generational

or even really ideological divide. I think there's probably two elements to that. I mean, all the people I talked about kind of before about the generational thing, those people are all very highly educated. And they're all, you know, it takes an interesting breed to kind of be highly educated

and to come through the elite system and also still turn out kind of on the other side. Usually there's a degree of contrarianism. And also it can be a very hardening experience, I can tell you from personal experience. So I do understand, I think, that cohort well, specifically because I came up with them throughout Washington and have watched them kind of with curiosity as they branch out between Trump, DeSantis, and then like Tim Scott people. They really are only the three genders, I guess, in Republican politics. So those are kind of where people generally fall. But overall, I do think it is clear that that college educated group clearly

really isn't in as touch as they would like to think with the mean Republican voter as to what animates them and to why they are all voting or very likely to vote Trump in the first place. And also it's super online. That's the other piece. That's why it hasn't even translated into DeSantis winning college-educated voters. It's a minority group of college-educated voters. It is a super online fixation that there's a lot of energy around, but doesn't necessarily translate into a majority of the base. Speaking of bread-and-butter issues and material concerns, let's put this up on the screen. This is insane. A bunch of Wells Fargo banking customers went to pay their bills, check their banking accounts, et cetera, pay their rent, and found out their deposits were gone because of a,

quote, technical issue. Let me read you the opening of this piece. They say that those deposits had disappeared, causing the customers to express concern over where their money had gone, and in some cases, to report being late on their bills. Wells Fargo said it was a technical issue and that it has been resolved. By the way, this isn't even the first time this has happened at Wells Fargo, which you all probably know. Wells Fargo has a very checkered recent past of all kinds of fraud that they have been, you know, they have gotten into all kinds of legal trouble for creating all these fake accounts, which, by the way, they were caught doing again just recently, even though they said they turned over a new leaf and changed their ways,

et cetera. But a similar glitch that resulted in deposits being erased or being reported incorrectly happened for customers back in March. NBC News put this up on the screen. They did some additional reporting on this. They talked to some of the customers. They actually found a guy that this happened to in both instances. It happened to him in March, and then it happened to him again now. And understandably, he's like, all right, I think I'm done with this bank. They also spoke with a woman, Jeannie Cortez, single, disabled, self-employed accountant and Alaska resident. She was supposed to have paid her rent, gas, electric and internet payments for the month by now with funds that she deposited Wednesday. She was told Friday by Wells Fargo rep that she would not be able to access her deposit for another three to

five business days. She'd earlier been told Wells Fargo could send her a letter to give to her creditors. That too has not arrived. She said, quote, there is simply not enough funds without that deposit to cover them all. Talking about her bills. I simply cannot live without my funds now. So this bank screws up, deletes these deposits, glitch, whatever happened, technical issue that, again, had already happened to them previously just a few months prior in March. This happens again. And people were just absolutely screwed by this. I mean, you know, and it screws up your credit. It makes it.

And once you cry, it's just it can be a total cascading effect. The late fees that get piled up for, you know, potentially like getting kicked out of your apartment, et cetera. So people put in a very bad position because of this. Yeah, I just don't understand how this is really even possible. And remember, we shouldn't forget Wells Fargo was fined three point seven billion dollars for consumer banking violations less than a year ago. And it was very similar, Crystal, in terms of they did not record payments on their home and their auto loans and in some cases, quote, wrongfully repossessed some borrowers' cars and homes and then charged overdraft fees, even when customers had enough money to cover purchases that they had made

with their bank cards. Wells Fargo had stopped this conduct this year as a part of a larger effort to clean up other unlawful practices stretching back to 2011. So they have now paid two record fines on a consumer banking institution. The 3.7 billion was a record after a previous 1 billion, which they had also been forced to pay

before that. So this is totally crazy. And at this point now, this is the overall statistics, $6.2 billion have been fined for banks for mistreating customers and investors. Who wants to bet that those fines pale in comparison to the overall profit that all said banks have made in the 2000, since the 2008 financial crisis. 6.2 billion is like a paltry day on Wall Street for some of these folks. And it's just crazy. They always get away with it. Wells Fargo is like the worst repeat offender here because even after they claimed like, oh yeah, we fixed all the, all the like superfluous fake accounts that they pressured their sales associates to setting up. Oh, we fixed that all that they had to be again fined by the government.

Pretty significant amount because it turned out they had lied about just how much work they had done to clean up the problem. So they are a complete mess. At the same time, this was pretty wild. Go and put D3 up on the screen. So this ties back to the conversations we were having around Silicon Valley Bank and the bank balance that happened at that time. And one of the theories was like, if the government is making it clear that even these mid-sized institutions are too big to fail, you know who's going to get screwed are the little guys. Why would anyone keep their deposits at small banks when you have the government,

you know, out and out making it clear that they're going to backstop the deposits at the big guys? So the theory based on that landscape that was really created, you know, with the bailouts and even prior to the bailouts was, okay, the big guys are going to get even bigger. They're going to consolidate even more of the nation's deposits. That actually turned out not to be true and for a very interesting reason. So actually, deposits at the big banks have gone down. Some of the biggest deposit declines during the second quarter were not those midsize regional lenders that everybody was worried about. They were the industry's giants, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo. Wells

Fargo. The four biggest banks by assets gave up a net $262 billion in deposits when compared with the year earlier period. Now, it is no surprise that even without the issues that were happening at banks, that deposits would be going down right now. Why? Because you had the Federal Reserve hike interest rates. And so there are sort of better opportunities to move your money out of a savings account and earn higher interest somewhere else. So it's not a surprise that deposits are being pulled down. What is a surprise is that they are coming overwhelmingly from the biggest players. The reason for that is that the smaller players realized they're going to have to compete by offering higher

interest rates on their savings accounts. And so they have upped the amount of interest that customers who put their money in a savings account in those banks, those smaller banks have upped the interest that those accounts are earning. And because of that, they have actually, in some instances, increased their deposits over this period. So it's surprising how it's the total opposite of what everyone had predicted. Now, the big guys, don't worry, are doing just fine. instances increased their deposits over this period. So it's surprising as a total opposite of what everyone had predicted. Now, the big guys, don't worry, are doing just fine. Part of why they haven't upped their interest rates to try to compete as well is because they're making so much money in so many other ways that they just feel like it's not even worth it and they don't

even need it. But it's just an interesting result and the opposite of what was being predicted. It was the opposite. But I mean, we can't say that one of the reasons why it happened is for is actually spurred some level of competition. So it actually means that the aggregate amount of profit that some of these banks is going to go down. But I mean, hey, it's better for the consumer, which I think is overall a good thing. It is interesting. I actually personally had this experience, you know, like most people, you want to try and have some savings in terms of an emergency fund and all that. I remember looking at one of these large banks and they didn't even offer a higher interest

savings account. You start Googling around and I came across all of these banks, which are paying like 5% or 6% interest, banks I'd never even heard of. I was like, well, that's interesting. You start to read a little about it. You're like, okay, FDIC insured. All right. You know, maybe you could take a chance on that.

So like on a personal level, I actually kind of went through this and it does make sense, which is that's how these banks are able to make a name for themselves. And also, frankly, in an era where the Federal Reserve is paying like four and a half on T-bills, there's no reason that these banks don't have the capacity to do it because they can literally just take your money and invest it in treasuries and then pay you back in the same interest and still make a modest profit. So there's no reason for the big banks not to offer it other than they literally just don't want to. So small banks using the arbitrage, I guess you can always have faith

in the American entrepreneur. There you go. There you go. It's working out. Okay. Let's talk about Lizzo. There is a lot here. So I'm sure some of you guys have been following this. Lizzo, of course, known for her sort of body positivity and being this sort of like female empowerment symbol, you know, huge artists, many record-breaking hits, all of that good stuff. So pretty shocking then, given her brand, that she's been accused now, put this up on the screen, three of her former dancers have accused her of weight shaming, so fat shaming them, and pressuring them to do all kinds of crazy stuff at a strip club.

Let me read you some of the allegations. They say that she created a hostile work environment. This was all in a lawsuit that was filed last week. They allege she pressured one of the dancers to touch a nude performer at an Amsterdam strip club and subjected the group to an excruciating audition after leveling false accusations that they were drinking on the job. That audition, they said, was so brutal. It lasted 12 hours and they were so terrified for their jobs that one of the dancers actually soiled herself because she was so afraid of just asking

to go to the bathroom. Horrific stuff. The dancers accused Lizzo of calling attention to one dancer's weight gain and later berating, then firing that dancer after she recorded a meeting out because of a health condition. I'll give you some of the details about what happened allegedly at the club. Apparently, she began inviting cast members to take turns touching the nude performers, catching dildos launched from the performers' vaginas, and eating bananas protruding from other performers' vaginas as well. Lizzo then turned her attention to one of the dancers who was suing her and began pressuring Miss Davis to touch the breasts of one of the nude women pressure that that dancer ultimately gave into. She felt very sort of like

bullied and like the from listening to some of the interviews with the dancers, they felt very much like their job was on the line in all of these interactions. So where Lizzo may have been like, oh, we're at the club and we're friends or whatever, they're viewing this as like, this is my boss. This is my entire career on the line. I do think, you know, one factor here is she's known for, and full disclosure, I've been to a Lizzo show,

so I've watched some of these dancers perform. She's known for her dancers being bigger, consistent with her image. And full disclosure, I've been to Eliza's shows. I've watched some of these dancers perform. She's known for her dancers being bigger, consistent with her image. And so if you are a high-level dancer who has that physique, it's probably hard to find work in other areas. So you feel extra pressure of like, I've got to keep this job because this is the dream. This is the thing. Without it, I don't even know if I'll be able to work. I have a little bit of an interview with two of the dancers who are involved in this lawsuit, just talking about their experience.

Let's take a listen. Did Lizzo know about this behavior that you're alleging? Well, Lizzo was a participant in the Lizzo is the reason that we were that I specifically was pressured to touch a new performer. She singled me out at the club that I didn't want to be at, but was told I couldn't really back out since I already said I was going before I knew what it really was. Once I had time to research it, me and Noel Rodriguez also, we figured out what it was and we're like, okay, maybe we should not go. You know, this is a little weird. But then we were told that a headcount was already sent a list was already sent so she knows who's coming and at that time we had already been kind of fearing for our jobs and being ostracized so it is a understand it's an understanding in the camp that

if you don't really participate and you know try to get in with Lizzo it's it you you don't really participate and, you know, try to get in with Lizzo, it's, you won't be booked on as many jobs. She won't like you as much. It just, you'll be ostracized later. So we went, we stayed in the corner. We talked to each other the whole time. We tried to ignore, you know, what was happening. A lot of crazy things were happening. And after a lot of explicit things went on, Lizzo kind of saw me, singled me out.

She was kind of going around, like, inviting people to touch the nude performers. And I guess it was my turn. She goes on to say they started chanting. She felt completely pressured, humiliated. She didn't know what to do. So anyway, that is their side of the story. Lizzo has responded. Let's go and put this up on the screen. This is what she had to say. She said, I'll read this in full. This was posted on Instagram. These last few days have been gut-wrenchingly difficult, overwhelmingly disappointing. My work ethic, morals, and respectfulness have been questioned. My character has been criticized. Usually I choose not to respond to false allegations, but these are as unbelievable as they sound and too outrageous to not be addressed. These sensationalized stories are coming from former employees who have already

publicly admitted they were told their behavior on tour was inappropriate and unprofessional. As an artist, I've always been very passionate about what I do. I take my music and my performances seriously because at the end of the day, I only want to put on the best art that represents me and my fans. With passion comes hard work and high standards. Sometimes I have to make hard decisions, but it's never my intention to make anyone feel uncomfortable or like they are not valued as an important part of the team. What do you think, Sagar? I mean, you know, basically calling these people a liar, not great, especially whenever you're so powerful. So one of the reasons why I thought it actually was interesting to cover the story was because there are actual real world implications outside of tabloid drama, of which I've been fascinated by. Let's put this up there

from Showbiz411. They say that Lizzo's record sales and streaming and airplay have collapsed in a single day after the harassment scandal broke wide in a career crisis. They say that the, quote, two days for record sales, including streaming and airplay, have collapsed. Looking at numbers from Luminate, the trends have not just fallen but have evaporated. It's as if every radio has pulled Lizzo hits, fanned, stopped streaming the records, and they forgot about buying them or downloading them.

This is actually incredibly rare. We did not see a similar instance whenever it came to Kanye West, I think, for example. Or I mean, listen, you know, many people in the music business and all that are not exactly angels. And we've been talking about this, about why I think this like kind of culturally resonated. Yeah. Which I think that because she cast herself as such an image of female empowerment as above the rest, as a genuine like liberal icon, that whenever she is found to just be like a rich, pompous, you know,

a rich, pompous, mean girl, like probably everybody else in this profession, that people are like, hey, you know what? Screw you. Like there's a real personal identification, I think, that a lot of people personally found, you know, with both her music and kind of the way that she presented herself and all of that. And of course, you know, media kind of blew that up out of proportion.

But it's not like she wasn't playing into it. has too much money and is the center of attention and acts like this and treats their employees like pawns and then calls them unprofessional whenever they speak out. Yeah, how about that? You're like, oh, hold on a second. You've got a titanic ego that really backstops a lot of this and that led to an actual consumer backlash. She also apparently put this next piece up on the screen. She's also apparently lost 220,000 Instagram followers. I don't know. I'll let you look that up. But 220,000 people is a lot of people. That is a lot of people.

Yeah, let me go. She's got 13 million. So it's not exactly all. Yeah, as a percentage, it's not all that much. But listen, I'm going to be honest with you. So I saw the headlines first before I read in detail the allegations. And, you know, obviously, like, the stuff that happened at the strip club is the most salacious when you're talking about, you know, bananas and vaginas and whatever. But the part that is the most dissonant with her brand is the fat-shaming part.

Yep, 100%. And I will say, when I actually read the allegations with regards to the alleged fat-shaming, it's a little ambiguous. I don't doubt that. So it required the dancer's interpretation of what Lizzo was saying. It's not like she was just flat out like, you're a fat ass, it's disgusting, et cetera. It was nothing like that. It was like, she had performed at South by Southwest. And when she was there, she'd apparently, this dancer had just gained some weight. And afterwards, they were having a discussion about that performance.

And this dancer already said, you know, I'm feeling basically like I'm feeling a lot better than I was there. And Lizzo said something to the effect of, yeah, because we were worried about how you were doing. And there was another comment that was made around the same time about, like, we weren't sure of your commitment. And the dancer interpreted that because she says, listen, everything about me was the same time about like, we weren't sure of your commitment. And the dancer interpreted that because she says, listen, everything about me was the same. My energy level, my dancing, my capabilities, my, you know, my commitment, all of that was the same. The only thing that was different at that festival was that I had gained weight. So I just want to say it was a little less clear cut than Lizzo just out and out being like, you're fat and I hate you or

anything that blatant. So that was this dancer's fat and I hate you or anything that blatant. So that was this dancer's interpretation. I don't know how that works out in terms of a lawsuit. I think some of the other stuff is like, you know, these dancers clearly felt very pressured. Like if they didn't want to go to this club, they just wanted to chill or this wasn't their thing. The one dancer, Ariana, who's involved in this suit,

said she was known as being sort of like the most modest. And they didn't feel that they really had a choice in participating in these activities. They felt there was a lot of kind of bullying, shaming, harassment that Lizzo created, this really toxic setting where they just felt sort of like powerless and like their whole lives were on the line if they didn't go along with whatever was happening

there. And there's also this piece about the girl who led, the woman who led the dancers, was, they say, you know, really very religious, fine, but then really proselytizing to the others. But then at the same time would like shame them for being virgins and post this. So she was, like, opposed to premarital sex. But then she was also, like, posting publicly and humiliating some of the girls who were virgins. Weird, weird stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

And clearly the hypocrisy is why this was a problem for her. Because if you compare this to other artists and various things that they've done, it really pales in comparison. Not excusing Liz's behavior, but it pales in comparison. It's the fact that she created this whole brand and then you get a little peek beneath the surface and it's like you are not remotely who you are claiming to be to the public. I mean, I think in personal experience, I think a lot of people in this situation. There's nothing more dehumanizing than having to like pretend and just go with the flow with whatever your boss wants. It's true.

Specifically during like a social thing, we were like, I don't want to be here right now. This is one of the last things that I would rather do. I'm giving up, you know, my personal time and like so many of the things

that I would rather, pretending to like the type of food or whatever the hell that you're putting in front of me and having to sit there and kind of eat it with a smile on your face while you secretly hate yourself inside. That is a terrible experience. So like when she was talking about that, I'm like, especially, you know, you're on the road. You're tired.

You don't want to be doing this. And she's like, you got to come to the club. It's like I cannot, for me personally, I cannot imagine a more nightmarish type situation. But millions of Americans are put into that same type of environment in their own way, you know, by being forced into something or whatever with their boss. Sometimes it's okay. You know, sometimes you actually do want to do that and there's a genuine friendship. But the power differential is one that people who are bosses very often forget and then they delude themselves into thinking that everybody actually does want to be there. When they really don't. It's like, no, you're not.

You're still their boss. You're still really famous. You're still really powerful. You really kind of have their fate in your hands. Do you think that she can recover from that? Clearly her career, Lizzo, has taken it. She'll be fine. I mean, my thing is like, I don't know.

I'm kind of biased because I already found her music like a little bit tired. You know, since the initial like breakout hits, I haven't really been feeling it that much. So part of me is like maybe her thing is just a little bit tired anyway, in which case I don't think she recovers. But clearly a lot of people still like the music. People love Lizzo. I don't know. I mean, in terms of, yeah, like I think she'll be fine, you know, in the longer run. She'll eventually apologize or do whatever. I do think that kind of to your point, there is

something tired about the brand of like lean in feminism that Lizzo-ism, I guess, embodies. And there's something around like the political correctness discussion and the whole like fat acceptance movement and all of that just was just codes cringe, I think in a way, whereas it would have been more celebrated by the media, I would say even three, maybe four years ago, maybe partially also why people are willing to turn on her, you know, now at this point. So I don't know. I don't know what it all kind of leads to. I'm the last person, I guess. I feel like if the music is good, people are going to over. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing about music is not that good then people will move on is literally like spousing nationality go walk into a gym anywhere in this country they're

gonna be blasting just the other day i was doing a set but it's like kanye came on i was like yeah but it's like kanye from like at least 10 years ago sure yeah yeah new stuff is yeah trash total trash but if power comes on and you're at the bottom of a set, it feels pretty good. All right. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, Jim Cramer was distressed, dismayed, and frightened on a recent day over at CNBC Studios. The source of his panic? A new militancy among auto workers led by new UAW president Sean Fain, who are pushing hard for a better contract and threatening a strike. Take a listen. I want you to compare the labor negotiations here to the ones in auto, where I think there's going to be a strike and I think it's going to be horrible. You're making that call today?

September 14th. I think they're going to strike. This, the man, Chauvin, the guy who runs the UAW, I find him frightening. And Teamsters UPS didn't give you any solace? Teamsters turned out to get a good deal. Teamsters is a historically very powerful union, rich union. But the UAW leader won. There was a contested, very contested vote between the company,

the union that wants to work with the autos together to try to preserve some jobs and give the elder people a good pay. And then this man, Sean, who is just talking about capitalism and the nature of capitalism

and how it's really hurt workers. This is very Walter Ruther language. It's the kind of language that when we had in this country, we'll take you down if you don't play ball. That's the language I'm hearing from UAW. And look, I mean, it's the kind of language where you just say, you know what, we should have built all our EVs in Mexico. It's that bad. I don't think people are paying enough attention. The man is, I'm not saying he's irrational. I'm saying he was elected in order to make it so that there's a

very short week to find benefit back. And then the notion that we're fat cats. The shareholders are fat cats and have been overly rewarded. We haven't seen this. That's class warfare. And it's very shocking to hear class warfare. I honestly got to start watching CNBC more because that was some fantastic content. So Kramer there, he said, it's class warfare and it's very shocking to hear class warfare. So let's talk a little bit about this class warfare, shall we?

Now, back in 2008 and 2009, to set the stage here, when the big three were on the verge of collapse, the Obama administration decided to bail out the industry in order to protect jobs at American manufacturing capacity. And honestly, it was the right call. But it wasn't only the government that stepped up to save the automakers. It was workers at those automakers who offered their own bailout. They put on the chopping block wages, pensions, and health care benefits. Now, the rhetoric at the time from the executives, of course, was, oh, we're all in this together. But when profits returned, the gains all flowed

to the top. Today, starting wages at the big three are about $10 lower per hour than they were back in 2007 when you account for inflation. In the bailout, workers gave up annual cost of living increases, something that the UAW first won back in the 1940s. And without those gains to keep up with inflation, worker wages for both new and experienced workers fell further and further behind. Not so for the CEOs of the automakers, though. They have seen their pay spike 40%

in just the past several years, widening a massive gulf between the pay of the executives and those of the workers, whose labor, of course, makes the whole thing go. In fact, at a time when the typical GM employee's wages went down, CEO Mary Barra got a huge raise, saw her overall compensation jump up to $29 million per year. This was class war, all right, the kind that has been standard fare in America since the 80s, the kind that Jim Cramer is very comfy with, where the working class always loses.

Now, take a listen to how UAW president that Cramer referenced there, Sean Fain, take a listen to how he described the class warfare that has been waged against his members at a time when the automakers are back to record-breaking profitability. So what are the big three done with these staggering profits? Instead of rewarding the workers

who spent long hours wrecking their bodies on the line to make these profits possible, the big three have funneled billions into stock buyback schemes that artificially inflate the value of company shares and further enrich company executives in the top 1%. That's billions of dollars that have been robbed from the workers who made these profits possible. That's billions of dollars that weren't spent on the EV transition. So when the big three say the future is uncertain

and that the EV transition is expensive, remember that they've made a quarter of a trillion in North American profits over the last decade and have poured billions of it into special dividends, stock buybacks, and supersized executive compensation. Our message going into bargaining is clear. Record profits mean record contracts. But it is not just lacking wages, multi-tier compensation, and degraded benefits that has

UAW members up at arms. They see this current contract negotiation as existential because of something that Sean Fain referenced there, the EV transition. Now, the union does not oppose the transition to electric vehicles. They just oppose using that transition as an excuse to screw workers, which of course is exactly what the automakers are doing, with, I might add, an assist from the Biden administration. Many of the new EV battery plants are joint partnerships with foreign companies that are not subject to UAW contracts. These new plants are also concentrated in southern states in environments that are more hostile to unionization. And already the union has plenty of examples to point to where lower-paid EV jobs are replacing higher-paid gas-powered vehicle jobs. Lordstown, Ohio is a perfect example here. GM closed their

storied plants in the town only to reopen an EV battery joint venture where workers make half of what the old labor force was earning. And UAW isn't just waging war with the automakers over the state of affairs, but also with the Biden administration. After all, no surprise that giant corporate multinationals would do everything they can to cheat labor. Biden, hey, he's supposed to be the most pro-union president ever. And yet his EV incentives did not include necessary requirements that the jobs created be union or even match the pay and benefit rates of existing auto manufacturing jobs. In fact, bucking the trend of many other unions which have fallen in line behind Biden's reelect, Fain and the UAW pointedly refused to

endorse the president. They instead issued a scathing rebuke of the no-strings-attached dollars, slamming them for, quote, funding a race to the bottom and facilitating corporate greed. Everything is really at stake for workers in the auto industry right now, and there are huge implications overall for the dying American middle class. These workers join the ranks of hundreds of thousands of others who are using this time of fat profits and tight labor markets to try to strike a better deal and claw back some portion of what workers have lost out to capital over the past four years. And I have to tell you, pretty impressed with the audacity of the autoworkers' asks. They are pushing for a 20% pay hike now with additional 5% increases until the

pay increase reaches 40%, number which, by the way, consistent with the pay hikes that the big three CEOs have garnered over just the past several years. They're also asking for a right to strike over plant closures and for automakers to fund a program that would keep workers employed if those automakers decide to close a plant. They're demanding that EV workers get the same deal as non-EV workers, and they're making some real demands for work-life balance, including shorter work weeks and more paid time off. Contrast that with the posture of the labor movement since the 90s, where they were constantly on the back foot, constantly playing defense, trying to keep the concessions from cutting too deep. Now we got new leadership at the Teamsters, which just won quite a bit for their members in a tentative deal that their members are now voting on. 323,000 workers across the country have already

gone out on strike this year, making it one of the biggest years for strikes since the year 2000. Among those workers, of course, are the writers and actors who are fighting their own existential battle to have a stake in the future of that industry. And this all comes at a time when public support for unions has skyrocketed across party lines, forming a new national consensus, bipartisan consensus,

in favor of workers against capital. It is truly a new day. So yeah, I guess maybe Jim Cramer is right to be a little trembling over the class war. Because for the first time in my life, his side of the class war could actually lose. And this is the next big fight. September is the deadline for these contract negotiations. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com.

All right, so how are we looking at? Well, in the beginning, when the United States and the West threw their economic might against Russia, there was a universal narrative, one that I, too, at least kind of thought, man, the Russian economy is screwed. There really was no turning back. There simply seemed no way that Russia, a declining power with little resources other than minerals and oil, could hang on without some serious problem. That was based upon all of our general understanding of the global economy, one in which the global economy is backstopped by the U.S. dollar and U.S. power, one which the U.S. and the West control to the global financial system, where if one is cut off, it becomes

incredibly difficult to conduct commerce. Almost immediately, however, cracks began to show. It turned out the rest of the world didn't really agree with our view of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, or even if they did, they didn't care nearly enough to stop buying oil from Putin, especially when there was a good deal to be had. And slowly, something even more frightening is becoming clear. What if the United States isn't nearly as powerful as we once thought? What if we don't really have control over the global financial system as we wanted? And what if instead, we have accelerated the development of multipolarity and a world where

the US does not nearly have as much say in the affairs of the world? It's difficult 18 months later not to come to that conclusion, as we have a look at the middling effects that US sanctions have had on the Russian economy. Just last week came a stunning announcement from the IMF, the International Monetary Fund. The Russian economy is going to grow this year by 1.5%. How can an economy so cut off from the West, so attacked, not only survive, but grow? The answer is important for us to understand. It tells a story of how the rest of the world is really not with us on Ukraine. The first and most important to that story is oil.

The West and the US have cut themselves off. But as I said earlier, doesn't mean the rest of the world is. And in fact, despite efforts by the European Union and the US to cap the price on Russian crude oil, the price is high enough at a discount that Russia has been able to facilitate enough money into its economy and fund its war machine. The Wall Street Journal even says that the current global position is especially advantageous to Russia. The countries most likely to depart from the Western Ukraine consensus are India, China, and other rapidly growing industrialized Asian countries. These Asian countries comprise almost three quarters of all global economic growth this year. They are happily consuming Russian oil at a steep discount, fueling their industrial economies.

Without Asian cooperation, Western sanctions have found themselves able only to slightly dent Russian revenues instead of cripple them as they once thought. This story, of course, has been told here many times now and looked at deeply. But the other question, the question of Russian economic resilience, is equally piercing in its indictment of Western sanctions. U.S. and Western bans on exports to Russia, especially if anything thought to be able to former Soviet socialist republics, Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan. By importing the exact same things through third parties, they quickly have been able to import materials they need for precision guided weaponry, which in recent months has been bombarding Ukraine on a near daily basis. Even deeper than that, though, it's a profound view into what the real strength of an economy is, what matters when the chips are down. Despite being nearly cut off from the entire Western-led financial system, Russia has turned to its hard assets that it has at its disposal

and is putting oil revenue to the most direct use, pumping it right back into the economy, spending massively on industrial production to continue the war effort. Russian government spending is now 14% of the entire country's GDP, with an explosion of weapons and ammunition spending and of computers, electronics, optical outputs. The government has effectively created a government stimulus by orienting its spending around the war effort, with an increase in material being sent to the front line and easing the effect of any of the war at home. On the elite front, sanctions too have clearly failed. One of the efforts by the West was to wage economic war on Russian oligarchs and billionaires, with two hopes. One, seize the assets, create economic problems inside Russia. The other,

fuel rebellion against Putin, encourage people to, create economic problems inside Russia. The other, fuel rebellion against Putin, encourage people to speak out and save their finances. Almost no high-profile oligarchs, however, have spoken out, save for that very weird Progozhin coup that lasted 48 hours. Instead, something else entirely has occurred. Many oligarchs now seem entirely cut off from their finances in the West, have found themselves actually more dependent on Putin than ever before. They can't speak out because it means absolute financial destruction at home. And as long as they and their families are inside Russia, they more or less have less agency than they once did when they simply relied on him, but also were able to hobnob

with the Western financial elite. And all of this is a familiar story, the law of unintended consequences, and worse, a reveal of what power the US has in real terms. We have discovered our ability to compel another nation to do what we want in financial terms actually didn't work. And worse, we have forced our actual strategic partners in Asia to make a choice between their own economies

and a moral war we're waging, which does not affect our actual material interests. The end result of this will be a study by Beijing. How do you sanction proof your entire economy? And an eye opening across South America and Asia. They have much more autonomy than they once thought without being touched by US public opinion. The net result is one which nobody wanted. The West and the US are weaker. Ukraine is under siege, embroiled in a devastating war of attrition. The Kremlin has zero signs of stopping. If that's not the definition of failure, I'm not sure what is. I mean, everybody predicted otherwise.

They not only survived, IMF says they're going to grow, and it's a real lesson too, you know. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, guys, very excited to be joined by the former press secretary for Dr. Jill Biden and someone I've known for quite a while, Michael LaRosa. Welcome. Great to have you. Thank you for having me. Good to see you, Michael. We wanted to have you on because you're not, you know, a totally uncritical, you know, Biden fan, but you do support him for reelection.

And so we wanted to hear you strongly make the case. So first question I have for you is just what grade do you give him as president so far? Well, first of all, I want to say that I'm a huge Biden fan. I have, you know, sometimes I take issue with sort of the, you know, strategies around him that are pursued. But I love all those guys. And, you know, we, you know, winning an election like that in 2020 against an incumbent and and being an underdog basically in a primary, you go through a lot with people. And certainly me and the first lady traveled together for, you know, three years. And so I have a lot of affection and for the family me and the first lady traveled together for three years. And so I have a lot of affection for the family personally and the president personally.

Good to know. But I would also say that as president, judging by any historic measure, you might disagree with what he has done. But he has been the most effective president I think we've had since LBJ in terms of the amount of legislation he was able to get done with a Democratic Congress with a small majority, the same majority that exists now. He was able to do more than most presidents do in eight years, and he did it basically in two and a half. So from that perspective, from the scoreboard perspective, he gets an A++. You couldn't ask for more to be done. You may not disagree with all of it, but he's gotten a lot done.

And a lot of it came from like wish lists for Democrats that they've been wanting to get done for decades. So Michael, what is your theory of the case for what went wrong then? Let's go and put this up there on the screen. We've got the right track, wrong track number. Right direction, 25%. Wrong direction, 65%. LBJ famously actually did very well on that number up until a little thing called Vietnam.

So Biden doesn't have, or at least yet, anything like that on the horizon. How do you explain that number right there? This isn't just Republicans and Democrats. This is the entire country. Yeah. So Mario Cuomo once said you campaign in poetry and you govern in prose. Governing is a lot unpopular, especially with Democrats, because Democrats can be, you know, as a party, sometimes very fraught in terms of issues and how they feel about compromise.

And so the president has had to navigate a lot of that, a lot of different internal dynamics in the party. But he's kind of where a lot of incumbents are at this stage. There's a lot of fatigue with incumbents by this point. And I think that's why you're seeing, you know, there's some minimal primary challenge. There's some Democratic lack of enthusiasm. But that's all fairly standard operating procedure at this point in any administration. Well, that's not necessarily true. So let's put this, the second one, Gallup, we have there, that's the overall approval rating that shows 40.7%. That's actually the second lowest at this time in history, except for Jimmy Carter. So many incompetents were actually doing quite better than that, including Barack Obama when he was running for president, even Donald Trump actually was

beating that number. So how do you explain that? Whenever he's only second, really, to Jimmy Carter? Well, I would explain it in terms of electoral politics. I mean, both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton got slaughtered in their midterms. This president and all the candidates that were running the last cycle ran on this president's record. And we had the most historic midterm as a party, and he had the most historic midterm as an incumbent president in, I think, since 1932. So the White House feels pretty validated about the direction they're going in. I wouldn't expect to see many changes because that, you know, this red wave that everybody had been talking about just never, never, never materialized. And the president took a lot of

credit for that, and they should. But how much of that is about the Biden record and Biden accomplishments and how much of that is about Dobbs, the returning of Roe versus Wade? How much of that is about, you know, psychotic Republican candidates, frankly, who were, you know, very extreme and really out of touch and fixated on election conspiracies, et cetera. How much of it was really a referendum on those pieces versus anything that Joe Biden had done? Well, I can't get the nuance past you, so I won't even try to spin. Look, I think even in the states where the Democrats won, where they had tough races, the Democratic candidates were more popular than President Biden. That's just a fact. But they were also more likable and more popular than their Republican

opponents. So candidate quality was a big issue for sure. And then there's always unforeseen events that, that's why I don't think every election can be really determined by any one-size-fits approach. And I think unforeseen events affect things all the time. I think we saw that with Obamacare, and we saw that with a couple of other things, like 9-11 affected that midterm election. And I think the Dobbs case absolutely energized Democrats to turn out in places that we didn't even expect. So let me talk to you a little bit about Bidenomics, because, you know, there's been an effort from the administration to sell their economic record. They're saying, look, unemployment is low. We've created a lot of jobs. But in a lot of ways,

the American people aren't feeling it. And certainly, you know, we just showed you approval rating. We showed you right track, wrong track. But even on measures of basic economic security, let's go ahead and put this next graphic up on the screen. You've got the percent of Americans struggling to pay their bills continues to go up. You also have increases in the percent of Americans without enough to eat. And you know Michael I want to say like some of the things that the this president did at the beginning of the administration in particular I was frankly kind of surprised by and I think were more progressive and were more aggressive than was reflected in his Senate career. You know the stimulus checks, the child tax credit, even his attempts to reduce student loan debt even though they've

gotten stymied by the Supreme Court, and we could have a debate about whether he could fight more and how he could do that differently, et cetera. But a lot of those pieces I thought were really encouraging. But the story of this administration since then has been basically those programs getting slowly stripped back. And things that could have had more of a permanent impact, like the $15 minimum wage, for example, he's failed to get through. During the campaign trail, he used to talk about, you know, we're going to do a public option in terms of expanding healthcare. I never hear anything about healthcare anymore. He's supposed to be the most pro-union president

in history, yet any thought of passing the PRO Act or using his executive power to cancel contracts of union busters, that's fallen by the wayside. And so you have this reality of Americans who started off doing okay under the Biden administration and have slowly had these sort of, you know, pandemic era supports pulled from them where their bank accounts are being drained and they're struggling to pay their bills. And so now they're saying, listen, I'm in a tough spot here and inflation hasn't really helped me. So how do you square a message from the president that's trying to say, hey, the economy is great,

and a reality that's being experienced by the American people that are saying, not in my household? Yeah, well, there's no question Americans have to feel that in order to lend their support to the president. They have to start feeling the economic gains. Now, there was a New York Times article out, I think, or a new New York Times CNN poll out a couple days ago, and it said that actually the standard of living most people feel, well, I think, our new New York Times Sienna poll out a couple of days ago. And it said that actually the standard of living, most people feel, I'm sorry, not most people, but the standard of living and the cost of consumer goods have actually, I'm sorry, the cost of goods has come down. Wages have gone up, are going up. Inflation is cooling. And the standard of living, people said they were worse off a year ago. It dropped about 10 points from the last year. So there's improvement. I think

there is improvement in people's lives. But you're right. There's a lot. I mean, and that's why he's running for reelection, right? We have to get the child tax credit permanent. We have more to do on climate investment. We have more to do on an assault weapons ban, on codifying Roe. There's a lot to be done. To be honest with you, though, I don't really hear that pitch much. What I hear from his team is, number one, I found it very revealing. I brought this up like a million times on the show. But after Emmanuel Macron won in France, Ron Klain is like, oh, interesting. He won with 30 percent approval rating. Maybe that could be a model for us. That's number one. Number two, I hear here's the list of things we did accomplish. And number three, I hear Trump is bad, which no disagreement there. I literally haven't heard a single agenda item for what would be accomplished in a second term

Isn't that it? You know, shouldn't he be making an affirmative case? That's not just about hey the Republicans suck and Donald Trump is crazy Well, there be some sort of like here's the plan. Here's what we're gonna do in the second term. I haven't heard that Well, okay. Let me unpack a little bit. First of all, I think during a reelection I think part of the first thing incumbents need to do, and Barack Obama did this in May of 2011, George Bush did it in March of 2004. Once they had their opponent, they were immediately ready to make their opponent unacceptable to the American people. And that is going to be a very big part of the re-election, as it is for every re-election. But that's not to say that there is an affirmative case to be made. I agree with you that with all the legislative success he has had and the accomplishments

and 300 bipartisan pieces of legislation, whatever, the legislative scoreboard doesn't always translate into voting behavior. There is more, right? There is performance. There's candidate quality. There is how you appear in front of the voters. The performance aspect of politics. There's a lot more that I think they're going to have to do

because the numbers are where they are and they have to get them up. But you're right. There's a lot of things on the progressive agenda that need to be talked about. And he's going to have to address that as well. Michael, the majority of Democrats, even the majority of the American people, think that Biden is too old to be president. You served either with him or around him for several years. I mean, what case can you make,

at least, on that front? I mean, it's very troubling and in some cases, you know, disheartening and sad kind of to see his overall public performance. This is a man that we've all seen on our television screens, me before I was even basically since I was alive. So it's not like we could deny that things are a little bit different really on that front. He would be the oldest president in modern American history and ever actually in American history. Should he be reelected up until the day that he served? I mean, should Americans feel OK that he's up to the job? I'm putting this in the nicest way possible. I know you are. And the short answer is yes. But I remember back in the 90s when

the Democrat retort to Bill Clinton was, you know what? He's creating 22 million jobs. The tech sector is booming. The economy has, we have record surpluses. He's done a fantastic job as president. Who cares what he does in his personal life, right? It's almost the same argument. Yes, he's 80. You can't escape it. He's going to be the oldest. He is the oldest president and he is going to be the oldest president. But you know what? I would take 13 million jobs created in two years plus. Remember, think about what this 78, 80-year-old did. He walked into a crisis of huge proportion,

unlike we've ever seen in our lifetime, since in a century. Not only did he, you know, force a huge spending package to stimulate the economy through Congress, but he administered the most successful vaccination program in history. And we can't forget where we were when he came in and where we are now. Schools were closed. Businesses were closed. The economy was feeling a lot of pain. And he's reversed a lot of that and actually created more jobs than at pre-pandemic levels. And he did that as he's 80-year-old, not to mention the huge wish list or laundry list I could run through that would take way too much time.

But I think what people are getting at is like we're talking about on a personal level. On a personal level. So, like, you – listen, I mean, there's a big narrative out there. A lot of people wonder, like, is this person actually up for the job? Does he get to the Oval until what, like 9 a.m.? I mean, Jen Psaki and all these people are like he's the most – Does anything I have said so far give you pause to whether he's up for the job. Well, no, it's more so like I'm not you know It's not I'm not a novice to Washington. I know that advisors can run a lot of things

A lot of people think that he's effectively like a prop. No, that's not true. Okay, tell it A lot of comfort. Fair. They're the same age as him. But, like, an age, as I've said before in public, age is a fair question. It was for Ronald Reagan. He doesn't get a—he was 60. You're right. But it was still an issue. Think about, I mean, people have selective memories in Washington, but, like, it was a huge issue when Bob Dole was running.

But my advice to them has always been to shine a light on your weaknesses. That's where he is weak. People perceive him as old. Be self-deprecating about it. There's nothing else you can do. He says watch him. Watch what he does. And he's been, like I said, probably the most successful president we've had since LBJ in terms of the amount of things he's been able to get done at

his age. So I would take the 80-year-old over, you know, Trumpnomics or DeSantis culture wars any day. Okay. So last question for you. Sure. Just one more? Just one more. We'll have you back. Yeah. This is just the first of many conversations. What advice would you offer or what critique do you have of either the Biden administration or the way that they're prosecuting the campaign thus far? Well, I think the campaign is sort of engaging in a really young stage right now. It's not fully developed, but, um, I think it's, it's going fine at the moment. I think that when there is a foil to run against you are gonna see juices

and energy around Democrats like They're gonna get excited. They're gonna get psyched because it's gonna be a choice between two people My biggest advice and this has always been my advice is That we live in a, we still, whether we like it or not, we are playing by, at least the legacy media still plays by Trump's rules. What does that mean? That means that he is able to be America's assignment editor and he's able to

drive a lot of the coverage. He can spend all of his money on his legal bills. Sure, go ahead and spend it. He's not effective as a fundraiser. He's not effective as an organizer. He's effective at owning free media. Well, it's hard to avoid when, you know, I mean, his indictments are historic. Well, he's the former president. But yes, it is. I get it.

He floods the zone and is able to own the airwaves. And they have to compete with that. And part of that is embracing the way Trump kind of embraces the media, treats them as an opportunity, not as a hazard or threat. And I think if you talk to reporters who cover the White House daily, there are severe levels of distrust. And you know what? There's no reason to be. Generally speaking, the president likes the press, but he should engage them more. And they should build constructive relationships that earn them goodwill and not lose them the benefit of the doubt. And I think if you talk to a lot of reporters, sadly, I think that's been going on. And I would say that the president should engage more with the media,

not less. Well, we agree. We would be happy to host him here. I've been trying. You should invite him. You should call the White House press office and invite him on. It's not like it hasn't happened. You can put in a word for us. Michael, thank you. It's nice to see you. I hope you'll come back and do this again. Anytime. We'd love to have you. it's not like it hasn't happened you can put in a word for us yeah Michael thank you of course it's nice to see you thanks Michael yeah of course I hope you'll come back

anytime we'd love to have you yeah alright we'll see you guys later over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country

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