Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/1/23: Partisan Hate Reaches New Highs, Almost Half American Homes Owned By Non Primary Resident, Millionaires Claim Financial Insecurity, Spanish Soccer Kiss Controversy, Late Night Hosts Start Podcast

Episode Date: September 1, 2023

This week the Breaking Points team looks at Partisan hatred reaching all time highs and how we got here, a report showing less than 60% of American homes are owned by someone living in them, millionaires claiming they too feel financially insecure, Counterpoints looks at the controversial kiss from a Spanish Soccer chief, and the Late Night hosts have formed a new podcast during the strike called "Strike Force Five".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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Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Some fascinating new data from Pew Research and illustrated by the Wall Street Journal.

Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Why tribalism took over our politics. The focus of the piece really comes down to some Pew data about the share of those in each party who view the other party very unfavorably and part of how everything has really changed from the 90s in terms of division and how even if we felt divided at that time, it's really child's play to where we are right now. Let's put this up there on the screen, this image, which is very important. What you can see is that the share of those in each party who view the other very unfavorably are at all-time highs in both parties. So in 1994, the share of those who saw the other side as very unfavorably was 21% for Republicans,

17% for Democrats. There was a spike actually in the late 90s, largely during the impeachment scandal, where the Democrats were pretty high, but nowhere even close to where we are right now. You can see that 2008 was actually a major jump off point for both parties, where the share began to rise and pretty much equalized around 40%. And we now stand at the most divided period, really, of all time, where 62% of Republicans say that they view the other party very unfavorably and 54% of Democrats. Funnily enough, when Obama was president,

the Republican vote was higher. When Trump was president, the Democratic one was higher. Depending on who that is, it's relatively marginal. But to have an outright majority of both people say that they view the others unfavorably is actually crazy because it leads to a complete negative valence of all politics in which everyone is voting, or the vast majority of people are voting, are voting against something. They're voting explicitly to prevent, like you talked about in our show. You were saying the Biden people, they're not running on like any new abortion consensus. They're just like, no, no, no, we'll go back to the old one. We just want to stop them

from doing something that you don't like. It's not going to be a powerful message. Even in terms of the Trumpian message, it's not, you're not trying to build anything. Everything they're running against is like, we're going to reverse everything bad that we think that Biden did. That's it. We're not going to build anything new. We're just going to go back. And so in both of those visions, it appeals to this particular part of the electorate. And I think, though, that at the same time, we should remember these are partisan people. Hundreds of millions of people are actually left out of this conversation. People are like, I'm self-exiting this entire system. I don't belong here. I think we speak to some of those people. But the people who are politically activated, there's no question about where they stand politically. There's a lot of social trends that I think have led to this outcome. I mean, one of them is like the self-sorting that has occurred, even down to the like neighborhood by neighborhood and block by block level, where people just making choices about where they want to live, whether they're, you know, famously going to be closer to a Cracker Barrel or a Whole Foods, and then just inadvertently surround themselves with people who share

all of their political views, beliefs, and partisan affiliations. And so if you're coming into less contact with people who are of the other party, it becomes easier to demonize them. That's number one. Because these numbers we're talking about, we're not talking about like Democrats hate Republican elites. They're talking about like Democrats hate Republicans and Republicans hate Democrats, no matter whether they are elite, a regular person,

whatever. And so it becomes much easier to demonize, you know, if you're not coming in direct contact with people who have a different political view than you. That's number one. Number two, you have a media ecosystem that is all about convincing Democrats that they should hate Republicans and convincing Republicans they should hate Democrats. And so if you're a partisan, you may well be susceptible to that. You have obviously like the rise of social media, and I don't think it's an accident that some of this really kicks off, really jumpstarts in the 2010s, 2012, around that time when smartphones become massively widely available and adopted. And when you also have social media driven by algorithms where it really, again, reinforces this desire for people to find their tribe online and rep as hard as they possibly can for that tribe because that's what gets them ahead in terms of the social media algorithms. But then that Wall Street Journal piece also points to a lot of social science research

about just the way that our brains work. That's pretty interesting. So they say that it shows our need for collective belonging is forceful enough to reshape how we view facts and affect our voting decisions when our group is threatened, we rise to its defense. So it makes sense that in a different time, you know, 30 years ago, when people were living in more mixed enclaves, where you had a lot more political views and ideologies, that if you're and you're not like forming your identity online, your sense of belonging comes from your whole community, which is a variety of political beliefs. The fact that you used to have higher union density, same thing. You're going to have a

lot of different ideologies represented within that union hall environment. And so your sense of belonging comes not from you being a Republican or you being a Democrat, but being part of this group. As people increasingly identify as whatever their partisan affiliation is, then you're going to have more of the belonging coming from just repping as hard as you can for that group and hating the other group. They specifically talk about this 2013 study saga that's really interesting where they asked people to solve a math problem that had like a political valence to it. It was about concealed carry bans and whether or not they reduced crime rates. And if you were a political partisan and the correct math would lead you to define your own ideology, even people who were really good at math would get the problem wrong because they just couldn't confront that this data went against the thing that they believed. So it's very,

it's a very sort of hardwired human thing to want to fit in and want to belong. And then I know I've been going on. The last thing I'll say is like Trump made so much politics so central to everything and it really kind of forced everybody to pick which team they're on that. I think that's a big part of this phenomenon. Why one of the worst things that I think Trump has done to our politics. Yeah, I don't know. I don't see a lot that I disagree with there. I mean, especially whenever you're looking at the shares of identification and the way that people feel really about the entire political system, the lack of faith in institutions that need to be tribal, even, you know, 100 years ago or so, even though people were tribal and they were still very divided,

they were just as divided as they were today. They still had transnational institutions, things like religion, church, or whatever that sparked both national identity in some ways that went cross-brown-g, that they were able to collectively kind of think about. We don't really have a lot of that, or even close to what those people had at that time, which is why I think that we're probably even more divided than you have the internet, which rewards division. So there's a lot going on today, and I think this graph actually illustrates a lot of,

like, at a core level, what's wrong with the country right now. Yeah, and why our politics feel different than they felt in previous years. They are, yeah. Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. So, fascinating stuff. There's some troubling new data

about homeownership in America regarding whether the primary resident actually owns their house or not and the ownership rates and making it unattainable and also raising the question of who does own these houses. So let's put this up there on the screen. This is very interesting. of the overall housing stock, which is owned by the actual primary resident, which has been majorly declining since 2004, but has taken such a massive hit in 2023. So you can go back and look. In 2007, the primary resident was about 67% of those people owned the house that they were living in.

In 2023, that has now dropped to below 60% for the first time in the 2000s. And the reason why that that really matters is it does and shows you that the interest rate in particular have made it so unattainable for people to be able to buy their homes that you are creating a mass rentier class. I mean, remember, a 12% drop is millions of people who are unable to own their overall primary residence and are at the mercy of their landlord. And then the question is, like, who are these landlords? A lot of them are boomer homeowners who have held the properties now for a long time. They're not going to sell them because the interest rates are so high that they won't want to buy anything else. And they're just going to sit there and continue to jack up

rents, especially because the overall competition for rent is going to continue to come up. So this is actually one of the most important things that you can look at. One of the most backward stats in any developed economy is if you have the majority of people renting versus the majority of people actually owning the house that they are living in. And backsliding on that away from two-thirds, nearing one-half is a really dangerous marker. Well, and you can see, let's actually put it back up on the screen there just so I can make one point about this. You can see between 2022 and 2023, there's been a decline for a while, but there is a huge drop off in a single year. So you ask yourself, what has changed? And I think the very clear answer is Fed policy, interest rates.

The fact that mortgages are so wildly unaffordable at a time when housing prices have not really come down from the peak of their height. So prices are still extremely high. And then you add on top of that extremely high mortgage rates. It makes it impossible for regular people to be able to buy a house. So guess who swoops in and takes advantage of that situation? Who doesn't necessarily have to worry about mortgage rates? Permanent capital with plenty of cash comes up, comes in and buys up existing housing stock and pushes the country even closer to their dream of basically being America's landlords, which is something that

we have talked about and covered here extensively. This is a disaster on a variety of levels. Number one, there's a real argument to be made that at this point in America, the biggest class divide is between people who are homeowners and people who are not. Because with wages failing to keep up with inflation and stagnating over decades, the best way to actually build wealth in America is to own a home. And home prices have continued to go up and up and up. Long before we were having this conversation about inflation, home prices were rapidly escalating and wildly more unaffordable than they were in previous decades. So if you own a home, that's great for you.

You're benefiting from that increase in wealth. For everybody who is shut down of that, it's obviously a disaster and keeps you in this incredibly precarious position. The more that you have permanent capital coming in and commodifying the entire housing market, the more they also control the market and can jack up rents. Many of these companies use algorithms to set the rents at their properties. And they've calculated they'll actually be a little more profitable if they set the rents beyond what the market can really bear and leave some units vacant just to extract that extra profit out of the residents that they do secure. So it's a disaster on a whole lot of levels. And just on a deeper level, Sagar, I think it just really reflects how our entire society, our entire economy, like really key parts of just like our humanity have been commodified. You know,

housing is no longer really seen as just like this is a place for people to live and shelter and have their family. No, this has got to be a moneymaking venture that's good for somebody's bottom line that they can gobble up and package together and make as much money as they possibly can and squeeze every possible penny over it. And so it's a real disaster for a lot of people. What's interesting to me, too, is looking at some data about who's actually purchasing these homes. It's not just permanent capital. They definitely bought a lot in 2021 and 2022. A lot of them are large and medium-sized investors who own between 10 and 100 homes or 100 to 1,000 homes. These are like the car dealer guy, the guy who's got millions of dollars in cash flowing off every year.

He's got to throw it somewhere, might as well throw it. That's how you become like a local real estate baron. These guys are purchasing homes like nobody's business. And small investors as well who are taking advantage of that. They're going to eat the interest rate. Maybe they'll refinance at some point later on. But the point really that comes through in all of this is that if it's not the primary homeowner, somebody somewhere is trying to make money, a dollar off of you. It could be the big guy. It could be the small guy. But it's better off whenever you're

the one who's actually building the equity. And when you have such a massive shrink in that number in just a one-year period, that is such a shock to the overall housing market. It's just going to change everything. So look, the more that we look and the more that we think about this, it could be like, if you get that number to below 50% or down to 40%, that's like societal, that's a complete societal change from where we've been for the last 75 years. That's right, and that's the direction we're headed in. That is. Very interesting report from CNBC on how even wealthy Americans feel about their financial status. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. Really curious to get Sagar's take on this.

I want to hear what you guys think about this. So their headline is, even millionaires are feeling financially insecure, according to this new report. Let me read you a little bit of this so you get the details. Even doctors, lawyers, and other highly paid professionals, also referred to as the, quote, regular rich, who benefit from stable jobs, home ownership, and a well-padded retirement savings account, said they do not feel well off at all. Some even said they feel poor. That's according to a recent survey conducted by Bloomberg. Of those making more than $175K a year, or roughly the top 10% of tax filers, one quarter said they were either very poor, poor, or getting by but things are tight. Even a share of those making more than a half a million dollars and more than a million dollars said the same, despite their high net worth. Less than half of all millionaires, 44%,

said they felt very comfortable. In fact, only 12% of Americans and just 29% of millionaires consider themselves wealthy. Sagar, your thoughts? This is all keeping up with the Joneses' behavior, and doctors are the absolute worst. So look, if you make $175K a year, like they said, you're in the top quarter. But all of this is driven by comparing yourself to others. So the $175K guy is comparing himself to the $500K guy who's comparing himself to the millionaire. The millionaire is comparing themselves to the decamillionaire, the decamillionaire to the centimillionaire, the centimillionaire to the billionaire, and then the singular billionaire to the hundred billionaire. And each one of those people feels comparatively poor and is to those individual people, but refuses to look at their overall actual place in life. I think that the keeping up with the Joneses here is the biggest problem. I mean, it becomes like intra-elite

competition, like doctors, for example. Doctors are, you know, they'll load themselves up with like two boats, two houses, like a Mercedes. And they're like, oh, I barely feel like I'm making it on half a million. Yeah, that's why. Because you actually kind of are. You've racked yourself up with amount of debt to sustain that lifestyle comfortably. You'd actually probably have to pull in like a million, a million five per year. So anyway, I think a lot of this is a comparative problem. And it's also, they even point to this, why credit card debt is so high. Is it even very high earners are racking up crazy amounts of credit card debt.

I see this all the time, especially with a lot of my friends who are lawyers in particular. And I think the reason why is they suffered so much, but not only through law school, but really. They hate their jobs. They're miserable. They're like, at least I should have like a boat and a nice house. Not even the boat. I'm talking about like going on crazy trips and going $2,000 a night in a Miami hotel or something like that or whatever, a club. I mean, all these things.

You know, it's one of those where it sounds very cliche, but you're like, that's not going to fix your life. You know, like spending things. But, you know, I'm not going to sit there and lecture them in the moment. It's just one of those where it's clear, I think, where a lot of this comes from. Some of them are trying to spend their ways out of emotional problems. But I think a lot of it is also just built on. I mean, even here where we live, Crystal, you know, a million. If you know somebody makes $175K a year who lives in downtown Washington, D.C., you can't afford anything.

You can't buy a house. You can barely afford. There's no way you'd be able to rent the nicest apartment in the town. Right. You could rent like the middle class. So to them, like, yeah, you do feel poor because compared to the other people around you, you kind of are. But if you were to think about it on a bigger scale, you're not at all. Right. I mean, there's so much going on here, actually, because I was thinking about we saw that report in California, the whole state. Right. I mean, there's so much going on here, actually, because I was thinking about we saw that report in California, the whole state, right, not just in San Francisco or whatever, the whole state of California, you have to earn $209,000 a year to qualify for a typical

mortgage. And that's if you have the 20% that you can put down on a house. Okay. So in certain parts of the country, if you're making 200k, if you making $150K, you would look at this and you would be like, that's a fantastic salary. You could live really well. And yeah, you're going to feel like from my vision of where my class status is and what I think I should be able to afford and what I'm actually able to afford. These are wildly different. You know, these are wildly different things. And then that does lead to like, OK, well, let me just take on the debt to live the life that I think that my station merits. Right. I think there's also a lot of because we have such wide and high inequality where there's, you know, upper middle class and wealthy people. And then there's, you know, a working class that's really struggling because there's such a gulf. And basically the middle class has just the quote unquote regular rich even about their kids not being able to hold on to that station. on by their fingernails to the status that I'm at, because God forbid they fall out of this more like elite higher class status that we've been able to achieve. So I think that's part of it

as well. But, you know, to one thing that I've been thinking about recently is you had a bunch of this is going to seem like a real aside, but I'll get to how this connects in a minute. You've had a bunch of kind of just like regular standard issue Democrats who were elected in these Midwestern states in Minnesota, Illinois, and Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. And typically, and they were elected largely in this new Democratic coalition that's like upper class liberals, right? Typically, when this has happened, like when this happened in Virginia, there was zero effort to focus on economics when you win based on this coalition ends up all being like basically cultural signifier issues. However, in these states, there actually has been a push on economics in Minnesota in particular, even though the coalition that elected that governor there and Tim Walz was this sort of like affluent, upper middle class, college educated constituency. They focused on, you know, free school lunches. They've actually focused on unions and collective bargaining.

They've actually focused on, I mean, they've done some cultural stuff as well, but there's been a major focus on economics that has surprised me. And I have, I'm sort of workshopping a theory that part of that is because this anxiety, this like economic anxiety has really creeped up the economic ladder, where even if you are a college educated person, especially if you're a young college educated person, just coming out, looking at housing prices, imagining how you're ever going to achieve this, like, you know, stable middle class life, it seems impossible. And so the priorities of that coalition may have shifted over the past number of years as housing and these things have become

really unattainable, even for people who have that college educated stamp of approval credential in their back pocket. So I think that might be part of why some of the policies in these states have been better than, frankly, what I expected with these standard-issue Democrats elected by an affluent, college-educated liberal base. Yeah, it's possible. I don't know. I think a lot of it is just more around their own, like you said, class anxiety. Now, it's not a bad thing if it goes down to everybody else, like we will see. But for example, Biden being like, I'm not going to raise taxes on anyone over a quarter, $250,000. And you're like, well, Obama said he wouldn't on anyone, or sorry, on anyone over $400,000. Obama said 250. So what happened? Where did that come in? It's like, oh, well, all those people have turned into Democrats. That's the reason why.

Yeah, well, they didn't really end up raising taxes on anybody. Well, they didn't end up, yeah. At the end of the day, they didn't actually end up taxing. As much as I would like them to raise taxes on the wealthy, they didn't do a lot of that. But we're ruling out actually a huge portion of the taxpayer funded base. Whenever we're talking about 250 to 400, that's actually millions of people. Well, the change in that is largely because of exactly what we were talking about, the change in the Democratic coalition. So I think it's one of those where they will only do it as long as it affects them. But there are actually

a lot of things, though, that are going to affect the lives of somebody between the 175 to 200 to 400 range that if you really wanted to fix a lot, it's going to come to them. And when things do come

for them and some of their lifestyle, they're keeping up with the Jones behavior and all of that. Will their priorities stay the same? I don't know. That's a big question. Yeah, well, I see it even in like the national support for unions, which is at almost historic highs, you know, and really is cross-partisan and cross, you know, strongest certainly among the working class, but even has, you know, become more cross class. And so I, of course, if you're making 250 K, no matter where you live in the country, you're doing way better than the overwhelming majority of Americans. And like, let's be clear about it. You know, I'm not shedding a

tear for you, but especially with housing costs, I think it has made them feel much more precarious than they previously did with education costs too and health care costs. I mean, all these like core middle class items that are so essential to having just like the basics of the American dream have become so wildly expensive that even people who are making really good salaries are still feeling like anxious about whether they're going to be able to do this and whether they're going to be able to do this and whether they're going to be able to protect it for their kids. So anyway, interesting look at class anxiety and how it is spreading.

Very much. We'll see you guys later. All right, so the Spain women's soccer football team won the Women's World Cup and now the head of the Spanish Football Federation, his name is Luis Rubiales, has found himself in a huge controversy that is not going away anytime soon. You'll know why after we play this next video. You can see him kissing one of the soccer players there on the lips.

So that's a midfielder, Jennifer Amoso. We can put the next tear sheet up on the screen. This is from CNN. Now, Rubiali said he made a mistake, but he said the kiss was consensual. The woman says she did not give her permission and felt violated. Fortunately for her, it's on camera and does not seem to be consensual at all. I mean, he's got both his hands on the back of her head. What kind of like?

He's going down the line in the video and doing this to all of the women. He's doing it after they win the World Cup. So he knows the eyes of the world literally are on him at World Cup. There's cameras everywhere. He clearly thinks that he's not doing anything wrong in the moment. Does say that he made a mistake. Now we can put the next element up on the screen here. His mom is on a hunger strike as calls have mounted for his resignation.

He's kind of making the defense that, like, listen, I made a mistake, but is it as bad as you're saying it is that I should actually resign? That's his defense. Ryan, you were recently in Spain as a tourist to Spain. I was. What do you make of this? I mean, he's trying to ride the backlash, the global backlash to the Me Too movement

and say that it's a witch hunt and I guess he's doing the boys will be boys type of thing. I'm trying to imagine in my mind if the men's Spanish team won the World Cup, him going down the line and planting big wet kisses on all the men. I suppose it's remotely within. No, it's not. I just can't get myself to imagine it. Like, this is clearly gendered. It's gross. It's like, dude, like, I mean, what are you doing?

And also this like entitlement to the job. It's like, you had a job that paid really well that put you at the top of this position. and now everybody wants you out of it. So go. That's it. Go quietly. Yeah, just go. If you want to keep the trust of the people that you're in charge of in this job, you've got to behave better. And you have to win their trust.

And you didn't. You lost it. So go. I think that's a good point, that he's lost the trust of people. Now, he gave the speech that CNN accurately characterizes as defiant. If you go watch it, defiant is really the right word for it, where he says... Is it a room full of hooting dudes, too? He says, yeah, he called the kiss, quote, spontaneous, mutual, euphoric, and with consent.

Spontaneous, mutual, euphoric, and with consent. Hell of a self-defense there. And he says he's going to, quote, fight to the end. As we mentioned earlier, his mom feels so strongly about this that she's on a hunger strike. And I don't want to actually minimize that because there are men who feel like they are bearing the brunt of the sort of collective reconsideration of sexual norms, post-sexual revolution. cases be unfairly maligned and smeared for offenses that are maybe more minor than the media scandal, that may indeed be wrong, but are sort of more minor than the media scandal makes them out to be. This video I think is really interesting because women get stuff like this more commonly than people realize. And it's from our current president of the United States. Yes, from exactly as conservatives lament and criticize him for.

And it is uncomfortable. And so the fact that it played out in front of the world, I think should be a lesson maybe to to men who grew up in a different era when this was probably still uncomfortable for women, although those women were just like incredible generations of women who put up with this and called it out but put up with it and sort of put on a brave face. And it's not to say that they should have to, but it is to say that is this the same thing as a sexual assault? I don't think so.

But is it also uncomfortable and something men shouldn't be doing? Yes. So the question of whether it rises to a resignation-worthy offense, I think Ryan comes to the point where it's like, well, you're the head of the federation, and everyone's like, dude, you blew it. Step down. consequences throughout the kind of Me Too movement is that a lot of it correlated with how much goodwill people had built up kind of previously. Like if you look back at the cases of people who kind of survived scandals and people who didn't survive scandals, in almost every case, it correlates with how much of a jerk you were to people. And then that corresponded to how much kind of benefit of the doubt you gave somebody in a murky situation. And if nobody's giving you any benefit of the doubt, and then you throw your

hands on the back of this woman's head, kiss her in front of the entire world on the lips, she says she hated it. And you've been a jerk to people and particularly to women over the years. Then people are going to be like, yeah, I'm with her because I believe it. Whereas with other people who survived allegations, they'd say, I know that's not who this person is. And even if they believe the allegation, let's not who this person is. And let's say, even if they believe the allegation, let's say they made a mistake. And so they end up coming through it in the end. And so what the reaction from so many people who know him so well tells me, even though I have no evidence, I don't know, never heard of the guy before, is that, you know, he didn't have a whole lot

of goodwill going into this right yeah i would i'd go out on a limb and say that that's probably the case and you can tell from the women's body language like they kind of lock up some of them do when you and by the way like some women don't mind this and like probably you know like are willing to just like go along get along but like they're also in this case it's not just something that happened with like a friend at a party. It's their professional implications. He has power over this woman. So she's got the eyes of the world on her. She knows that she's got rows of cameras behind her and gets sort of grabbed by this guy who has some power over her on, on national TV. She can't do what a lot of women would do, or she probably feels less able to do what a lot of women would do. Just push

him back and be like, hey man, cut it out. Or even playfully to do that. You don't want to do that to someone who has power over you. There's no incentive to do that to someone who has power over you, even though the world probably would have rallied behind her. That's not what your brain is telling you in the moment when your ability to continue on this team, doing what you love, making money, providing for yourself and potentially your family is on

the line because you could be embarrassing the studio's power over you on TV. There's no incentive to do that. So it's not just like a typical social thing either. It's a pretty inappropriate thing to do. Yeah. And don't be a jerk. And nobody has mentioned the Cuomo defense where he's like, it's just, I'm Italian. like nobody is okay. I'm Spanish Yeah, like what's the big deal? All right. Well, I didn't realize Ryan that you were nine avid football fan. No No, not really Yeah

That's why we have we both have baseballs behind us if people haven't meant that we both when when Sagar and crystal were telling us What's a stock on the, both of us independently without talking to each other behind a baseball. I played soccer in high school and never really liked it that much. I love soccer. I did solve the Catalan independence issue when I was in Spain. Really? Do they know that? Do the Catalans know that? They don't know it yet. Here, I'll tell you how I solved it. Okay.

Also, this is an incredible story. Yes. And we're over eight minutes, but I'll tell it anyway I solved it. Okay. Also, this is an incredible story. Yes. And we're over eight minutes, but I'll tell it anyway. We don't care. So the Spanish elections like a month ago or whatever, everybody expected the right wing was going to win. They fell just short, 48% or something like that. So they don't have enough to take power. So they need to form a coalition.

Back in 2017, you remember this? The Catalan kind of independence movement held its own referendum where they were going to have a vote and then they were just going to declare independence. Catalan is Barcelona. It's the kind of Mediterranean area and the area around there. And it was illegal. And the police came in, beat up a bunch of people, arrested most of the leadership of the Catalan independence movement. And the head of that movement escaped. They didn't, like he was going from like safe house to safe house, got across the border into France, and he's now in Switzerland. He's been in exile for the last six years. The right has 48%, left's got less than 50%. The Catalan Independence Party is now the kingmaker.

And so whoever they form a coalition with becomes the government in Spain. So who are they negotiating with? The fugitive in Switzerland. You could not write a better story than this. So he is currently negotiating with both sides. and he's trying to get a legal vote, legal referendum, and then other things that the Catalan independence crowd wants. Here's how you solve this. You drive around Europe. There's no borders. Just how you like it. No borders. Everybody uses the euro. I mean there's EU borders. Right. I mean if you drive into the sea, you're going to get into a border. But it's like, what do you mean you want independence?

Like, you're still going to use the euro. You're still going to be within the EU. What they really mean is they want their language to be respected, their culture, and they don't want to subsidize what they think of as all these lazy Spaniards. Like, they hate that they are the kind of economic engine of Spain. And that they, you know, the same way that New York hates that they have to subsidize Ohio or whatever. And so what you can do is say, all right, fine. You don't have to pay anything to Spain. You can have your independence. But whatever the current tax revenue structure is, you got to pay that to the EU Then the EU is gonna kick it back to Spain. Mm-hmm

And then you have your independence get your own country on flag your own language all that stuff And I think that they would reject it. Yes, and That which shows they don't really want it Like they if if you're not willing to like pay a little bit higher taxes to have independence Then you don't actually want it and you're not willing to pay a little bit higher taxes to have independence, then you don't actually want it. And you're just play acting, like pretending that you want it. And I am certain the Catalan Independence Party doesn't want it because then what are they? Like they're nobodies at that point because they're actually a pretty conservative.

They've become Catalan nationalists. They're a pretty conservative party, but the Catalans themselves are pretty progressive. And so the only reason that they win votes in Catalan is because they support independence. Uneasy alliance. Right. And so as soon as they have independence, they're no longer going to support this like right-wing Catholic party anymore. They're going to support a progressive. I love to think sometimes that Sagar and Crystal are like, let's check in on counterpoints. They click on a segment about Spanish soccer and they tune into Ryan solving the problem of Catalan independence. Nothing more American than like driving into Spain for a couple

of days, having some topless and solving the Catalan independence crisis. Well, stay tuned because if Ryan does indeed turn out to have solved this problem, we'll surely bring that issue. But they can't, because these are cynical people who don't actually want to solve the problem. Well, either way, regardless, we'll keep you updated on the situation as Ryan's negotiations proceed.

So as the writer's strike in particular, but also the actor's strike, by the way, drags on, some of the late night hosts have gotten together to launch their own podcast. And it is for a worthy cause. It's supposed to go to the strike fund for their writers. It's called Strike Force 5. And it's Jimmy Fallon, John Oliver, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and Seth Meyers. Let's take a look at their little teaser here.

One more time, Jimmy. Yeah. Hi, I'm Jimmy Fallon. I'm stephen colbert i'm jimmy kill i thought when you said jimmy you meant me jimmy but you meant jimmy jim i always mean you but when you always seth meyers who do you mean i mean john oliver it's the five of us together for uh maybe an hour a day. Strike force five is the name of our podcast. Subscribe to it now. Spotify or wherever else you get your podcasts, but Spotify, you fucks.

Oh my God. So I cannot really recommend the content, which I did watch, listen to the first episode, half of the first episode yesterday. It's not that great. It's a little cringy, but I do appreciate the solidarity with the writers. Okay, sure. That's great.

This is great. We need to end the strike now. We need to end this podcast as soon as humanly possible. I am personally begging Bob Iger and all the other studio executives, just give them whatever they want. Put these people back on network television so they can remain irrelevant or whatever on the spaces that they fill there. Let the people get paid that all need to get paid. Let's just end this abomination as soon as humanly possible. You were getting at something though, Crystal, when we were talking beforehand, which is the lack of, you know, it's shocking actually to think about the medium of late night TV as the original comedy venue, especially in an age of YouTube, where it's like, it's just not funny. Like, and a lot of these guys on themselves, and I don't know

what it is because clearly they had to have some level of talent to get where they were. I wonder if it's because the writers are actually doing all their jokes. I wonder if it's just that they're old, like out of touch. I wonder if it's just that the authentic comedy on YouTube is just so much better than anything you can find in a network environment. But it is just so shocking to me to like see this exist in the age of – I mean there's so many great comedians who are out there right now who are putting and dropping specials out, 15, 30- minute or whatever sets, which have you double over in laughter that you can watch for free. And then to see these guys are probably better paid than every single one of them, even, you know, whatever their strike for. And it's great. Once again, any compensation they're giving to strikers, I think that's awesome. But the fact that it even exists in the first place is just really odd. I find it weird. The thing that is interesting to me is, you know,

I think a lot of comedy was kind of broken by the Trump era. You know, a lot of the like the liberal resistance comedy, which becomes kind of tired and whatever, like it doesn't land with me. Right. Just in terms of being funny. I mean, Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report was genuinely hilarious, groundbreaking, unique. His, you know, roasting of George W. Bush is legendary. That's an all-timer. All of that stuff. But also I'm thinking about the fact that all five of these, they're sort of, they're made for that made-for-TV late-night era. And now they're trying to do a medium that they're just not really geared for not at all and

the in the product it shows and then i mean it's also just these are all people who are used to being the guy and you put them together and it just it doesn't totally mesh doesn't totally jealous the first show we'll give them some time maybe it comes together etc but um it's very clear and they to their credit make this joke in the first episode. It's clear that those writers are important. It's clear that they need the writers. They need them back because it's not the same without the producing and the scripting and the things that they need to have their shows be what they are.

Yeah. So look, like I said, uh, this is just the clear sign yet. We need to end the strike, give the writers whatever they want. Return them from whence they came and end this. End this as soon as possible. Although, unfortunately, it doesn't actually look like any of that is going to happen. And this is probably going to go on for a long time. Yeah, I mean, there's no sign that, you know, that it's coming to any sort of amicable close here. The studios have made good on their promises to let writers go homeless. I mean, I actually am seeing reports now

that what they said they were willing to do, which was coming out and telling journalists that, hey, our plan is to let this drag on until people start losing their homes and start becoming homeless. And then we'll try to get a bad deal out of them instead of coming at this with a place where they're at a place of strength.

That's happening now. People are losing their homes. They're getting kicked out of their apartments, et cetera, as this drags on. So it's incredibly disgraceful. The future of that industry, the future of Hollywood is, you know, really at stake. The future of AI and the use of chatbots to write initial drafts of script and basically strip writers of their livelihood, like that is all at stake. So let's not lose sight of that. These fights are incredibly real, not just for Hollywood and for our favorite shows, whether these are your favorite shows or not, not just for Hollywood and our favorite shows,

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