Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/25/23: Democrats Freak Over Trump Plus 10 Poll, WGA Strike Reach Agreement, Biden Picket with UAW, Nazi Honored In Canadian Parliament, Shutdown Politics, Menendez Pulls Race Card, Bachelor For Olds, Legalized Bribery, Anti Racist Grifter

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss the WGA reaching a tentative agreement after striking for almost 150 days, Democrats freak over Trump plus 10 over Biden poll, Biden to join the picket line at UAW in historic move, UAW President Shawn Fain shreds the Big 3's lies on Car prices, a literal former SS Nazi was honored by Zelensky in the Canadian parliament, Matt Gaetz fights with Maria Baritromo on the politics of the government shutdown, cable TV caters to it's remaining audience with The Golden Bachelor for elderly viewers, Krystal looks at the legalized bribery established by recent examples in SCOTUS and Senator Menendez, and Saagar looks into how Ibram Kendi's Anti Racism center is collapsing under the grift.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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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 Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?

Indeed, we do. Lots of interesting stories breaking this morning. So first of all, we have a poll that has really set DC on fire, that has Trump up by 10 on Joe Biden. So we'll break that down for you. How much stock should you put in it? What are the reactions? All of that.

We'll get into that. We also have President Biden doing something that we don't think any U.S. president has ever done before, which is heading to the picket line in support of autoworkers in Detroit. So we'll break that down for you. We have, I can't even believe I'm saying these words. Canada honoring a legitimate Ukrainian Nazi. Yes, alongside Zelensky. From World War II alongside Zelensky. Lots to reckon with there.

We've also got an update on that Senator Bob Menendez who was indicted for cartoonish corruption. He has a real excuse for why everyone is turning on him. It couldn't have been the gold bar statue of Klaus and Sager. It's the color of his skin. It's his identity. They're persecuting him. It's all wildly unfair. So we'll get into all of that.

We also have boomers, apparently, the only ones who are watching TV at this point. Some very interesting content being developed to cater to that audience. But before we get to any of that, this is also a debate week. So we've got some special coverage planned. We've got very special coverage planned. We're going to do a very similar format for everybody. A preview, a breakdown. We're going to get our power panel back, all of that. So go ahead and sign up if you can. We've got a lot of extra production content, which of course costs

money. So if you are able to, breakingpoints.com to become a premium subscriber. Not only that, we're doing all this on the ground stuff with UAW. And we of course also have some more expansion plans that we're excited to announce in the future. So you guys are helping with that, breakingpoints.com, as I said, premium subscriber today. You get the show early, all that other good stuff. And the debate preview in particular you will get very early before everybody else. So just in particular, another incentive to do so. But with that, let's get to the poll.

This poll has rocked Washington. Before the poll, we had breaking news this morning, remember? Oh my gosh, you're right. Of course. The writer's strike that has been ongoing in Hollywood put this up on the screen for 146 days. Looks like it may be coming to a close. They have reached a tentative agreement. This you see on the one side of your screen is an email that went out to all Writers Guild members.

They say we've reached a tentative agreement on a new 2023 MBA, which is to say an agreement in principle on all deal points subject to drafting final contract language. That deal, of course, will have to go to a vote for the membership. They will have to approve whatever has been agreed to here. You also have some comments here. We did it. We have a tentative deal over the coming days. We'll discuss and vote on it together as a Democratic union. But today I want to thank every single WGA member and every fellow worker who stood with us in solidarity. You made this possible. We don't have a lot of details yet about what is contained in this deal. According to the New York Times, they said that the writers were able to achieve much of what they had demanded, including increases in compensation for streaming content. That was a really critical one. Concessions from studios on minimum staffing for TV shows guarantees that AI tech will not encroach on writers' credits

and compensation. And that apparently, Sagar, was sort of the biggest sticking point at the end of the negotiations because, I mean, it's kind of understandable since the technology is so new and the contours of what it's going to mean so undefined at this point. That was the piece that they had the biggest trouble coming to an agreement with. You know, this thing looked like it was going to go on forever. There was no movement for a long time. Apparently, Bob Iger from Disney got involved and that helped bring the parties back to the table and they were able to negotiate this deal. Comes at a critical juncture, as you saw, you know, some cracks beginning to emerge. Drew Barrymore, Bill Maher, others planning to go back and then facing

backlash and deciding, all right, we're going to hold off. We're not going to restart our shows. But it created kind of a dangerous situation because if you had a lot of these shows begin to go back on air, that obviously would have dramatically undercut the negotiating leverage of the writers. So exciting to see this. You still have the actors out. So Hollywood continues to be in sort of partial shutdown mode. But this is a big development. We'll see what the membership thinks of it. That's right. Yeah. The next step is that the membership themselves have to vote. So they've got 11,000 or so people who will be members of the guild who will vote to ratify said contract. I guess Bill Maher was right, though, that there

was movement going on behind the scenes. So maybe he knew something that was going on. Doesn't necessarily excuse him since he was a W.A maybe he knew something that was going on. Doesn't necessarily excuse him, since he was a WHA member who was planning on still crossing said picket line. But I do think it is a very positive development, as you were getting to, around the AI. One of the tricks that the studio kept, they were like, well, we don't know

what the technology's gonna be. So how do we know that we can put it in there? The point, though, and actually it's very smart of them to demand it right now, was to make sure that you get some principles and protection before the technology comes. Because one of the problems we've always seen from unions and really workers across the spectrum is that as technology creeps, you know, software goes exponential. It doesn't move linearly. And so they're trying to like move backwards and try and sort of impose protections after things have already eaten into them.

It's a smart move to see something on the horizon. It's almost like you can imagine writers for newspapers or something demanding protections in 94 and the verge of the internet. Some smart people saw that, but by the time people were trying to make demands or renegotiate contracts or renegotiate or protect business, but at that point, the internet had completely destroyed it. So I think that we've learned a lot from the early days of the internet and they made the right call by demanding. And I mean, it was 150 days. It's a long time to go without pay. It's a long time. People losing housing and stuff. It's very tough. Yeah, absolutely. So a very hopeful sign that they were able to apparently looks like achieve a lot of

what they were looking for here. And when I think about the writer's strike, the actor's strike, and the autoworkers, these seem like very disparate, especially the autoworkers in Hollywood seem very disparate. But at the core of all these struggles are actually that future of technology and how workers are going to fit into the future and be able to secure their own livelihood as technology advances. And autoworkers, electric vehicles are very much at the center of what's going on there and making sure that they're going to be able to still have good union, well-paying jobs as we transition to electric vehicles. And then obviously with the actors and the writers, they were concerned about streaming, which is kind of a technology that

has already been here that they were behind the eight ball on in terms of guaranteeing and securing their own livelihoods there. And then the future with, you know, LLMs and AI being able to increasingly substitute for writers. That's what the studios wanted and being able to use likenesses to substitute for actors. So they're trying to get ahead of things there and we'll see what the actors are able to negotiate. But, you know, we'll await details, we'll await reaction from the members themselves who have to take a look at this and see if it is sufficient. But it all seems really encouraging. And another example where labor has been able to secure some real gains for themselves through the union process, through the strike or potential strike process. Same thing we saw with UPS and the Teamsters, which is really different from what we've seen most of our lives. All these contract negotiations have been workers taking concessions. The fact that you have even a

handful of instances of things going in the other direction is a really stunning and very hopeful development. Absolutely. All right. So now we'll actually get to the poll. Yes. All right. So what happened? These poll, the shaking Washington to its very foundation, especially over at the White House. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. The reason why everybody is paying attention. A 2024 national general election poll of registered voters. Trump, 52 percent. Biden, 42 percent.

A 10-point margin for former President Trump in this head-to-head race. Now, there's a lot of questions actually about this poll and the freakout of which we will get to. Let's actually put the Washington Post's tear sheet up there on the screen who reported this. The very way that they reported this, Crystal, is one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen. The headline out of this is very obviously Trump is beating Biden by 10 points. Instead, what they write is post ABC poll, Biden faces criticism on economy, immigration, and aid. Now, don't get me wrong. That's definitely a story. They talk about his disapproval rating, of which we're going to get to a little bit about the favorability of some of the candidates.

But you have to go almost 18 paragraphs down in this thing before they actually mention the 10 point margin that Trump is beating Biden by in their very own poll. Now let's, of course, let's emphasize all of the obvious. It's an outlier. Do I really think Trump, if it comes down to it, if he wins, do I really think he's gonna win by 10 points? No. Is it certainly an 890 registered voters, relatively smaller sample size? Are we gonna treat this as gospel? Are we going to say this is an exact snapshot of the race? No. What we're going to do is we're going to look at the overall average and we're going to look at some of the more important factors like how is approval of president, how approval of the job, what is things

are issue by issue, which historically have always been important. But we still have to lead with the news here. I mean, so what did you think of their decision to basically bury the biggest lead out of their story? I think they were a little bit embarrassed by it. And of course, they still got the pushback from the Washington establishment, regardless of their framing on the story. I mean, in a sense, I think they should be embarrassed because I wouldn't believe a poll that said either one of these candidates was winning by double digits. Like the country is just too closely divided. We're so polarized. It's not going to be a 10 point election, not going to happen. So I think I kind of understand their embarrassment with this. Nate Cohn to me made the most salient point, which is like, listen, I, you know, kudos to them for even publishing this thing because they knew

they were going to get a pile on and all the language about like, it's an outlier, just so you know, it's an outlier. And they dig into the sub groups here and show some results that just seem again, kind of farcical on their face. Like voters under 35, I think we're going for Trump by like 20 points. That's not reality. I mean, there's no other data that backs that up. So he's like, on the one hand, kudos to them for publishing this. But on the other hand, this is the second poll that they've had in a row that's an outlier in this way. So there's clearly something going on with your methodology that if you aren't standing behind it, you need to fix it or you need to dig into what's going on here that's creating these results that are really different. And if you believe the methodology and you think that this is the accurate numbers and more accurately reflective than every other poll, which shows a very different race, you know, where it's basically, you know, a coin toss between the

two of them. If you believe that, then stand behind it. If you don't, then change your methodology and explain what's going on. Absolutely well said. That's the thing is like they're not changing their methodology. Clearly, they're like a little bit torn about it. But I think they should have just led with that. The thing is, though, and there's another one, NBC News did a deeper poll that actually gets to some of the things that the Post was trying to package. Let's put this up there on the screen. You can actually see some of these graphics. These were the most interesting. If the election for president were held today, for whom would you vote? Biden, 46,, Trump 46. That sounds very much like what it

actually looks like. They pulled some of the other candidates. Ron DeSantis, they had Biden 46, DeSantis 45. This one, I'm still trying to wrap my head around. Biden 41, Nikki Haley 46. I think my only hope is that America doesn't know enough about Nikki Haley. But they actually, this was even more interesting. I'm curious what you think of this. Look at how they included third parties. So there they had Biden 36, Trump 39, Libertarian candidate 5, No Labels candidate 5, Green Party candidate 4. So you can see that actually both candidates lose a pretty significant margin to the Libertarian and the No Labels candidate as well with the Green Party, like drawing from Democrats. So you could see there, though, that's very reminiscent of the 1992 election, where neither candidate actually won even close to the popular vote. Clinton was only elected 42% of the vote because Ross Perot was there. But he, of course,

won an outright majority in the Electoral College. George H.W. Bush long believed that Ross Perot had cost him the election. But it's interesting, though, because, of course, I mean, the no-labels candidate, we don't know even if that's going to exist. It's not necessarily on the ballot. But Libertarian people, Libertarian and Green Party are 100% on the ballot. And you could see that they're definitely drawing margin from Trump, and they're definitely drawing margin from Biden. So there is not a sizable, but what, 10% or so of the overall electorate, which is definitely drawing from those two candidates in a head-to-head race. And that's a pathetic margin. If you're going to have effectively a duopoly where they're only able to garner individually 36%, 39% of the vote, what kind of system are we living in where these people are getting elected with one-third

of the actual popular vote? That's nuts. And where the overwhelming majority of Americans are like, please, not another Biden-Trump rematch. And it's like, here we go, another Biden-Trump rematch. I mean, look, it's more data that shows that the third-party candidates tend to take more from Biden than they do for Trump. Yes, in this particular—well, with no labels, yes. It's about—right, it's about three percentage points. You know, I don't know the breakdown of I would expect Libertarian maybe takes more. I really don't know. But it's more data that shows the third-party candidates tend to hurt the Democrats more.

However, let me say, is the 10 point margin for Trump in the Washington Post ABC poll accurate? No. Does it mean that they don't have an issue here? No, it does not. I mean, they have bigger problems right now than even worrying about these third party candidates. They need to fix their own house to begin with here, because listen, if Trump is who they say he is and listen, I thought the Trump administration was horrible on a number of levels. The tax cuts for the rich, the chaos during COVID, January 6th and trying to steal the election. All of these things were horrendous. He's facing 91 charges, 91 criminal indictments, and you're tied? Like that's your best case scenario is you're tied

with this dude? You need to do some real soul searching about your guy and about what has gone wrong in this administration that this thing could even be close. And let's recall, let's assume the state of play is that they're even in terms of the polls. That is a way better position than Trump has ever been in, in 2016 or 2020. Now he ends up losing in 2020, but it was close. So yes, they should be deeply concerned. And it is insanely pathetic that this should be the state of the race right now, given the fact they had for a while,

they had total democratic control of the, of the town, you know, they were able to do what they wanted. And I really think it comes down to three things. Number one is Joe Biden's age, you know, just in terms of that instant reaction, you're looking at this guy, you're like, I just don't even know if he's going to make it the next term. It's a real problem. I think an even bigger problem is the combination of inflation and the fact that you have had all of these pandemic era programs that have gone away, that have left people way more cash strapped than they were at the beginning of the administration. So you can imagine how people are looking back and going, geez, if I think about how I was personally doing during the Trump administration versus during the Biden administration,

I don't know. I can't, you know, there may be a lot of things I don't like about Donald Trump, but because those programs have all been taken away under a democratic administration, as much as they may be doing things long-term down the road that I like and I think will be positive for the American working class. The reality is today, people have less money in their bank accounts and are having a harder time feeding their families. And that is what is showing up in these polls. Yes. And actually, to the point about the outlier and all that, and part of the reason I don't think it even matters, put this up there. This is an average that Harry Enten put out in terms of all national polls just from the last month. Quinnipiac had Biden up by one. The Journal had

a tie. NBC News has a tie. CNN has Trump plus one. CBS has Trump plus one. Fox News, Trump plus two. ABC Washington Post, Trump plus nine. The median of those is Trump one, and the average is Trump two. But here's the thing. Trump won the election in 2016, and he didn't even win the popular vote. I believe he lost the popular vote by a couple of points. So if he's leading by one on average, let's say the margin of error on that is two, he can easily lose two. He could lose the popular vote by an easy margin of 1% given California and New York. He can absolutely clean up in the electoral college. The thing is, and I actually saw some experienced pollsters say this, what you really want for

Biden is you can disregard any of the outlier polls for Trump. Where are the outlier polls for Biden? We haven't seen a single one from a national polling company that has come out from any major outlet that has shown, you know, remember those Hillary era polls, Trump, Hillary plus 16, Hillary plus 19. I'll never forget, what was it, Wisconsin had Biden winning by 19 points at ABC Washington Post poll, I believe. I mean, he barely won it by one or two in 2020. So my point is, is that you need to see some major outliers to assume some sort of

strength. Let's give the counter to this. Polls are totally wrong in 2022. We also know that the special elections of which we just covered in our last show, they're all trending heavily Democratic. We're seeing a major Democratic turnout. Abortion is very much some sort of sleeping giant for a lot of Democratic voters. It's very likely that a lot of people who never voted in the past are definitely going to come out to vote this time around, juicing voter participation. A lot of people were willing to overlook their economic conditions because they hate Stop the Ste steal and they hate pro-life candidates. So there's a lot of case. There's also a good case, I think, to just keep calm and carry on if I am the Biden team, as pathetic as it is. But age is just one they're not getting around. As we tease, though, Washington is very

much not happy. Go and put these up there on the screen. Larry Sabato over at the Crystal Ball, no relation. Says, ignore the Washington Post. It's a ridiculous outlier. My question, how could you even publish a poll so absurd on its face? Will be a lingering embarrassment for you. Again, from what you can see, it's really, really hard to release these outlying polls. So you've got to give credit to the ABC Post. But I do give a major quibble here. If you release constructive outlying poll results, R7, R10, you don't get to dismiss your own results. I definitely agree with that. And I think that the point is that for the freakout, it just shows the underlying insecurity of you have an 81-year-old man who's running for re-election, and you can't

see a single one to even boost the ego a little bit that has you winning by plus 10 or plus 11, which in their minds, they deserve to win the election by that much. And they should be, in my opinion, they should be running scared for where they are right now. I think they are. It also is not lost on me that this poll comes at a moment when there was already a sort of collective freak out among elite media about Biden being the nominee again, about Kamala Harris being the vice presidential nominee again. Do I think, look, there's a lot of speculation like, oh, maybe he's still going to drop out. Maybe they're still going to have like a real primary process. I don't expect that, even though I think it would be the right thing to do. I think it would improve their chances. If you were able

to have a competitive Democratic primary process where people could actually evaluate their options and maybe get behind a candidate they actually feel excited about and actually feel confident is going to make it through the next four years. I'm not hopeful that that's going to happen, but I'm sure all of that pressure around are we really once again going with Joe Biden as the nominee is only going to increase, which is part of why there's such a freak out around this poll right now as well. Yeah. So, all right. That's your takeaway. All right. So at the same time, we've got some big news with regard to the United Auto Workers ongoing strike against the big three automakers. So put this up on the screen. Joe Biden making a

big announcement last week under pressure, both from within his own party, but also from the Republicans and the fact that Trump is going to Michigan. He announced that this Tuesday, that would be tomorrow, I will go to Michigan to join the picket line and stand in solidarity with the men and women of UAW as they fight for a fair share of the value they helped create. It's time for a win-win agreement that keeps American auto manufacturing thriving with well-paid UAW jobs. Put the next piece up on the screen. So as far as we know, this is actually the first time that a sitting president has ever gone to stand in solidarity with workers at a picket line. I was talking to Jeff Stein at The Washington Post.

He has been talking to labor historians to find out if there's any precedent for it. No one quite knows 100% for sure. Yeah. But, you know, that seems to be an indication that this probably never happened before. What they keep saying is at least in 100 years, this hasn't happened. Maybe something happened earlier in the history of the republic. But you would think it would have been a big enough deal even at that time for there to be some sort of news and recording of the event. So as far as we know,

this is the first time a sitting president has walked a picket line. Per Mother Jones, they say it's not unusual for politicians to walk a picket line. Candidates often make a point of dropping by with donuts and coffee. In 2020, Biden did march outside the Palms in Las Vegas with casino workers, but no sitting president has ever walked a picket line with striking workers. They have historically been much more prone to extravagant shows of solidarity with the companies that are trying to break those strikes. And they recall that in 1894, Grover Cleveland sent 2000 federal troops to Chicago to break a railroad strike. Biden has yet to announce exactly where in Michigan he will be. But they say it's a safe bet that wherever he ends up going, the National Guard, thankfully, will not be coming with him. So this is a huge deal.

It really is. There's no way to sort of oversell this. Democrats had increasingly been pushing him to go. You'd already had a number of Democratic politicians, including John Fetterman and Ro Khanna and other local Michigan representatives who had shown up on the picket line, especially after Trump announced that he on debate night is going to give a speech to union workers past and present. I think they felt increasing pressure that Biden needed to do a little more and be a little visible to stake his claim that he is the person who is really truly standing alongside these workers. And so looks like this is going to happen, which is pretty extraordinary. Yeah. So I also looked into it in terms of the history. Everyone keeps saying 100 years,

but I've been trying to look past and think about the major labor era. I also cannot really think even the best friends of labor who were in the White House, people like FDR. Well, FDR, for obvious reasons, not going to be joining a picket line. But, you know, in terms of issuing statements of support and all that, the other reason why politically I think this is a very for obvious reasons, not going to be joining a picket line. But in terms of issuing statements of support and all that, the other reason why politically I think this is a very smart move is that there are 66,000 UAW workers, Crystal, in the state of Michigan, just in Michigan. So that's 66,000 people who are organized and they like to vote, a lot of these union folks. So we should not forget, why did Mitt Romney blow Michigan so badly back in 2012? Because of the 2008 or 9 op-ed that he

wrote, which said, let Detroit go bankrupt. That was plastered all over the state and he lost it by a massive margin. And then all of a sudden, Trump comes around and wins this state by a fraction of a point in 2016. That is one of the craziest things that has ever happened. Well, why did Trump win it? Because, A, a lot of people stayed home, a lot of urban voters who did not feel excited by Hillary. And he split the union vote by a pretty historic margin for a Republican presidential candidate. And it was largely on talk of Lordstown. It was talk of GM.

It was talk of NAFTA. And it was specifically speaking to a lot of thesestown. It was talk of GM. It was talk of NAFTA. And it was specifically speaking to a lot of these people concerned. So one of the reasons why I think that this is actually a net benefit is we finally have two candidates who are courting union workers in the state of Michigan, which is a complete inversion from the Obama era. Like, I'm kind of with you, you know, but I'm still embracing NAFTA, free trade, and all this other stuff, which screwing you as opposed to Romney is like, no, no, no. I literally want to see you die and collapse. So to see that inversion is and of course, look, it's all in rhetoric, but rhetoric at least precedes something usually to see that happen, I think is a very is a very

net benefit to the country. Trump, in terms of his record as president, as you guys know, was a horrific union buster. There's no doubt about it. However, I do think the fact that he rhetorically approaches these issues in a different, at least giving sort of like token or symbolic gestures towards the plight of the workers, I think has changed public sentiment. Because, you know, back under the Obama era, there was a really hard divide about how Republicans versus Democrats felt about unions. And there's still a split. I mean, Democrats are still way more favorable towards unions, towards labor, towards these strikes in particular than Republicans are. But you now consistently have polls that show Republican, the Republican base, not the elites who still continue to be union busters overwhelmingly, but the Republican base showing support for unions and standing on the side of striking workers.

I think that the rhetorical shift, even though, again, in terms of the record, it's total bullshit. But the rhetorical shift, I think, has opened up a space among the Republican base, combined with the fact, I mean, the pandemic changed everything. Of course it did. You know, the pandemic really changed the way people are thinking about this. We all lived under the specter of seeing these corporations making literally record-breaking profits and then using the excuse of inflation just further price gouge everyone. And so, you know, that kind of changed the way people feel about these labor disputes. So not only is it smart because Biden is kind of one-upping Trump here in terms of what he's

actually doing, Trump isn't speaking directly to the auto workers, there isn't any expectation he's going to walk the picket line. All his rhetoric has been on the one hand, like I sort of in theory support the workers and screw electric vehicles. On the other hand, like this kind of anti-union, union boss, traditional Republican language. So it's not only smart from that perspective, but also, you know, it's not just the union workers who stand on the side of the union workers, you have something like 75% of the public that is on the side of the workers over the bosses in this dispute. So it is not, that's why this is so politically safe for him and why it's such an extraordinary moment that created the conditions

where even someone who's been this lifelong, like, you know, centrist-y, moderate kind of a guy can do something that, again, is, in terms of history, truly extraordinary and has, as far as we know, literally never happened before. One reason I know that the political dynamics have changed is back in the 2010s era, there was an entire GOP, like, media ecosystem dedicated to, like, attack. Remember the whole Scott Walker thing? Of course. The lion-eye Scott Walker. Yeah. Attack the teachers, teacher pay, all that other stuff. I don't see any of that right now. Like in terms of Twitter and YouTube and GOP, like where like base media, they're not consuming anti-union content. It doesn't even exist. It doesn't register. But A, I think that's two things.

One is obviously the base has moved long past or they agree. You know, in many cases, a lot of these people culturally are very much with the Republican Party, so it gets a little queasy if you're trying to attack their overall economic demands. But as you said, Trump has just moved on from that. He's pushed a lot of the people, the most MAGA-type influencer. I have not seen one single individual, like Charlie Kirk, Jack Posobiec, any of these folks attack the UAW strike. If anything, they've posted stuff. Ben Shapiro has. He's different. Shapiro is not a Trump guy. He is an OG member of the Tea Party, the Libertarian Factor. I mean, remember, he was attacking Trump

for being too liberal back in 2016. So I would not put Shapiro in that whatsoever. I'm just saying there is still some union busting conservative media out there. So it's not like it's all gone. But the moment is very different from, I mean, Scott Walker in that moment, that was totally different. Conservative cause celeb. Exactly. Chris Christie came to Republican conservative prominence from like yelling at teacher unions and being super anti-union in the state of New Jersey.

And so it was a very, very different moment energy wise within the Republican Party, even as, you know, the policy in terms of what they actually do when they're in government hasn't changed. But the rhetoric, the attitude, what's like the beating heart of the Republican movement has, in terms of where the like online energy is, has definitely radically shifted. And, you know, that does create a real opening for working people, which is part of what we're seeing and part of, again, what I think is like one of the most hopeful stories in the entire country at this point. At the same time, we have the UAW announcing that they are expanding the strike. And some of the

details here are really quite interesting. Put this up on the screen. This is from Jacobin's reporting. So as of Friday, they announced 5,000 more members of the United Auto Workers at 38 parts distribution centers for Stellantis and GM walked off the job. Those facilities spread across 20 states. So you'll note they did not increase the strike on Ford. And the reason being, apparently they've made a lot more progress in their negotiations with Ford, where the union enjoys a better relationship. And there's been more of a give and take. And apparently Ford has already met a number, although not all of their demands.

So they did not escalate at Ford. They are only escalating at Stellantis and GM. So they say those 5,000 workers joined the 13,000 that were already out at assembly plants in Ohio, Michigan, and Missouri. One of the things that I thought was really interesting here and shows the savviness, I guess, of this stand-up strike strategy that they're using, where instead of everybody going out at once, they're picking and choosing and sort of, you know, keeping the companies off balance and showing that they can extract more pain from

the companies if they want to and if they're not getting what they need at the negotiating table. So they added these parts distribution centers to the mix. That is apparently a very profitable part of the company's business. They sell after sales spare parts and accessories to dealerships. Sean Fain talked to Labor Notes and he said, why strike those parts distribution centers? Well, there's several reasons. One of our issues is ending tiers. The parts distribution centers are a big example of that. Their wages were capped at $25 some years back during the greatest times in the history of these companies, and that's got to change. So that's part of why they're going in this direction to make a point about the unfairness for the workers at those particular facilities.

Let's put the map up on the screen so you can see how widespread this strike is. So they started with just a handful of large-scale facilities and now auto assembly plants where they actually finish the products. Now you have these parts distribution centers, which you can see are literally all over the country, coast to coast. So, you know, from there's you got Connecticut, you got D.C. area, you've got Charlotte, you've got Florida, you've got California, you've got Oregon, you've got, of course, a lot in that industrial Midwest, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, et cetera. So that's where they are now. We haven't got any updates about if there have been additional progress in the talks since they expanded the strike, but interesting to see the strategy that they're deploying here. It's very interesting. Yeah. I mean, I especially enjoy that factoid around what was going on with Ford and about how they're able to flex up and down. It's actually

one of the benefits, I believe, of the new strategy, which you've educated me on, versus a stand-up strike as opposed to this more targeted strike. You can expand and contract and target the particular people that are coming to you with different demands, contracts in order to benefit. So I'm curious. I mean, what do you think in terms of the movement? The fact if Ford is being much more forthcoming in some of the demands, maybe this one won't have to drag on 150 days, especially if they're going to ramp up the pain. Like parts distribution, we already saw being much more forthcoming in some of the demands, maybe this one won't have to drag on 150 days, especially if they're going to ramp up the pain. Like parts distribution, we already saw how the chips crisis in 2021 devastated the American car market and especially the big three. Their inability to import and to have the inputs into their cars just destroyed overall the price and

a lot of the profits in the bottom line that the company was already having. So if they're able to do this, I mean, you could cripple critical infrastructure so quickly for these cars. Listen, I have no idea, but if I had to guess, there's a lot of pressure on these automakers right now. You have the freaking president, former and current presidents of the United States coming to Michigan and Biden overtly being on the side of the workers, Trump mixed bag, but that's a lot of pressure being put directly on you if you are a big three executive. Now you have the news that Ford is offering some significant concessions and getting at least part of the way there in terms of the worker demands. That applies additional pressure onto Stellantis and onto GM. And then when you have this, you know, this strategy that sort of creates chaos

and shows that they can last a long time with their strike fund is pretty full since they're not going on all at once, they can really stretch that strike fund. And in a lot of ways, strikes are a game of chicken, right? Who's going to blink first? Who's going to say this pain is too great for me

and really, you know, have to give way and come to the table and give up some concessions. Right now, I think the auto workers have positioned themselves very well. Now, I should say there has been some dissent within the union of some of the workers really wanted everyone to go out at once and have a big show of force and really stand in solidarity together. And, you know, I think Sean Fain was sympathetic to that view, but ultimately decided this was the sappier tactic. There are risks to the stand-up strike strategy that is more targeted versus everybody going out all at once. The risks are that you don't have everybody participating in the same way. There can be

a breakdown in solidarity. It requires a lot of discipline for every worker at every facility to know exactly what their part is and what the rules and guidelines are and what they're supposed to be doing when. So there is like a risk on the other side of that. But so far, I feel like the auto workers have a lot more leverage and power in this situation than the big three do. So one of the points of leverage that automakers and also like CNBC and the business press and whatever are trying to use is this idea that,

oh, the strike is gonna cause car prices to go up. Sean Fain knocked that one down pretty easily when he was asked about it. Let's take a listen. Companies chose to put us in this position because they've had eight weeks to get a contract, and they chose for seven weeks to screw around and do nothing. They got serious in the last week. This isn't on the UAW workers. When bad things happen and things are happening right now, it's all because the companies. They own it. It's on on their shoulders. You deny that it's going to hurt the consumers in the long run. What's hurt the consumers in the long run is the fact that companies have raised prices on vehicles 35 percent in the last four years. Our wages went up six percent. The

CEO pay went up 40 percent. Profits have been in the billions, the hundreds of billions. They own all of this. That's what's hurting the consumers. I mean, it's pretty hard to argue with those numbers. Like, listen, our wages are not the problem because guess what? We've been getting screwed on wages ever since basically the 2008 recession, even before that. I actually put this up on the screen from Heather Long. She highlights that U.S. auto workers have seen their paychecks plunge further from 93 to 2023 than any other of the 166 industries we regularly track. In the early 90s, auto workers were the top paid rank and file workers. Now they are middle of the pack. And I think the title for that chart there where they say now auto workers,

just another job, kind of says it all. The auto worker used to be the sort of gold standard, rock solid, middle class job. It was this iconic industry where the understanding was if you worked there and you did the job, you were going to be able to have the basics of a stable middle class life. That has been eaten away. And so auto worker wages have suffered more than those of workers in any other industry. So for them to turn around and be like, oh, it's your fault that car prices are so high when they've been taking a haircut and when their labor makes up a grand total of like 5% of the cost of a new car, it just doesn't hold water. It doesn't hold any water, as you said. And I think that the most important point is that these are not people who've been

getting paid well. They've actually been underpaid for more than a decade. They got a massive haircut after 2008 and are just trying to keep pace with inflation, with any of the demands and all the flexibilities and all the things that the white collar workforce and many blue collar workers have been able to demand. They find themselves as part of an America's critical security or critical economic infrastructure and are using, you know, I mean, again, you know, without them, the big, they could have decided not to take the haircut and they would have all gone completely bust in 2008. They did the car makers, the big three, a big favor. And don't forget, all of us saved the auto industry. And I think that was the correct

decision back then. But, you know, one of the things is that they have just been able to make fantastic profits. And more importantly, the executives, the shareholders have all benefited. The workforce itself is the only one who has not since the, I think the GM, I believe still owes billions of dollars to the U S government. So let's all not forget about what happened, you know, not that long ago. Yeah, very true. Very true. All right, let's move on. Uh, Ukraine, this is a story which I have, I couldn't, I couldn't believe when I first saw it. And the more that we research it, the more insane it actually gets. President Zelensky was here in Washington with his hat out, asking for $25 billion more from the US Congress. By all accounts, they'll probably give it to him, although we might

have an interim shutdown in the meantime. But after that, he visited fellow NATO ally Canada. And while he was in Canada, Justin Trudeau and the Canadian Parliament decided to honor President Zelensky in a session very much like we had our joint session, where they featured a, quote, Ukrainian freedom fighter. And it turns out that that Ukrainian fighter, who fought in World War II, as they described it, was a literal Nazi. Here's how they described it, though, at the time. Let's take a listen. Zelensky's speech received at least a dozen standing ovations. There was also one for this man, a 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians during the Second World War. Fighting for Ukrainian independence against the Russians in the Second World War is certainly one way to say it. The other way to say

it, let's put this up there on the screen, our friend Yegor, is it was called the SS Division Galicia, which changed its name to the 1st Ukrainian Division in April of 1945, after already losing the war the same month that Hitler killed himself. Calling a, quote, 98-year-old SS veteran a Ukrainian veteran is like calling Adolf Eichmann an Argentinian farmer. This is no joke, Crystal. This was straight up, this is not like he was a Wehrmacht soldier. No, straight up Waffen SS, actual Nazi soldier in the Second World War. A division, by the way, the SS division, Galicia, implicated in several horrific instances during the Second World War, specifically targeting the Polish people who are very much waking up to this. The fact this is not a bigger scandal in the United

States, and really even in Canada, who is only just now waking up to this and took a long time to even acknowledge or even apologize more than 24, 48 hours after this incident is outrageous. Put this up there on the screen. This is actually from a university professor and historian there. He says, quote, these are the photos that for those who are watching can see of the SS Kalisha division veteran who was given standing ovation by the Canadian parliament. He published these himself of his division in training in Germany, standing in the middle of the first photo, second on the left in the second photo, if we want to go ahead and show that one, and without a helmet near the machine gun in that photo. I mean, one of the things is he volunteered in 1943, okay, in the Ternopil region

of Western Ukraine, which means he fought and served in this division at the exact times when it was both commissioned and was implicated in multiple atrocities, as I said, in the region. And unfortunately, look, this is going to be, you already know, this is going buck wild in Russia because they're like, of course, you know, they literally honored a Nazi. But it also raises the uncomfortable truth of which many people in the West don't want to talk about is, yeah, there are some Nazi affiliated groups in the Ukrainian military who have a complicated history. And this is something I've even raised here on the show

before. I'm glad to even show it, is a lot of people think of the SS and specifically the military units as just being all German. And it's actually not true, because they have this entire idea of an Aryan-like race. Himmler himself actually decreed that this has to be like the Galician division because they were, quote, more Aryan-like than other slobs. Oh my God. And so that's what he served in. That's what we're celebrating here in the Canadian parliament. That's who they celebrate. Now, look, I guess to be fair, it's become a big enough scandal now that the Speaker of the Canadian parliament has had to issue an apology. To my knowledge, at the time of this taping, Justin Trudeau has not acknowledged this.

But the crazy thing is they had a meeting beforehand. The granddaughter of this gentleman, I guess if you can even call him that, was actually posted a photo. And it's even more interesting, the reason they changed their name to the Ukrainian division is there was an entire effort after the Second World War to whitewash their Nazi affiliation and to portray themselves as Ukrainian freedom fighters. And actually over a thousand of them emigrated to Canada. So this is a very, very disgusting situation where they were explicitly used the name to portray themselves as these great freedom fighters to gain access to the West. I mean, this is a longstanding thing that a lot of people who fought within the SS did.

Now, look, in terms of like, I don't know if this man served in the actual play, but, you know, look, in terms of the whole idea of like the good Nazi and all that, he volunteered for a Nazi division in 43, served until the end of the war. He was around, or the very loose new people who straight up slaughtered civilians and were implicated in the death and also the liquidation of Jews in the Eastern European theater of war. I don't think there's any getting around that. And these are not people who we should be celebrating. I cannot believe that they honored him, that Zelensky, you know, like, you know, the other thing is here, maybe you can forgive the Canadians for not knowing, okay? A lot of these people are idiots. They don't know. He knew what was going on. You think he didn't know? He's like, oh, he fought for Ukrainian independence in World War II. People in Ukraine,

they know. They know what that means. Which side people fought on. Right. Well, I mean, this is one of the uncomfortable realities that was easy for a lot of people to acknowledge before the war and has become something that no one really wants to talk about anymore. But some of the great like heroes of Ukrainian nationalism committed, you know, incredible atrocities during World War Two, fighting against the Russians on behalf of the Nazis. So one thing when I was talking to Yegor about this is I was trying to understand, like, you're like, was this an accident? Did they know? Because when you hear freedom fighter against the Russians during World War II, it doesn't take a

rocket scientist to figure out then, okay, which side were you actually on? And one thing that he really wanted to impress upon me was that this is not like a one-off incident. First of all, we have seen numerous times the, you know, Ukrainian social media accounts posting photos of their soldiers with all sorts of like Nazi insignia. And I don't want to play into the Russian idea that like every Ukrainian is a Nazi. That's far from the truth. Okay. So we're trying to be nuanced here and say, listen, there is an element. And certainly those who were the hard Ukrainian nationalists and continue to be the hard right Ukrainian nationalists have a lot of very uncomfortable Nazi ties and sometimes have Nazi insignia tattoos on their uniforms and tattooed on themselves. So I don't want to play

into like, you know, some blanket statements. But the other thing he was telling me is it's sort of akin to, you know, Southerners who want to whitewash the civil war and the Confederacy and the Confederate flag and all of that, that there's been an ongoing project in Eastern Europe, in Ukraine, in the Baltic states to try to whitewash their quote unquote freedom fighters. And this has been going on, you know, under the radar of people who are, don't want to be embarrassed by their like Nazi grandpa, as Yegor put it to me, anymore. And so this has been going on under the radar. But for them to actually achieve this moment of having a legit former Nazi celebrate and receive a standing ovation from Trudeau and

Zelensky, I mean, that's a whole other level. And in some ways, it ends up being useful because it shines a light on something that's been going on underneath the surface here that really, like, Nazi apologia should not be mainstreamed. It should not be allowed to continue. It should be called out for exactly what it is a complicated history. I'm not going to sit here and just say it was all easy. Here's the uncomfortable truth. When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, a lot of those people were cheering them on, Ukrainians, Poles, a lot of these folks. You know why? Because they hated the Soviets. I get it. A lot of the Latvians, the Lithuanians, and here's the other uncomfortable truth. The Latvians, the Lithuanians, the Ukrainians were involved in some of the worst pogroms of the early 20th century. They had no love for Jews and they did not stand in the Nazis' way, or at the very least, they helped them out. Some of the highest liquidation rates of Jews in the entire Nazi regime happened in Eastern Europe. And it was because, in many cases,

of a willing and a compliant and some kind of enthusiastic populist. I'm not denigrating the people who are the descendants of them today. I'm just saying, though, that at that time, their own symbols of nationalism, when it's going to be so inextricably linked to that time period of World War II, we should not be uncomfortable to pointing out some of the major moral quandaries around this and to also think about who we in the West are siding with and are supporting and I think this is A very basic fact it is of course unjust and horrific that the Russians invaded Ukraine But it is also empirically true that us provided and Western provided weapons have gone into the hands of straight-up neo-nazis in Ukraine It's undeniable. I mean absolutely

Undeniable you can decide you know the lesser of evils, the enemy of the enemy is my friend, etc. But, you know, phrasing, framing this all and just like democracy and autocracy, you know, I see some people being like the front line of democracy is in the Donbass. And I'm just like, all right, shut up. I'm sorry. Like, that's ludicrous. Like, first of all, we're talking about one of the most corrupt nations in all of Eastern Europe. You should maybe go ask some of the people in the Donbass previous to this conflict who they had allegiances to. All I'm saying is it's messy. It's complicated. None of this is justification for a horrible invasion. Just to show you, like, the world is not black and white. It's very gray. Yeah. In this case, it gets very gray.

In this case, it's a little bit black and white on this one. Well, on this one, it gets a little Nazi gray in terms of what those uniforms look like. And I think it's a tragedy, more so also, that people in the West, they don't want to admit this stuff. Only in Canada, because they straight up honored him at the parliament. But how many people in the U.S. media are talking about this? I haven't seen a single media outlet here in Washington condemn Zelensky. You know, Zelensky, too. Listen, if you're going to come here and shake your hat asking for money, maybe don't be honoring Nazis. I haven't seen a single media outlet here in Washington condemn Zelensky. You know, Zelensky, too.

Listen, if you're going to come here and shake your hat asking for money, maybe don't be honoring Nazis while you're over here. Somebody on his staff. This is not doing him any favors. Somebody on his staff. Again, you can excuse the idiot Canadians, maybe, although probably not. But they knew. There's no way that those people on Zelensky's staff, you know, the advanced staff and Zelensky himself, there's no way they didn't know who this guy was fighting for. Hundreds.

This is coded language in Ukraine for, yeah, they fought on the side of the Nazis. You think that was a smart move? And then it gets to the uncomfortable question of like, hey, maybe they support it a little bit, or at the very least like tacitly okay with it as they are in their own government and in their coalition. So people can think we're unfair and harping on this, but like, you know, look, you know,

these are the people we're supposedly allied with. These are the people who are funding with a blank check. You got to ask questions about your friends more so probably even than your enemies. It's also in a certain sense, like the logical endpoint of this black and white Disney version of the war that you're gesturing towards, that if it's just like the Russians are bad and the Ukrainians are good, oh, here's Ukrainian freedom fighter, quote unquote, who was fighting against the Russians, he must be good. I mean, that's like the logical endpoint of this really silly childlike version of events that we've been fed by the media. And so in that regard,

it's actually not surprising that you would end up with something that is this egregious, just like, you know, literally celebrating a Nazi to own the Russians kind of makes sense as a logical conclusion of the direction that we've been heading in with all of this. So absolutely, we should say, you know, there are a lot of Canadian Jewish groups, obviously, understandably, very upset about this state of affairs and wondering like we are, what the hell were you thinking and how can you let this happen? So Trudeau and parliament under a lot of pressure now to make amends for this state of affairs. But yeah, in terms of US media, pretty much silent.

Where's the ADL, huh? ADL, who's willing to call anybody an anti-Semite for anything anybody says about Israel or anything anybody ever says, even about them. They haven't put out a single statement about this. This is the probably, I mean, let's think about it. Since Operation Paperclip, this is probably the most prominent celebration of a literal Nazi in the West in decades throughout all of the West. And these people don't have a word to say. They're complete and utter tools. So let's just keep that very clear. Let's move on now and talk a little bit about a government shutdown. We put it into the Ukraine block because I guess there's some elements about Ukraine. We want to make sure everybody stays updated about what's going on. There was a fascinating fight

between Congressman Matt Gaetz, who's one of the leaders of the shutdown movement, with Maria Bartrioma over on Fox Business. It was a clash of a Kevin McCarthy ideology and the Gaetz ideology. Let's take a listen. I'm glad I get to respond to your monologue because if you're saying that I'm standing in the way of all the Republican wins, I'd love you to enumerate them. Watching my friend and mentor, Jim Jordan, it was quite painful because he started by saying we should only pick one fight, the border. But then as the interview went on, he said, well, we should pick a second fight, Jack Smith. And by the time the interview rounded out, he was saying that we

shouldn't be funding Ukraine without a plan. And yet the very continuing resolution that you and Jim Jordan seemed to be for continues to have $300 million more for Ukraine. So I think we ought to fight on all fronts. I think the border is very important. Kevin wants it in one big up or down vote. Keep the government open, shut it down. I'm saying single subject spending bills. It's the only way to break the fever and liberate ourselves from this out of control spending. Well, he's doing the four bills next week. So we're making him because we're making him doing it. So to push now to blow up all of the wins that you all have had now. Which wins? Please enumerate them. Well, OK. Well, how about the fact that he has set up a weaponization committee to investigate

the DOJ, whether they're involved in a cover up? You cannot see any of the January 6th. Are you not right now indirectly working with Democrats because you are going to allow Chuck Schumer to come up with a continuing resolution next week to fund the government? That's what your actions are doing. That's why some people feel this is a personal vendetta you have against the speaker. No, my vendetta is against a Washington system that allows corruption to put the interests of lobbyists and PACs above the interests of the American people. Kevin McCarthy facilitates that system, and I do deeply resent that. So there it is. That's the fight with Maria and Matt Gaetz. Now, to be clear, Ukraine is part of the story that will be voted on. But just to explain in senates or congressionalese, because I know this is complicated, a continuing resolution is a

giant bill that funds the government. Once upon a time before Obama was president and when the Congress kind of ish worked, they used to pass individual appropriations bills for each part of the government, which were reported out of committee and sent to the floor. So the Department of Agriculture had one bill. The Department of Defense had one bill. The Department of the Treasury had one bill. And within these bills, there would be a debate, a line item debate, as he was saying about, it's called the normal procedure. It hasn't been the normal procedure now in Washington basically since 2009, and especially since 2013. Gates and the Freedom Caucus have demanded a return to that, although Kevin McCarthy, the Senate, and all these others have decided that they want to stay. Hence, the showdown that's happening right now.

Now, in terms of the demands that are being made here, Ukraine is one of those demands, but it's not one of the most prominent ones. Let's put this up there on the screen. One of the things that the House GOP wants to do is they want to cut spending, but they have decided to rule out over 90% of the federal budget, meaning entitlements and defense. So that leaves discretionary spending, which is only about 7% of the overall federal budget. That includes cuts to 27% of what they were advocating for, the Social Security Administration, nutrition assistance for newborns, money to ensure our drinking water is safe, most federal education money, federal cancer, and stroke research. So, Crystal, I personally think, look, I actually do think a return to normal order would be a good

thing, maybe conceptually. That said, what people are demanding here is crazy and actually would be, look, it's always ridiculous. Yeah, we could cut spending. Let's take a freaking axe to so much of the Pentagon. But they don't want to touch it. They never touch it. They never want to. And that's where, look, I'll give Gates credit because Gates actually would touch Pentagon spending, but the rest of them, they refuse. And so the whole thing just becomes this crazy farce effectively about cutting to the bone any existing welfare programs which we have, which by the way, many of these are as means tested if anybody is worried about that. But many of these existing programs are not exactly like cash. People aren't living high on the hog these days. My point is that type of welfare doesn't even exist in the United States.

That's what people don't understand. If you're not working, you actually can't get welfare. Even if you're unemployed, you can't just have no job. You have to have paid in the unemployment insurance in order to get unemployment insurance. I just don't think a lot of people understand that. A lot of the cuts that we were talking about are silly. That said, on the Ukraine side, I'm 100% with them. But the problem is, is from a political perspective, if McCarthy does fold, and it does look like he's going to, to individually bring these bills to the floor, the vast majority of the House of Representatives does support Ukraine aid. So it's not like it's not going to pass. That's the issue that I really have with this whole thing. And even that, so the expectation, I mean, this is also in the weeds,

and I know, I'm sorry, I apologize. But it really does matter because we are coming down to the wire here, and it looks, we're heading towards a government shutdown almost certainly because there's just not even time if they were going to do some other sort of complicated discharge petition process. There's just not even time to get that done. So here's what the state of play is. Kevin McCarthy is going to try to pass through the House these individual bills like you're talking about to appease the Matt Gaetz of the world, okay? That's going to go nowhere in terms of the Senate. Meanwhile, the Senate is trying to pass their own continuing resolution, which would be comprehensive, which Kevin McCarthy, because he values his position as Speaker of the House, is not going to put forward in the House. So you have this impasse

between the two chambers. What it looks like maybe we're going to end up with is a situation where they use this kind of workaround called a discharge petition that doesn't require the Speaker to bring something to the floor that you can get a majority of members, which would be some combination of probably mostly Democrats and a few Republicans to bring something like what the Senate is going to pass to the floor. But again, that's going to take some time. And there's no guarantees about that either, because the Matt Gaetz faction says even that would be a real betrayal if anything passes through the House that uses Democrats to get across the finish line.

So it's a complete impasse. You know, their demands are really extreme, as we showed there, and extraordinarily ideological, even if you, like we, are sympathetic to their demands on Ukraine, on everything else. I mean, it's just really trying to take a hatchet to these already threadbare social safety net programs, which have been cut and cut and cut, by the way, during the COVID era, in which they already extracted a pound of flesh over the last debt ceiling freaking negotiations. They got a lot of what they wanted there, too, which it's easy to forget about. So I think what was notable mostly about the Maria Bartiromo, Matt Gaetz clip there is just how ugly it was. I mean, it really is bringing out into the open. And I think, Maria, you could

just basically assume those are like coming directly from Kevin McCarthy. I mean, that is really the divide here. And it's quite something. From a pure entertainment perspective, here's my ideal solution. The Republicans do team up with the Democrats to pass it, and then McCarthy loses his speakership, just because I would enjoy it. I mean, me personally, I like to see people lose their jobs. You know, I like to see a little bit of chaos. That's what the House is for. But the problem is, like the Gates people, this is the same issue they had at the beginning of the Kevin McCarthy speakership fight. They don't have an alternative that can unite the caucus. And so maybe we won't have a speaker. You know, there's actually there's an interesting rule. You don't have to be a member of the House of Representatives to be speaker.

Yeah, you could be you could be a normal. So people always go, oh, there's an interesting rule. You don't have to be a member of the House of Representatives to be speaker. Yeah, I know. You could be a normal senator. People always go, oh, let's make Trump speaker of the House. I mean, they would enjoy it. I would enjoy it. Let's be honest. The one thing that I did think that Matt Gaetz was right on when he was like, Maria was like, and we can continue with all the wins. And he's like, what wins?

Because he's pointing to the fact, I mean, in fairness, like I said, they did win some of their hard ideological goals through the debt ceiling fight. So those, in their view, would be wins. I would consider them losses, but they would consider them wins. But in terms of all their, like, you know, their weaponization committee and their, like, impeachment investigation or whatever, he's pointing to the fact that this is all just, like, bullshit virtue signaling without any real teeth at this point. And he's not wrong about that. No, he's not because McCarthy has not given them the powers and the subpoena stuff that they actually want for the Congress. It's very interesting. And again, I know that we're boring people with the weeds, but you know, if you learn a little bit about

the procedure and you start to speak some of this language, you're like, you know, look, you can conceptually understand why it would definitely be better to move away from these giant CRs, these continuing resolutions, because they're just packed full of junk. Nobody ever knows what's going in them. They're never debated. They're never marked up. And effectively, the real problem is it's undemocratic because it means that only three people are making the law. The president, the leader of the Senate, and the leader of the House. They write those bills, and then they release 2,000 pages, and they go, look, up or down. There's no debate, nothing. Oh, you're going to lead to a government shutdown? It's basically a blackmail situation invented, like I said, by John Boehner and Paul Ryan and all those other

people, going back all the way back to the Obama administration. So getting away from it would be great, but listen, I'm not going to hold my breath. That thing is a rule in Washington. It has now. They love it. You know, the establishment loves that because they can chock full of, you know, Ukraine aid, disaster relief. They're like, oh, you want to vote against Hawaii? Remember the whole the $2,000 check thing? McConnell held it up because he refused to put it on the floor as a single item.

He would only put it up against government spending. He went ahead and killed it. So there's a lot of reasons why this really does hurt you as an individual citizen to pass laws this way. Yeah, but there's just too much dysfunction for them to be able to, and has been now for over a decade, for them to be able to actually run the government in the way that the government is supposed to be run. So not that I'm really longing for those days of bipartisan consensus around cutting social safety. But the way that we made those laws genuinely was good, especially 40, 50 years ago. It was great the way that they used to really take it seriously. Think about the committee, the way that you would have witnesses come and testify.

They would truly, I mean, go back into one of my personal favorite instances of American history is the tax bill by John F. Kennedy. The way that was reported and thought about and then eventually passed by Lyndon Johnson. The amount of work that went into that bill, which ended up being one of the best things that ever happened to the US economy. People should really go back and think about the debates around income tax and about how corporations, and it's set up for a lot of prosperity in the 60s. So I don't want to go on too much of a tangent, but it really was interesting. And there is, you know, a thing to be said for good order, but it requires a lot of other stuff. Well, the reason that it's impossible now is because the parties have completely ideologically diverged. So, you know, used to be that there was actually ideological overlap between the parties,

and that just doesn't really exist anymore. Now, it's theoretically, I mean, you could imagine a scenario where you ended up with, you know, I mean, you start to see glimmers of, okay, there's a few Republicans who are serious on antitrust and there's some Democrats who can start to see, yeah, the railway. I mean, there's a few little glimmers, but there's not anything like the type of actual like cross-partisan ideological overlap that used to enable that sort of working. And I don't know if we'll ever get back to that. Speaking of dysfunction in Washington, as you guys know, Senator Menendez of New Jersey, Democrat of New Jersey,

was indicted on stunning allegations of corruption last week. I mean, truly the details here are cartoonishly mind blowingblowing. Like they found hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in this guy's house stuffed into what is like a jacket that literally had his name on it. Gold bars. And the allegation here is that this was that he got this cash and the gold bars and like a luxury car for his wife and house payments and all this other stuff in exchange for doing favors for these Egyptian businessmen and also doing favors, by the way, for the Egyptian government. This is the man who was, until this all came out, head chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. So the fact that he's doing favors on behalf of a foreign government, and by the way, this is the second time he's been indicted

over corruption charges, is just absolutely stunning. Perhaps even more stunning, though, has been his response. You would think someone would have a little bit of shame about this, but nope, not at all. Put this up on the screen. So he had the gall to respond to calls for his resignation with a new statement saying, it's not lost on me how quickly some are rushing to judge a Latino and push him out of his seat. I am not going anywhere. And by the way, he's expected to give a press conference this morning in which he announces his re-election days after these indictment charges come down.

We'll wait and see what he actually says. But the goal to claim some sort of identity-based persecution over what are absolutely cartoonish, a caricature of corruption in terms of the allegations, is just absolutely stunning. And by the way, it is quite the opposite because, again, this is the second time this man has been indicted on corruption charges. Now, the other ones got thrown out. And so let's say innocent until proven guilty, all of that. But you would think that perhaps after the first corruption indictment charges, maybe at the very least, they wouldn't have made him chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Don't forget, Crystal, it wasn't that they thrown out. It said it was a hung jury. So it wasn't

that, you know, it was just a mistrial. So it was one of those where at least some jury, they thought he was guilty. He was never declared innocent. I mean, look, you're guilty before innocent, of course, in the American justice system. But I encourage everybody to go and read that original indictment of Mr. Menendez because it was shocking in 2017. Now, of course, cash isn't the only thing he's got in that jacket pocket. He's got the race card that he's got to go ahead and pull out. And my favorite thing is that after he got the gold,

allegedly, he Googled how much is a kilo of gold worth on his phone. That's the most boomer thing you can do. They also found the DNA of the people bribing him on that wad of cash. Just by the way, look, allegedly from the DOJ, all of that. So you can take it. I'm sure there's a perfectly innocent explanation for the wads of cash and gold bars. For those who want to know, $66,000 is a kilo of gold. And he had two of those. So that sounds nice. What a nice life to have two bricks of freaking gold. It's like out of a Bond movie

that you were seeing this gentleman. But there have been some people that have been coming out to. Yeah. So actually, the New Jersey delegation has turned on him pretty hard, not across the board, but put this up on the screen from The Wall Street Journal. The most critically, the New Jersey governor, Phil Murphy, who is also a Democrat, called for Menendez's resignation. You had New Jersey representatives, Democratic New Jersey representatives, including Mikey Sherrill, Bill Pascal, Pascal Jr., and Josh Gottheimer, show favorite, calling for him to leave. So far, his Senate colleague there, Cory Booker, has been silent. Although last time around with the corruption charges, Cory actually came out and affirmatively supported him. So I guess there's progress in some direction. You have Representative Don Beyer of Virginia,

who's co-founder of the Egypt Human Rights Caucus and a critic of the current government's human rights record. He said Menendez should step down. You actually have another Democrat, Representative Andy Kim, who has jumped into the Democratic primary to directly challenge Menendez

in a primary fight for that Senate seat. So Andy Kim, what he said is that after calls to resign Senator Menendez in a primary fight for that Senate seat. So Andy Kim, what he said is that after calls to resign, Senator Menendez said, I am not going anywhere. As a result, I feel compelled to run against him. By the way, I looked in, Andy Kim is sort of just like very standard issue Democrat, more or less. He's voted with Joe Biden 100% of the time. He hasn't distinguished himself in all that many regards. But anyway, he's just sort of like- He's not corrupt, or at least as we know it. As far as we know. This is New Jersey after all. But yeah, as far as we know, he hasn't been indicted over corruption charges as Menendez has. So we also had,

to the point of the identity-based persecution here, we had very prominent Latina, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, coming out and also calling for him to resign. Let's take a listen. Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, as you know, has just been indicted on bribery charges. Should he resign? And what do you think of his statement that it has to do with him being a Latino? Well, you know, I think it's the situation is quite unfortunate, but I do believe that it is in the best interest for Senator Menendez to resign in this moment. As you mentioned, consistency matters. It shouldn't matter whether it's a Republican or a Democrat. The details in this indictment are extremely serious. They involve the nature of of not just his, but all of our seats in Congress. And while as a Latina,

there are absolutely ways in which there is systemic bias, but I think what is here in this indictment is quite clear. And I believe it is in the best interest to maintain the integrity of the seat. Yeah. Don't agree with our Latinx colleague AOC all the time. But, you know, first of all, happy she said Latina. At least Latinx appears to have died so far in the lexicon. But she called on him to resign. So, you know, props to her. Yeah. And, you know, it's not like it doesn't take actual courage for Democratic lawmakers. I mean, it's no joke in the Senate. He, by all accounts, is going to remain the Senate Foreign Relations

Chairman. Schumer hasn't said anything. Many of these other senators don't want to cross him because if you have a single individual thing that you want done, it's not going to happen. He can straight up block it through committee. So, so far, there has been one senator, Democratic senator, who has called for him to resign is John Fetterman. Put this up on the screen. He says Senator Menendez should resign. I mean, this should be so easy, right? He's entitled to the presumption of innocence, but he cannot continue to wield influence over national policy, especially given the serious and specific nature of the allegations. I hope he chooses an honorable exit and focuses on his trial. Thank you, Senator Fetterman, for saying

the most obvious, basic thing that everyone should literally be saying. And it's actually worse than Schumer not saying anything. He did put out a statement in which he praised Menendez's service to New Jersey and said he is entitled to a fair trial and innocent until proven guilty. Now, he has stepped down from being chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. But Schumer, who is the most critical voice probably in all of this, declining to call on him to resign, along with, again, literally every other senator, Democratic senator, save for John Fetterman. Here is Dick Derman, who is another powerful United States Democratic senator, declining to call for him to step down. Let's take a listen. Let me tell you, Dana, this is a very serious charge. There's no question about it. But it bears reminding us of what I've said about the indictments against Donald Trump,

equally serious charges. These are, in fact, indictments that have to be proven under the rule of law. The person who is accused is entitled to the presumption of innocence. And it's the responsibility of the government to prove that case. I said that about Donald Trump. I say the same thing about Bob Menendez. In terms of resignation, that's a decision to be made by Senator Menendez

and the people of New Jersey. So he's trying to sound very serious, whatever there, but the bottom line is he won't call on him to resign. So apparently he called for Al Franken to resign over the photo. That was enough for old Dick to come out and say that you got to go. But a straight up federal indictment over corruption is not enough. I mean-

Which directly impacts his job. I mean, Al Franken allegedly grabbing someone's boobs. It doesn't impact your job as a senator, right? This is, you are literally trading your power and influence to do favors for a foreign government. And you people can't bring yourselves to say, hey, maybe this guy is the right one for the job right now. While there's an ongoing Democratic primary process, by the way, it's absolute insanity. Yeah. And Republicans are, of course, getting excited because Menendez is up for reelection in 2024. And they're thinking, hey, maybe we got a shot at the seat. If it's especially if it's Menendez who ends up being the nominee, he's probably the only Democrat in this era who could lose the New Jersey Senate seat. And yet, you know, they're apparently willing to take the risk on him. Look, this time around,

you got a Democratic governor who already came out and said he should resign. So it's not even an incident, but apparently, you know, as you were saying, he's got a press conference. I think he's going to run for reelection. Everybody thinks that in the press conference from today, he says he's going to run. That's the expectation. And you know, that's the expectation. And guess what? He won last time. He still won, despite the fact that he was, look, in my opinion, he was guilty as hell. Based on the indictment, my own personal opinion of reading of the 2017 original indictment against Menendez, but he beat it at trial in terms of a mistrial. This time around, who knows? Who knows with a New Jersey jury? He has nothing but

confidence, though, walking into this. He's going to go and fight it in court, and he very well could win, just like he did last time. Well, and here's the thing, too, and I'm doing this in my monologue. The Supreme Court has so limited the definition of corruption, which he used before with Bob McDonald to cover their own corrupt behavior, et cetera. So he'll try to use every trick in the book. But I mean, this seems like a pretty difficult one to wiggle your way out of when you got the literal gold bars in the closet. I thought the same thing about the last one, about the private jet travel. Yeah. Basic quid pro quo. And he still got off. So I don't know. Amazing. Yeah, absolutely amazing. All right. So this is kind of interesting. So we've got,

you know, the new TV season or whatever, I think, I, is about to drop. And so Catching Eyes is a new remake of The Bachelor, but with a twist. Put this up on the screen. So it's called The Golden Bachelor, Looking for Love and a Pickle Bob Partner. And I actually, unironically, I actually genuinely love this. So this man's name is Jerry Turner. He is The Bachelor.

He's in his 70s. It's going to be a group of women who are between 60 and 75 who are all vying for his affection here in the traditional Bachelor style. They say in this New York Times piece that they include divorcees, widows, mothers, and grandmothers. They were talking to the producers of this show, and they said that at first when they brought the contestants in to the Bachelor mantra or whatever, I they said that at first when they brought the contestants into like the Bachelor Mansion or whatever. I've never watched The Bachelor, but this is my understanding of how this thing works. I am familiar with the concept.

I'm generally familiar with the product, but they brought them into the Bachelor Mansion, and they were looking around at the bedrooms and everything. And it was a sort of like typical Bachelor reaction, yelling off the balcony and saying, and they said, okay, this feels like The Bachelor. And then they came down to the kitchen and had mimosas. They were doing toast, and we said, okay, this feels like The Bachelor. And then they came down to the kitchen and had mimosas. They were doing toasts. And we said, okay, this also feels like The Bachelor. And then one woman said, let's toast to social security. Good. They're like, all right. That's not The Bachelor. That's different. But apparently this, this is no accident in programming choices. Put this up on the screen. Also for the New York Times, TV networks, last hope, boomers. Viewers have fled primetime lineups for streaming outlets with one notable exception, people over 60.

So basically, the only people who are left watching regular TV programs like The Bachelor are all over 60. And so, you know, reading the room, television networks are increasingly programming for this older audience. And they point specifically to The Golden Bachelor as, like, case in point of this. But here's some of the numbers. This was stunning to me. Just nine years ago, the median age of most top-rated network entertainment shows ranged from the mid-40s to the early 50s. Just nine years ago, not even a decade ago.

It was 45 for the sitcom How I Met Your Mother, 52 for Big Bang Theory. Some shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine had a median viewer as young as 39. Now, in the most recent network television season,

which ended in May, median viewer was older than 60. Median. Including The Voice, 64.8. The Masked Singer, 60. Grey's Anatomy, 64. Young Sheldon, 65 plus, the highest range that Nielsen provides.

And so it's not just The Golden Bachelor. They're bringing back Law & Order, starring the 82-year-old Sam Waterson. I couldn't believe that. When I saw that photo, I'm like, Sam, retire, my man. You've been on TV since before I was born. So they're bringing back Quantum Leap, which I actually, as a kid, I used to love watching Quantum Leap.

Yeah, but you should not be bringing these things back. Magnum P.I. CBS is resurrecting Matlock, a show they say The Simpsons used to lampoon for its older fan base. Last year, NBC found a surprise hit in Night Court, another like 1980s era, 80s, early 90s era show that I also watched as a child. And they talked about how they intentionally tried to avoid computer screens and other, quote, trappings of modern life. We really intentionally wanted Night Court to feel like a place a bit frozen in time, was the idea. And apparently, it worked for their viewing audience because it was a breakout success, the revamped Night Court,

which I never would have expected. So it's kind of interesting. Yeah, of course. It's fascinating. And the reason why it matters above all is that this is what props up linear television. I've talked ad nauseum about cable carriage fees and all that other stuff. But the bedrock, the beating heart of linear TV, of network TV for years was the serialized show, the modern families. I'm talking more of my era, like you said, Law & Order, what is it, NCIS? I think that's what it's called, NCIS. Yeah, I think so. NCIS, which has various different ones, Law & Order, Law & Order SVU, the various spinoffs of all of that. They were the bedrock of television. It's what kept America interested.

It really peaked, in my opinion, with Lost back in 2004. It was really like the height of their powers when they were demanding huge amounts of money. But people don't forget this. Lost launched and actually was helped by the Internet. It was one of the first forum board TV shows where people would talk on forums about what was going on with Lost. And that really presages the eventual move to streaming television and really a collapse of the funding model. Because the thing is that these shows and the whole anchor that they present at these big conferences helped prop up an entire

advertising scheme, which came in the middle of commercial breaks. And now almost a decade into the Netflix, HBO, Peacock, and all these other eras, a lot of that is really gone. You know, even the ads that we watch on those streaming services, if you're ad supported, they're like 15 second spots for some idiot State Farm ad. You know, it's not the original ads that demand the premiums that once were. It's really interesting. You know, there was a, do you remember, did you ever watch The West Wing? Yeah.

Yeah, so like The West Wing, for example, one of the reasons why it went on for seven seasons was that it was one of the only shows that got rich people to watch network TV. And so even though the audience wasn't that big, it was like doctors and lawyers and the intellectual class supposedly. That's the whole CNBC business model. That's the CNBC business. And they were able to, NBC at that point was printing money off of the West Wing. ER, for example, was another long serialized one.

And look, I enjoyed some of these shows, you know, at the time and all that. But I think they died, you know, a good death for a reason. And I think it's very sad, actually, the fact that it is now effectively an elderly market. We already saw this fight that just happened with ESPN Disney with the, what was it? I forget who the cable carrier was. Charter Communications, right? Charter Communications, that's right. This is the future.

I mean, very soon, you're going to move to an era where the cable bundle is diminishing like nobody's business. Once sports goes fully online, it is dead, absolutely dead. And with that will come the collapse of NBC Nightly News, ABC World 2020, or whatever these programs are, and the Today Show, a lot of these things. I mean, these programs were hundreds of millions. At one point, Matt Lauer was single-handedly responsible for almost a billion in ad revenue for what was going on over at NBC. I mean, what are they making today? Maybe 100 mil?

And, you know, I'm talking, you know, obviously that's a lot of money, but that's like one-tenth of what they used to make over there. So you've got to think about it that way. Yeah. I mean, the business piece is really fascinating to me. And, I mean, the sad reality that's increasingly coming into view is, you know, the thought was it would be better for consumers once you weren't paying for the whole cable news bundle. But increasingly, people are paying more for like 18 different streaming services and getting less. So it hasn't worked out for consumers the way that one might hope that it would. I think we'll get there. We're in a chaos era. Maybe. I don't know. We'll see. But, you know, in terms of the cultural representation piece, though, like with the Golden Bachelor and whatever, I'm actually here for it.

It's funny. Kyle watches golf all the time. It's always on in the background. Golf Channel. And Golf Channel. And he watches TV like he's an old man. It's like Golf Channel and Weather Channel. It's like 80-year-olds and Kyle are watching these channels.

But anyway, they played this senior women's golf tour on the channel. And I actually really appreciate it because so much of representation of older women in particular is like very limited in terms of television. I feel like older men, you know, the salt and pepper, like Demonaire, older guy, like that's been a thing for a while. But to see these older women, many of whom just look like a regular old grandma out there doing these incredible athletic feats. And like, you know, they were amazing on the golf course. It was kind of cool. And so I'm for the golden bachelor. I'm excited to see what this is all about. Like these, the dude is less interesting to me than the fact that they're actually going to have

women who are age appropriate to him, who are vying for his attention. So I'm kind of here for the cool old grandma representation that this new era could represent. I agree. I just think, though, it's an example of the original age of the mass market TV show, which could appeal to tens of millions. Absolutely. That's gone. I mean, I was talking about Lost. Yeah. And that's the thing with, you know, boomers, this has been their whole life has been centered around like when I get home and in the primetime shows, like we sit down as a family and like the TV is central. And so they're just there. That habit is not going to break because it's been a lifelong habit. Right. Whereas for younger generations, you know, they've they've evaluated the landscape and switched over more readily and more easily. And the other issue that's a problem for the networks

in terms of the business model is it's still what they call the key demo, which is I think like 25 to 54, where advertisers, that's what you sell your ad revenue based on because that's the group that is most lucrative that advertisers really want to reach. So when all of your audiences are like frigging 65 years old,

I mean, that's the other issue for them in terms of the advertising model. Some of the numbers you guys won't even believe. Like I just looked it up. The season three premiere of Lost got 18.8 million US viewers. That is so, that's like one-tenth of the adult population. And I remember it as a communal experience at the time. I still love that show. But those days, they are long, long gone. So you're going to see more of the golden bachelors and hey, more power to them. But from a funding and a business point of view and a mass market, mass culture point of view, that thing is, that's a ship sale. That is a white flag of surrender. Yeah. For what they're doing. Indeed.

Crystal, what are you taking a look at? In a single day, two instances of absolutely cartoonish corruption were revealed among some of America's most powerful elites. Senator Bob Menendez, chair of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee, was indicted again. Once again, the senator stands accused of accepting cash, gold bars, house payments, a luxury vehicle, and other gifts in exchange for doing favors for Egyptian businessmen and the Egyptian government. And at the same time, ProPublica dropped their latest investigation into the brazen corruption of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who has arguably become the most ideologically influential justice on this conservative court. In this latest piece,

they detail how Thomas was groomed by conservative billionaires over years, attending ultra-elite Bohemian Grove retreats. These ties not only resulted in all of those luxury trips and private school tuition and payments for his mother's home from billionaire Harlan Crow, but also led to a relationship with the most influential big money network in the entire country, the Koch Network. Justice Thomas went on to flagrantly disregard any conflict of interest concerns by raising money for the Kochs in spite of the fact that they routinely have cases in front of the court. Of course, none of this objectively corrupt behavior was disclosed to the public in what appears to be a clear violation of federal ethics laws. Now, these stories may seem kind of unrelated, different parties, details, ideologies, but they hold in common quite a lot as it turns out. From their

grotesque betrayal of public trust to the code of silence and complicity among elites that enables such absolutely outlandish behavior. Both stories of corruption stand out for their direct impact on policymaking at the very highest levels. As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Menendez's influence on our nation's foreign policy was second only to the president himself. And all the while, he has apparently been available for what in the grand scheme of foreign governments was a cheap price. Egyptian businessmen were allegedly able to buy this guy for a few hundred thousand dollars,

a bargain considering the power that he wields and the favors he was able to allegedly provide. The impact of Clarence Thomas' corrupt dealings with the Kochs and other libertarian billionaires is, if anything, even more far-reaching. The Kochs look set to win one of their longtime goals in this upcoming Supreme Court term, stripping federal agencies of much of their power

to regulate anything from clear air and water to labor rights to consumer protections. stripping federal agencies of much of their power to regulate anything from clear air and water to labor rights to consumer protections. This issue, the so-called Chevron deference, is a libertarian billionaire obsession. And lo and behold, as Thomas has been feted and lavished with gifts by the very businessman most influential in pushing the end of Chevron, his position on this issue has totally flipped. Thomas once authored a major defense of Chevron and the ability of Chevron. His position on this issue has totally flipped. Thomas once authored a major defense of Chevron and the ability of federal agencies to regulate in areas where congressional intent is ambiguous, but his billionaire buddies appear to have successfully changed his mind.

Thomas has since repudiated his previous position and looks set to help end Chevron, granting his billionaire benefactors their fondest wish and kneecapping the ability of the federal government to protect the rights of ordinary Americans. But it's not just their powerful impact on our democracy that unites these two instances of corruption at the very highest level. Both stem from the very same rotten roots. In fact, no institution has done more to legalize and normalize corruption than the Supreme Court. David Sirota of Lever News has been making this point very powerfully. He writes,

If proven true, the sordid details of the indictment of Senator Menendez reflect a country whose billionaire-owned Supreme Court has been explicitly telling politicians that flagrant, grotesque corruption will now be considered perfectly legal. In 2016, justices unanimously overturned the corruption conviction of former Virginia Governor McDonnell, essentially saying gifts may be exchanged for certain government favors. Menendez weaponized that to fight a past indictment and will likely try to do so again. SCOTUS justices now have a personal motive to try to protect Menendez from prosecutors. Justices' own acceptance of gifts from those with businesses before the court

mimics the alleged scheme detailed in the Menendez indictment. Supreme Court justices will likely be personally averse to criminalizing the same behavior we now know that they themselves routinely engage in. Now, this is just the most explicit, codified way in which elites enable corruption. Just behold the silence, though, from most corners surrounding these new stunning developments. In response to Menendez once again facing indictment for insane levels of corruption, as of this writing, one of his Senate Democratic colleagues has called for his resignation. Just one. Kudos to John Fetterman for doing that. And this code of silence and protection comes all the way from the top. Majority Leader Schumer not only declined to call for Menendez to step down,

but took this opportunity to praise him as a dedicated public servant who is, quote, always fighting hard for the people of New Jersey. Of course, according to the indictment, he was in reality fighting hard for some shady Egyptian businessmen, not so much for the people of New Jersey. Meanwhile, Chief Justice John Roberts, who supposedly cares so deeply about the institution of the court, has done nothing but stonewall any attempts at real reform. Remember, the Supreme Court alone, among federal courts, has no code of ethics,

allowing justices to engage in whatever twisted, brazen levels of corruption that they can justify to themselves, because they don't have to justify it to us. None of Thomas's fellow justices have spoken a single critical word against his enrichment by a powerful network of billionaires and conservative activists.

And the reason why is pretty simple. Because so many elite politicians are guilty of some level of corruption, even if not as cartoonish as Menendez or Thomas, there's a sort of principle of mutually assured destruction that ends up reigning supreme. They all keep their mouths shut and the status quo locked in because their own hands are not clean. That's why stock trading remains. That's why anti-corruption laws are loosened. And even when politicians and their aides are indicted, they frequently get let off. These men believe the rules do not apply to them. And unfortunately, too often, they are correct. And that is what enables it because you- 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? Of all the causes that I've been early to, perhaps the call I'm most proud of to be attached to is calling critical race theory and many of the hucksters complete grifters from the beginning. Nobody much cared in 2018 and 2019 about critical race theory or emerging con artists like Nicole Hannah-Jones and Ibram Kendi, but I had my eye on them. Those who want to see can go back and watch rising coverage from at that time of me calling them out if you're interested. I saw them clearly for what they were, nothing more than modern day race hucksters capitalizing on the guilt of white liberals to both enrich themselves, advance their careers,

and destroy any social fabric left in this country that is not obsessed with race. Jones, Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, they had one single mission, convince the elites in this country there is one source for all of our problems and nothing else, race. This is reductive and a false view of history, but it was successful. Ultra-liberals on campuses were beginning to be indoctrinated. Slowly but surely, an infrastructure was built up all throughout 2018 and 19 for the perfect moment. And luckily for them, it came with the BLM riots of 2020. White liberals and corporations suddenly began playing Olympics to see who could outwoke or out-virtue signal each other, and these people were happy to take their money. Kendi especially. Kendi is unsurprisingly the dumbest and yet the most successful amongst them.

He has written several books about, quote, anti-racism. He advocates for such ideas as a constitutional anti-racist amendment, literal race discrimination in favor of blacks, and brainwashing children from a young age about his view of race. Every genderqueer bookstore in this country has his book buried at the front row, and billionaires have flooded this man with money to continue his important work. He decided to use that money, in conjunction with Boston University,

to create a new center. And henceforth, in 2020, the Center for Anti-Racist Research was born. It sounds as smart as the Zoolander one. Now, endowed with tens of millions of dollars and a new mandate to research and promote the anti-racist cause. Three years later, though,

it turns out the entire thing was as much of a grift and as a con as I thought from the very beginning. More than half of the employees of the center were abruptly fired just recently after Kendi has apparently burned through much of $43 million. In that time period,

they have produced no real research, applied for and given grants with no work output, no real original work to speak of. In fact, one professor at the university said Kendi, quote, had a pattern of amassing grants without any commitment to producing the research obligated, adding that to the best of my knowledge, there is no good faith commitment to fulfilling funded research projects. She wrote that in 2021. Instead of thanking her, the university retaliated against her, refusing to even renew her affiliation. The grift is now so obvious, Boston University has had to launch an official inquiry into Kennedy's leadership. They note that originally, the center was supposed to track racial disparities nationwide, have a graduate degree program, a media enterprise,

and research teams on systemic racism. Only one of those projects ever came to fruition, a half-assed media project. The so-called racial data tracker did not, which was supposed to be the centerpiece for all their work and their funding. As for the graduate degree programs, nope, nowhere to be seen. In fact, it turns out that Kendi for the last several months has been on leave from his own center that he was supposed to be running. Why? To work on things like his podcast, his new ESPN Plus series about racism in sports called Skin in the Game. And while he's rolling in corporate cash and enriching himself, the people who work there saw him, quote, as a tool of capitalism and would often exploit them and their labor. One professor called it a

colossal waste of millions of dollars and noted that Kendi's work was thought to even be influenced by many of the billionaire donors who had backed him and the university, including rolling out the red carpet for big pharma executives. It would all be funny if millions of people had not bought this idiot's book and shoved it down their children's throat. The media had not celebrated him as some modern day Frederick Douglass. For a while in this country, as I said, you couldn't even go into a bookstore or Barnes and Noble without seeing how to be an anti-racist or anti-racist baby prominently displayed. You couldn't turn on the TV or watch a movie without having this racialism at the center.

And how many of us couldn't even open social media without seeing his signature quote, it's not enough to not be racist, you must be actively anti-racist. It was everywhere. The collapse of the Kennedy Center, the wasting of millions of dollars, it's the latest casualty of the BLM movement. Who can forget the BLM executive accused of stealing $10 million of donor funds who used them as a quote, personal piggy bank, or the multi-million dollar mansions that were purchased by these groups' leaders. I am hard-pressed, really, to think of a single major figure in the so-called movement

who got prominent after Ferguson who hasn't turned out to be a grifter, rather than one who was honest. And I'm going to end with this. The billionaires and the, frankly, rich white liberals, they owe only themselves to blame. These people were never hidden who they are. Nicole Hannah-Jones famously appeared in a so-called racial justice movement sponsored by Shell Corporation. Anti-racism has always been a tool of the billionaire class to distract and to divide the populace. It is not an accident that it was the prevailing thought after BLM and is certainly not an accident that despite all these revelations, all of us know this. Kendi's going to get away with it. ESPN, the podcast, he'll still be called for commentary during the next racial incendiary moment.

The grift is the point. The only thing we can do is not buy into it next time. I mean, Crystal, it's been, I mean, I know you're no fan of Ibram Kendi, but he was the perfect person. You know, I have a funny story. I was in a book club. Yeah. And in 2018, I think, and that was Stamped by Racism. That was Stamped by Race or whatever it was called.

It was the first time. I remember, this is the most trash book. But one of the guys in charge was, I'm not going to give away the name. He was like a dean of a liberal arts college. He was like, I think this really speaks to me. And I brought up some of the class concerns even at that time before I even started the show with you. And it was like I was speaking gibberish to this man. He said, no, no, no, no. He addresses that in the book. All class concerns are downstream of race. And I was like, well, okay, hold on a

second here. Now, we would be fools to say that it's not deeply intertwined. But the causality and then the things that they reach for as their solutions are obviously very much at odds for a lot of what we believe in here at this show. I mean, this ties in perfectly with Freddie DeBoer's latest book that we interviewed him about, how elites hijack the social justice movement, as I think what it's called. And look, capitalism has created a class-race stratified society very intentionally. And there is no doubt that black people, starting with slavery and and throughout our history have been completely screwed by our system. And so what really disgusts me about people like Kendi is that they use these moments when there's a genuine like desire to do better. There was, I mean, there was a collective outpouring of grief and concern and desire to change and all of these things in the, you know, during the BLM moment after George Floyd

was murdered. And so when you had people like, you know, Kendi and people like the, you know, the BLM leaders who sucked up all of these millions of dollars and activist energy and then channeled them into things that oftentimes, I mean, Kendi's programs were found at the corporate level to actually exacerbate racism. Yes. Like you took this. I'm going to say you stole this money and did nothing with it at this center. And you made it worse. And it's no surprise because, of course, like any this is the way this is the And you made it worse. And it's no surprise because of course, like any, this is the way, this is the way capitalism works, right? You have this moment of what could have

been a real reckoning that could have really transformed things in a better way for everyone. And most of all for black people who've been oppressed for far too long. And so they look at that not as like, oh, how can we make things better? But like, how can we turn a profit? How can we, you know, put up our Black Lives Matter banner on our website? How can we hire this anti-racism consultant and do a little dance like we're so virtuous and like we really care about these issues without actually really changing anything. And so, lo and behold, that's exactly what happened. And no one should be surprised when this is the ultimate outcome of his, you know, quote unquote think tank or center or whatever the hell this thing is. In the words of the great Eric Hoffer, every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, eventually degenerates into a racket. There you go. Sad to say.

All right, guys, we're gonna have a great show for everybody tomorrow. We've got special debate coverage planned, as we said. So go ahead and become a premium member today if you are able. Otherwise, we're excited to see you all tomorrow. And it's going to be a fun week here at the show. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Michael Kassin, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on good company.

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