Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/26/23: Perfect Storm Economy, Debunking Auto CEO Lies, Menendez Uses Cuban Heritage, Newsom DeSantis Debate, New UFO Whistleblowers, Landmark Case For Podcasts, US Subsidizing Ukraine Businesses, EV Future, Big Pharma Corruption

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss four major factors that may crash economy, debunking auto CEO lies amid strike, Menendez uses his Cuban background to defend corruption allegations, Newsom vs. DeSantis debate confirmed, Newsom vetoes bill to protect truckers from AI vehicles, dozens of whistleblowers on UFOs come forward, landmark case for podcasts, Biden admin subsidizing Ukrainian businesses, autoworkers go to war for EV future, and Robert Weissman joins to discuss corporate corruption in the USA and his new book "The Corporate Sabotage of America's Future"To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Robert Weissman's Book: http://corporatesabotage.org/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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I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios.

Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here

and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?

Indeed, we do. Lots of big stories that are breaking this morning. We're taking a deep dive to start with into the economy and what could be a perfect storm of a number of troubling storm clouds on the horizon. So we'll look at that. We've also got Senator Bob Menendez, of course, indicted again for corruption, has a pretty incredible excuse for what he says is going on. And at the same time, and this was a little surprising, Nancy Pelosi actually calling for him to step down. So we'll bring you all of that.

We also have some updates about Governor Newsom and clearly positioning himself, I don't know about for this presidential election, but for the future. For something. Making moves. He has agreed to that debate with Ron DeSantis over on Fox News. So we'll talk about that. Also making some interesting legislative choices and earning the ire of a powerful labor union in the state. Sauer's got a UFO update for us based on a Michael Schellenberger report. So he'll bring that to us. And we also have a really interesting story here about two podcasters who are hoping that Joe

Biden will save their show. We'll give you all of those details. Also excited to be joined by Robert Weissman. He is an expert on government corruption. Gee, wonder how that could be relevant. It's a great, a great topic. Yes. Just happened to work out that there was a little bit of government corruption in the news that we could peg this to. Before we get to any of that, remember, guys, this is a debate week, and so we've got some big plans for you guys. Yeah, that's right. So we've got the debate special. It is planned for everyone. We will have one preview that will drop tomorrow. There's also going to be a normal counterpoint show for everybody. For premium subscribers, that preview will actually drop later on today. And we will have a very special show for everyone on Thursday. So we've got a lot of fun graphics

and things planned post-game analysis. If you can help us out, as we said, it's extra production, so extra cost to us. You can sign up at breakingpoints.com, become a premium subscriber, as we said. We'll get the early drops and all those other things. And also, everyone, I just want to say, I know we've been having some issues with Spotify. That's really on Spotify's end over the last couple of days. We are working on it. I know how difficult it is, all the processing nightmares with YouTube and Spotify. But unfortunately, look, we are at the mercy of these big corporations. But as we said, we heard you. We are absolutely working on it, and we take it seriously. I know how much people want the show immediately on time. I'm the same way.

I get messages from my parents. It's a little unsettling that they watch the show every day. I feel the same way. That's why my mom checks up on me. All right. Let's start, though, by taking a look at some of those potential storm clouds on the horizon for the economy. Put this up on the screen from The Wall Street Journal. They had a good report. The headline here is U.S. economy could withstand one shock, but four at once. They outline four different potential factors that could have some level of impact on the economy and are asking the question, OK, on their own, we could withstand each of these. But if you put them together, what will the impact be? The first one they highlight here is the autoworker strike.

If it is prolonged, if it ends up hitting more plants than it is right now, that could shave some small amount off of growth. You also right now have the threat that we've been talking about here of a lengthy government shutdown. Looks very likely that the government is going to shut down next week. The question is, how long does it take for them to come to a deal? Obviously, that could have a significant impact on the economy as well. The other thing they point to is we are facing the resumption of student loan debt payments. That is quite a significant one. You have a lot of Americans, millions of Americans who are going to be having to put out hundreds, if not thousands of dollars per month to service those debts. That has been on hiatus for quite a

while. This comes at a time also when Americans are increasingly stressed in terms of their debt load, in terms of their credit card debt, also in terms of the interest rates that they're facing on auto loans, home loans, et cetera. The other thing they point to here is rising oil prices, which obviously hits American consumers extremely hard. And Sagar, the other one that I just sort of briefly referenced here that I would add, putting a fifth level of shock into the economy, is the high level of interest rates. Yes. And the fact that the Fed has signaled, while they've been holding rates constant, that they could actually hike rates again in the future. If anything, that hangs over the economy more than any of these individual threats they're

pointing to. I mean, we just have four simultaneously assaults, immediate assaults on the American pocketbook on top of the systemic factors that we already are destroying so many people. Let's go and put this one up there on the screen. The monthly mortgage payment is actually at an all-time high at $2,300. The overall mortgage payment in March of 2020, for example, was only $977. We currently

have the lowest housing affordability on record in the United States, and that's largely because of high prices and because of high interest rates. So people are locked into either their home and they can't move, or their rent is going to be increasing substantially. People always forget that while, yes, gas is a leading cause of inflation, shelter is right up there with it. So you have a major assault right now on American affordability going into the most critical time for retailers in the United States, the fourth quarter, when people do Christmas shopping, they buy a lot of clothes, Black Friday, Prime Day, all these other things are coming up. And if you see even a marginal decrease in their overall level of consumer spending, that is going to impact the overall economy.

And each one of these things, Crystal, 0.1%, 0.2%. I mean, these things add up. If you have an overall 1% reduction in economic growth, that's a ton, actually, when we're only supposed to grow at 2%. And inflation is, I mean, who the hell knows what inflation actually is. It could be somewhere between 4% to 9%, depending on the way that you look at it. The point, though, is that all of these are not good news as we head into a critical economic time period for the US economy. And then politically, it's also a terrible thing for

Biden. So I really think this is, you know, it's like 1970s all over again. It's like, the only thing that we're missing, thank God, is high unemployment. But unfortunately, we still have very high underemployment or we have a decrease in overall real wages relative to inflation. There's also a lot of global signs of trouble. China seems to really be in a very difficult position, especially with their real estate sector. Europe also has seen growth slow much more significantly, and their economies have been

struggling a lot more than ours has. We've actually been outpacing the rest of the world in terms of the strength of our economy, quote unquote, strength of our economy. So when you see those sorts of global factors too, that's another thing to weigh on you to say, okay, well, is some of that coming here as well? Are we going to be facing the similar struggles that other countries around the world are? Just to dig in a little bit more on the debt situation for Americans, which has been exacerbated as the pandemic era programs have all gone away, as interest rates have been on the upward swing to try to deal with inflation, but at the same time you have inflation, which is also making things so much more expensive and forcing Americans to take on more debt. We've already covered signs of stress there, the fact that credit card debt has hit over a trillion dollars for the first time. But we have

another indicator that Americans are feeling stressed in terms of their personal finances. Put this up on the screen. You now have credit card losses rising at the fastest pace since the great financial crisis. So what CNBC reports on here is the fact that Goldman Sachs is predicting credit card losses are going to continue to climb through the end of 2024, early 2025. Very unusual that these losses are accelerating outside of an economic downturn. Credit card losses currently stand at 3.63 percent. That is up one and a half percentage points from the bottom. So the fact that you have this rapid increase in credit card losses and that it's happening at this kind of unusual time period is really raising a lot of red flags for economists. But it makes sense when you put it in with that picture that I just painted of the fact that Americans were already taking on a lot of debt. They're having to try to deal with high

interest rates. They've had the loss of these programs that benefited them. They've had rising prices. And now you add on top of that the fact that student loan payments are set to restart on October 1. According to the Wall Street Journal, that restart could divert roughly $100 billion from Americans' pockets. That's according to an analysis from a Wells Fargo economist. It's the first time borrowers will have had to make payments since March of 2020. And while this is one slice of the economy, it has been significant enough that retailers like Walmart, Target, and others have been really raising concerns in their investors' calls about what this could mean for spending among some of their core consumer groups.

So a lot of uneasiness about what's going on here. And listen, if you're like a normal person out there, none of this is going to be a surprise to you because even as the top line numbers in terms of unemployment have been relatively strong, we know the way that personal finances have been stretched and stretched and stretched over the past several years. Yeah, that's right. And so actually, I'm looking right now at the average monthly car payment right now in the United States. New car payment, $728. A used car payment is $530. I mean, that is a lot of money that we're talking about here. That's more than six grand a year after tax income that is being diverted just to people's car notes. And so look, I guess it's a broken record, but it is one of which I think is so, so important is that overall, the personal financial situation of the average

American household is vastly worse today than it was a couple of years ago. And that is going to manifest itself in all sorts of crazy ways in terms of how we spend our money, in terms of how we think about our politics. And it is also why the right track, wrong track number is so high for President Biden and why his disapproval rating is so high as well. You just can't get around it. And President Biden just does not seem to have the political will or necessity to actually speak to these everyday concerns and to say that I'm doing everything I possibly can in the immediate, immediate term to try to get something done with this. And overall, that is just hitting people very, very hard, I think, at a mass sociological and psychic level, which is difficult. And you can feel it right now in the country,

I think. You can feel the level of dissatisfaction. Absolutely. And I think on the political level, I feel like we say this every election, but there's a wide open lane for someone who actually promises to deliver materially for people. And, you know, Biden, their strategy is they're hoping that abortion is still going to be an incredibly salient issue. Probably will. Right. They're hoping that, you know, the fact that people hate Donald Trump is going to be a salient issue. I'm sure it will be. And they're hoping that that is going to be enough. That's what they leaned on last time. And look, it worked.

It's what they leaned on in the midterms. And look, it worked. So it's not like it's a crazy strategy. But when you're looking at the polls that have Biden at best tied and that one that we covered yesterday, an outlier that had Trump up by 10, which again, I don't believe. But the fact that you can even have a poll that says that indicates maybe you need to do a little bit more than what you've been doing. Maybe you need to actually have an affirmative economic agenda that is going to deliver for people in the immediate term. Now, I've talked about how the industrial policy and some of these bigger picture things like his support for labor rights, I think that's really important for the economy for the medium term and also for the long term. And it's going

to be really delivering for workers over that period. We got to talk about the here and now. What have you done for me lately? I don't hear any affirmative economic agenda from actually what I hear from Trump is negative because they want to cut corporate taxes and go back to that well and do even more in that direction. From Biden, I just really don't hear any affirmative economic vision at all. Great economic policy is made where it both provides short-term relief and cash injection, or not even just cash injection, tax cut. It depends, and I'm not in the current term, I'm talking about in the past, but also long-term economic design. And I talked a lot yesterday, so I've been thinking about the Kennedy tax bill, which shaved the

income tax, but also actually overall boomed the economy from 1964, which made it both an immediate cut, which boosted consumer spending, but provided a lot of the economic growth that we saw throughout the 1960s. And that was at a time of deliberative process where people actually thought about this stuff. They had real ideas. And it was like a time, not only to to it was a time where they would both fuse the political reality with design and in the future. And unfortunately, I think we really have lost a lot of that the more that we think about it and the way that our policy is being designed right

now. Fly by wire is just so ridiculous and stupid. And that just comes and underscore again, just because we were on the verge of it. We are almost certain now to have a government shutdown. Every person that I have seen just from a pure timeline level, it doesn't seem possible, Crystal, for them to be able to get out of this, even if the Senate does pass a continuing resolution, which is able to get through the House of Representatives through some sort of discharge petition and all of that, just from a pure time, like time on the floor. It's September 26th. We're filming this right now. The government funding expires October 1 at 12.01 a.m. That's just not enough time to pass these types of bills.

And that's without any of the political fights that are happening. So that is going to impact the economy because not only federal, I mean, the federal government is the largest employer in the United States, but so just no paychecks that are going out there. But on top of that, there's a lot of other alternative programs that people rely on for the feds, for services, even tourism. Remember last time, the National Park Service shut down, stuff like that. All of that can bleed into overall economic conditions. Yeah, indeed. All right, so let's transition into the way that current president and former president are trying to signal their support for working class people this week. We do have a historic event today with President Biden showing up at the picket line expected to arrive in Wayne County, Michigan, to join workers there,

striking workers around noon today. UAW President Sean Fain is expected to join him on the picket line. As we said, first time that we know of that labor historians can figure out that a president has ever done this, which I think is a real reflection of the way that the politics around labor unions and corporate power have dramatically shifted in just a few years time and hugely accelerated by the pandemic. So you have Biden making that trek there today. You have former President Trump speaking to workers also in Michigan in a neighboring county, sort of trying to counterprogram the Republican debate that's going to be going on. He's going to be trashing the Biden EV agenda.

I mean, so far, his tactic has been to sort of like trash, quote unquote, union bosses, but also trash the Biden EV transition and claim that, you know, he's the one who will really help workers because he opposes all of that. So you've got those rival visions. At the same time, one of the big conversations that has come out of the autoworker strike and one of the things they've been talking about a lot, understandably, is how wildly out of step CEO pay at the big three automakers has been versus median worker pay. Put this up on the screen. You know, it's bad when even the Wall Street Journal is like, hey, auto CEOs, maybe making 300 times what workers make is a little bit over the top.

So they did what is actually a very useful analysis of where the big three automakers stand versus other large corporations in terms of their executive compensation. And what they find is, lo and behold, even in an era when corporate executives typically make wildly astronomical salaries as opposed to the workers, even in that era, the big three stand out for just how much their CEOs make versus what the median workers make. So they also point to the fact that wage gains for rank and file employees have not actually kept pace with inflation. Rank and file employees have taken a pay cut when you account for inflation. Meanwhile, over that same period, CEO pay has gone up by 40%.

So that is why these auto workers, among a host of reasons, are calling for significant pay increases because they have actually fallen way behind in terms of their salaries. So let's take a look at some of the specifics here. Ford's CEO last year earned around $21 million. That's 281 times the company's median employee earnings. And that's actually the lowest ratio of the big three. Over at General Motors, Mary Barra made $29 million last year. That was 362 times the median employee earnings. And over at Stellantis, the global parent of Chrysler, Dodge, and other brands, their CEO last year made around $25 million or 365 times the average employee pay. So even when you account for what other large corporations are doing, the big three

are at the top end of those pay ratios with their executives wildly out-earning by 300 times what the typical worker is. One of the reasons I always feel like I'm taking crazy pills on this is that we talk in percentages, and sometimes we don't even just deal in outright dollar figures. So for example, under the current contract, the UAW starts at $18 an hour at an annualized basis that is $37,440 per year. Please tell me a city in this country that you can, quote unquote, make it on at $37,440 per year. I don't even think you could be a normal renter without penny pinching at that salary. At the top, they can make up to $32 an hour. $32 an hour is $66,560 per year. That is less than the overall average household income in the United States at $70,000. So what are these people asking for? Okay, we can do a little bit of math. $37,000 at a 30% pay increase is how much? It's around

$40-something thousand dollars per year. That seems eminently reasonable for a skilled position of a unionized auto worker. Same whenever we do $66,000. We are just pegging slightly above the overall average household income in the United States. So when you put it that way, I mean, it completely falls apart, right, Crystal? When we're talking about bargaining so that the top wage gets you to near average in the US. And I think that's fine. The UAW and workers, specifically auto workers, were the bedrock of the American middle class. The idea of the middle class was you earn about a household income and on said household income, you could mostly make it.

Now, to be honest, even $75,000 for a family of four, you're not going to go very far. You could maybe scrape by with some rent in a not a particularly nice house, but you know, you can ish make it, you can probably save up enough to put your kid through like community college, but we're not talking about like high and fly, high flying wages. You're not traveling your vacation at $70,000 a year. You're driving to Disney world. Like if you want to make sure that you're not taking out any debt. So that's at the top end of the spectrum. I just think we should all again, talk in real terms. And even this 365 number, it's not particularly useful when you, until you, again, in the overall dollar figure.

We're talking about $20, $25, $30 million in a single year. Now, obviously, yes, I understand there's a big difference between stock compensation and more. But I also don't even think it's just as useful to just focus in on CEO pay. Let's talk about executive pay. The fact is the executives are all rewarded in overall cash bonuses, sorry, in stock bonuses. And the problem is, is that these companies have financially engineered themselves such that they use huge portions of their money to buy back their

own stock, inflate the overall value, and then said value goes right back into their pockets, which they get to realize that grains. And even if this is the greatest scam in all of America, even if they don't realize guys, like CEOs, let's say they have all this stock that's just sitting in their bank. They can take cash loans at very, very low rates from their high net worth bankers, and they can live off said cash and never pay one dime on that as a tax. So we're just, it's like a perpetual motion machine that these people have created to live multi-gajillion dollar lifestyles. The people who are Ford shareholders, GM, Stellantis, all these people, they're doing fine. But the overall workforce is making well below, even at the top rate, what the average household income is. When you put it that way, every American

would be like, all right, I'm cool with this. It's just the way that we phrase and talk about all these things, it misses any of the brass tacks reality. Can you actually pay a freaking mortgage for your family on the top salary? I mean, look, we just talked about mortgage payments. Good luck at $2,300 at an average mortgage price somewhere even in Michigan, even in the heartland now at this point. What's the overall average price house? Maybe $450,000, $500,000. And that's if you're lucky enough to have $100,000 down. You don't have to pay PMI. So you put all these things together. Once again, I don't think it's a very difficult conversation. Now, this is what CNBC was calling the politics of envy.

Yes. But that's not even envy. That's just normality. I think it's the politics of like basic fairness and having a functional society. One thing that has been extremely heartening to me, though, is as this strike has progressed, the American people's support for it has actually only gotten stronger. So there's a new poll out that shows a shift in favor of the workers. Now you have 62% of the country actively standing behind the union. That's up from 55% in this data for progress poll just one week prior. So in spite of all

of the propaganda that you hear about, all the politics of envy and all these workers are asking for too much, et cetera, et cetera. In spite of what is literally decades of propaganda, trying to indoctrinate the American people into believing that rank and file workers do not deserve a middle class living. People aren't buying it. And that to me is one of the most heartening, most extraordinary things that is happening right now is in spite of all the money that's been spent on the other side of this, all of the years of media propaganda, all of the biased coverage, all of the bearing and smearing of working class people, in spite of all of that, the American people are not buying it. And that is the most beautiful thing to behold here. Now, I will say we're starting to see some dirty tricks from the companies themselves. One of them announced that they're shutting down a battery

plant as sort of like a veiled threat. The UAW is calling them out for this. Those are the sorts of tactics that they will deploy. But I think the fact that you already have Ford giving some significant ground, they're not all the way there, but some significant ground in terms of concessions. The fact that you had pilots and you had Teamsters, UPS drivers make significant gains from their own labor activity. I think these autoworkers with the president coming today and with the former president showing up for whatever reason tomorrow, I think they are in a very strong position of leverage. And I'm hopeful that they're going to be able to actually secure a good deal, which matters not just for them. It matters for the whole auto industry. It matters for our conception of what working

people deserve and are able to ask for and demand when they band together. So we obviously are going to keep a close, close eye on it. That's right. So why don't we talk a little bit about corruption and why don't we talk about overpaid useless folks? Uh, one of those is Senator Bob Menendez, not overpaid by us, the taxpayer overpaid by the people bribing him, uh, with straight up gold bars, allegedly, by the way, for Bob's lawyers, he had the most incredible defense I have ever seen about why he had all of this cash stuffed in his envelopes, stuffed in his jacket pockets, bearing the Senate insignia and his name. I'm not even going to tease it. Take a listen. I firmly believe that when all the facts are presented, not only will I be exonerated, but I still will be the New Jersey's senior senator. For now, I want to address four

things. First, a cornerstone of the foundation of American democracy and our justice system is the principle that all people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. All people. I ask for nothing more and deserve nothing less. The court of public opinion is no substitute for our revered justice system. We cannot set aside the presumption of innocence for political expediency when the harm is irrevocable. To those who have rushed to judgment, you have done so based on a limited set of facts framed by the prosecution to be as salacious as possible. Remember, prosecutors get it wrong sometimes.

Sadly, I know that. Instead of waiting for all the facts to be presented, others have rushed to judgment because they see a political opportunity for themselves or those around them. All I humbly ask for in this moment, in my colleagues in Congress, the elected leaders and the advocates of New Jersey that I have worked with for years, as well as each person who calls New Jersey home, is to pause and allow for all the facts to be presented. Third, for 30 years, I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings account, which I have kept for emergencies and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba.

Now, this may seem old fashioned, but these were monies drawn from my personal savings account based on the income that I have lawfully derived over those 30 years. I look forward to addressing other issues at trial. So, Crystal, his excuse is he's Cuban. Because I'm Cuban, I withdraw large amounts of cash. You know why that's particularly offensive? Guess what, Crystal? His family emigrated to the United States, when do you think? 1953. Does anybody want to tell me when Fidel Castro came to power? 1959, aka he came to this country under Batista's rule, not under Fidel Castro. So it's just miraculous that his parents came to this country six years prior to the communist takeover and that he learned through their legacy of leaving Cuba under a non-communist

to withdraw massive amounts of cash. I will say this. One reason why I'm happy that he said this is the easiest thing in the world to check. Okay, fine, you took out X amount, let's go check the bank. Let's see the bank record. Easy as hell, right? Yeah, that's true. Also, if he was withdrawing that amount of cash from his bank, you know the bank is supposed to alert the feds to that. That's true. If you or I walk into a bank, if you or I, who's not, or anyone not named Jeffrey Epstein, were to walk into a bank and withdraw anything more than, I think it's like $10,000, $10,001, then they have to immediately alert the feds.

Now, I mean, look, once again, they have easy access to his bank records. You can just check it and be like, all right, I see, withdrawn X amount of cash. Well, does he have said amount of cash in his pockets? If it's more than that, where did the cash come from? Even if he didn't take it from a bribe, which again, they found the DNA of the person allegedly bribing him on said cash. Well, you didn't report it to the IRS and that's a crime too. I mean, you know, we should all just start using our ethnic heritage as defense. Should the IRS ever come out? Like the IRS comes to me, oh, I'm Indian. You know, we're real penny pinchers. That's the actual actual it's like

what are we talking about i wonder if uh if his cuban heritage also led him to store random gold bars in his house which by the way he got asked a question about and uh did not deferred answer on that one just wave that one that went away producer mac was analogizing this to when cuomo was saying that he's not a sexual harasser. He's just Italian. He's just Italian. So here we got Menendez. He's not corrupt. He's just Cuban. He's just Cuban, guys. This is what Cubans do. These are the most shameless people who have ever lived. Amazing. Shocking. Now, I think it's worth noting and also sort of encouraging. No other politicians would stand by him at this press conference. And I know that he tried. He definitely tried. And you last time, I mean, listen, it's a low bar. This should be the easiest

thing in the world to denounce this guy and say this dude should resign. But apparently it's been very difficult. You have had a trickle now of a few other Democratic senators who have called for him to step down. We also have Nancy Pelosi. This is maybe the biggest one who is also calling for him to resign. We'll show you that in a minute. But just the shit. Think about this. This dude was indicted on the most brazen allegations of corruption you can imagine using his position as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee to literally sell out the country. I mean, this is like traitorous type of behavior that he stands accused of. And he announces his reelect like three days later. That's insane. The shamelessness of that is just absolutely incredible. It's man, it's something.

It certainly is. And guess what? White House can't even call on him to resign. Here's what Karine Jean-Pierre said. And given that President Biden is the leader of the Democratic Party, does the president believe that a person who is facing allegations that are as serious as the allegations confronting the senator, that there is any place for somebody like Senator Menendez in the Democratic Party? So I'm going to be very clear. This is a serious matter. We see this as a serious matter. I think and we believe the senator stepping down from his chairmanship was the right thing to do. Obviously, the right thing to do as it relates to anything else, any decision that he has to make. That's certainly going to be up to him and the Senate leadership to decide. But of course, we see this as a serious matter. And I'm just going to leave it there for now.

We see a serious matter and it's up to you. What are we doing here? Yeah. Mr. Biden, who remember his sanctimonious speech on day one, he's like, if I find out a single one of you ever mistreat somebody or a single one of you ever comport yourself, I will call for your resignation that day. But Bob, my old colleague, oh, I've known him for a long time. That's just how they are over there in New Jersey. Let's give some credit, okay? There have been some people who have been willing to call him out. So you have this statement from Summer Lee, if you want to go ahead and read it, the representative. Yeah, I thought this was strong. I just wanted to flag it. Go ahead and put it up there on the

screen. So she issued the statement saying, Senator Menendez must resign. Corruption is corruption. Bribery is bribery. We can't talk about holding Thomas and Alito accountable for selling on our freedoms for luxury vacations and private jet flights if we fail to hold a senator accountable for selling on his chairmanship to a dictator gifting gold bars and cash to keep military aid flowing to Egypt as this government violates human rights. Menendez is, of course, owed due process, but the American people are owed trust in our institutions. Our fight against right-wing fascism depends on that trust. and institutions. How can you look the other way on such a blatant, just insane violation of the trust and the power that he was given? And again, I can't get over the fact. Remember, this is the

second time he has been indicted on similar charges. And after the first time back in 2015, they went ahead and gave him the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I mean, this is incredibly powerful position that they went ahead and decided to give him after he had already faced similar charges. It just boggles the mind how this is allowed to happen. Ken Klippenstein has been pointing out the difference. For example, Senator Schumer, when Trump indictment, quote, no one is above the law on Menendez indictment. Bob Menendez is a dedicated public servant. He is always fighting for the people of New Jersey. And look, even Pelosi, you know, think about how many sanctimonious things he said about the Trump charges, all of which are serious.

We've covered them all here extensively. Just even this, even when she does call for him to resign, it's the most tepid. She has to be drawn to it. She's like, you know, kind of she clearly is weighing her words very carefully. Take a listen. Several House Democrats, along with New Jersey's Governor Phil Murphy, have all called on Senator Menendez to resign. Do you think he should resign? I respect their position that they are taking. And the charges are formidable. And if in fact we're going to say that if you're indicted, you should resign.

We have a situation in the House, as you know, from the state of New York that that would hold to. But right now, sadly, because of the challenges that we face, because the skepticism that exists in our country about governance, about this Republican Party that doesn't believe in governance, doesn't believe in science, so wants to take down everything in order to give tax breaks to the wealthiest. We've got to stay focused on that. And for that reason, it'd probably be a good idea if he did resign. So because the Republicans are bad and bad and bad and bad and bad, and for that reason, it'd probably be a good idea if he did resign. So because the Republicans are bad and bad and bad and bad and bad, and for that reason, it'd probably be a good idea if he resigned. Come on now, all right? Like, what are we doing here? Just say it. Say it's terrible. Say he's awful. And you know, how can you have any credibility whenever you don't call on the others? But look, I think that the real sin, it's not,

because Pelosi, she doesn't suffer for this. The people who are going to suffer are the actual Democratic senators. So we gave credit, Senator John Fetterman. Let's give it to Peter Welch, Democrat from Vermont, came out and he said that Bob Menendez has got to go. He said it last night. And Sherrod Brown also came out and said, Sherrod, the thing is too, this needs to be representative. There's a political benefit to being in front of these things. Sherrod Brown is in a tough spot, right? He's running in a Trump plus eight state, longtime survivor, working class Democrat,

longtime union guy on trade policy and more. And I bet you that if he didn't speak out about this, his constituents would be like, why are you okay with democratic corruption? And he can stand up and be like, no, I was the second person to come out and call on him to resign. These are, I believe, the type of things that penetrate to the core of how everybody knows that these filthy politicians actually act.

And so for a lot of, you know, the gold bar thing, it's so salacious, it's so perfect. There are real, average, normal, working day people who look at that, they're disgusted to see somebody with $66,000 of gold in their house and cash in their pockets. We need to normalize this. There's a benefit to speaking out on it. It's not just partisan. You've got to call out your own side.

That's what we – what have we found the most powerful thing on this show is when we call out the people that we even kind of agree with. Right. You know? That's what gives us credibility. That's when it's uncomfortable. And I will say, I mean, where are the Republicans on, you know, Justice Thomas, where are the Republicans on Donald Trump and Jared Kushner and whatever? So I don't want to like make it seem like they've been calling out their own side. You do have at least a few Democrats here who have after the second indictment with the gold bars are like, all right, this is a bridge too far. But again, all of this should be so easy. It should be so easy to look at what 99.9% of the

American people would say is completely unacceptable, wildly corrupt behavior and just say, no, no, you cannot continue to serve in this position. You must step aside. Now, in terms of the political landscape, Menendez just announced for his reelect, incredibly, amidst all of this, he is facing a Democratic primary challenger. It does seem like, you know, to use an old saying in politics, the walls are starting to close in when you've got much of the New Jersey congressional delegation, the New Jersey governor, now Nancy Pelosi, now a growing list of Democratic senators all saying, OK, dude, time's up, time for you to go. I don't know that he will step aside

because he obviously is very attached to this particular Senate seat and the benefits that has conferred upon him and his family. But I do think if you have everybody line up behind his Democratic competitor in the primary, there's a good chance that he could be ousted in the primary. I think that's probably the best chance you have to get this guy out of office in the immediate term, because otherwise, you know, I don't think he's going to resign on his own. If the pressure, as hot as it is right now, isn't causing him to fold, it's just causing him to be defiant and make up these insane excuses like, no, actually, it's just because I'm Cuban, then I don't think that he's likely to resign over any of this, no matter how many politicians call him at this point. He has to be beaten through the democratic process. People of New

Jersey, you guys need to step up. Although you guys did reelect him, so I don't know what to tell you. But I'm not from there. Maybe he's done something that I don't know about. All right. So turning to some other political news here, this is kind of interesting. So there's been a lot of back and forth about Governor of California Gavin Newsom potentially debating Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis, who are both sort of like, it's this weird proxy fight, both between their states and their ideologies, and also between two very ambitious men who both clearly want to be president of the United States, but are probably not going to be president of the United States, at least in 2024. So you finally appear to have an agreement between these two gentlemen to debate. Let's put this up

on the screen from Fox News. They announced that Sean Hannity is going to moderate the red state versus blue state debate between Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and California Governor Gavin Newsom. They go on to say that this will occur on November 30th. It's going to be a 90-minute debate. It's going to take place at a location to be determined in Georgia. It's going to air on Hannity at 9 p.m. Hannity, they say, first raised the prospect of a debate with Newsom during his exclusive sit-down this past June, following which Governor DeSantis officially signed on to participate in July. This will mark the first time the two governors will face off in a debate. Now, there is some indication from the Newsom side that it's not quite as locked in as Fox News is portraying.

There are still some details that need to be worked out that could cause this thing to fall apart. It looks like one of the sticking points originally was going to be whether or not there was a live studio audience. Newsom, I think, understandably didn't want the optics of a Fox News audience that's just constantly cheering DeSantis and constantly booing him or playing into or whatever. He wanted it to have, you know, for the TV viewing audience, more of a neutral feel to it, which, again, I think is understandable. He seems to have been able to achieve that in terms of the negotiations. But anyway, that's what we know. It'll be interesting content. I mean, I'm looking forward to it. I think it'll be fun to watch. I'm very much looking forward. Look, we said this in the beginning. I think this is great. I want to normalize this. It's actually a lot of fun. You know, at the time,

we haven't done this in a long time. I'm not really sure why. I'm trying to think about it. The last governor to win the presidency, was it Bill Clinton? I think in 1992. But it used to be, I mean, for a long time, going all the way back to the early days of the Republic, the Senate and Washington was not seen as the pathway to become president. It was to be a successful governor. People like Ronald Reagan, people like Bill Clinton, state level politics, your ability to be an executive. There's like, you know, an adage of like, oh, he ran a state, you can run a country. It's like an executive thing. It was probably something to it. But the point though, is that at that time in the Clinton era and when

things were less Washington centric, there were like debates and elevation of statewide politicians and they were seen as the future. It's only like the Obama era onward that we just continue to nominate senators, at least on the Democratic side. And obviously even on the Republican side, alternatives to Trump, you know, DeSantis is more akin to the old era. So my point, though, is that seeing the debates between these two states, I mean, look, undeniable. California and Florida are the two of the most dynamic and economically booming states in the country. I know that sounds odd to say about California, but listen, if it was its own country, it would be like the seventh, it would be a member of the G7. It's a massive economy.

Right. Even with the net loss of $500,000, 500,000 or so people, it's like 40 million people who live in the state. They have two very different visions of governance. And so to see the two of them head to head, they're both like running ads in each other's states, like why you should. Yeah. It's good.

It's a good thing. People should watch it. And frankly, if you live in Florida, if you live in California, these people have probably way more of an impact on their day-to-day life than a lot of people who live here in Washington. So to see those contrasts about how you run a state and their ideas, and even from social policy to economic policy to COVID policy, whatever, I think it's a fantastic thing for the country.

I really do. Here's a question for you, Sagar. Obviously, like I said, both of them want to be president. Newsom has gone to great lengths to say, oh, no, I think Kamala Harris is great and I wouldn't run against her. And I love Joe Biden. Of course, Joe Biden's going to be the guy and I have no concerns about his age, whatever. He's been fully on the message, on the script in terms of Biden and Harris. But, you know, if for whatever reason there was to be an opening this year, no doubt he'd jump in. And I think he's more positioning himself for 2028. No doubt about that. In terms of DeSantis, do you think that he, Sagar, has harmed himself in this primary sufficiently that he would be kind of out

in terms of a 2028 run? I don't know. You know, it's a tough question. I can only say what I've been reading and I've been hearing about, which is that his presidential run has significantly diminished his power in the state of Florida so far. He was seen as untouchable and he was seen, I mean, for a good reason. He won the biggest margin for Florida governor in modern history. He transformed the politics of the state. He had ironclad control over the Florida Republican Party. Now there's a lot of cracks that are beginning to show. You got a lot of Florida Republicans who are backing Trump.

They're also like, oh, you're not as popular as we once thought. Maybe we're going to buck you whenever it comes to the state legislature. So his overnight transformation of the state has begun to crumble. And I think that the record that people were so celebrating, he's not going to have the same ability to just ram through and do whatever he wants in the state legislature like he did at one time, which was the bedrock of his appeal as president. So at the same time, in America, you shoot your shot, right? There was a chance. It was small. I personally wouldn't have done it if I were him. But if you were as ambitious and he wants to be president and there was a time, you know, the moment. And I think he probably did make the right call in terms of there is, and probably still

is a small chance that he could be the eventual Republican nominee. But if things can go the way that they are, I do think it probably hurt him overall in the long run. This isn't Reagan running against Ford in the 76 primary, which is what actually made him the heir apparent this time around, because it was so close. And Ford actually had to accommodate Reagan and even think about making him as vice president and all this thing, because he showed real power and appeal to the overall base. Instead, we've seen a reversion from DeSantis' original high position in the poll

down to falling as just your average other Republican. I think that is overall a political net, but it's still early. You know, you don't know. I think that the other thing that's a real issue for him is that donors have fallen out of love with him. And I mean, for a guy who, you know, was really leaning on that, I'm not going to say he didn't have his own base of support. I think he definitely did at least. I think that's waned over the, over the months, but he definitely did have his own base of excited support nationwide. But he was really making the play to be the donor alternative to Trump. And, you know, they've all based, not all, but many of them have moved on. Many of them have

fallen out of love with the idea that this guy is really the future and this is, you know, really the person they need to get behind. They've sort of, you know, flirted with Tim Scott, flirted with Nikki Haley. The latest analysis that I saw is they've basically given up on it being anybody other than Trump at this point. Yeah. But I think the fact that whether it's fair or unfair, and it's hard for me, look, I'm not on the campaign trail. I don't see how he's actually interacting with voters. I can't tell how much the image of him as this like super awkward dude who, you know, has these strange interactions with people. I can't tell how much of that is real and how much of it is created. But it kind of doesn't matter because that's the impression of him that has been made with a lot of people.

And it's stuck and it's certainly stuck with that group of donors that he would need, you know, their backing in order to make a credible run in 2028. So oddly enough, even though DeSantis is the one actually in the race right now and has gotten so much national media attention and had the whole Fox News organization pulling for him, I would actually say Gavin Newsom is in some ways in a more powerful political position right now for the future and for representing the future of either of the two major parties. Yeah, you know, the thing is about Newsom, and look, I can't stand Newsom. Obviously, I think he's bad in many respects. And we'll talk a little bit about that just in a moment, about policy-wise, his leadership under COVID, his sliminess, and all of that. He's a shapeshifter is what he is.

He's savvy. He's a savvy. I see it when I call it like I see it. He did well in the Sean Hannity interview. He's got the shamelessness enough to be both like normie-ish, but also, you know, to pander to the right coalitional bases. You know, it's not easy getting elected as the governor of the state of California. He survived the recall, which he could easily run on. And, you know, a lot of Democrats, they agree with Gavin Newsom. So I could definitely see a world where he was able to mount a success. Also, you know, he's probably more likable, and this is sad to say, than Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg. So if that's the bench, then yeah, I think, you know, given where he is, he could easily become a presidential contender in 2028 after Biden. For me as a leftist, Newsom's record in California is very mixed. I think I would

compare it favorably to like, you know, I'd prefer him to probably like definitely to Kamala Harris or Pete Buttigieg. But as we're about to show you, I see him and DeSantis both as sort of similar, almost like mirror images. They're both very clearly ambitious. They're both very finger in the wind. You know, DeSantis positioned himself as this Tea Party, small government guy when he's in the House and when that's the like thing of the day in the Republican Party. And now he's shifted to try to take on this more populist rhetoric, et cetera, and try to have a break from that past. So you can see very much the way that he's trying to read the mood and trying to translate that into his political position. It's the same thing with Gavin Newsom. You know, he's he's real finger in the wind. You

can see. And let's go out and transition now to talking about his his latest move in the state of California, which is fascinating because Newsom coming up in California. I mean, this is a guy who was really a darling of Silicon Valley in the tech sector. And, you know, a lot of the fundraising in California, not just in California, a lot of the national fundraising, the Democratic Party and some in the Republican Party, too, comes from Silicon Valley tech oligarchs, billionaires, et cetera. So he's been very closely tied with them. They've been very responsible for his rise. At the same time, he's now trying to position himself more on the progressive end of the spectrum and as a friend and ally of labor, which has also supported him in many respects throughout

his career. So put this up on the screen. There was a bill that overwhelmingly passed the California legislature, which would have required that autonomous trucks have a human being, an actual truck driver, present in them. Of course, industry hates it. Silicon Valley hates it. But labor very much behind this, both out of safety concerns and also clearly out of job concerns. Because if you actually move to a future where trucks are driven autonomously, you're talking about a loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs just in the state of California. So Teamster is very supportive of this bill. And like I said, sailed through the California legislature by huge margins. But guess what? Newsom, caught in a tough spot between his Silicon Valley donors and between labor,

decides to back, you know who, the Silicon Valley donors. So he vetoes this bill. It was vetoed Friday night. It would have banned self-driving trucks weighing more than 10,000 pounds, ranging from UPS delivery vans to massive big rigs from operating on public roads unless a human driver is on board. And let me tell you something, the Teamsters and their newly elected president are not having it. Put this up on the screen with what they had to say in response. This is Sean O'Brien. He says Gavin Newsom doesn't have the guts to face working people. He'd rather give our jobs away in the dead of night. Late yesterday, the California governor vetoed AB 316 that would have put human operators in autonomous vehicles, saving jobs and protecting communities.

Go on. He says 95% bipartisan support in the legislature, 75% public support. But Newsom still killed it. He's giving a green light to put these dangerous rigs on the road. And there's one more piece here. He says any politician who turns their back on workers to curry campaign contributions for corporate America and big tech better square up. Teamsters will not walk away from this fight. And listen, maybe it's a small thing, but in this era when labor is so highly supported and so popular, and when American people are overwhelmingly

backing workers and are very concerned about what these new technologies are going to mean for the workforce and for safety and for all of our future, that you're siding with the tech oligarchs in this moment is very telling and very troubling. Yeah. And also it comes on the heels of, and it's funny because I had just told you guys about this before this video went viral. I was in Austin for Marshall's wedding. And while I was there, I had an Uber driver who was telling me, he's like, man, do you know anything about, he like knew who we were because of the show. And he's like, do you know anything about these self-driving cars here in Austin? I was like, no, I don't know anything about it. And he points out to me, he goes, yeah, one of these guys almost hit me. One of these almost hit me

yesterday. And he's like, by the way, when you're crossing the street, make sure you watch out because sometimes they don't watch pedestrians properly. And I was like, what? This is crazy. And I started looking around. You could actually start to see it. Well, just yesterday, a video has gone viral. Guys, let's go and put this up there on the screen and play it as I'm talking over it. These are all of these cruise-operated Chevy Bolts causing a massive traffic jam. They're autonomous, self-driving vehicles. And one man is going, quote, are you telling me they have no way to get out of this?

For those who are watching, you can see they're just lined up car after car after car. They have no idea where they're going. And they are all over the city of Austin in downtown. And it's one of those where, look, I'm a believer that we will maybe eventually get to the self-driving technology. But having experienced some of it, been in some friends and tried multiple different variations at this point. Yeah, we're not there yet. I think we're at a point where, you know,

autopilot on highways. I think we're there. I think we're there. Everywhere else. I don't think we're there at all, especially not on the city street and especially not Austin, where the infrastructure is not ready for the population boom that there is right now. So I think it's a little bit crazy, but it gets really to what the bill was saying is just like, hey, we want to have human drivers ride in the autonomous truck to make sure, just to make sure that in case anything goes wrong, just like in that video, that somebody can do it. Now, if you can prove over millions of miles, you know,

and all of that, that that won't be the case, then fine. Maybe we can have that conversation. But in the interim, it's probably a good idea. And we're talking about freaking 18-wheeler trucks here on major highways. I mean, if one thing goes wrong, you can kill people. Oh. You can get some things that can go terribly wrong. Yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, you just come to realize when you're thinking about it, they can get like 95% of the way. Yeah, you can get pretty close. You can get pretty close. But that last 5% is really important. That's where death happens. All these little, you know, think of how many unusual, unique situations that you encounter on the road. I mean, we actually, when we were driving into D.C. last night, had this. There was like, you know, somebody had broken down in the middle of the road. And there's a fire truck.

And there's a police officer in the middle. And you've got to do something weird to go around them that, you know, was against the typical traffic laws. But that's what it was necessitating. Like they can't deal with those sorts of novel situations or the way that human beings actually drive versus like the technical. Like you always talk about the left turn thing. Left turn, it's not there yet. be a while before you can work out because those last pieces are so complex and really require like the human eye and understanding of the situation and be able to process these things that are novel situations. Let me give you the real nightmare scenario. You're in a bad situation.

You got to go two ways. You're going to hit somebody either way. There's a kid on the left. There's an old person on the right. Who's the AI hitting? It's like, well, that's, that's a scary one. You know, it's got computers making these moral judgment calls? Now, by the way, I wouldn't even make that decision. You obviously brake and you try as easy as possible. But somewhere, somewhere, that has to be programmed. It's like that is a terrifying one to even contemplate. Or even in terms of spins.

And I've even read or heard about people who like to mess with Teslas when they're in autopilots and like go into their lane because the car instantly reacts. But I mean, that's something scary. And then also it doesn't necessarily compute potholes all that well, something that we have a lot of here in Washington, D.C. So it's just there's so, so many things and the chaos of everyday human life of which we're just not there yet. Yeah. We're just not there. But the moral questions, I mean, that's not a technological fix.

No. You think about, like, do you hit the dog or do you risk a crash? Yeah, there you go. You know, like. Good point. Squirrel, even. Exactly. I mean, these are situations that happen not uncommonly.

And we're going to outsource our moral judgment to a computer designed by whoever. Right. Scary, scary future. Very scary future that Gavin Newsom has now come down on the side of. Bombshell new report from Michael Schellenberger over at Public, his newsletter. He's done some great reporting on the subject, so I definitely want to give him credit. Let's please go ahead and put this up there on the screen, and I'm going to read a little bit from his report. Quote, in August, shortly after the U.S. government UFO whistleblower David Grush gave testimony to Congress about crashed spacecraft and alien

biologics, many observers wonder how much credence to put into his testimony. Grush is just a single individual. The other two individuals were just former Navy pilots. But at least 30 whistleblowers working for the federal government or government contractors have given testimony or a protected disclosure to the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General, the Defense Inspector General, and to Congress over the last several months, according to multiple sources now interviewed by public. When told, whistleblowers had come forward to share this information. Even skeptics, people like Mick West had said, it'd be interesting,

more people saying the same thing independently makes it more likely to be true. What they say is that this is all in the backdrop of a very confusing report, Crystal, that came out from the Inspector General that was made on September 15th. In that September 15th letter, the current Inspector General of the intelligence community appeared to deny that his office was

investigating these claims. He said, quote, that the office has not conducted any audit, inspection, evaluation, review of alleged UAP programs within responsibility authority of the DNI. But the wording actually of his response gives him a lot of wiggle room, of which this testimony now fits into, which is that the original official taxonomy quote for the ICIG activities include audits, investigations, inspections, and reviews. It is then curious that an investigation is not being denied. So there's a lot of word salad that this all comes back into. But the very basic is what Schellenberger can report. More than 30 former or current officials have made classified disclosures to the inspector general of both the DOD, to Congress, and to the intelligence community around some of these alleged programs. And some of the details about what's actually happening here really go into some of what

Grush has made claims around, both in terms of recovered craft, quote unquote, biologics, in terms of, quote, like kinetic incidents in some cases between these alleged, how do I say it, beings, craft, whatever people are saying. And I think it's just pretty extraordinary. The other one that I definitely want to highlight is this quote. Testimony has included both firsthand and secondhand reports of crash retrieval and reverse engineering programs by the United States, Russian, and Chinese governments. The testing of materials obtained from retrieved craft, active and ongoing government disinformation operations, kinetic military action with UAPs,

aka a shoot down or a tried shoot down, and contact collaboration with, quote, non-human intelligences and the successful reverse engineering of a triangle-shaped craft with unconventional propulsion. So some more interesting reporting there coming out from Michael Schellenberger. And before everybody says, show it to me, I agree. Listen, show it to me. I want to see it too. I want to see him come before Congress. But don't forget, we're seeing a major stonewalling right now in Congress. Congressman Tim Burchett, Anna Polina Luna, they've said we will have another hearing, all of that. That's what they've been granted. But they still have not been given the special compartmentalized access to be given a classified briefing by Grush, which it doesn't make any sense to me. I've spoken now

with people on the Hill, and I'm like, if you're a normal congressman, why is it so hard to just book a special compartmentalized facility to get a briefing? And they're like, well, if it had to do with Iran or something like that, you could get it done easily. But they keep getting denied access, and it's all up to the House Intelligence Committee, which apparently doesn't want anything to do with this. So there's a lot of crazy stuff that's going on behind the scenes. I mean, if this is true and you've got 30 to 50 more whistleblowers

who are corroborating some aspects of the story, obviously anyone would have to look at that and say that's very interesting. Of course. Sagar, do we have any expectation of when we'll learn more about what these whistleblowers are saying? Because the information here is very vague about what pieces of the story

they're corroborating, whether it's actual, you know, the craft retrieval programs, et cetera, or whether it is wrongdoing within this program, which may not be indicative of anything with regard to extraterrestrial life. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those where the disclosure can only come through an open forum. And the only open forum that we currently have is Congress. And Congress needs to do more of what they did with Grush. One of the reasons why I love that hearing is, look, it's all under oath. If he lied, I'll be the first one to prosecute him, all right? Throw his ass in jail because he wasted my time and he wasted the American people's times. He said all this stuff under oath. Now, let's get to the point of, well, did he lie? Did he not lie? Let's get to the investigation of the inspector general community. And also, in terms of the way that all of these come out, the parsing of the language,

they always try and emphasize one thing. There's nothing going on behind the scenes. This is all crap. But they always leave themselves room for no real explicit denial of what's happening. And I just have to recall that when Grush came forward, his claims, I'm not saying they were vetted by the inspector general, but they called them urgent and credible, his allegations that were made. He's now spoken out. He's had, did a big documentary with some of the Yes Theory guys. I recommend people go and listen to it if you're interested. But what I'm looking for is not just David Grush. I mean, to me, you know, no offense to him. I think he's a courageous man for coming forward, but it's not about him. It's about the claim, whether it's true and whether there are multiple other people who can corroborate it. So Schellenberger, I mean,

was one of the first to also report after Gresh came forward about some of what was going on. He's a knowledgeable source and his reporting has not been denied by people inside of the intelligence community, by the DOD inspector general. They always fall back on the same thing, like with the BS NASA conference. They're like, we've got no evidence of extraterrestrial life. It's like, yeah, but you're admitting in an open form you have no idea what any of this stuff is.

You have no clue. And it's like, well, yeah, you have no evidence that it is. You've got no evidence that it isn't. You just have no evidence, period, because you don't know what the hell is going on. And obviously, I want to believe. But I'm keeping my skeptics hat on, as everyone saw with the aliens incident, the bodies.

On this one, I just want more people to come forward in a public setting. And ultimately, it just comes down to programs like ours, educating people so that they can pressure Congress. I mean, one thing that I will say about the public pressure, when I showed up to that UFO hearing, I was stunned. There was only 30 seats for the public. Hundreds of people lined up out of the back. The staffers told me they had not seen public participation or enthusiasm for a hearing like that since the freaking Mueller report in 2017. And there's a very different crowd.

Some guys that I met there, Birch had even talked about this. One guy flew all the way from Belgium just to attend this hearing. Like, people are really interested in the subject. So yeah, I know. Personally, I wouldn't do it. But hey, you know, Belgium's a boring country. No offense. It's very beautiful. Don't get me wrong. Good chocolate, right? Yes. Good chocolate, good fries. Fries, as they call them there. Good waffles. I didn't try the waffle. I did have the hot chocolate. It was delicious. Antwerp, by the way, one of the most beautiful cities I've ever been to. Shout out to Antwerp. But my point, though, is that immense public pressure and public interest, that's something these politicians, and no offense, I think Burchett is a believer, but the rest of them, they don't care. They don't

care either way. But they see that the public is animated and interested. And so I think it was a big wake-up call for many of the people, at least anecdotally from what I saw when I was in the room, many of the people who were in Congress were stunned at the amount of attention that people were, that they were receiving of just, I mean, they were, Birch was greeted like a celebrity. He was taking freaking selfies with that. So play a little bit to their vanity, you know, make it politically beneficial to them to push for investigation. And because a lot of the powers that be behind the scenes, like I said, the house intelligence community and a committee and others, they're trying to quash this stuff. And so if you show them that it's undeniable and that we have to have more disclosure, more people under oath, and to just talk about it in an open public setting and form and get real yes or no answers to our questions, that's how we move forward and actually have a path to

real transparency, which is what our goal should be. Indeed. Okay. Let's talk about the podcast. So really fascinating story about how two podcasters and their attempt to launch this new show have run straight up against some Biden era policy with regard to his efforts to end non-compete clauses. Put this up on the screen. Great report from Jeff Stein over the Washington Post. The headline here is their podcast is in trouble. A Biden led crackdown may save them. So the backstory here of these two gentlemen, Dan McDowell and Jake Kemp, is they had a radio show that was really super popular in Texas. They worked for Cumulus Media and they couldn't come to terms on a new contract. So they left and they decided to launch their own podcast called The Dumb Zone. Well,

lo and behold, Cumulus Media sent them a letter that said, no, no, no, you have a six-month non-compete. You cannot start this other podcast. Basically, you can't work at all for that six-month period because of this non-compete. Well, as I mentioned before, the Biden administration is trying to end the abuse of these non-compete agreements. Back in May, when President Biden's appointees from the NLRB published legal guidance finding that overly broad non-compete agreements violate federal labor law. And so they are going to court to challenge this non-compete from Cumulus Media. And it could end up being the case that really ends a lot of overly broad non-competes that have taken hold in massive ways on our economy. They had the estimate here of just how much of our economy is governed now by non-competes. And it's

a huge percentage of the workforce for things that are insane. Like we've talked, Sagar, before about like sandwich makers that are being supposedly governed by non-competes. I mean, industries where this makes no sense at all, because the original idea is if you are privy to trade secrets, then potentially it makes sense. But it's just gotten wildly out of control. I have it here in front of me. Roughly 30 million workers collectively lose $300 billion a year in wages because of non-compete agreements, according to the Federal Trade Commission. And currently, 18% of the entire labor market is currently governed by a non-compete agreement. It's total and complete BS.

Now, look, we are not saying here you should be able to walk out. Let's say you're a lawyer. You can't walk out with the client list, for example, in terms of proprietary information. But what should stop you, though, from leaving and then going to the client and be like, hey, I think that I could provide you a better service. What's wrong with that? If it's up to the client and it's up to you, if you think you can provide a better service, then Godspeed. And maybe this one is just a little too personal, Crystal, because we quite literally had to suffer through this. Very similar situation. I mean, I think people should understand. It's not just white collar workers or people like us,

feel bad for the podcasters. There are millions of people who are governed by this and are held and basically forced to work against their will. You and I, not to go too into the scenes, we're quite literally forced to work against our will as part of some negotiations and work a place that we did not want to be at in order to make sure that we were not subject to these ridiculous non-compete agreement. And one of the reasons why, you know, this is such a ridiculous one is, Crystal, they're basically claiming that they were not allowed to work for six straight months after not even signing a new contract. It's not like they left. They didn't come to a new agreement. And now they're being sued in court and putting this to a test. So, you know, by the way, shout out to my friend Akash Singh.

He actually put me in touch with these gentlemen. He's a friend of theirs. He's one of the ones who encouraged them in order to go public. So all of us do kind of band and stick together. But, you know, the point is that these gents have the absolute right, in my opinion, to be able to leave and to continue the show of which the intellectual property had nothing to do with the cumulus media. It had to do with their content as you and I have discovered over here at Breaking Points, rebuilding a channel from zero to a million in just the span of two years. It's because it was about me and it was about you and it wasn't really about whatever we

were doing over, whatever the hell was giving us at that time. And that's why it's really about the empowerment to the overall individual citizen that corporations do not own you even after you are under contract with them. The entire idea, you know, actually is very dirty and gross history spanning back to indentured servitude. And when we had no labor rights in the 1790s, the idea that, you know, you owe me your labor and then I can even control where you go work afterwards because of the trade secrets and all that. We need to get away from this. This is very patrician nonsense. Yeah. And this is, I mean, this is a genuinely good direction that the Biden NLRB and actually the FTC,

the Federal Trade Commission has also under Biden moved in the same direction, but it's going to apparently for some reason take longer for them to issue their guidance. But apparently there was a sort of dispute under the Obama administration between Obama and Biden and, you know, various factions within the administration about this same issue. And Obama came down on the side of that. I don't know if we can really limit these things. Biden has been really clear. He gave a speech several years back before he was in the White House about how he saw this as a violation of federal law. And now the people that he's put in place in the administration have attempted to make good on it. Matt Brunig, who's the founder of the People's Policy Project

and also a labor attorney, he's the one who actually filed the host's petition to the National Labor Relations Board to try to uphold this guidance about the non-compete clause. And he says, listen, if the NLRB finds in their favor because the courts are supposed to defer to the NLRB's judgment on issues such as this, he says there'd be nothing to stop everyone else in the country with the non-compete clause from doing the same thing. Because at that point, all you have to do is quit your job, point to the NLRB case, and you are golden. He also said that this particular suit against the hosts of the dumb zone from Cumulus Media perfectly reflects the kind of corporate overreach the NLRB's guidance is intended to stop. Their contract clauses make it so these guys have no outside option. They cannot really leave the

employer without facing huge legal backlash. You're bound to the employer and you effectively cannot leave without their permission. And that is so incredibly important to focus on because think of how much monopoly consolidation that we've had, especially in the media space, but in so many sectors. So if you have no other option, you can't go to a competitor. There are barely any competitors. You can't hang up your own shingle as these guys did with their own individual podcasts, which, by the way, appears to have been pretty successful for them. They're doing well. It sounds like a funny podcast.

I've never listened to it. I don't really know. They sound charming and funny. They're sports guys, so there's no reason for me to listen to them. Sports, culture, whatever. But if Akash vouches for them, then I'll go. I might check it out, actually. But anyway, the point is you leave these people with no options.

You keep them locked up. It is sort of a form of modern indentured servitude. You keep them completely locked up. So if they're able to succeed and the NLRB backs their case, that is a game changer for millions and millions of workers who are dealing with very similar issues, whether they're at a sandwich shop or podcast hosts or wherever they may be in the workforce. And also, guys, if you support independent media or the ability to consume the best content at your own choice, this is an important case for you because there are lots of people who work in

these media organizations who are tied down to the stake at these corporations because they own, I mean, even look at the Tucker case. Look at the way that they're able to, there's a reason his show's only on Twitter. That's the only place that he can post without being in technical violation of his contract. Well, even that they're saying is in violation. Yeah, and even that they're still trying to sue him and there's all sorts of behind the scenes stuff. If you are not working somewhere else, they should not be able to control what you are doing. And even if they

get you to sign it because, you know, bonuses or whatever, like these things should not be enforceable. And if we can keep this at the national level, it will free up a lot of people. And it's, it's one of the last tools establishment media really has over the people because they control the means of distribution. But if we can kill it, then future people like us don't have to deal with that. It was a real headache. It cost us a lot of money. It would be really huge. Yeah. All right, Tucker, what are you looking at? Well, the Ukraine war is dragged on for nearly two years now. It's easy to forget how ubiquitous the support for aid was at the time. Poll after poll showed Americans willing to pay higher gas prices,

sustain major supply chain shock, and hurt American interests in the short term as long as it meant helping Ukraine. And within that debate was a big fight that I had with many about the nature of bipartisanship and the priorities for American politicians and much of our media class. I would classify many of these people as Ukraine firsters,

meaning that their chief agenda is Ukrainian sovereignty, with many American interests secondary. My challenge at that time was the baby formula crisis, for example. It was sweeping the nation. And I sat in one debate. I believed absolutely that most American elites cared far more about Ukraine than they did about Americans getting baby formula. The argument was that we can care about both. And what I've always said, show me what gets effortless bipartisanship and is spent without question, and I will show you where power really lies. Well, we have an easy answer, I think, to those questions two years into this war. American politicians and most of the American commentariat are Ukraine firsters perhaps even

more than we thought. In the midst of a major fight about a government shutdown, quietly behind the scenes, machinations have been made. The Pentagon has ensured Ukrainian aid will not be touched. Secretly, without any congressional authorization, the Pentagon has made a new change to its rules. Through bureaucratic trickery, the Pentagon has internally decided any Ukraine operation will be exempt from a potential government shutdown, meaning that, quote, key training and other activities in support of Kyiv will move ahead uninterrupted, which means, in plain English, if a government shuts down, millions of everyday American citizens will not get a paycheck. Veterans will not get benefits. Services for all of us will

diminish. But people in Kyiv, they're going to get paid. You can't even make it up. Who they decide to pay, even when they don't have the constitutional authority to do so, shows you who our government really cares the most about. And it's decidedly Ukraine. 60 Minutes inadvertently revealed to the historic degree to which the United States is not only propping up Ukraine's military, but is backstopping their entire economy and civil society. Take a listen to some of the stuff they found that we're funding over there.

American taxpayers are financing more than just weapons. We discovered the U.S. government's buying seeds and fertilizer for Ukrainian farmers and covering the salaries of Ukraine's first responders, all 57,000 of them. That includes the team that trains this rescue dog, named Joy, to comb through the wreckage of Russian strikes looking for survivors. And the US also funds the divers, who we saw clearing unexploded ammunition from the country's rivers, to make them safe again for swimming and fishing.

Russia's invasion shrank Ukraine's economy by about a third. We were surprised to find that, to keep it afloat, the U.S. government is subsidizing small businesses. So the U.S. government is funding every single first responder in Ukraine. The U.S. government is buying all the seeds and fertilizer for their farmers. What they leave out there about that small business, by the way, is that it's funding one woman, for example, a woman named Tatyana Abromova. She has a knitwear company.

She's a small shop in Kiev who US government officials have assisted in keeping afloat and have even helped her find new customers overseas. It must be nice to be a Ukrainian knitwear company. I know a lot of people over here who would love it if the government paid their bills and then found them customers. As a small business owner myself with Crystal, I cannot tell you how much time we spend making sure our finances are straight, payroll, making sure it runs properly, the trains have to run on time. In many ways, it's even harder than doing the show every day.

I know farmers too. They struggle on the knife's edge of making their mortgage payments and they battle with big grain companies over seeds and fertilizer. Meanwhile, those in Kyiv don't have to worry about anything. The government has got their back. Our government. Perhaps some of this sounds callous, and I really don't want it to. I'm not opposed to aid to Ukraine.

Only within reason, which advances our interests. At this moment, we are not only backstopping their entire military, we are backstopping their entire civil society. Biden and establishment Republicans, they say, we're going to back Ukraine as long as it takes. It's clear that means not only do the weapons have to flow, putting us in danger of perhaps embroiling into a larger war with Russia, but we've got to backstop their whole civil society for the foreseeable future. Does that seem fair to you? Or does it seem like we've done our part now?

If Europe wants to step up and they can be our guest, if they want to pay these people's bills. But with the US the farthest away and the least at stake, shouldn't we have to pay, why should we have to pay the vast majority of these countries' bills? Recently, there was a concerted campaign to fool the American public with talk of how the Europeans have overtaken the US in aid to Ukraine. And that's a fun talking point. It happens to also be totally false. They do this by focusing on non-military aid commitments over many years, which the governments have pledged to spend but have

not appropriated and not actually spent. When you take that away, what do you find? Shocker, turns out the US has provided the vast, vast majority of all military aid, the only one that also matters. Also, even whenever you take away the so-called EU classification and you look at it by country, guess who's still providing the vast majority of aid to Ukraine? You guessed it, us. The amount of this side that we have dispersed is vastly disproportionate to our actual interests, and worse, is honestly feeding unrealistic expectations in Kyiv. Do they just expect us to pay these nitmakers bills forever, even after the war is over? The answer is probably at this point, yes. And the secret answer from US politicians to that question is also yes. I mean, how crazy is that? We're paying this nitpicking.

And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. What are you taking a look at, Crystal? As you guys know, Joe Biden will join the picket lines with autoworkers today in what is an extraordinary move. As far as labor historians can tell, this is the first time in the history of the nation that a sitting president has actually joined an active strike, a sign of how rapidly the politics around labor, corporate power, and unions have shifted in recent years. But it's also a little bit ironic because Biden's administration has been marked by tension with this very union over the

nature of the electric vehicle transition. UAW President Sean Fain, unique among union leaders, has pointedly refused to endorse Biden's reelection bid over his failure to include wage and union requirements in the Inflation Reduction Act. Our partner Jordan Cheridan at Status Quo, he recently asked Fain about exactly this issue. Take a listen. Do you need more from the Democratic Party aside from, you know, talk and showing up when the cameras are here? Yeah, I mean, the proof's got to be in the pudding. The proof's going to be in the work. I mean, and as we said, our endorsements are going to be earned. It would drive me nuts

as a worker to just watch. Sometimes we just endorse people and there's really no body of work behind that. And we can't be taken for granted no more. Workers shouldn't allow themselves to be taken for granted. And so, you know, there's a lot of things going on in this economy and there's a lot of things with the EV transition. I mean, we're not against a green economy. I mean, we got to have clean air. We got to have clean water. You know, we got to have a world for people to live in, future generations to live on. And but it's got to be a just transition where, you know, labor is, guys are seated at the table. You know, there's a lot of money, you know, with the IRA that was put in play with the government, a lot of our taxpayer dollars to help fund this transition.

But again, like always, the corporations come with their hands out. There's always a way, the government finds a way to put money in their pockets. But labor gets left behind. Labor cannot continue to be left behind. And that's been our message to the White House, to Congress, and to anyone that'll listen. And so, you know, that's got to change. So at its core, the UAW strike is about two basic issues, securing the present through increased wages, ending tears, increasing benefits, improving quality of life, and securing the future through protections against plant closures and locked-in cost-of-living adjustments. And it is this future which is most threatened by an EV transition that would follow the standard neoliberal-era playbook in which new

technology provides a fresh excuse to fire workers, offshore jobs, and undercut wages. Trump was very savvy to pick up on this tension and seek to cynically exploit it, even as he offers workers worse than nothing, because the EV transition really is the elephant in the room of this strike and of the future of the auto industry. And while it's not up for direct negotiations, the outcome of this strike could well determine whether this transition will in fact spark a blue-collar rebirth or be yet another race to the bottom. So the first thing to understand here is that the EV transition is happening, regardless of who's in the White House. It's really just a matter of timing. Here in the U.S., EVs are still a relatively small percentage of the overall market, but they've been growing at an astonishing clip. In a two-year time span, between 2021 and 2023, EV sales shot up by 147 percent%. Here, Tesla is still by far the market leader, but other automakers

like Ford and Chevy, they've been shipping into their dominance, dropping them under 60% of the total market for the first time ever. But in some ways, to look just at the U.S. is really to miss the big picture. Global sales of EVs have absolutely exploded. Last year saw sales of 10 million electric cars worldwide, and are expected to spike another 35% just this year. That means electric vehicles will jump from only 4% of the new car market in 2020 to 18% this year. Those sales are led by China, which has aggressively incentivized development and provided consumer subsidies to try to make the cars more affordable. The big three, they see the writing on the wall. And even before the Biden era incentives had begun, investing billions into this new market.

GM wants to completely switch over to EVs by 2035. Ford wants half of all their sales to be electric by 2030. Now Biden is working aggressively to speed this transition, but his policies have been woefully incomplete. Effectively, you got to deliver here for three groups, consumers, workers, and automakers. The Inflation Reduction Act only fully delivers for one of these groups, and it will not surprise you which one. In classic DC fashion, the giant corporations got taken care of, most fully, with generous incentives. This industrial policy is already having a huge impact, with North America surging to become the fastest-growing EV battery hub. Meanwhile, the consumers and workers are getting half a glass at best. Consumers get

a $7,500 credit on certain EV models, but that is still not enough to offset the initial price difference. And the government is tackling the biggest pain point for EV drivers, the lack of charging stations, through funds to build around 500,000 new chargers nationwide. Unfortunately, experts estimate we actually need more like 2 million new charging stations. In terms of workers, the automaker incentives do require jobs to be kept in the U.S., so those provisions do protect workers from offshoring. But there are no direct requirements on wages, benefits, or unions, a betrayal of Biden's stated desire to be a truly pro-union president. Goes without saying that Trump and Republicans plan to do nothing on EVs and to continue union

busting, which will virtually guarantee that this industry and its associated jobs will be offshored and that any plants which happen to spring up here will suffer from low wages and dangerous conditions. Hardly an appealing alternative. But there's nothing strikers can do directly about the EV transition. That doesn't mean the strike is irrelevant to EV unionizing and wages. Just imagine that you work at Tesla and you're watching all of this unfold. Currently, non-union Tesla spends about $45 per hour on wages and benefits altogether for their workers. That's as opposed to $66 right now per hour for the big three. So if you work at Tesla, you are already on the short end of the stick.

But you're about to watch people who do the very same job as you get a double-digit pay increase, along with better benefits and job protections, all because they are in a union. And this administration has just significantly eased the path to unionize thanks to some key National Labor Relations Board decisions. You think workers at Tesla just gonna sit back and accept getting dramatically underpaid versus their competitors? They're either going

to unionize or E-Line's going to have to cough up a good bit more money to try to keep them from unionizing. It's the same with all the EV battery workers in what is now an extremely hot industry here in this country. Battery workers don't make anywhere close to what auto workers are making right now, and they're routinely exposed to incredibly dangerous conditions thanks to working with some very hazardous materials. Jackman wrote a great article recently which documented how wage and safety concerns recently led a Lordstown GM battery facility to unionize. Those workers were being paid about $16.50 per hour to risk their health after being exposed to a toxic chemical spill on site. After that spill, they voted to join the UAW by a margin of 710 to 16.

There is nothing to stop other battery workers from following suit. So as you're watching the auto workers strike, just remember, it's not just their livelihoods which are on the line. The entire nature of the EV transition also hangs in the balance. Will it be just the latest way to screw workers, or will they be able to organize and secure a new middle-class standard of living? The UAW has a chance here to show these workers that the benefits of unionizing outweighs the always-present risk of going head-to-head with the bosses. And even as his EV policy has fallen short, believe me, having the president of the United States joining the strike and signaling that he'll have your back too, that doesn't hurt either. And this is really the elephant in the room.

And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints.com. A lot of government corruption in the news lately, which seems to be an unfortunately recurring experience. And we are joined by a great guest who is an expert on fighting government corruption. Robert Weissman is the president of Public Citizen, and he's actually author of the new book, go ahead and put this up on the screen, The Corporate Sabotage of America's Future. And I like this part, what we can do about it. Robert, welcome. Great to have you. Hey, it's great to be with you.

Yeah, absolutely. So what inspired you to write the book at this particular moment in time? You know, one thing I think is coming out of the Trump period, we've been so focused necessarily on fighting Trump, defending democracy, and preventing fascism that we've turned away to some extent from the underlying factors in our society, the economy, and our politics that got us here in the first place. We've also lost sight and all the focus on polarization, relatedly, on all the things we agree on. So at the end of the day, I think we have a problem of too much corporate power in America. And if you look at the polls, people across the political spectrum agree with that on issue after issue after issue and want to do something about it.

Robert, you detail in the book, you got chapters, industry by industry. Can you outline some of the most egregious industries and the way that they influence policy here in Washington through effectively legalized corruption? Yeah, we look at big pharma, big tech, and big oil. If we start with big pharma, that's the industry with the most lobbyists in America, probably the most lobbyists in the world. They have more than three lobbyists for every member of Congress. And they do that because they're so dependent on government support.

They're dependent on government support for research and development. They're dependent on taking at a discount or for free the fruits of that government research and development. They're dependent on the government to approve their products. They're dependent on the government to purchase their products. And they're dependent on the government to protect their monopol. They're dependent on the government to purchase their products.

And they're dependent on the government to protect their monopolies and purchase their products at too high a price. So we've seen the results of that political influence in each of those areas I'm talking about, including notably and probably the most corrupt deal in modern American history, where we created a Medicare drug program to provide pharmaceutical coverage for seniors, but we prohibited the government from negotiating with the drug companies over that. That's costing us on the order of $500 billion over the next decade. We've saved about $100 billion of that from the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act,

but we've got a long way to go. Yeah. Talk a little bit about big oil, which is one of the other sectors that you really dig into here. Well, big oil has perpetrated the greatest crime in the history of the world by denying the climate crisis for years and blocking action on it. We're living with that right now. Everybody's lived through disasters around the world this past year. And we're thinking about these things out of the norm, but they're actually going to be not just normal, but weak versions of the kind of chaos that we're going to experience in the coming decades. And it's not that we didn't know about this problem. In fact, big oil knew about the prospect of climate change probably before anyone else, certainly dating back to their corporate boardrooms in the 1970s. And instead of saying, okay, we're going to share this information

and help the world figure out a way out of this, they engage in a concerted effort over decades to deny the science and block action. We're still living with that right now in terms of their objection to moving forward to a clean energy future. And we're certainly living with results of it every day. You know, one thing I was wondering from your perspective is we've been talking a lot about Bob Menendez this week for obvious reasons, stands accused of taking literal gold bars and having hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash stuffed in jackets with his own name on it from these Egyptian businessmen,

effectively accused of selling out the country to the Egyptian government, exploiting his very powerful position as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. It's very easy to look at those stories as one of personal failing, which certainly it is that. But do you see broader structural issues or is this about the people that are involved here? Well, I think the Menendez story is kind of a distinct one. If the allegations are true, I don't think that kind of corruption normally goes on in Washington, D.C.

That's kind of like unsophisticated corruption. It's also not structural corruption. And the structural corruption is for sure far more powerful and consequential. It didn't start with the Citizens United decision in 2010, but it got way worse then. That was the decision, of course, from the Supreme Court that said companies could spend whatever they want to influence election outcomes. And we've all lived in the world since then. Everybody's familiar with it.

But they're not probably familiar with exactly how bad it is. We have 25 people who are responsible for half of all super PAC spending. Just 25 people. So not so long ago, we'd call that a country described like that, a banana republic, but that's the United States of America. So Robert, you said what we can do about it. Give us some of the prescriptions in the book about how you can actually get to a more bipartisan and less corrupt future. Well, it is bipartisan in that I think, again, as I said, if you look at people's support for

raising the minimum wage, taxing big corporations, cracking down on big tech, supporting an anti-monopoly policy, lowering drug prices, issue after issue, you're seeing 70, 80, and even 90% support. I think the number one thing to do is to deal with campaign finance to overturn Citizens United and have a system of public financing or small donor financing of our public elections. We've got to deal with regulatory capture so that regulatory agencies work for the public and not for the corporations they're regulating. We need an aggressive anti-monopoly policy to break up the big companies and stop them from leveraging their political influence. We need to support labor unions. So we've got an independent check on the power of big corporations by making it legal to organize and illegal, legitimately illegal to interfere with union organizing. And on down the line, there's a set of things. There is for sure no silver bullet to the problem of too much corporate power. My last question for you, Robert, is because I've been thinking about this one recently.

You name checked all of these policies that have massive support. I could go through another list that has even like 90% level support. Banning stock trading by members of Congress as one example. And yet it never happens because of exactly the structural factors that you're talking about. And it makes me question if we even live in a democracy at this point when the will of the people seems to matter really not at all. Well, the only answer is to organize and to overwhelm big money power with organized people power.

You know, in that one example, there is a problem with stock trading, but we made some progress on stock trading by members of Congress in 2007. We at Public Citizen did a lot of work on that. We were banging our heads against the wall for a while. We got some media coverage and all of a sudden people got outraged and Congress had no choice but to enact some meaningful reforms, far too little as we see every day. But we made progress and that's how we make progress every time. You take that example of the Medicare drug program, biggest ripoff, I think, in modern American history. But we just clawed back $100 billion of that

in the Inflation Reduction Act. Again, we should have gone for it all, so we didn't get everything we needed, but we got something, and that's because people rose up and demanded it and overcame, to some extent, the power of big pharma. All right, well, a hopeful message. We appreciate you joining us, sir. Thank you. Great to be with you. Thanks so much.

Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. We'll have the debate special for everybody tomorrow for premium subscribers. It drops today and we'll have a great debate after action report. I guess you could call it on Thursday. We'll see you later. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case.

If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs Podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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