Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/5/23: Nate Silver On Biden's Shocking Chances of Death, Dave Portnoy Says Trump Should Debate, Ukraine Aid Corruption, Burning Man, Trump Blasts EV Plan, Bill Maher Whines About Writers Strike, Original Movies, Hot Labor Summer, Freddie DeBoer New Book

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss Nate Silver concerned on Biden's age and shocking chances of death, Dave Portnoy and Tucker agree that Trump should have shown up to the debates, the Media finally admits corruption in Ukraine Aid, Kim Jong Un and Putin join a summit in Biden rebuke, the Internet revels in Burning Man suffering, Trump blasts Biden's Electric Vehicle plan and UAW union bosses, Bill Maher whines that Striking Writers are "not owed a living wage", Saagar looks into how Original movies are destroying franchises, Krystal looks into the Hot Labor Summer of strikes and if this could be a historic turning point, and we're joined by Substack writer Freddie DeBoer to discuss his new book "How Elites Ate The Social Justice Movement" out today in stores. (Freddie's book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/How-Elites-Ate-the-Social-Justice-Movement/Fredrik-deBoer/9781668016015)To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? breaking this morning. First of all, Biden responding to questions about his age and also new rumors that perhaps he's not really going to run for president after all. So we'll

get that to you. And we've got some numbers to break down all of that. Also, the press is actually discussing the problem of corruption in Ukraine. We'll give you all the parameters and guidelines of when you're allowed to discuss such things. We've been given the green light just for today only, basically. So we'll dig into all of that. Also, Burning Man becomes Drowning Man as the festival turns somewhat disastrous, but it looks like folks are leaving and have left now, so we'll break that down for you. Trump with a long diatribe against electric vehicles. So that's interesting. We'll react to that. And Bill Maher with quite a take on the writer's strike. We also have author Freddie DeBoer has a new book that I'm very excited to dig into with him. It's called How Elites Ate

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are really helping us out at this time. Let's get into Biden. Indeed. So there are some new DC insider rumors that perhaps Joe Biden is not going to complete the presidential campaign. Maybe he's going to step aside and someone else is going to jump in. I've always been skeptical of this, but those rumors have been renewed. And we also have some new numbers that are pretty dire about how people, including Democrats, feel about Joe Biden's age. He clearly, over the Labor Day weekend, felt compelled to respond to some of this critique and some of these rumors. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. Someone said, you know, that Biden, he's getting old, man.

I tell you what. Well, guess what? Guess what? You know, the only thing that comes today is a little bit of wisdom. I've been doing this longer than anybody, and guess what? You know, the only thing that comes with age is a little bit of wisdom. I've been doing this longer than anybody, and guess what? I'm going to continue to do it with your help. Going to continue to do it with your help. Wisdom, dementia, risk of death.

I mean, look, again, I don't want to be unkind, but how can we be sitting here, you know, in the age of watching this man clearly on the decline over the last several years, on top of the Mitch McConnell incident and the Dianne Feinstein incident, and not say that age is not the most real concern that there really is about Joe Biden. Even put the policy and all that other side, there's basically no defense of it, which is why most people aren't even able to acknowledge it. You know, Crystal, in my opinion, the only reason that the media is even able or even has to address this is because poll after poll after poll shows that it is the number one concern, not just of all voters,

but even of the vast majority of Democratic voters. Well, I have a little prediction to make here based on our past experience in 2020, when there was a period of time where it was okay to talk about his decline. It was okay to talk about his age. And then once it was clear that, you know, Pete or Kamala or Beto or whoever the other media candidates, you know, were, weren't going to succeed, then suddenly you couldn't talk about it. You know, it was ableist. This is just his stutter, et cetera. And so I think we'll see a similar thing. There's still some wish casting right now in the media that maybe he'll step aside. Maybe we'll get the candidate of our dreams, Pete Buttigieg, or whatever. And so some of this talk is allowed. And also to your point, I mean, the poll numbers

are just overwhelming and sort of indisputable and undeniable. So it is kind of hard to avoid. We've also seen a lot of reporting about how internally, I mean, they know that this is an issue. They've been brainstorming around how do we attack it? How do we address it? How do we perhaps use humor to get around this? Maybe we channel sort of Ronald Reagan. How do we do these things? I would actually feel totally different about this issue if Biden was willing to subject himself to a just regular democratic process, subject himself to a bunch of interviews, including some contentious interviews, not just like puff pieces with wellness experts or whatever, if he would do debates and put himself out on stage, and then people can judge for themselves. You know, because age is one factor weighed against

a whole variety of other factors. And Donald Trump is no young man himself. So there's a lot to consider here. It's not like this is the determinative one and only thing. But you're not even giving people the chance to really assess how you are and whether or not you're truly up to the job. So I would feel differently about these things if he was willing to subject himself truly to the rigors of a real democratic process. But he isn't. And by the way, Trump isn't either from what we've seen thus far with him skipping his debates. Nate Silver had a good write up just looking at the numbers of, you know, is this a legitimate issue? Is there a big difference between the age that Biden was when he started, between the age that Trump is versus where Biden is now versus where Biden will be when

if he finishes the second term? Let's go and put this up on the screen. And basically, you know, if you're looking at the numbers here, effectively the actuarial tables, it makes a big difference. You can see the way that the chance of death in the upcoming year basically skyrockets, especially over the age of 80. So you see this chart, this depicts the annual risk of death for an American non-Hispanic white male, which applies to both Biden and Trump in 2019 and 2020, according to the CDC. At age 70, and just keep this up on the screen, guys, so people have the visual. At age 70, and just keep this up on the screen, guys, so people have the visual. At age 70, Nate Silver writes, Trump's age when he was inaugurated for his first term,

the risk of death in the upcoming year for a white American man is 2.4%. So not nothing, but you know, on the lower side. By age 78, that'll be Trump's age in 2025, that risk has roughly doubled to almost 5%. At 82, Biden's age, if he is re-inaugurated in 2025, it's increased further to 7.3%. And the risk of dying in a given year is 11% by age 86, which would be Biden's age at the end of his second term. So by the time his second term would be over, he would have a more than one in 10 chance of dying in that year. This is a serious consideration, especially when you're thinking about, all right, who's the vice presidential candidate? How do I feel about that person? Furthermore, according to the

Alzheimer's Association, this age range is also associated with a sharp increase in Alzheimer's dementia, which by the way, was a concern and a valid one in Ronald Reagan's second term. So Nate Silver basically making the case here that voters are worried about it and they're not long to be worried about it. And just to underscore how much voters are worried about it, put this next chart up on the screen. We can see three fourths of U.S. adults say Biden is too old for a second term. It is overwhelming among Republicans, certainly 89 percent%. It's overwhelming among independents, 74%. It's overwhelming among Democrats, 69% say that Biden is too old. And roughly the same number of Democrats say Trump is too old as well. The numbers for Trump among independents are 48% and among Republicans much lower at 28%.

So overall, three-fourths of U.S. adults say Biden is too old for a second term. Now, as I said, is this the only thing voters are weighing? No, it's not the only thing. But is this a significant and legitimate factor for people to be thinking about? Of course, it absolutely is. Yes, there's no question. And, you know, something that he actually does a good job is contextualizing it in terms of people who are also very elderly, but in positions of high power. So for example, he even lands on like Fortune 500 CEOs. He says that of that, there are only two current Fortune

500 CEOs who are over the age of 77, Warren Buffett and Roger Penske. No current US governor is older than 78. And quote, while there are quite a few U.S. old senators, we are seeing serious consequences from that, be it Mitch McConnell or Dianne Feinstein's manifestly diminished capacities. And as he points out, the presidency arguably is even more of a stressful job than the Fortune 500 CEO job. I encourage people, if you're ever in Washington, go to the National Portrait Gallery and go look at the mask made of Abraham Lincoln's face, which was made in 1860, I believe, and then look at the mask that was taken of his face on the day that he died in 1865. The lines that are etched into his forehead, the gaunt nature of his cheeks shows the sheer amount of stress that were exerted on him in just a four and a half year period during the Civil War. I'm not comparing that to current times, but I'm just giving people an idea. In the worst of times, this job will kill you. FDR, I mean, unquestionably,

he of course had problems, but the stress of World War II and 12 years in the presidency, he was a dead man by the time he was reelected for his fourth term. He only lived like 80 days into that term. There are serious consequences to covering this stuff up. And I will always remind people, we had this conversation in the Reagan years, where Reagan currently, as you said, Crystal, proved himself via the democratic process by charging and turning around his age on Walter Mondale. And he was only 68 when he's running for president. He's a spring chicken compared to both of these guys. So I think Silver does a fantastic job of laying out the very legitimate concern. And the most important thing to underscore too on those probabilities, that is not the cumulative chance of death. It's the annual chance of death.

More than one in 10 chance of dropping dead of natural causes in your last year while you're in office. And that is for people who are not in the most stressful job on the world, who are retired, hopefully, you know, sitting on a porch or, you know, even whenever they're in good health, even the most minuscule thing can take you out when you're that old. Yeah, that is true. So, I mean, important to keep those numbers in mind. And also just to not allow the media to gaslight you that this is not a legitimate issue. Of course, it's a legitimate issue to consider. I mean, obviously, these men are elderly, so that makes the choice not too appealing on either side.

We also have new evidence that these concerns about Biden's age and also concerns about his economic stewardship are really weighing on him in terms of reelection. Put this up on the screen from the Wall Street Journal. They say Biden's age, economic worries endanger reelection in 2024. Nearly three quarters of voters say the president is too old to run again. We were just discussing some of those numbers. But if you could leave this up on the screen for a moment, you can see the approve or disapprove of the job that Joe Biden is doing on each of the following. On the economy, he's only, I think that's like 37% approve of his handling of the economy. Even poorer results on inflation and rising costs than even poorer results, again, in terms of securing the border. He does decently well on improving infrastructure. And actually decently well on creating jobs, which is kind of interesting

that there's a significant separation between how people feel about the economy overall and how they feel about job creation and the unemployment rate. It really underscores the fact that, yeah, there's a low unemployment rate. There are a good number of jobs out there, but are they good jobs? Are you able to afford a house? Are you able to afford a car? Are you able to afford just to make ends meet at the end of the month? Just to dig into these numbers a little bit more, I think this is a big problem for Joe Biden. By an 11-point margin, more voters see Trump rather than Biden as having a record of accomplishments as president. Some 40% said Biden has such a record. 51% said so of Trump. By an eight-point margin, more voters said Trump has a vision for the

future. And by 10 points, more described Trump as mentally up to the presidency. Some 46% said that is true of Trump, so not even a majority for Trump, but better than the 36% who said so of Biden. Now, how do you square this, these numbers and this perception from the American people with the fact that, you know, you did have things passed during the Biden administration. You had the Recovery Act early. You had the Infrastructure Act. You had the CHIPS Act. You had the PACT Act. You had the Inflation Reduction Act. You've had, you know, accomplishments in terms of antitrust, things I really care about and that I think will be really important over the long term in terms of unions and the National Labor Relations Board. How do

you square that with these numbers where people feel like, actually, I think Trump accomplished more? Well, what I would argue, Sagar, is that over the course of the Biden administration, the story has been one of gradually stripping away all of the supports that were constructed under the Trump and Biden administrations to deal with the pandemic. So while infrastructure is good for the long term, CHIPS Act, good for the long term, improving the odds for union organizing, good for the long term. In terms of the short term, the experience has been number one, inflation, and number two, these things that were helping me are going away. I'm having to rack up insane amounts of credit card debt and other types of debt. I'm getting behind. I'm about to have to restart my student loan debt payments.

And I don't even understand these complicated procedures. People have the perception, not just the perception, the reality that things have gotten more difficult for them over the course of the Biden administration. And so it makes all the sense in the world that they would be unhappy with his economic stewardship and, you know, basically giving Trump another shot and a toss-up race that has a 50-50 chance of going in either direction at this point. I would also argue there was a Kennedy term that was in vogue at the time, the 1960s about vigor. And when they looked at Kennedy, they felt that he was a vigorous man and he was vigorously attacking the problems that we had. As I've said before, a lot of that ended up being methamphetamine that was being injected into him. But the appearance was there nonetheless.

And the point, I think, is that with inflation, I mean, I've said so much of this. People are going to want to go back and roll the tape from over two years ago. I'm like, listen, people are not stupid. They know that you're not solely responsible for the price of gas, but they do need to feel as if you are attacking it with vigor every single day. He didn't do anything with the SPR and they drained it, hasn't refilled it since then after he left us more vulnerable. I mean, there was a sense, at least a small sense, I think of vigor-ish in the first like

two to three months of the presidency. I think he really killed himself by bringing back mask mandates and all the other nonsense for the first year or so. He got himself totally derailed by COVID. And during that time when we had supply chains and all that explode with the pricing, with inflation, he'd never let himself get ahead of the ball. He always is behind it. And he's basically fallen way behind it ever since. Even in some of the things you're talking about, Crystal,

it's all been half measured. So like on the union front, be like, yeah, he ruled this nice way on the NLRB. I mean, ask the railway workers how that worked out for him, you know, at the time, ask why, and we're going to do a whole segment on this later about the UAW and why they refused to endorse Biden. There's just been a series of things that were done that were not done in the most wholehearted manner. Now, look on the Trump front, I think one of the reasons why is because, A, Trump was the beneficiary, of course, of the zero interest rate phenomenon. He had the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. But also, even though people vigorously, again, attacked his approach to COVID, let's say on the actual COVID front. You can't deny the economic things

that were put into place under his presidency and a lot of the structural things that were done by him or at least by his administration specifically at that end period, of which people can't just look back. And I mean, polls show this very fondly as to 2019. Some of that could be just wanting to go back to the past, but I do think part of it goes back to that story. And so anyway, Biden's inability to like, you know, his whole pitch was returned to normal and almost like a normal plus vision. Well, that requires a ton of work and he just, he doesn't do the work. I think that's what, and I think people can feel that very, very, very deeply whenever they look at his presidency. And I don't think they're wrong

whenever they look at the structural conditions of their lives. Yeah, I think they got freaked out by the, I think they took the wrong approach on inflation. They got freaked out by the Larry Summers of the world who told them the only thing that's driving this is government spending and you gotta pull back on all these programs.

And I'm not saying that that had nothing to do with it, but it's become increasingly clear over time that corporate profiteering was a larger percentage of it than even I thought at the time. I mean, the numbers just bear that out, that actually a majority of the inflation was corporate profiteering. You had all these supply chain issues. And we were calling for him from the beginning to aggressively go out and go after these corporate profiteers and do everything he could to call them on the carpet to bring down prices. He didn't do that. corporate profiteers and do everything he could to call them on the carpet to bring down prices. He didn't do that. And so, yeah, I mean, it's unfortunate because the real turning point in his approval rating, if we're being honest, is actually when he did one of the best things of

his presidency, which was to withdraw from Afghanistan. But you had a Yuna media moment of, you know, this is how horrible. I mean, that was a total media story. But in terms of the enduring low nature of his approval ratings, you can see really clearly the story of his administration at the beginning when they were doing stuff and people were getting checks in their bank accounts. Guess what? His approval rating was really high and people felt really good about his stewardship of the economy. When they stopped doing stuff that helped people and started stripping away all of the programs that were helping people,

guess what? His economic approval ratings and overall approval ratings fall off a cliff and stay there. So that is how you're in the situation now where it's a jump ball. Now, you may ask, given this analysis, why does he even have a shot at winning? And I don't just think he has a shot. He's an incumbent president. I think he has better than a 50-50 chance of winning reelection if he ends up being the Democratic nominee. Why? Well, within the same poll, you've got Biden viewed significantly more favorably than Trump on personal characteristics. 48% of voters think Biden is likable. That's compared with 31% for Trump. 45% view Biden as honest. 38% say that of Trump. You have a pollster who's quoted here, and this is actually one of Trump's pollsters. He polls for Trump's super PAC, Tony Fabrizio,

who says, if this race is about personality and temperament, Biden has an advantage. If the race is about policies and performance, Trump has the advantage. And I think that that is probably accurate. Last thing to throw into the mix here, and then we've got an amazing CNN clip we want to show. Or not CNN, sorry, Stephanopoulos. Yeah, ABC, right? This is the clip we want to show for you. But they also interviewed someone who had been a Biden supporter back in 2020 because he hates Trump and he wanted to make sure that Trump was not reelected. But this time, this man who they describe as a 57-year-old investor based in Phoenix who describes himself as an independent,

this time he's leaning towards supporting Cornel West, due in part to his frustration with Biden's inability to deliver on his promise to overhaul policing in America. There's no goddamn police reform out here. They are still killing people. I voted for Biden because I knew he can heal, but he's just not doing enough right now. So some of those key supporters who last time around voted for Biden as a bulwark against Trump are saying, you know what? He hasn't done enough. This time I'm going in a different direction. Yeah. And you're going to see that on the people who held their nose for him as well, who were more conservative voters. And all around, you're just seeing the erosion of support. We brought you the Pod Save piece last show, which I think really hit it all home.

As you teased already, ABC's George Stephanopoulos is like, I just can't believe it. I just can't understand why he's neck and neck with Trump. Let's take a listen. And Donald, let's begin with the presidential race. I don't ask you the question I asked Tim Kaine towards the end there. It is kind of shocking in a way that despite all of the baggage that Donald Trump carries, he's tied with Joe Biden right now. Yeah. I mean, George, when I looked at that recent poll, The Wall Street Journal, I said, oh, this could keep me up at night. Look, the problem is and the biggest challenge we face as Democrats, I say we because I'm a Democrat, is that young voters, young black and Latino voters, they're not ready to come back to the party. They're not even looking at the so-called messaging that's being sent to them about the economy, about climate change, about student debt relief.

Well, well, well, like you just said, a lot of young voters who are Democrats are very upset whenever it comes to the Joe Biden presidency. And that's the thing, too. They're like, I just can't believe it. These indictments. Yeah, it turns out the indictments, I really haven't done a damn thing. Now, listen, we will see. It's possible. Stop the steal didn't show up in a lot of the polling in 2020. So 2022, I'm not going to sit here and just say that it's a total write-off. We could have the exact same phenomenon going on right now. So I do encourage people, always remember that in the back of your mind, stop the steal on abortion remained dramatically underpolled in 2022. So if you want to consider what the bullish case for Biden would be, that's what I would rely on.

But as it seems right now, it's still a tough race. And regardless of what it is, you should still, you should fight like hell in order to try and win. I don't think he's doing that at all. It is ironic that Donald Brazil, the former head of the DNC, who is more responsible for preserving this version of the Democratic Party, the, you know, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden version of the Democratic Party than, you know, few other people, right, involved in all the rigging at the DNC to make sure that the Bernie Sanders movement was sidelined and shut down and all of that stuff, that she's now, I don't know what happened. How come these young voters,

how come they don't like the Democratic Party? I just don't get it. It's keeping me up at night. I don't know. You know, young people, African-Americans, Latino men, I just don't get what's going on. It's like you designed it. I mean, it doesn't compute for them

because it goes against their whole political philosophy of like, let's do the bare minimum and let's just be a little bit better than the other guys. And let's make sure that we're just, you know, staying towards the center, quote unquote, and not really delivering for people in a meaningful way. Let's make sure that we crush all these young people who have these big ideas of how much better the country could. Let's make sure we crush their hopes and dreams and aspirations. Then, oh, why won't they vote for us? Why aren't they excited about us? Gee, I wonder why, Donnie. Yeah, absolutely. There was another piece that we wanted to get to here, which is an interesting exchange between Barstool's Dave Portnoy and

Tucker Carlson discussing age with regard to both Trump and Biden, and also discussing Trump's absence from the first GOP debate. A lot of people took note of this. Let's take a listen. I thought Trump should have done, I thought he should have done the debate. To me, if you're voting on the president, you want to hear him debate. He's brilliant. He's the best to ever play the political game. So to become president, I think it was the right move not to do it. But for the betterment of the country, I think you should be on the debate. I kind of agree. I like the debates personally.

I mean, how else are people going to decide? The problem is that the news companies that host the debates are so rotten and corrupt and everybody knows it. The whole thing's rotten. The whole thing is rotten and corrupt. Is Biden going to be the nominee? I don't know. I'm not a political person, but I feel like there's been a shift where internally, maybe the Democrats don't think he can win and they're setting the stage to do somebody else.

I think it's crazy if he's I mean, to be honest, I think both Trump and Biden are too old. I think there should I don't think you should be able to be that old and be president. But I think Trump is hundred percent more aware i i think biden has got some serious dementia issues like how that is the president i don't know and that's not a democrat because i said about both it's like uh mitch mitch the guy who had the stroke during the speech the other day mitch mcconnell yeah like what how how are these people running our country you wouldn't put those these people i would say mccon't put these people in control of our CEO. I would say McConnell's, the only defense I would say of Mitch McConnell is McConnell post-stroke is an improvement over McConnell pre-stroke.

What did you make of that, Sagar? Look, I mean, I think he represents frustration. I mean, Dave, look, he says he's not a Trump supporter now. I think he said he's moved on. Was he previously? I didn't even know. I mean, definitely did in 2015. He wrote a whole thing about how he supported Trump. And then obviously interviewed Trump supporter now. I think he said he's moved on. Was he previously? I didn't even know. I mean, definitely did in 2015. He wrote a whole thing about how he supported Trump. And then obviously he interviewed Trump in 2020.

I wouldn't call him a supporter per se. He's a cultural figure much more than political, which is why he kind of interests me whenever it comes to these things. I did think it was significant though about what he said. He said, I think these two men are too old, but he was like, how are people supposed to decide? And I think that was a great normie view into how a lot of people will look at Biden's decision not to participate in Democratic debates and Trump not participating in debates. Now, to be fair, GOP primary voters are not going to care about that at all. But I think that people who are

more outside of the political process are like, well, you know, these things kind of are important. And, you know, we even saw, Crystal, did you really expect the pop, not even our show, but in general of the media attention that was showed to the GOP primary debate without Trump? I didn't, I can tell you that right now. We saw an extraordinary amount of interest from a lot of people.

Of course, our audience is disproportionately young. And I think that's because people like seeing an actual exchange. They like seeing somebody get pressed on something. They like seeing how people interact with each other. We got a lot out of that debate in some ways, you know, and specifically also the Nikki Haley versus Ramaswamy, the Mike Pence and what was going on, DeSantis' decision to like put himself above the fray and then the subsequent movement there that we have seen since about how the anti-Trump vote really taking a big look over at Nikki Haley, Ramaswamy remaining more static than we expected because a lot of those people are just Trump

people. I mean, there's so much to learn, I think, from these things. And I think that he really put his nail, he really understood there that it's like, well, how are people supposed to decide? How are people supposed to evaluate? It just hits home what you were saying earlier, which is like, look, I think, you know, as with Reagan, Reagan's genius was that he campaigned very hard and he disarmed people. And he was like, no, I'm not too old to be president. Biden has to convince people probably triple times more what Reagan did. And instead, he's probably doing, I would say, less than one third of what Reagan actually did when he was running for president. Would have been nice if Tucker had pressed Trump on any of this when he sat for him for an interview during the debate.

Would have been nice to see him pressed on those things. I continue. Listen, unfortunately for Biden politically, it is the right decision. I think it's abhorrent. I think it's disgraceful. I think it's anti-democratic for him to not even, you know, submit himself whatsoever to a democratic process. However, given how he presents and how he would likely perform on a debate stage, politically, I think it's a no-brainer what they're doing and his basement strategy. Recreating the basement strategy is probably the best thing he could possibly do because I just don't think he has the goods, right? For Trump, I continue to think there is a little bit of danger in the strategy, a little bit of danger, because you are allowing people to see these other candidates. You are allowing these other candidates to grab some of the headlines and some of the spotlight.

You are allowing Republican primary voters to imagine a post-Trump party and consider, OK, if Trump was not in the picture, who would be my chosen candidate? And none of them are my cup of tea, but I think for Republican-based voters, there was a lot that they probably, wherever they fall in the Republican spectrum, they probably saw someone on that stage that they were like, you know what? That person was good. I like them. I like their policy. I like how they present themselves, whatever. So I continue to think there is a little bit of danger for Trump. Do I think that it is likely to end up being an issue for him? No, not likely. But it's a little risky. And he's very good at debates. I have lots of issues with Trump. But as a political performer,

Porter is right. There's no one better in the political game in terms of just sheer performance value than Donald Trump. And so pushing aside the opportunity for him to go out and do his thing that he does better than anyone else, I don't think it's actually the right call. I think he's actually making a small mistake. Again, is it going to be determinative? No, probably not. But is it a little bit of a missed opportunity for him? Yes. Well, that's what he's betting on is that the risk would be too high. I think he should have more confidence in himself. He's

obviously, you know, after what we saw, I'm like, oh, Trump would have nuked that whole thing. He would absolutely dominated the stage. So yeah, look, he's, you know, he's a student, probably the best media manipulator in the history of the American presidency. And if anybody would study it incorrect, I think it would be him. Let's move on to Ukraine. You guys are going to be amazed. We are now allowed to talk about pervasive, rampant corruption at the highest levels in the Ukrainian government. Why? Because Zelensky has now given us permission to do so. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. The president of Ukraine kind of stunning the world by firing the chief defense minister of Ukraine for military graft and corruption. And some of the details that the

media has now allowed itself to report on are, you know, just as stunning and are as obvious as people who have been watching this conflict from the day one. They point to the fact that, quote, the removal of the defense minister highlights the enduring challenge of corruption in Ukraine, which has emerged as, quote, a rare area of criticism of Vladimir Zelensky's leadership. Who made that criticism rare? I do wonder about that. It's, of course, these two media outlets who are only doing it after the man has already been fired, or at the very least, he offered his resignation. But one of the things that really came out to me, Crystal, was the specificity of the claim, and this claim itself that shows you how obvious so much more of the corruption

that we are overwhelmingly bankrolling here. Let me just read this part. At one point just this year, $980 million in weapons contracts missed their delivery dates, according to the official government figure. And some prepayments for weapons, quote, vanished into overseas accounts of weapons dealers. Let's be clear. This is your and my money. This is our money, American dollars, taxpayer dollars, of which we have no inspector general and no oversight. Also, let me remind everybody of this. The Treasury Department under the Biden administration has said we have seen no indication of any corruption going on in Ukraine because we are

obviously looking at the situation. The hilarious part, this is the Ukrainian government. This is the Ukrainian government being more honest about their corruption than our government about their corruption, about our tax dollars. They say, quote, though precise details have not emerged, irregularities suggest procurement officials in the ministry did not vet suppliers, allowed weapons dealers to walk off out with money without delivering armaments. That is on top of the actual specific scandal that was uncovered under this defense minister's leadership, where they were charging at one point 47 cents US dollar for a single egg per egg that was being supplied. Massive overpayment for food.

Go ahead and guess who the people who were supplying the food, the cronies and the friends. We'd seen the Zelensky government attack some of this. The thing is too is they don't actually care. Do you know why they're doing this? It's because people like us, Crystal, and people in the US Congress and all over the world are like, hey, what's actually going on with our money? If we're gonna give you even more money, they're like, oh, we're gonna make a big show about doing something about corruption. My personal favorite line was a flag by Byron York, let's put this up there on the screen, which says that inside of Ukraine before the invasion, the primary source of embezzlement had been poorly run state companies.

Money was siphoned off by wealthy insiders. Quote, anti-corruption groups now say that the huge influx of funds to support the war have prompted them to shift focus to military spending. Oh, really? That's very interesting. I can't help but think of that CBS News report from the earlier days of the wars, the first three months in, and they talked about misdelivery, about procurement, about rampant corruption, about all of that. And CBS News retracted their report that was on the ground and was directly factual because of criticism from the Ukrainian government who were like, no, no, no, that's out of date. Well, okay,

even if it is out of date, it's still true. Was it factually true or not? They're like, it's out of context. Well, it wasn't out of context. It's a simple fact. There was a massive misdelivery of arms. And everything you read about how things work out there, we're literally talking about crates of brand new U.S.-provided weapons. Hop off of a truck, open up the back, and they're like, all right, anybody who wants, you can come and get it. We don't know who these people are. We're talking about militias, some of whom have terrible ideology and are connected to longstanding Nazi groups. That is not, again, to say that all Ukrainians are in the military or whatever,

are Nazis, but there's no denying that our weapons are obviously in their hands and they're fighting on behalf of the government. More so, Crystal, the desperation going on in Ukraine right now is stunning. I mean, they have lowered the bar dramatically for the amount of eligible men who are fit for service. In some cases, people who are like HIV positive, who previously would have been disallowed from serving. That is not the action of a confident military that has an endless amount of supply here. It is the time, unfortunately, time-honored tradition

of people who are bleeding men in an attritional conflict. Happened in the South in the American Civil War, happened during World War I with all of the great power militaries that were sending men into the meat grinder. So you put these two things together and structurally, clearly there is not signs of, there's not a lot of good signs for the Ukrainian military. And it confirms our 19 month long now suspicion that graft and corruption is deeply embedded into the Ukrainian government society, which is not to put down the people themselves. Just to note the most obvious fact,

it was one of the most corrupt countries on planet earth before the invasion. Why would anything change? That's like being surprised that half the amount of aid that we sent to Afghanistan was embezzled and now currently is sitting in a bank account in Dubai. Obvious to anybody who knew anything about Afghanistan prior to our war that was going on there. So look, again, this isn't to put down the people themselves or the soldiers who are fighting nobly. It really is to put down the leaders who we just bankroll without question. And it's very obvious here what's going on. And it's also noteworthy to me, not one American official ever said one word about this in public.

Yeah. They only said it behind the scenes. And the Ukrainian government itself is taking better note of their corruption than we are. Not just the Ukrainian government. Apparently the Ukrainian media. Yeah. Because what comes out, too, is that, you know, Ukrainian journalists and media there in-country, they've been doing lots of investigative reporting into things like what

you're talking about, like the egg overpricing. There was another incident where, you know, all these winter coats were shipped that were totally shoddy quality, not close to sufficient in terms of like actually keeping people warm in the cold Ukrainian winters. So they've done quite a bit of reporting about some of these problems and these contracts that are going to cronies and that the Ukrainian government and by extension our government and taxpayers are getting ripped off by. And it makes sense because, of course, the Ukrainian people, they actually live in the country and they don't have this cartoonish Disney-fied version of their own government that we have here. A couple other things to note. Just foreign policy put together a list of, there's a new Department of Defense appropriations bill that needs to pass. And there are a bunch of relevant amendments that have been proposed here that are worth watching. Some of them have directly to do with Ukraine. There's a new effort to block the transfer of

cluster bombs that will be proposed as part of this. There's also two, this is interesting, two Republican amendments on the Azov battalion, Azov battalion, sort of famously, you know, Nazi, neo-Nazi roots, et cetera, but now part of the Ukrainian armed forces. There's one that's pro-Azov and there's one that's anti-Azov. So that will be part of it as well. And of course, this goes into tracking, okay, where did these, whose hands did these weapons end up in, which is obviously relevant in terms of corruption as well. The other thing to add that I think is part of why this anti-corruption talk is coming out right now in terms of the U.S. press is Zelensky is acknowledging that corruption

has been an issue and tacitly acknowledging it by some of the personnel changes that he's making. But then his solution is to override this somewhat independent board that's supposed to be looking at corruption and take matters into his own hands and charge anyone caught with some sort of corrupt deal with treason. So this is concerning because obviously if you put the entire enforcement in the hands of one person who has a history of going after political adversaries and stifling dissent, etc., even U.S. officials are raising alarms about this particular approach to cracking down on corruption.

Of course, we certainly want to see corruption dealt with, but not in a way that's just going to be used selectively against his political adversaries versus an actual whole-of-government effort to make sure that the funds are going where they're supposed to be going. Let's all just recall that President Xi Jinping has been a famous use of the same power, rooting out officials for corruption. And by that, he means his friends are the ones who are the only ones allowed to do corruption, not the people who are his political opponent. Doesn't take a genius to see how it all works out. The secondary part of this is another extraordinary rebuke of the Biden administration. And one I want to spend some time on today because it is one of the most unanalyzed, uncriticized parts of the Biden

presidency, which has always baffled me. And that is our treatment of North Korea. Say whatever you want about Trump. Trump shook up the geopolitical consensus in the U.S. relationship with North Korea after they obtained the ability in order to have an ICBM successfully deliver a nuclear warhead to touch the United States. That was a complete strategic change of the calculus. And he said, you know what? We can't keep going down this path or we're going to end up in a war. I'm just going to go meet the guy, no preconditions. And you know what happened? We didn't have any military tests. We didn't have any missile tests. The hermit kingdom became a little less hermity. We had multiple US exchanges of diplomats. He ended up finishing his presidency.

And what did the Biden administration do? They reverted exactly back to the Obama administration. They said no talks without any talk of denuclearization. And what did the North Koreans do? They started firing stuff off, scaring the crap out of our Japanese and South Korean allies, militarizing again, and now have been a main source of weapons for the Russians in Ukraine. And what's going on? Let's put this up there on the screen. Kim Jong-un will be making a historic visit to Moscow to go and meet Putin sometime later

this month. He will be, or sorry, Vladivostok, not Moscow. He will be aboard his armored train because he's too afraid to fly, which I always think is one of the funnier things about Kim Jong-un. But this is a historic and incredible trip for Kim Jong-un in his premiership or presidency, whatever they call it over there.

More importantly, though, it is the sign of an emerging kind of tripartite pact between the three. We can laugh off North Korea all we want. Of course, you know, their economy, society, all of that is a disaster, but they knew how to do one thing. They have massive stockpiles of weapons. They have nuclear, they're a nuclear armed power. And now they're entering into a basically quasi alliance with the Russians who are, of course, happy to take any weapons that they're going to give them because they need the money.

And more so, let's go and put this up there, they're actually, it seems, going to be entering some likely North Korean three-way drills, military drills, unprecedented in all of history between North Korea, China, and Russia. So a reversion entirely back to the Cold War. Crystal, let's say you're a big Ukraine stan who was out there. You should be furious because if the Biden administration had kept up diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang, we may not be in this situation. We may have some diplomacy. We may have an avenue to be like, hey, don't sell weapons over to the Russian. We'll help you guys out. What do you guys want? Or maybe we can do this. We can ease this sanction here. We can change things up here. So even if you do care about Ukraine, you should be angry about this.

But this gives you a good view into when we revert to the old style talking points, we're just not going to engage or any of that. It's a disaster. And this is what's happening here. Again, laugh off North Korea all you want. They've got an ICBM. They can wipe out Los Angeles. They can wipe out the island of Hawaii if they want to.

Yes, many people in their country are starving. They have decided to dedicate their entire society to get it. And the Kim regime is not going anywhere anytime soon. So it is obvious we have to treat this with seriousness. And instead, everybody laughs it off. This is still a major, major diplomatic event that's happening. And of course, Washington is ignoring the event. And we don't even have an avenue, Crystal, to go to Pyongyang as Mike Pompeo did, or even have some sort of summit and just be like, don't do this. We can make it worth your while. There's many different avenues that we could go down. We haven't exchanged a word with them now in years. Yeah. You know, this is one of those issues that Trump was really attacked by.

And he was so right about it. And he was so right. I mean, this was such an example of the media attacking Trump for all of the wrong things. Because on many other areas, he was way more hawkish than Biden. He was extremely hawkish, actually, with regards to Russia, extremely hawkish with regard to Iran in ways that were wildly irresponsible, that have made us less safe and killed engagement on that front. But on this one thing, his approach was clumsy and it didn't amount to everything, but the general direction was correct. The general instinct of, hey, you know what, we've been, what we've been trying to do here hasn't worked. And Biden has just gone back to

that old way of thinking with regard to North Korea, specifically, that for years and years and years has not worked. And so, you know, surprise, surprise, when you get the same results that we got with this hawkish, we're not going to talk to you, you know, all these preconditions approach that we had for so long. Exactly right. And, you know, it's one of those where Trump was very proud of his engagement with Kim Jong-un, and I still, look, in an odd personal way, that said, it was for the best. We were safe. Our allies who were actually productive members of our alliance, like Japan and like South

Korea, felt a lot better about it. They were pretty happy with the results of not having their citizens cowering in fear over being accidentally hit, or a jet aircraft being hit by a North Korean missile. And now, like I said, North Korea, which has massive stockpiles of weapons for its possible war with the South that they've been preparing for basically since 1953 or whatever when we signed the armistice, are happy to sell it at cost or a little bit of a profit to the Russians and to secure the respect that the North Korean regime craves and desires. And you can hate them all you want. It won't take away their nuclear weapon. We've learned that the hard way.

Bill Clinton basically had the only chance in order to do something about it. He decided not to. From the Bush administration on, the nuclear tests and the eventual attainment of the weapon, it is what it is. When countries get a bomb, they get treated differently. And it's one of those where people just want to wish it away differently. But having a tripartite nuclear alliance specifically around Russia and watching now as Chinese banks are stepping in to basically provide all the banking services that Russia used to get from the West, we're just bifurcating in a way that is not achieving the end result and is very likely making us all much less safe as a result

of this policy. I think that is all accurate. Okay. All right. Let's get to the really important story. Everyone is waiting to hear updates about the Burning Man festival. Okay. So for people who aren't in the know, it's this annual festival happens really in the middle of nowhere in the desert, in this dried ancient lake bed, a hundred miles from Reno, Nevada is the closest airport, et cetera. So it's this sort of like techno utopian libertarian vibes. You go, it's supposed to be about community and radical self-reliance. And this year they had a huge rain event that, you know, because it's the desert and because they're in this dried lake bed, created massive

flooding and made the thing, you know, incredibly muddy. People could barely walk, let alone bike, let alone drive to try to leave. And so they actually closed down both the entry and the exit for a period of time. Now, people this morning, they have been leaving. The roads are reopened. People are able to escape now in whatever muddy condition they are. But let's take a look at a little bit of what was going on at its worst. Now, roads leading in and out of the festival have been shut down since Saturday after heavy rain turned the ground into ankle-deep mud. Officials say the thick muck made it virtually impossible for cars, buses, and RVs to leave.

Some people walked four miles to get through the mud and get out. Drowning man update. We got three quarters of an inch of rain. Travel is impossible. And there's about 70,000 people stranded on a barren lake bed. But fortunately, burners are badass and brought all the supplies we need. Or most of us. We got people who came by bus camped on the edge of the city.

They're in pop-up tents and at risk of getting hypothermia. But we don't need outside help. We're gonna bind together, get radically self-reliant, dry out the furniture, and keep the party going. The alternative is to fall into despair, roll over, and die. And we all have a choice in how we're gonna handle this. So everyone open up your Starlink satellites so people can communicate with their families.

Make an expedition to the edge of the city with food and water. And don't fight anybody because we're all to handle this. So everyone open up your Starlink satellites so people can communicate with their families. Make an expedition to the edge of the city with food and water. And don't fight anybody because we're all in this together. Bury those negative thoughts and gratitude for your life because a couple of people didn't make it last night. And know that we're all going to clean up this mess and get out of here. This is the hand we were dealt this year and together we're going to get through it. I love this guy. Yeah, I do too. I mean, it's kind of a perfect emblem of like the vibe of the people that are there. And I mean, I have to confess, I watched a million videos about Burning Man and what it looked like. I mean, it looked so disgusting. And you're like all these people there and they can't empty the porta potties. And it's just a total disaster, fire festival sort of vibes. But the internet was clearly kind of like

obsessed with this. I'm curious, Sagar, why you think that people were so interested in like imagining the suffering of the Burning Man attendees? Well, A, it's an extraordinary situation. You know, I mean, Burning Man is a long place in pop culture. There's a lot of controversy around Burning Man, where originally it was kind of like hippie festival and then largely it's been, I wouldn't say taken over, but a huge contingent of people who are really into it. A bunch of celebs go, influencers are like posting photos of themselves there. A lot of them are Silicon Valley billionaires. It's almost like Coachella. It became one of those things that became Instagram trendy, became one of those things that became an attainable goal,

rather the counter really to like the anti-capitalist goal that was originally there. You know, there's a big separation between like real burners and then people who buy their way in. So I'll put that aside. I have some sympathy. I think it sounds cool. I'm not sure I would experience it. But I mean, visually, it's a stunning thing. And also, people love to see how people, especially Silicon Valley billionaires and others, like the idea of them like sitting and suffering in this extraordinary environment is just obviously humorous. I saw videos of people like Chris Rock and others like being able to escape during a manhole. The poor regular Burners were sitting there with their stuff.

I actually really like that guy's vibe. He's like, we're gonna be fine. We're gonna be resilient. We're gonna keep the party going. And people I know who are really into it who are not these Silicon Valley types and others, that's very much the spirit I think that they would like to embody.

I don't know though if the festival can recover. I was seeing some takes out there. Others, of course, are going to keep going, but I mean, broader pop culture, like they were like, this really will put a damper on the future. And I think at the very least, it does highlight something which has always been at the core of Burning Man, which is being a hundred miles out in the middle of the desert, it's not a joke. You really do need to be self-reliant. You do need to prepare and plan for the worst. Crystal, you and I spend a lot of time outdoors.

People are very cavalier putting themselves in situations which can, you are, the margin of safety out there is real thin. I've seen people six miles or whatever into the Grand Canyon wearing jeans and a single bottle of water. And it's a hundred. I'm like, what are you doing out here? Like you, you're asking for it, man. Same in Moab. I remember they, you know, even in Arches National Park,

they're, they even have rangers there who are checking people to make sure they have enough water and people are still disregarding it and be like, no, I'll be fine. Like if you trip and fall, you're four miles out, what are we going to do? gonna do now they gotta go save you and it's one of those where it is a reminder i think to everybody it's like look if you're gonna partake not even this activity but any activity out there on the margins like you need to genuinely be aware and prepared for a worst case scenario so i think that's also some schadenfreude that's that's a part of this yeah i think the festival probably will recover but maybe it shouldn't and the reason I say this is it just feels like one of those things where its time has passed. Like whatever the original organic idea was that, you know, was a real thing and a community experience, et cetera, it's been sort of commodified.

It's become more about like the, you know, selfies that influencers post than whatever the original conception was. And I think there's a there's a couple of pieces here. I mean, first of all, I expect that the people actually went through this since their whole goal in a sense in going to Burning Man was like to have this extraordinary and challenging experience. They had an extraordinary and challenging experience. And so I suspect that the people who leave there, as much as we're looking at the photographs and videos that are like, that looks like hell on earth. You could not pay me enough. I bet they actually come out feeling like they got something out of the experience would be my bet. There's also something

about the level of privilege that it takes, first of all, to be able to, you know, take time off work and the expense. It's not cheap to do, et cetera, et cetera, get the supplies, go there. But the also level of privilege it takes to feel like you need to add suffering into your life. Like you need to artificially generate suffering and struggle that's meaningful into your life. And so I think that's, there's an element of that too, in terms of how people are reacting to this. You know, some people are highlighting like the types of folks that were at Burning Man at this point, Neil Katyal, let's put this up on the screen from the serfs, who they describe as he's a former Obama Solicitor General, but he also was the lawyer who successfully,

in their words, defended Nestle in their child slavery case, dressing in what they say they can only describe as pedocore to build a courtroom in the middle of the desert perfectly encapsulates the essence of Burning Man. So listen, I haven't been, so I can't speak to what it's actually like when you're there and the vibe and the energy and what people get out of it. So I don't want to like completely cast it aside. But certainly the popular perception is of dudes like this who are wealthy, privileged and have done evil things coming there to pose like they're these utopian idealists when really it's just about them sort of like play acting some struggle for a week. Very likely. And yeah, I mean, there's also never underestimate rich people's ability to ruin everything. And that's very likely something that happened here.

And of course, that's why the Internet's been captivated at schadenfreude, including Ebola conspiracy. Yeah, there was, I guess I should say, there was one person who died and they're saying it wasn't related to the weather. I mean, you got 70,000 people in the desert, like the chance that some, and there's a lot of drugs and whatever going on. So the chances that someone of those 70,000 people might die is not crazy to imagine. It's being investigated, but it did spark a whole bunch of like, there was a conspiracy theory that the reason they'd shut it down wasn't the mud. It was because there was Ebola and this spread wildly online as things do. So that is another part of why the internet was fascinating. I wish them the best. Safe travels home. I hope you at least were able to salvage some fun out of it. That's it. Yes, indeed. All right, let's move on to the next block here because former President Trump

making some interesting comments about the electric vehicle transition and the push from the Biden administration, including largely provisions contained in the Inflation Reduction Act. Let's take a listen in part to what Trump had to say and we'll react on the other side. What's happening to our autoworkers is an absolute disgrace and an outrage beyond belief. Auto workers are getting totally ripped off by crooked Joe Biden and also their horrendous leadership because these people are allowing our country to do these electric vehicles that very few people want. And it's a mandate. So you'll ultimately be forced to drive in a car that goes for an hour and then you have to have it recharged. I hope you don't want to go very far away. Biden has imposed the outlandish requirement that 67% of all new vehicles must be electric in less than 10 years. That means Michigan and places that make

cars, you can forget about it. You better get your union working because you can forget about it. Those cars are all going to be made in China. And your bosses are leading you right down the tubes. You shouldn't pay your fees. They get these big fees from all of their workers. And it doesn't matter how bad they are, they'll endorse a Democrat, even though the Democrats selling you down the tubes. Both the UAW bosses and the big three auto executives should be screaming at the top of their lungs. They should be ashamed of themselves. And I'm telling you, you shouldn't pay those dues. You should not pay your dues because they're selling you to hell.

You're going to be going to hell. You're not going to have any jobs. All those cars are going to be made in China. Listen to these union guys who get paid a lot of money and they get wined and dined in Washington. They know that electric cars are no good in terms of our workers. So there is a lot to sort through there. There's a lot going on. Many layers.

First of all, that anti-union rhetoric is so like classic standard Republican. I mean, it's delivered with like a Trumpian flourish, but the bottom line is like, you know, the big union bosses around to get you, et cetera, et cetera. And he's talking specifically about the United Auto Workers here, where they just elected Sean Fain, who is, you know, really standing up for the rank and file, really pushing the big three automakers. They are imminently threatening a strike. I'm talking more about this in my monologue again today. You know, it's demanding 46 percent salary increases, is demanding that when they close a plant in the town,

that there's actually, you know, a job program to keep people employed. That put this up on the screen. The part about them not pressing Biden is also just a lie. The UAW has not endorsed Biden specifically because they don't feel he went far enough in terms of guaranteeing that the EV transition is a just transition, meaning that the wages are commensurate with what is in the industry right now and that those jobs remain union jobs. But on the other half of this, put the next piece up on the screen for the American Prospect, who did some great reporting here. You know, it's not that Biden has done nothing, which is what Trump did in terms of trying to make sure that these are union jobs and they're good, well-paying

jobs, et cetera. He used all these typical neoliberal like carrots and sticks and subsidies and incentives to try to get the automakers to use union labor and keep wages high, but they didn't mandate it. And so that's the beef with the UAW is they don't feel Biden did enough, even though it wouldn't be accurate to say that he did absolutely nothing. And then the last thing, and I'll throw it to you, Sagar, for your reaction. Let's remember Trump's record with regard to automakers and union auto jobs. Lordstown auto plant was, you know, sort of storied, historic, really the bedrock of that community. And it's an area that I know well. Trump came in. He told these GM workers

that he was going to save their plant. And of course, it was a lie. It closed. It's now there's, you know, there's some like battery factory nearby. They tried to get an EV maker and none of it has worked out. And so Trump's own record with regards to the auto industry was calamitous and catastrophic. And he had zero incentives in place to keep the, you know, the jobs well-paying and union, et cetera. But he goes out there and of course, you know, does his Trumpian thing. I think there's some interesting parts of this. One is I do think Trump is correct about the demand for electric vehicles. So for example, Tesla is outselling Toyota in the state of California for 2023. That's not just because of subsidies, it's because people want the cars.

Also, people do drive a lot in California. There's a reason for that, which is that they're great cars. They're fun to drive. Now, let's put that aside and let's talk about some of where I kind of agree with Trump, not on the union front, because I think what he's getting, I mean, factually, it's just not correct, especially whenever it comes to Sean Fain. He's not wrong, though, that a lot of auto worker actual members did vote for Trump. And I think some of it stems back to those 2016 rhetoric culture that goes into it. There's a whole other conversation we can have. Specifically on the EVs, and I've done so many monologues about this, what he has gotten at is, like you said, they have gone to this mandate about X amount of vehicles on the

road that have to be electric without planning or doing any of the stuff that you actually have to do in order to achieve that very lofty goal. There's no mandate. So he's talking about the EPA emissions mandate around, welly goal. There's no mandate. So he's talking about the EPA emissions mandate around, well, whatever. There's no mandate. New cars sold by 2035. The thing that he said about like,

there's a mandate that it has to be 67%, that's not true. Well, Biden is using these incentives, that's his goal is to get to that point, but that's just not accurate that it's like, we will have this number by that year. It's not all cars, it's that new cars have to meet emissions. I mean, it's the same way California is doing it.

They're doing the same thing with the EPA, with their own state environmental agency requirement around new cars being sold. Regardless, the point is that if you do want to get to that, you need a massive explosion in charging infrastructure. You need a massive explosion in industrial capacity to build battery plants. He's not wrong. The vast majority, I've done tons of monologues on this. The vast majority of the battery supply chain is in China. It's a huge problem for Elon Musk and for Tesla, where not only the major battery supplier, but huge parts of their own supply chain for the basic requirements of the car themselves are not made here in the United States. So we need actual plants in order to get that done. I support the UAW trying to push that. I do not, though, and I'm not a fan of the requirement or at the very least the EPA emission

standards that require this because I think that electric vehicles can be subsidized and can be created to be a genuine competitor. But I don't like the idea of forcing people to buy electric cars. But I don't think anybody is not being forced to buy electric cars. But if you're in an environment where you're directly making it with the emission standards, you need to be able to have a situation where, look, there's a lot of scenarios

where people are going to need a gas-powered vehicle and or want or prefer a gas-powered vehicle, not only strategically, as he's talking about, with our own oil reserves, but for rural life and for people who drive hundreds of miles. It's really not feasible with the current infrastructure, not to mention the amount of power that we're going to need, actual nuclear power, much cleaner and better power available. This would require a

massive change in the way that Americans live their lives in the next decade. And that's just not going to happen with the current incentives that we have here. Right. So there's two sides of what Biden is doing. On the consumer side, there are rebates in place to try to make electric vehicles more affordable, to make it more appealing for consumers. They're not being forced, but to try to bring the cost down so the electric vehicles are more appealing. On the automaker side, there's a bunch of incentives in place for them to shift to EVs. By the way, and we talked about this before with regard to California, the big three automakers already, before Biden passed the Inflation Reduction Act or any of that, they already saw the future as EVs and they were already moving in this direction. So the Inflation Reduction Act provides additional

tax. I mean, this is industrial policy, right? They've decided this important play for the future. By the way, China is all in on this market. I mean, they have aggressively been funding their own EV market because they see it also as the future and they want to get a jump and they've done way more than we have in terms of both the EV technology and the battery technology specifically. So we are behind. So the other thing the Inflation Reduction Act does is provides incentives for the automakers

in this direction and includes incentives to try to make those jobs good, well-paying union jobs. Now, I personally think they should have gone further in terms of requiring them to be union jobs. So you know, all the Tesla people would have been very upset about that because Tesla is not union. Tesla is not union. Tesla is not union. With their current infrastructure.

So it would have been a big issue for them, even though, again, I agree with Sean Fain that they should have done that. So I just think what he's trying to do here is he's trying to make electric vehicles like a partisan issue. Yeah, and I don't want that to happen. And I don't want it either. And the way that most consumers view this is not through a partisan valence. They're just looking at, like, what's the cost of gas? How much does an EV cost? What's the charging infrastructure?

And by the way, look, the charging infrastructure needs to be way better than it is now. There is some money for that within the Inflation Reduction Act. It's probably not sufficient. That is an important component. It's probably the most important component of making this realistic for ordinary people. But most people are just like looking at the math and seeing if this works out for them. And it's really not a partisan thing. And the one thing I will credit Elon Musk for, no, I'm not a big fan, is that he has, by reading as right wing, he has made EVs more acceptable

for Republicans, conservatives, independents than back when it was seen in sort of like the Prius-like lens. There's two geniuses of Tesla. Tesla was a decade ahead of establishing the actual electric vehicle at the very basic consumer level. They brought the Model 3 online and made it one of the best-selling cars currently in the United States. That's number one. Number two is the charging infrastructure. They have over 12,000 Tesla chargers that are

all across the nation, which vastly outstrips every single other nation. In fact, I believe that the future value of Tesla will not be the car. It will be effectively Tesla as a physical platform. Think of it almost like a tech platform where they're retrofitting and have created deals with Ford and with multiple other companies. And they just did a deal with Ford on charging infrastructure. Exactly. So they are going to create a way for Ford vehicles and all these other electric vehicles to be able to use the existing Tesla infrastructure. I believe that's the biggest leap forward in electric technology and infrastructure has been by Tesla. The thing is, though, and this is where this has

nothing to do with Elon or any of that, somebody's got to pay for the power. I mean, right now, when you charge up a car, it's actually not that much money. But if we're going to move to a place where two-thirds of vehicles are using that, not gas stations, and you're going to have to retrofit all this existing infrastructure, we are going to need a ton more power, actual physical electricity. And that is where things get really complicated and where I have not yet seen a single real serious effort by the Biden administration or any of that. They are going all in on solar and on wind. Their Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not doing any serious effort. And it's not just them. There's Congress that's involved here too. So I don't disagree with you. I mean, I think it's a bad place. I hope the electric vehicle does not become partisan because I think they're awesome

cars. I do think that they are very much can be the future, but there's a lot of stuff that has to line up behind it. The current status quo is really not one where we want to end up. I mean, currently, gas-powered vehicles, brand new electric, brand new gas-powered vehicles are still quite expensive. They're like 50, you know, 50, $45,000, I believe is the average price. On top of that, you got $4 a gallon right now. As I said, though, I think that the gas, I think gas-powered vehicles will always have a place in American life, largely because of people who live in more rural communities, because of the ability for us to actually take it out of our ground and not have to rely on foreign countries if we want to, in order to achieve that. That said, if you want to create a real mix, the current path forward

isn't a terrible one where a lot of people are just buying Teslas because they're cool cars, or Ford electric, Ford Mustangs, or any of those. And that's kind of where you want to keep it. You want to keep it at the consumer level where people are choosing them. I think it's like 10% or so or whatever of the market right now because it's either a second car, it's largely like a middle class, upper middle class thing right now. But as the Model 3, especially right now, Tesla is massively cutting its prices. I'm very interested to see what the uptake is on there. I mean, when you can buy a brand new Tesla for like $33,000 or something, or even a used one for $25,000 with not that much mileage on it, that changes the whole game for how this is going to work. That's true. I mean, I have a 40V. I love

it. It gets more than 300 miles range. It's been very, I would not at this point, given the charging infrastructure, I would not want that to be my only car. Yeah. That's the problem. Just for, you know, if we long road trips with the kids, like that's a pain in the ass. Right. And so those are the sorts of like pragmatic considerations that a lot of people are making. It's like weighing the cost. What's gas? What's the charging infrastructure look like? What am I going to use this for, et cetera. And I charge at my house. Right. So for me, it's very easy. I almost never charge at any of the chargers, whatever. I just don't go further than what I can go. That's what I mean. Look at the Burning Man. I mean, one thing is like, you don't want to be a hundred percent reliant on, uh, on

the, you're like, Oh, I'm just going to drive to this Tesla charging station out in the middle of the desert. Yeah, and you're like, uh-oh. I hope it works out. It's not working. 95% of the time it will, but 5% of the time, and you got no cell service, what the hell are you going to do now? Right, yeah. Sure, you can do it with gas too. Those are the practical barriers.

On the political front, let me say I think Trump is – he has, he often has good instincts, even when I hate what he's saying, which part of, you know, most of what he said, I hate what he said. But I think on the union, anti-union part, I think he's really off base. If we just look at the numbers in terms of how the public feels about unions, if you look at the fact that the UAW is just about to have this giant fight with the automakers. So to be like the bosses, you know, the union bosses are telling you, I just don't think that that comports with reality, public sentiment in America broadly, or even within the Republican base at this point. So that's one thing. I think he probably is right in sensing that there is an increasing partisan valence to EVs and that there is obviously a lot of skepticism

within the Republican base about doing anything with regard to climate change. And so I think, you know, on the politics of it, on that piece, I suspect he's probably kind of prescient here. And, you know, I hate that that's the case, but I think it's probably true. I think that the F-150 in particular was such a massive mistake here because they tried to overpromise to their core consumer. A lot of Republicans drive Ford F-150s in rural areas, and they were like, no, this is going to be able to totally replace it. And the thing, whenever you've got real cargo, it's got like a hundred mile range. I think that EV proponents, which I am, really need to be realistic about use case, about infrastructure, about the pain points, about all of that. And then can't be just telling folks

who are actual farmers, yeah, you can totally replace your Ford F-150. Look, if you drive a truck for fun, go for it. It's probably a hell of a lot of fun if it's your second car or something like that. But that's not the privilege that most people have. And it's not even the primary reason that people are buying trucks, or at least the use case there for what they exist. I just think that people need to stay within their own reality here and not over-promise and then under-deliver. They have to actually over-deliver, which is what a lot of Tesla cars have been able to do for their consumers. Part of the reason why they have such a high amount of brand recognition, I mean, of people who desire the cars, because it's not just that they want it, they have people who have it, they know people who love it, and all that.

And it has never really under-delivered in terms of what they've promised, whenever it at least comes to range and all of that. I know there's some lawsuits, but that's mostly from years ago. The brand new cars, they pretty much have not seen any of those same problems. Yeah. So anyway, it was an interesting discussion. Yeah, Yeah. Let's move on. Bill Maher. Bill Maher, you might have seen him. He's on the podcast circuit right now promoting Club Random. He had an interesting moment on his podcast with Jim Gaffigan where he talked about the writer's

strike. And it seems that Bill is getting a little bit cranky about not being able to do a show. Let's take a listen. The strike is a perfect example. Those guys would never go back. This strike could go on till the 24th century. They would stay out. I feel for my writers. I love my writers. I'm one of my writers, but there's a big other side to it, and a lot of people are being hurt besides them a lot of people who don't make as much money as them in this Bipartisan world we have where you're just in one camp or the other there's no in-between you read there For the strike like it like they're fucking Che Guevara out there, you know, like this is

Caesar Chavez lettuce picking strike or you're with Trump. You know, there's no difference. There's only two camps, and it's much more complicated than that. It is, but I do feel like there is a lot of the points, a lot of the grievances I kind of agree with. I do understand that they're getting screwed a bit by the streamers yes yeah I mean it's a change and you either you know it's like anything that is you know I believe in free market but I also believe in trust and then verify right what does What does that mean? Meaning, you know, you don't trust, you know, like the reason, I mean, Zaslav made $400 million, and I think they're looking for $80 million for, you know,

it's like they're going to, you know, you leave a kid in front of a bowl of marshmallows, they're going to eat the marshmallows. It's not like some grand thing. Well, I don't know. What are you saying? They're only asking for $80 million? Well, I'm saying that.

They're asking for a lot of things. They're asking for a lot of things. That are like kooky. Like what I find objectionable about the philosophy of the strike, it seems to be they have really morphed a long way from 2007 strike where they kind of believe that you're owed a living as a writer and you're not.

This is show business. This is a make or miss league. And not everybody... You don't think that they should... that streamers should reveal numbers so that they can...

Oh, maybe. Sure. Wow. You are... They kind of believe you're owed a living as a writer and you're not. Dreamers should reveal numbers so that they can calculate things? Oh, maybe. Sure. Wow. They kind of believe you're owed a living as a writer, and you're not. Imagine being one of the writers on his own show. How would you feel about that whenever you're on strike? I don't really understand.

But at a broader level, and look, you can agree or disagree with him. The thing is that gets me is just the privileged position of being, obviously, at the near tail end of your career, of having made decades of success and tons of money in Hollywood and on HBO and then kind of lecturing these folks, even those who are coming up, who are trying to just have the even just a basic shot. And then even those who want extraordinary success see so much of what's going on with the writer's strike as their ability in order to attain that without having their literal likeness stripped away by AI, without having the ability to get the residual checks and all these other things that some of these people have been banking on. And frankly, they're

not even going to be making that, you know, they're really fighting more for different protections of which I think are correct, specifically whenever it comes to AI. That's where I was like, what kooky thing does he think that they're asking for? I know, I wanted a little bit more elaborate on what part of just wanting to be able to live and earn a decent wage is kooky. Now, listen, in fairness to Bill Maher, my understanding is that his people are paid well,

that they can live, that he does believe they are owed a living as a writer, at least as a writer for his show. So I don't think he's treating, you know, in my limited experience there, I don't think he's treating his people shabbily at all, which makes this commentary even more, a little more dissonant because it's like, look, they see the fact that the industry has changed a lot, right? And they see what's coming down the pike here in terms of using AI. And this is what all this, this is one of the big sticking points with the writer's strike specifically. The studios want to be able to use AI, like for

example, to generate first drafts of scripts. And then writers are brought in after the fact to just polish the scripts that the robots wrote. Now, I don't in after the fact to just polish the scripts that the robots wrote. Now, I don't personally think the tech is even at the place where it could feasibly do that at this point, but it's not crazy to imagine that that is coming very soon before whenever will be the next chance for them to renegotiate their contract. And so they clearly see these stakes as existential. That's why this you know, this has not been easy for these writers. They've been out of work for a long time. The studio said they're willing to make them homeless.

And some of them are like living that reality. They are losing their apartments. They're losing their homes. This is very, very real for them. They wouldn't be doing it casually. The other part, part of the framing that I really object to is he says at the beginning, I feel for my writers, but there's a big other side where other people are getting hurt who, you know, make less money than they do, something like that.

It's like pinning the whole problem on the writers as if the studios don't share any blame for trying to screw them over and really haven't, you know, given them any sort of a deal that's feasible for them whatsoever. So I owe it. That framing to me is so, um, so disingenuous and so inaccurate that it's always the fault of the workers who are trying to demand a little bit better and demand like a fair piece of this gigantic part of the economy. And they're the ones that are blamed versus the studio executives who are rolling and, you know, have plenty, lots of money and, you know, did great during the pandemic and whatever. Somehow it's never their fault for screwing people over. And they're the ones who like, you know, have all the money. And

I just don't know also at which point this is going to fold because the problem is that even public attention right now is going to be so divided. I mean, think about it. All mass attention in the United States is about to go towards football. It's like it's football season. It's one of those which is going to dominate. We are here on a platform like YouTube where user-generated content is going to continue, but also prestige content. I'm doing my whole monologue about this, about prestige content, about why original scripts and all that are so important. That's part of the reason why I'm so sympathetic to so many of these demands is because I'm like, this is really the,

you know, the engine of creativity. If we go to an AI generated world, we all know it's going to be crap. AI only generates off of other AI. It doesn't have, at least yet, you know, it doesn't have its own physical creativity. And so, look, I think that what Marr fundamentally is, you know, I mean, I think he just misunderstands. Because even the writers who are on strike, these are professional writers. It's like they're not owed a living. Like, sure, anybody who's just writing a spec script and is like, it's my dream to become a writer, of course. But these are actual professionals who are in the business. In the union, yeah.

Who are making a living, or at least trying to make a living by doing so. That's a whole other, you know, different consideration. So anyway, I think the whole thing was pretty out of touch for Bill Maher. All right, so how are we looking at? Well, like many people, the ideas behind the fourth turning of Aynil Howe have intrigued me now for a long time. There's oceans of discussion out there about how Howe's thesis pertains to politics, where the ruling regime loses legitimacy, the population reaches a crisis point in politics, and often either a civil war or a world war is required to end the cycle. his prescient and yet equally important discussions of how each turning is reflected in pop culture and how what art is popular in each turn relates to the larger trends. I couldn't help thinking about that over the Labor Day weekend. The official numbers of the summer box office season have come out, showing a stunning reversal of more than a decade of American pop culture and Hollywood successful formulas. The two major hits of the summer blockbuster season

are now officially Barbie and Oppenheimer, beating out traditional franchise hits like the latest Mission Impossible and the latest installment of the Indiana Jones franchise. But what is really stunning is to consider Barbie and Oppenheimer in broader context. Barbie has now crossed the coveted $1 billion worldwide box office threshold, and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is now one of the highest-grossing R-rated films of all time. Consider Barbie, for example, against Guardians of the Galaxy 3, which is the end of a particular franchise

and one of the only good Marvel movies to actually come out in years. It grossed only $800 million globally at the box office. That's not to even mention the pathetic performance so far of DC Comics movies like Flash and Blue Beetle, which are a decade too late to the craze and hopefully will die or at least be reborn in a more dignified fashion. The sudden reversal with films like Barbie, Oppenheimer, and Sound of Freedom crushing major franchise films at the box office is a massive demarcation point in American culture. And it returns us possibly to the best of Hollywood. Great scripts, great cast, original screenplays, big dollars at the box office. The real test

comes in the next year or so. Which era are we going to live in? We get to choose. Consider some of the other films that are coming out in the next year or so. Ridley Scott with Joaquin Phoenix for what is sure to be a stunning Napoleon biopic, or the character actor Adam Driver starring alongside Penelope Cruz in Ferrari, or Leo in Scorsese coming to us once again with Killers of the Flower Moon, which is already one of the best nonfiction books to come out in the last decade.

And don't get me wrong, there are plenty of franchise films that will still come out. Saw X, which we needed, of course, a new Hunger Games movie, a new Wonka movie, and Aquaman 2, The Marvels, which looks like, of course, a new Hunger Games movie, a new Wonka movie, and Aquaman 2, The Marvels,

which looks like one of the worst movies ever, and only one that I'm actually excited for, Dune 2. If only the best, though, of those survive, and great original screenplays with stars and great directors do thrive alongside them, it will be a sound message to Hollywood,

no more recycled crap, we demand originality. More so, it is important to connect our pop culture, again to the fourth turning, in the context of geopolitics. The economics of Marvel movies didn't make as much sense just for American box offices. It was because they occurred at the height of Obama-era globalization and the coddling of China. Marvel movies found incredible success in emerging box offices, and that led to the watering down of scripts that were relevant across all cultures, as opposed to references

that people could truly understand at home. In the era, though, of great power competition, the Chinese box office dream is basically dead. Even Marvel movies that were targeted to China, like Shang-Chi and The Rings, were banned for political purposes, and Hollywood has found itself increasing demands for censorship,

which even they can't bow to. This, of course, forces their hand. If they can't have access to that market, they gotta change their approach, and that change would work far better if you actually like good movies. The great stagnation that we saw in our economy since 2008 has, of course, affected us all

in much, much more important ways, like access to housing, jobs, inflation, wages, wealth inequality. But the way in which we both entertain ourselves and that we demand of our entertainment says also a lot about us. The stagnation of Hollywood led to an explosion of streaming content for niche individual audiences. This was downstream of the internet, which, of course, also coincided and pushed along politics of division. Now, I am the firm belief a national identity is a result of a major economic and good conditions and uniting beliefs. Hollywood at its best, in its golden age, it served as a vehicle for everyone to find a piece

of themselves in silver screen and to experience collective moments together. And perhaps one good result of all of the chaos of the last 15 years is the birth of a new era, reclaiming that legacy, which could lead to better times far ahead. So interesting, Crystal, I'm curious what you make of it. I know you didn't like Barbie, but hey, listen, it was an original. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, Labor Day is back. For the first time in modern history, rather than some nostalgic anachronism of a bygone era when labor actually commanded some real respect in our economic system, Labor Day

2023 came with a little bit of bite and a whole lot of promise. This new labor energy is every bit as exciting as our sclerotic political system is depressing. Rising strike and organizing action combined with some genuinely significant policy changes has made this a hot labor summer to remember, and I am 100% here for it. And into this mix steps autoworkers who could in mere weeks launch a groundbreaking, potentially transformational strike. We may well look back at this moment and this Labor Day as a turning point from the bottoming out of worker power during the neoliberal era. So first, let's take a look at the big picture.

Strike activity is way up in 2023 after a pandemic era lull. Actors and writers, of course, are on strike. UPS workers authorized a strike but instead secured a very strong deal for themselves, and now autoworkers are weeks away from a possible strike of all the big three if the automakers do not come to the table with a serious offer and fast. What's transformational about all of these actions is that at their core, they're actually about workers trying to claim a fair deal in a rapidly evolving economy

focused on technology. Actors don't want to be harvested for AI and screwed by streaming. Writers don't want to be an assistant to chat GPT. Auto workers are demanding a just EV transition that will not leave them behind and shift yet another industry into a workers race to the bottom. But that's not even close to all. New York Times compiled a remarkable visual chart showing the number of workers who have gone out on strike this year as compared to previous years. Now you can see the numbers for this year, if autoworkers hit the picket lines, will look more like the 70s and 80s when union density was far higher than it looks like the early 2000s. Now that

makes these numbers even more extraordinary. Looking at the chart though, you really come to realize how this moment actually kicked off with the red state teachers strike waves of 2017 and 2018. Those movements signified workers of all political persuasions were ready to fight back in a big way. But what's happening now is maybe even more significant because of its breadth. Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations has tracked 251 work stoppages just this year. One of the stories of the new labor energy is about smaller shops, places like individual Starbucks stores

organizing. So it makes a lot of sense that a wave of small-scale action would be happening underneath the surface of the big headline stories like UPS and autoworkers. Now, there's a lot of indications, too, that the moment is particularly ripe. The public, having soured on the free market radicalism of the past several decades, is increasingly supportive of unions and eager for them to have more power. After hitting a trough in 2009, the number of Americans yearning for union power has steadily increased. Through Occupy Wall Street and two burning campaigns and COVID, more and more people have realized that part of what ails the American working class is a lack of organized

power in a political class, which has often joined together to block their aspirations. Today, a higher number of Americans, 43%, say unions should have more power than at any time since that question was first asked. Only 26% say unions should have less power. You go back to 2009, those two numbers were completely flipped. And lo and behold, politicians are actually somewhat responding to this new reality. Just take a look at Joe Biden's National Labor Relations Board, which is perhaps the absolute best thing about his administration and is truly significant. They issued key rulings which enable the Starbucks and other grassroots union drives. Recently, they've issued a spree of highly based rulings which could completely transform the union landscape.

As Biden would say. Not a joke. The Biden Department of Labor is pushing to up the overtime thresholds so that more workers will qualify for overtime pay, significantly increasing the earnings of millions. The National Labor Relations Board also just strengthened protections for solo work actions, encouraging more workers to engage in protests that could prompt future group actions. But in what is a true labor earthquake, they just issued a ruling which would require employers to recognize unions and start bargaining if that boss is caught union

busting. Now, keep in mind, union busting labor violations are so common and so completely routine that this ruling alone could de facto make so-called card check the law of the land. In other words, if a majority of workers sign cards indicating they want a union and bosses then try to union bust, which they always do, the election's canceled and the union is recognized. At the very least, it will powerfully dissuade the commonplace attacks on unions, which have run rampant because there has been zero accountability. Now, I wish I could say Republicans have gotten the memo, but outside of some vaguely pro-labor rhetoric, it's just not the case. Right now, in fact, congressional Republicans are working hand in glove with the Chamber of Commerce to

hamstring the operation of the National Labor Relations Board so it can't do any more good things for working people throughout the remainder of this Biden term. But I guess you can say at least that union busting is no longer the animating cause celeb in the Republican Party that it was a decade ago. When you think about Scott Walker running the Koch brothers playbook to decimate unions and one of their historic strongholds of Wisconsin. Or when you think about Chris Christie, who rose to fame and conservative stardom by screaming at teachers and beefing with unions. Now, I know I'm supposed to temper my expectations here. After all, the economy could be turning, making things a lot more difficult for workers. Union density still declined last year in spite of a whole lot of new energy. And despite real wins, the overall landscape is still tilted radically against

workers. But I can't help but feel on this Labor Day 2023 that a dam has indeed broken, that we have now reached the depths. And perhaps the story from here will be one of workers actually scoring some wins in the class war that is always being waged against them. So for everyone out there with the courage to fight for a better deal, happy Labor Day. The nation is with you. And I do think we're at a turning point. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints.com. Writer and activist Freddie DeBoer is out with a new book.

Let's go ahead and put it up on the screen. Excited to dig in this one. The headline is How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement. It is available today. And Freddie joins us now to discuss. Great to see you, my friend. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, of course.

What inspired the book? I just had a feeling in sort of early 2022. So I sold the book in May of 2022. I just feeling that I was just going crazy because a couple of years earlier, everyone was talking about revolution. Every day you read a new overheated piece about how we had to sort of shake society by its foundations, that we would not settle for reform, that everything had to be torn up by the roots. And then in a couple of years later, it just felt like everyone had kind of decided to sideline that, ignore it, and pretend like it didn't happen because they were embarrassed by the fact that nothing changed. I think that the events of 2020

indicated very deep and very real problems with our country, and that those problems need to be met effectively. And that didn't happen in 2020. And if you take those problems seriously, you have to ask, how can we do this better in the future? And that's what the book is all about. Freddie, one of the things that leaps out, you mentioned the Washington Post review, I had it up in front of me, and it's one of those where they kind of take issue. They're like, well, Freddie DeBoer ostensibly says the left was co-opted here by elite movements, that they were defeated in their aims. And as you said, now too embarrassed to talk about, like specific instances that you kind of go into in the book about where you think that was the most prevalent?

Well, I can tell you one of the things that invited just rage very early in the process. So at some point, the publishing company unleashed the table of contents onto the world before the book itself was available. And one of the chapters is titled BPMCLM, which means Black Professional Lives Matter, Black Professional Managerial Class Lives Matter, excuse me. And the argument is, I think, both completely just sort of undeniable, but also very controversial, which is that the activists who made up Black Lives Matter are not like the median Black American. They're not even like the median Black Democrat. Now, I want to say very quickly that that's okay. It's not their job to be avatars of,

you know, median Black experience. Their job is just to advocate for what they think is right. The problem is that the media just sort of took whatever Black Lives Matter activists were saying as sort of the gospel of what sort of Black popular opinion was. And we know that that's just not true. I cite a lot of polling in the piece, for example, that it's simply not the case that the average black American wants to abolish the police, defund the police, or even reduce police presence in their neighborhoods. In fact, in poll after poll, black respondents say that they want the police presence

in their neighborhoods to remain the same or to even increase in dramatic majorities, which of course makes sense. If you are among a class of people for whom violent crime is much more likely to occur, it's natural to want more police in your neighborhood. If you have less property because you're more poor as a class of people, it's natural to want more police in your neighborhood. But that kind of attitude was really verboten within our elite media class in 2020 because they wanted to associate all of Black America with a sort of very thin slice of the activist class, which is hyper-educated, which is overwhelmingly concentrated in urban

parts of the country, which is enculturated into a certain elite sort of status and vocabulary, which sort of emerges from this meritocratic space. In fact, the medium black Democrat, so the more left-leaning, the average person is fairly liberal economically. But in fact, the medium black Democrat has always been slightly to the right of the party's mainstream when it comes to social issues. And it's just not true that every Black American is a radical activist. And it would be bizarre if it was.

So but you wouldn't deny that there was an organic national widespread reaction in response to the murder of George Floyd and that the core of that reaction was about changing the way that police operate and specifically changing the way that police operate in overwhelmingly Black neighborhoods. Yeah. I mean, again, the basic premise of this book is that anything that we have a moral duty to do, we have a moral duty to do well, right? So if you say we have a moral duty to prevent police violence against black people, I would absolutely agree. I would say that that's one of our most sacred

political duties right now. And we did a terrible job of it in 2020 of advancing that cause. There is just profoundly little on the ground difference in terms of how policing is being done in this country. In a moment in which we had enormous media attention, when there was more goodwill than you can possibly imagine, I think that this is forgotten. As I refer to in the book, there was a period immediately after George Floyd's murder, when even majorities of Republicans in some polls

were expressing favorable views of the Black Lives Matter protests. That was an incredibly fertile moment for real change, and real change didn't happen. So yes, absolutely, the George Floyd moment was a moment in which we should have gotten serious and made some real changes to American policing. I think that the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which is a bill that went before Congress,

is flawed like any other big omnibus legislation is, but I think it had a lot of great provisions. Unfortunately, it sort of died in the middle because the activist class said that it was a watered down compromise and they didn't want to hear about it being sort of a major goal. And then, you know, it sort of got lost in the mire of Democratic centrism on the other side. So let me get you to respond to one piece of the Washington Post review, because they're talking about, you know, you're making the case here that basically, you know, nothing really changed at federal level. Like that's indisputable. Nothing changed literally. But they say, you know, at the local level, there were things that happened. And I'll just read this quote. They say, though he makes

much of the lack of ensuing federal legislation, not all meaningful change takes place at the national level and not all institutional overhaul is enshrined in law. BLM prompted innumerable legal reforms in states and cities, among them the reallocation of police funds in LA, bans on chokeholds on tear gas in Colorado, but it also inspired a generation of progressive prosecutors who vowed to change the criminal justice system from within. What's your response to that sort of pushback? Sure. So I mean, I think as I go through in the book, a number of those reforms have since been rolled back. I mean, I think as I go through in the book, a number of those reforms have since been rolled back. I mean, Minneapolis, which is where George Floyd was killed, is the sort of the prototypical example where the city council responded to that by voting to dissolve

the current police department and build a new one. That was then in the future changed to simply reducing the budget of the existing police force. And then after that, they increased the budget of the existing police force. So everything was completely undone over time. There have been some things that have been salutary in specific locations. I also mentioned things that appear not to have worked. So, for example, in Portland, where drugs have been effectively decriminalized in many ways, essentially you get a ticket and an offer to go to rehab, but no one's

forcing you to go to rehab, and has led to just spiraling overdose rates in those places. But the overarching point I would make is, again, compare what she is saying as success to the demands that were being made in 2020. Again, we weren't saying, let's have some limited local reforms that create some sort of positive good for police violence against Black people. No, what was being demanded was that we completely change our relationship towards race. Those reforms don't amount to that. The median Black American, the average Black American out there, is likely seeing nothing substantial in the differences with their local police force at all.

And at some point, you have to ask, right, like all this money got poured into a bunch of institutions who did things like, you know, create scholarship programs or beef up their DEI wings. You have to ask if that's actually the lasting impact of the 2020 moment, just that a lot of bureaucrats got paid. Well, I think, I mean, I don't think there's any way, not just from your book, or just objective analysis to say that's obviously what happened. I mean, that's why I think, I mean, I don't think there's any way, not just from your book, or just subjective analysis to say that's obviously what happened. I mean, that's why I think that your PMC point is so accurate. It's like, oh, well, now every company that goes public on the NASDAQ has to have what, like a black or a minority person on the board. It's like, yeah, but it doesn't change the way that they do business. Or as you said, you know,

whenever we're talking about DEI bureaucrats that have exploded, but there's no evidence that it's actually helping like materially the lives of your average black working class citizen. What they take away of yours is that leftist movements are to have a greater impact in the future. He concludes, they should strive to reflect the interests of the working classes, agitate for material, not merely cultural reforms, and focus on what de boer regards as a universally invigorating question of economic Inequality rather than racism and sexism which he takes to be more divisive now She takes a little bit of an issue with that but defend your thesis that you know There's we always have the the war we've had it here plenty of times on the show. It's not race. It's class class not war

They're inextricably linked you're following much harder on the show. It's not race, it's class. It's class, not war. They're inextricably linked. You're following much harder on the economic question. Why is it, though, that if you do care about those interests that were originally expressed, which I totally agree, that a very small sliver pre-riot May 2020, where something actually might have done,

why would that have been a better tack than what ended up happening in the first place? This is kind of a petty thing that I used to do. This was mostly a thing that I would do in fights about Bernie versus Hillary in 2016. But I've been doing it for a long time, which is when I'm in online, you know, shitposting with people and I am in a fight about like sort of identity politics versus class politics, I would copy and paste a quote from one of the Black Panthers and just put it out as though it was something that I was saying. So for example, Bobby Seale, one of the founders of the Black Panthers said,

ours is not a race struggle, ours is a class struggle. Or Fred Hampton is someone who said over and over again that you can't beat racism with Black capitalism, you beat racism with communism. I would just take those quotes and I'd throw them out there without attributing them. And then people would say, oh, look, what a racist, you know, class reductionist you are. And then I would reveal that it was Black Panthers who had said those things because I'm a petty person. But the point is, this stuff is not, is written into the history of uh uh of the liberation struggles for people of color it's written into the history of feminism if you go back for example to the periods of the suffragettes it would have been totally bizarre for them to sort of say well

there's there's sex issues gender issues and then there's economic issues core to their complaints were that those things were intertwined. The reason we should appeal to class is because it's just math, right? One of the things I've said in the book, which some of its critics have ignored, is that, look, conservatives play identity politics as much as liberals do. If you want to sort of attack identity politics in theory, you should be attacking Republicans as well as Democrats. The problem is, is Republicans are at a much better position to

do identity politics because identity politics that appeal to white people in states that are overrepresented in our system because of the Senate and the electoral college, that's just always going to be more powerful politically than it is going to be to appeal to Black people who are in an enclave like Atlanta or D.C., to queer people who are on an enclave like New York and San Francisco. Reality is just there's a lot of white people. Seventy percent of the electorate is still white, even though only 59 percent of the country is white at this point. The electorate is 70% white. White people are overrepresented because of the Senate and the Electoral College. You just can't win that way if you keep doing it. What you can do is you can say,

hey, look, we have differences of opinion and differences of culture and differences that are racial or ethnic or whatever. But just about everybody knows what it's like to be really freaked out about how they're going to get their rent money this month, right? And that potential coalition is just bigger than the coalitions that can be built by a bunch of brown graduates talking about intersectionality. It's just in pure political math.

Class is going to beat identity politics in part because the whole point of elite identity politics is to nominate yourself as part of a minority of the enlightened. So, Freddie, I want to ask you about this because this is something that I'm sort of working through in real time. So Democratic Party has made, you know, the mainstream factions of the Democratic Party have made it pretty explicit that, you know, they don't really care about a working class base. They're happy to win if it's with more affluent, like college educated liberals. In this past election, you still had a majority of lower income people voting for Democrats. But this was the most sort of like college educated, affluent coalition they've ever had. But then you have, you know, especially in places like Minnesota and Illinois and Pennsylvania, you have governors and legislatures that were elected with this more affluent college educated base that are genuinely doing better things than Democrats were doing during the Clinton era. Better things than Democrats were doing during the Obama era.

You know, they're actually paying attention to unions. They're actually in Minnesota strengthening collective bargaining. And even with Joe Biden, who I've got all kinds of ideological issues with, his National Labor Relations Board has been one of the most important institutions for working class people and unions that has existed in my lifetime. You might say that's a low bar. It is. But it's still way better than what was done under Obama, way better than what was done under Clinton and like the sort of uniparty union busting that has been happening for most of my lifetime. So how do you square those two things? That at the same time that the coalition has gotten more highly educated, more affluent, more liberal, more upscale, you actually have

some better wins for workers, especially if you focus at the state level. Yeah. So, I mean, I would never suggest that there's no advantage to having the votes of people like me, right? I mean, I want to be very clear about this. I am a member of the class that I am critiquing in this book. I lived in Brooklyn for many years. I have a PhD. I write for fancy do dot publications, etc. I'm a part of that class and I'm grateful for their support. I would say a few things. First, that people like that tend to be reliably hit or miss on foreign policy. So, for example, there simply appears to be no sort of like park slope resistance to you know funding ukraine for the rest of our lives right like that's not they don't care about that stuff um it's wonderful

things that have been happening um with these narrow majorities but in the long run you have to look at the structural state of the democratic party which is two things that are very important. Number one, college enrollments have finally seriously leveled off after growing for more than a half century. So I'm not sure if people are aware of this, but there's finally been a start of a plateauing and maybe even a slight decline in the percentage of young people who are heading off to college, probably because they're cost-sensitive and they don't want to graduate with $200,000 worth of debt. And so, number one, the primary growth of the Democratic coalition in recent years has been this dramatic sort of shift

since the turn of the century when college-educated people are now heavily Democratic. But the other problem is that, as Roy Teixeira will tell you, the emerging Democratic majority myth, which is that the browning of the United States, sometimes people call it, right, the increasingly less white United States, that was going to create a permanent Democratic majority.

That has been just proven to be entirely false. Hispanic voters have been sprinting in the direction of the GOP. And we should have always suspected that that was going to happen. I mean, you know, you listen to people talk about Hispanic Republicans as these race traitors or something. You say to them, look, if I say to you that I know a guy who lives on the border of Texas, who owns his own ranch, is an NRA member and a devout Catholic, you'd say, oh, that's a Republican. The fact that he's just doesn't look good. So I'm very happy with what people are doing in these states with these narrow majorities, and that's great. And thank you to all the voters of, you know, like Georgetown or wherever, who are sort of powering these sort of like white liberal Democrats who are very socially left. But the reality is, big picture, long term, it doesn't look great for Democrats. And this is all happening in a period

when there's just total incoherence at the top of the Republican Party. You can imagine if there was an actual competent candidate, right? Someone who knew what they were doing and didn't appear to have a brain injury like Donald Trump, that they could be making

incredible inroads right now. And I think it's a frightening time. So, Freddie, the last question I have for you, which is something that's been very inconvenient for my worldview, which is not dissimilar from yours about the importance of material politics, about, you know, foregrounding class, about the importance of having multiracial coalition if you want to sort of, you know, not only build out political power, but consistently notch wins that are for the working class. One thing that's been very inconvenient for me is how powerful abortion politics have turned out to be. I mean,

post-Roe versus Wade, listen, Republicans still won the House, but we have to acknowledge the red wave certainly did not materialize, even at a time when Americans were saying, my economic situation is absolute shit, and I don't trust the Democrats on the economy, et cetera, et cetera. Abortion was really key in sort of overcoming that tide in the other direction. We've seen in terms of special elections this year, Democrats have outperformed by 10 points on average, not in like one isolated incident, but on average in every special election we've had this year. And, you know, it's not 100 percent abortion, but that's a really big part of it. So how does that square with your political theory? And I'm

partly asking this in a selfish way because I'm trying to figure out how it squares with my political theories of change as well. Well, I actually think that that speaks perfectly to sort of my overall point here. What do we know about abortion? It is a cross-race, cross-class, cross-education level, cross-religion, etc. issue, right? Abortion is like one of the great stealth issues in American politics, which is, I think, part of what happened with the demise of Roe v. Wade is there's a lot of women who might ostensibly be pro-life, who have like a sort of intellectualized rejection of abortion. But when they're confronted with the possibility of carrying a baby to term that they don't want to,

right, suddenly their self-interest activates and they realize I could be put in a position I really don't want to be. I think abortion is a perfect example of an issue that's incredibly rare, which is that it's salient across all of these divides of ethnicity or education level or income, et cetera, where every woman is in a state that does not have guaranteed right to abortions is at risk of having her life permanently altered by a pregnancy that she doesn't want to. And so that is the kind of appeal that we need to make to people. The problem is, look, of course we have to fight for trans people

who are a population that is incredibly vulnerable and that faces all kinds of discrimination and violence. Of course we have to fight for Black people who are, just by every statistical measure taking it on the chin still 60 plus years after the major civil rights victories of the last century. But we have to do so in a way that demonstrates to people that it is in their best interest to be part of these coalitions. I try to tell people this all the time. I'm a Marxist. And they think it's weird when I talk about the politics of self-interest. Like only Ayn Rand ever talked about the politics of self-interest. In fact, Karl Marx himself said, look, the only way you ever move people politically

is by appealing to their own best interest. And so you need to find a way to loop other people in with that. I think we can do that if we say to people, hey, housing is insanely expensive. Child care and education are insanely expensive. Health care is insanely expensive. These are structural problems that the Republicans have no answer for. Let's look for things that actually work and can help all of us together. That's a really excellent answer. And this has been a really good discussion. Guys, we're going to have a link to the book down in the description. We encourage everybody to go and buy it. And we really appreciate your time, sir.

Thank you. Yeah, I've been really enjoying it, Freddie. Congrats again and great to have you. Thanks for having me. Thank you guys for watching. We'll see you tomorrow. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024.

You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy. But to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of times, big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways. Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one.

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