Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/7/21: Biden Jobs Report, 9/11 Docs Unsealed, Trump 2024, Texas Abortion Backlash, Men Abandoning College, MSM Fake News, End of 9/11 Era, American Empire in Retreat, and More!

Episode Date: September 7, 2021

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We have an amazing show for everybody today. I hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day weekend. Marshall Kossoff is back in the house with us. Marshall, it's great to see you, man. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, great to have you back here. And everyone, thank you so much for all the support if you were after Thursday's show.

I had an amazing time, and I know we're going to have a really great time together on Tuesday. Quick reminder, Crystal is back on Thursday. And you can see me on Breaking Points clips of the Realignment podcast that are posted here on Wednesday. Lots of great stuff between Sagar and I. As we will point out, we are 300 subscribers away from getting the channel to 50K.

So we'd love anyone who enjoyed this episode to go check us out there. Go ahead and help us out there, folks. Please, please do us that favor. Okay, we've got great stories for everybody. So we're going to start with the jobs report. But we have other stuff, like college. There's an alarming drop in the number of men who are dropping out of college. It's a big societal trend.

We're going to figure out what's going on there. Obviously, there's some political fallout from what's happening there with the Texas abortion law. We're going to break that all down for everybody. Trump is making, and his allies in particular, making a big noise about running in 2024. They want to capitalize on Biden's continually falling poll numbers. The 9-11 papers, so Biden has moved to declassify some 9-11 papers. A lot of you asked about that. We're going to break down what you need to know. But we will start with what I think is the biggest story of the day, of the month, really, of the year, which is the U.S. economy. As the economy goes, the president goes, and the party in power.

And unfortunately for Biden, fortunately for a Republican, and really, I think, unfortunately for most Americans right now, the economy is not doing so well. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen, which just shows us the recovery in terms of the hit that we just took in August. So we added far fewer jobs than most economists had expected, only 235,000. Largely, this is due to the Delta variant, but there's a lot of other discussion, and the unemployment rate has now fallen slightly to 5.2%. But the real story is actually beneath those numbers. Go ahead and put the next one up there on the screen, and you can actually see exactly where the loss in jobs is. Retail lost 29,000 jobs. Restaurants, 42,000. So you saw gains in other areas. You got 74,000 there in the business sector, 53,000 in warehouse, 37,000 manufacturing, 36,000 entertainment, 17,000 IT.

So basically, the Delta variant, the pandemic, restrictions, lockdowns, that is just completely dragging down the US economy. And really, Marshall, this is a major problem for Joe Biden. And he essentially acknowledges such in his speech. He was like, look, it's because the Delta variant. And that is partially true. But also, it is because of policy that is now being affected in some of the nation's largest states. Return here in Washington, D.C. to mask mandates. Oregon, same thing. California, as well, has got some sort of pandemic restrictions. You pair that with general consumer confidence and the inability to go into a restaurant, and you have a disaster. I mean, just so people understand,

the $235,000 or 235,000 jobs which were added, that was 700,000 less than what was expected. So obviously, stock market goes into a tailspin. But really, what it is, is these are the types of numbers that we were used to seeing back in January of 2021. It was not supposed to be this way in September. And I think that's the biggest political liability that Joe Biden has right now. Yeah. I mean, look, everyone, the real problem here is that the Delta variant, regardless of how you feel about the individual mandates or the specific policies, has just completely bowled over everything. It bowled over the confidence that everyone had. It bowled over the Biden administration's hopes that they could turn the page on all these things.

And here's what I'm really worried about. I'm worried about winter. If there's this lack of confidence right now, what happens when the winter surge, which we can expect no matter what, what happens when that happens? Exactly right. And this is why I'm actually really beginning to get worried. And you can already see, if I was the White House, I'd be freaking out. So they tried to spin this a little bit from the Council of Economic Advisors. But there is no spinning this graph, folks, just to show you exactly how bad it is for them. Let's go and put that up there on the screen, the Council of Economic Advisors. You can see the curve. Now,

they tried to put it this way. Today's jobs reports show the economy added 235,000. That's an average gain of 750,000 over the last three months. For those who are just listening, you can see a precipitous increase in the monthly job growth. You saw 800,000, then you saw a million, and then the precipitous 800,000 drop in a single month from July to August of 21. So that is the problem that they are seeing in the White House right now. Not only did they see a massive decline in the number of new jobs added to the economy, but as we saw, the sectors which were driving the growth previously, those are now losing jobs. So what does that mean? It means that consumer confidence is beginning to plummet, which is actually the first thing that we already saw on retail consumer confidence.

People's willingness to go out and eat, that is beginning to go down. As you pair that with mask mandates, vaccine mandates, whatever policy which is being put into place in some of the nation's most populous states, you're going to have a real issue. And it's interesting, and I think it is important, you know, many Republicans are pointing to this, and they did this a lot during the pandemic and are saying this is purely because of blue state lockdowns. That is just simply not the case. But I will say that in the age of the vaccine, in the age of vaccine efficacy, and really in the age of, I personally think, you know, having to live and learn that COVID is likely to be a largely endemic disease, especially given where winter is, policy is going

to matter a lot more than it did back in January, November of 2020. And I'll tell you why, which is that at that time, when we had to make a trade-off or at least what we were thinking about as a trade-off between protecting the elderly and, you know, having dining capacity or whatever at 25%, I understand, you know, and I was clearly, I was on the wrong side of public opinion, but, you know, generally what I was saying was like, I think that that is a case where I think the American people would support that. Now that you do have a vaccine with 99.9% efficacy in protecting elderly from death and hospitalization, then that's a different situation. So I do think that the American people's willingness, which was overestimated at the time and especially now for dealing with – and I'm not talking necessarily about mask mandates. I'm talking about what we

had here in Washington, which was like 25% restriction on indoor dining. I do not think that that is going to remain there, although I could be wrong. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, here's the problem. The reason why this has become so controversial is that disease control policies are a mix of public policy and politics. And I talked about this on Thursday, but I just think as much as we can, if we could try to de-politicize this as much as possible, that would be the huge thing. And once again, you're seeing these cases where you're seeing blue states overreach.

There's this desire to say, hey, we are doing something. We're making a move. We are going to be actually different than the red states. That's the exact opposite of what we want. But at the same time, I don't think the exact way to do the COVID policy is just to say, what does X polling numbers say? That is what actually is going to lead to disaster. And that's where we're seeing all these differing actual results for

people. Yeah, you're seeing these very strange cultural cross cuts where it's like, you know, the way that you prove that you're really, you know, hardcore as a Republican is you ban mask mandates. The way that you prove that you're a hardcore blue state governor is like you bring back outdoor mask mandates. And it's like, well, okay, like what's going on here? Exactly. And look, the science around all of that is very mixed. And we've talked a lot about here, especially whenever it comes to children in schools. But really what we are beginning to see, especially with the large case increase day over day, is in the hospitalizations in particular, vast, absolute vast majority are people who are unvaccinated. Same thing whenever it comes to the deaths.

And that is why it is concentrated largely in areas where you don't have a large number of people who are vaccinated within the general population. So personally, I think that that is where we should look at. Whereas otherwise, if you are vaccinated and you get COVID like me, which is what happened to me, well, what's going to happen? Yeah, sick for like four days. And that sucked. Don't get me wrong. But that doesn't mean that that should justify kind of some of the more onerous restrictions that we had in the past. And so really, as you're pointing to, if we go back to some sort of lockdown regime like we saw back in November

and September, the economy is going to crater in terms of what we saw last time. I mean, especially if we see school closure, college closure, and more. I do not know if they will close the colleges again, but I do certainly could foresee a situation where something like that happens. School closure, restriction on hours, curfews, the types of things that we saw. Again, I do think that the economic deleterious effect there, that's going to have just a big problem for Biden. Because as I predicted back whenever he became president, I was like, look, the guy's only got to do two things. He's got to pass these checks, get everybody vaccinated. He's like, get everybody back to normal. Now, for better or for worse,

and you can blame him or you cannot, the problem is, is that events are moving such that we're not going back to normal, at least under the current way that him and the White House and the public health people are looking at this. And so he is going to share some of the blame, as Trump did, for a rising number of cases, especially in the winter. And as he's already the only area of public policy where he's above 50% is his handling of COVID. It's at 51%. On average, I think that's going to begin to go down and that's a big problem for him. Yeah. And look, at the end of the day, all we could hope that public policy people would do is identify the fact that all that actually matters in the discussion you just gave is getting people vaccinated. How do you do that in a

trustworthy way? The vaccine passport thing obviously did not work from a pure, how do we ensure consumer confidence in anything? So how do you actually get this done when, despite what I said earlier, this is just so politicized? So that's what the number one question that every single policymaker should be asking here. Because as we're seeing in all these blue and red states, when you swing too far to the other direction, there actually really is backlash and that isn't sustainable. 100% right. Okay, so let's move on to the next one. This is a very interesting story, Marshall. It's a little bit more on your radar than it is mine radar. You guys see what I did there? And let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So Biden, the president, has moved to declassify some documents related to 9-11. So it's an executive order. The president instructed

the attorney general to publicly release the documents over the next six months. Now, there's been a lot of controversy around these documents, allegations, especially from the families of the victims of the 9-11 attacks, who said that the government has to reveal more information about Saudi involvement in financing these attacks. This is really important, especially as we're coming up on the 20th anniversary of 9-11. Last month, and I suspect this is what the impetus was, let's put this up there from NBC News, 1,800 of the families told Joe Biden, do not bother to come to our memorial events if you are not going to declassify these documents. And you'll remember, Marshall, this has been a huge part of U.S. politics now

for quite some time. The Obama administration went and vetoed that bill that passed unanimously through the Senate, which allowed the victims of the 9-11 attacks to actually sue the Saudi government. There were, of course, the infamous 19 pages, which were left out of the 9-11 attacks to actually sue the Saudi government. There were, of course, the infamous 19 pages, which were left out of the 9-11 commission report, which implicated Saudi officials. And again, I don't want to get too conspiratorial, but in terms of their involvement, there was like that Saudi consulate figure, right, who had some interaction with some of the, explicitly the 9-11 hijackers and helping them find apartments and all that. Anybody who's looking for more reading on this, I recommend The Looming Tower by Lawrence

Wright, kind of the definitive story of the lead up to 9-11, all the background, the actual interplay, the screw up of government and all of that. But ultimately, are we likely to learn anything new in these declassified documents, Marshall? Yeah, so it's really important to tell the story in terms of what actually happened. So 9-11, 20 years ago, 15 of the 19 hijackers come from Saudi Arabia. We actually saw this come up with a lot of younger listeners and viewers who are asking, wait a second, what did Afghanistan have to do with 9-11? It seems like Saudi Arabia played a huge part of that. What actually happened there. So this was handled in the 2004 9-11 Commission report, where the report concluded that top levels of the Saudi Arabian government, this is the monarchy, senior officials, did not play a role in funding or actually supporting

the 9-11 hijackers. Here's the key thing, though. Senior officials, that wording in the report actually suggested that there was some level of mid to junior level governmental involvement. So moving forward, if you are a family member of a victim of 9-11, everyone here is obviously a victim of 9-11 in that case, you are wondering, hey, can we sue the Saudi Arabian government? Can we sue Saudi Arabian charities who through Wahhabist connections actually played some role in funding or supporting the attacks? It was possible to sue the charities. It was possible to sue nongovernmental organizations.

But it was not possible to actually sue the Saudi Arabian government. That is the policy you're talking about when you're describing what happened in 2016 with the Obama administration. That ended up passing. It was actually possible now, after the Obama administration, to sue the Saudi Arabian government over possible involvement. Now, to 2019, Attorney General Barr actually vetoed the further declassification of information regarding Saudi involvement in 9-11. So now, taking us to this very week, there's now going to be this six-month process to further declassify information. Once again, the key thing that is not particularly in dispute, the Saudi monarchy, the head and top of the Saudi government, hated Osama bin Laden.

That is not the claim. The concern is really about what did the actual underbelly and low-level parts of that Saudi society look like? And what does it actually look like to actually rectify or at least attempt to basically rectify what happened 20 years ago? Because obviously, because of the governmental involvement, this isn't a question of the U.S. placing sanctions or this, this, or that. But is there an avenue for revealing what actually happened? No, I think you're right. And this is where, look, and the 20, I misspoke earlier, it's not the 19 pages, the 28 pages. And I covered that at the time. Really what the main kind of revelation was, is that there was a Saudi family which had interactions with the known 9-11

hijackers, that there were people who were connected in some way to the Saudi consulate in here, in the United States, to the hijackers themselves. Now, with the Saudi government and others, it said that was completely coincidental. It's because they were just Saudis and they heard them speaking Arabic in a cafe. Okay, you can say whatever you want. That being said, there needs to be some really coming clean with the American people because this was the problem, is that the government actually did itself a disservice all the way back in 2004, which is, as you said,

many Americans said, hey, 15 of these 19 people were Saudis. So what's going on there? Well, they went ahead and classified those 28 pages of the 9-11 commission report, which they explicitly and senators had told us was about the Saudi government. So then what happens? Over the next 12 years, everybody says, well, what are they hiding? What's going on? And what it was, was a clownish, as usual, attempt by the Bush administration to try and shield the government of Saudi Arabia from American public opinion. And all they ended up doing was actually stoking government public opinion that the Saudis played an integral role in the 9-11 attacks. And as you say, basically, here's what we know. And I am not absolving the Saudis of anything because at their senior and the highest levels, they knew exactly what bin Laden

was up to. As you said, they hated him, but they didn't necessarily want to turn him over to the United States because he himself was a Saudi citizen. He was also the child of a very prominent Saudi Arabian ally, his father, who started the bin Laden construction group. All of that interplay was that they were consistently trying to deal with the Taliban and saying, hey, Taliban, please give us back bin Laden. And they knew he was planning all sorts of nefarious attacks. But really what they cared about was not his attacks on the United States. They cared that he had denounced the actual regime of Saudi Arabia. Senior Saudi officials traveled to Afghanistan, asked Mullah Omar, who at the time was the leader of the Taliban, and they begged him. They said, please give him over to us. Mullah Omar, who at the time was the leader of the Taliban, and they begged him. They said, please give him over to us. Mullah Omar, citing the Pashtun tribal code, was like,

no, I can't. He's my guest, you know, all of this. Anyway, really what it gets to is that the Saudi officials, regimes, all the way at the highest levels, they knew bin Laden was up to some really bad stuff. Now, did they finance the attacks or anything? Current evidence does not suggest that. But were there officials who were inside the Saudi regime who were very sympathetic to bin Laden? Absolutely. Were there low-level officials here in the United States connected to the Saudi government in some form who had an interaction with the 9-11 hijackers? That is not actually in dispute whatsoever. So for those families, I actually feel for them.

And I think that what happened is that the Bush administration tried to protect Saudi Arabia and in the end actually ended up building up a far worse narrative for a lot of people in their attempts at secrecy. And look, at least on my end, I'm not going to go back and relitigate what happened in 2004. 2004 was actually crazy. You had the war. We were literally invading a foreign country right next door to Saudi Arabia. At that point, you're still dealing with a fallout from 9-11. So I completely can, from a pure empathy perspective, understand the actual argument that the classification had to do with deep, direct national security reasons.

Here's where we can get off that train where you and I agree. In 2019, the key thing is that Bob Barr said there were national security reasons why you could not further declassify. I just don't buy that anymore. It's been almost 20 years now. There has to be an ability to actually move forward. And some of it's a big question for our government moving forward is how do we actually get to a balance? How do we balance the fact that we need national security? That's an actually important concept. It actually is important to cooperate with our erstwhile frenemy, enemy in the country, whatever. But how do we actually still maintain trust in the system? I think in 2004, I think this is a much stronger argument. But as we've moved further and further away, I think the whole actual part here has moved towards trust. And this

is actually something which, look, I think Biden should be praised for. And this is something that I think that Obama and Trump should have done something about. Obama and Trump all should have done something about it. It was shameful whenever Obama vetoed that bill. And look, we all know why he did it. And the Trump administration is the same thing. Why did they do it? Because Jared and Trump were friends with MBS and they called him and said, please don't get us on. This is one of the most sensitive areas. They don't want you to know about their connections to 9-11 because really what it shows is that they're both derelict, incompetent, stupid, and that they have a huge problem with radical Islam within their own ranks. And so they have

a lot to lose. The families, in my opinion, they had a lot to gain all the way back, even in 2004. The merits of that decision, you know, et cetera, that can obviously be debated, but it's been 20 years. These people deserve some information. Hey, so remember how we told you how awesome premium membership was? Well, here we are again to remind you that becoming a premium member means you don't have to listen to our constant pleas for you to subscribe. So what are you waiting for? Become a premium member today by going to breakingpoints.com, which you can click on in the show notes. Okay, let's get ahead to the next topic. This is a fun one. It's been lighting up the internet from a lot of you.

So Congressman Jim Jordan, who was recently at a fundraiser, was pressed and asked by somebody whether Trump is going to run again. Now, the audio is a little muddled here for the people who are just listening. So bear with us. I'll dissect it there on the other side. For those who are watching, we do have subtitles. Let's take a lot. He's going to run again. You think so? I know so. I talked to him yesterday.

He's about ready to announce after all this craziness in Afghanistan. Thank God. Yeah. Pardon my French. He's really bad. Okay, well, I'll work it out. Thank you for coming. Thanks a lot.

So this is a really interesting one. So if you missed it, the real news that came out of that segment was he said, President Trump, he's going to run again. Somebody says, you think so? He says, quote, I know so. I talked to him yesterday. He's about ready to announce after all of this craziness in Afghanistan. He says, quote, I would say somewhere between 99 and 100, I think he is definitely running in 2024, Marshall. So that's a big deal.

Jason Miller was very, you know, recently his most senior communications aide in the post-presidency period, now working over at Getter. And he go ahead and says that I don't think that it is a coincidence that they're floating this. What do you think? The key thing here is, if I'm Joe Biden, I want nothing more than Donald Trump to announce that he's running in 2024. Think about it this way. There's this pretty common narrative that's going out there in the mainstream media in Washington, D.C., which is that the Biden administration feels really aimless right now. The debacle in Afghanistan, regardless of how you feel about the actual policy, really pushed them off their agenda

because their whole narrative was, we are focused on the economy and we're focused on COVID. The scandals, all this stuff is not what they actually want to deal with. So the one thing that could reunify the really fractious party and base for them right now is Donald Trump coming back into the fore. So the thing that's really fascinating for me here is, I definitely think there's a very strong chance Trump will run again.

But they are trying to calculate the exact moment to do it. If they go too early, they will reunify Joe Biden and frankly give Joe Biden all he actually needs to keep this back up again. If Joe Biden could spend the next three years saying, look, COVID, econ, no more Trump, that's a very good place for him to be in. Frankly, I think for Donald Trump, you want to come in in 2023 with more issues so that there isn't this organizing principle to put his presidency around. That's right. You know, it also depends on how the midterms go. I mean, I'm generally, and people know this of the opinion, I think it's going to be a absolutely massive win for the Republicans based on the economy, based on the dissatisfaction numbers, and largely due to the public health maneuvers.

I think that people are just absolutely sick of it right now. I did find a fascinating head-to-head matchup on potential 2024 nominees. Now, keep in mind, this is Emerson. It's not the biggest sample size or any of that. But it is still pretty interesting for a lot of Republicans who are going to have to grapple with this. Let's put this on the screen. So we see Biden versus Trump. Trump is up plus one. Biden versus Romney. Biden is up 19.

Biden versus DeSantis, Biden is up 12. So it's interesting, Marshall, in Washington, some circles, people say, well, DeSantis is great because on the policy, he's Trump, but, you know, he's not as inarticulate and he's not, you know, crazy and he's not, whatever your general pejorative is around Trump from pure professionalism perspective. But here's the deal. Trump, it seems, is a far more effective and popular politician than DeSantis. Now, I can already hear what people are saying. He hasn't had a chance to define himself nationally. People don't know him as a candidate. I'm not so sure about that. I actually think a lot of people know Ron DeSantis' name. If you think about it,

name another governor in the country who, regardless of how you feel, has been such a point of contention. There are people in California. Yeah, maybe Gavin Newsom. Honestly, maybe, even at that point. DeSantis has been at the forefront of the COVID wars from the very beginning. I would argue, at least, that other than Trump, he is the most prominent Republican in the country. And I would really guarantee that almost everybody in the Republican base knows his name and that a lot of swing voters would know his name as well, just given the politicization around Florida and all the... He's always trending every other day on Twitter amongst wine moms for some reason or another.

But again, I do would point to that as evidence that he is clearly salient within the electorate. So for him to be trailing 12 points while Trump is up plus one, that gives you some idea, Marshall, of the actual political strength that Trump continues to have. And again, you can feel whatever you want. I do look at this and say Donald Trump is still obviously not only a serious contender for the presidency again in 2024. I would also look at this and say if you're – there are many Republicans after Trump, January 6th in particular, who are like, well, look, we've got to stick with the Trump policy but not with Trump himself. Politically, that just seems foolish in my opinion if you know how to read a poll. Well, let me read the poll for a second. I don't think you could take any of those numbers, the Romney or the DeSantis, particularly seriously. Here's what I think is happening here.

The Trump poll number is the most honest poll number in the sense that no matter what happens in 2024, the election is going to be incredibly tight. No matter who is nominated, with the exception of probably Nikki Haley or someone like that. As long as you, frankly, nominate a politically talented person who can put together some type of coalition, it is going to be a very tight election because our country is just so polarized

along that level. So because Trump has run for office nationally twice, I think people are giving as honest an answer as possible as to their level of partisanship. You and Crystal have talked about this. The 2020 election was incredibly close. Yeah. That's just the true answer. Right. With DeSantis and even Romney, I think in both cases, people are not truly being honest with themselves about their level of partisan identification. So let's say you did have a presidential election even next year. I know

those Romney and DeSantis numbers will go to two or three. So it's not that DeSantis is weak necessarily. I think it's that at the end of the day, the identification hasn't gotten to where it's actually going to end up. Yeah, I don't know. See, this is interesting though, right? Because with Trump, you're correct, which is that there is partisan clustering. Partisan clustering means that basically it's like vote blue no matter who or vote red no matter what, which is that in both cases, because of how you feel about certain cultural issues, you're just going to vote Republican or you're going to vote Democrat. The Trump superpower was that he both was able to coalesce those votes, the Republican votes, and millions of people who just never voted before. Like all of these brand new voters who, for a variety of reasons, were like, you know what, screw lockdowns.

Or you know what, I hate Democrats. Or you know what, I just love Trump. Millions of those people came out to vote not only in 2016, but even more so in 2020. We've told the story a million times. You know, you've got the Latinos in South Texas. You've actually got a lot of inner city minorities, Rhode Island, Providence Town, Boston, Orange County, California, Asia. I mean, increases all the way across the board. He increased his vote share amongst every single ethnic group except for white men, where it decreased by around

seven points in the verified exit poll. So obviously a lot to dissect there. Now with DeSantis and more, there's no question that every normal Republican voter is going to come out and vote for DeSantis. The question is, are the people in Laredo or the people in Orange County or the people, all of the millions who did come out to vote and came in the Trump margin of only 45,000 votes losing the presidency. Are those people going to come out? That's kind of what I see in that number right there. The fascinating thing here from this poll to take the other – the argument I just made is basically that how if you are – because let's put Mitt Romney aside. He is very comfortable.

He is very comfortable not running for president again. If you are Ron DeSantis, if you are Kirstie Noem of the Dakotas, if you are DeSantis, if you are Rick Scott, senator from Florida, how are you going to interpret every single thing you just said. Right. And what I really would probably just suppose here is that the lesson from this poll is that if you're a Republican and your generic desire is to appoint Supreme Court justices, you want to beat Joe Biden, it actually seems like

Donald Trump is actually like a pretty strong actual candidate. Also, frankly, I think if you took Joe Biden, the fast, here's the fascinating poll I would love to look at.

What do those numbers look like if Kamala Harris is the actual presidential nominee? Right. What does those numbers look like if Kamala Harris is the actual presidential nominee? What does that look like if Pete Buttigieg is the presidential nominee? That's the real question there. So if you are a Ron DeSantis, if you're looking at this poll, the number one lesson is I need to stop just thinking that I'm going to pull this off by being like a side of lightly printed copy of President Trump. Because if people want that, it's Trump's for the taking.

If this all comes down to the fact that after four years of exhaustion with Trump, people in 2022, 2023 want to come back to it, they are going to pick Trump and Trump is going to go for it. I don't see any world where he doesn't take up the crown again to actually close his narrative the right way. But you need to do something different because I do not— we saw that video of DeSantis literally doing the red tie, doing— It's not working. It's clearly not working.

You need to figure out something else. You need to develop your own identity with those bits there. No, you're absolutely right. Okay, let's get to the fallout from the Texas law. So this has been fascinating, really, to watch. Also, I heard you, I apologize for the last time I did not explain the private right of action within the Texas law. And so that's actually important. Marshall, can you break that down for people on what exactly it

is? Not only does the Texas law ban abortion after six weeks, known as a so-called heartbeat mechanism, but it includes, and this is probably the most contentious part of it, private right of action. And this matters, everybody, I promise, in terms of what the corporate fallout from this has been. Yeah, so the way it effectively works is if a citizen, a resident of Texas discovers that an individual, a clinic, people involved in the actual process. This could hypothetically even go to a Uber or Lyft driver who actually takes the person to an abortion clinic, is involved. They can actually sue that person.

Okay. Privately. They can privately sue, establishing a civil claim there, which has created a huge amount of controversy, obviously, because in effect, this is deputizing fellow citizens, residents, et cetera, in the cases that these actually go beyond that six-week period, which has caused an incredible amount of controversy and has forced anyone wading into this issue to really have to think about their actions a different way. Because just to add the quick thing, the South has been increasing abortion restrictions for over the past decade.

Yeah, that's right. There's been a consistent effort to push the bounds of Roe v. Wade. You've seen abortion clinics close across the South. What is truly different this time isn't just the six weeks, it's really the lawsuits and that private action. Yeah, that's right. And I should have explained that previously as to why so many people are upset. So now that context being added, now let's get to what is happening there and how this may play out on the national stage. Because I actually do, you know, look, I think culture wars are actually what is driving most of our politics. And this actually could have a lot of political salience in 2022. So let's put this up there on the screen from The Verge. So what has happened is that GoDaddy, the hosting website, has actually cut off Texas's Right to Life's abortions whistleblowing website,

and it might be gone. So GoDaddy gave them 24 hours to find an alternative. Of course, Marshall, this immediately calls to mind things like Parler being removed from the Amazon Web Services. I've spoken previously about how censorship is moving kind of up the levels of technology. And so it used to be that on the platform itself, we talk about, oh, well, we're going to ban this user, that user individual for right of action. Then it actually moved up a level to the actual domain hosting. So now it's like, okay, well, we're not going to host your website at all. We're not going to host you on our servers. And eventually, you know, we're going to get to the full ISP, like Comcast should ban X website, you know, so-and-so. We haven't gotten there yet. Unfortunately, I think

we eventually will. This kind of has ignited a discussion, especially amongst people on the right, about the ability for the corporation to cut off the hosting service and all that. I think it's very tricky. I'm curious for what you think, because look, I mean, it's a 50-50 issue. Or look, if you really want to dig into the polling, it's more like a 60-40 issue. But the gray area in between has kind of people who are extreme in terms of no cases and extreme in terms of all cases. That gray area isn't necessarily being represented by corporate America. At the same time, it's not like corporate America's job necessarily to represent all of the population. So what do you think about all this, you know,

kind of looking at this from a tech angle? Yeah. So I'm going to request that everyone be hyper, hyper nuanced with the discussion we're about to have because it shows how complicated this stuff is. So one, I don't quite think the word censorship perfectly applies to what's happening with the web hosting service. I think the clearer framework for understanding is right to refuse service. I think it's entirely reasonable for a private company to say, I don't want to host this website. Because once again, it's a hosting service. And there are plenty of hosting services. The claim is not that there's a monopoly on hosting services. The only hosting company in the entire world is GoDaddy and they've refused service. As long as there are other services that can provide it. Because once again, that isn't the protected thing here.

I'm completely fine with that. I think it goes in either direction. And as we discussed with the context, in other contexts, I think there's easily a world where I could see someone on the right, not on this abortion issue, but finding their own specific version of that. I have no problem. I do not think, for example, that a conservative hosting site should have to support a pro-abortion site. Sure. This is that. I think that's entirely reasonable. Secondly, though, and this is what I really like with you talking about the ISPs, talking about actual internet service providers.

For example, when you move into your apartment or your house, oftentimes you could only actually get Comcast. They're like, the house is only wired for Verizon. So that's it. That is where this becomes deeply problematic. And I would not support a world where an actual monopoly on internet service says, no, we will just not host this content regardless of who is web hosting it. There has to be a delineation between a utility, a.k.a. an internet service provider, and an individual website. Breaking points, the realignment, I don't feel like we're obligated to host anyone or do anything. The same thing applies to GoDaddy.

The same thing does not apply to an ISP. But finally, and this is the most difficult part here, the difficult part here, and this is why this resonated with so many people, is that this is going to change our politics. This really will. This is actually an issue. As much as we like to say, like, poo-poo the culture wars, this actually means something. Regardless of how you feel about the actual individual model, this actually means something. This is a very serious shot against the bow. And there are going to be consequences of making a supportive decision in either direction. People aren't aware of that, and they deeply do not understand the country we live in right now. It's fascinating. So this column we're about to show you, this ignited a lot of discussion on the right. And I think that where you come down on it

or not, the analysis within it, I think, is correct. And this is going to actually create some real battle lines. So let's put this up there on the screen. Matthew Continetti from the Washington Free Beacon. So he writes, did Texas hand Biden a lifeline? So what he gets to in there is the unpredictable politics of abortion in 2022 and 2024. Now, what he points to is Biden's approval rating is sinking. Independent voters are against him. Republicans are gaining on Democrats in the generic ballot. Glenn Youngkin is within striking distance in Virginia. By the way, we are going to talk about that when Crystal comes back. There's a dwindling chance that Gavin Newsom might be replaced in the recall. Democrats are already worried about next year's election. Then what happens is that the state of Texas has now come in with this new abortion law.

And what Continetti points to within this is that the reigniting of actual Roe versus Wade politics, and what I mean by that is a fundamental change to the system, has the capability poised for a huge gain in the midterm elections because of COVID, where clearly there's a national dissatisfaction with the way that the Democratic and public health regime is handling this pandemic and their inability to say this is over. Same thing whenever it comes to the economy. Now, in general, Republicans generally do better on the economy. As we saw with Trump, it was the only area in the entire 2020 election where he remained above 51% water, and that was enough for people to actually still come out and vote for him. So if you keep it focused on those couple of things, plus critical race theory, which is, of course, the greatest Republican gift that you could have ever seen, you're going to be in a great spot. As I said, you could even be bigger than the Tea Party wave of 2010. This could change things. And what Continetti points to is the Todd Akin moment, right? Back in, what was that? 2012. Whenever he said, I forget what he even said, something about legitimate rape. Anyway,

cringe, terrible, and actually is what made him lose that election. So, Continetti is saying, regardless of how you feel about this bill, it's going to make it so that the politics of it, every Republican in the country is going to have to come down either for it or against it. Now, look, let's be real. Most Republicans, if you want to survive a primary, you have to be for it. And he points to the private action mechanism in particular as uniquely tailored kind of for liberal narratives around how conservatives view the abortion subject. Now, all that being said, the counter to that,

which is what I've also heard quite a bit, is what the hell are you talking about? This is about, you know, being pro-life means you actually have to be pro-life. This law is actually preventing abortions, which means that it's righteous, and that means that we all have to come down on it regardless of the politics. But what we try to do here is look at this dispassionately, analytically, and I do actually think that the Continetti has the potential to be right. As in, it has the potential to set the stage for a major cultural confrontation, which in my opinion, based on the politics alone, again, not in terms of how you feel about the issue, could actually negatively affect Republican chances in 2022. I do also think given the large number of liberals that have moved to the state of Texas, particularly Austin and

Moore, this will ignite and change the politics of that state in the future. But that's another segment for another day. Well, and look, the key thing here is that I know everyone likes to mock the term vote blue no matter who, but if there ever was a case to illustrate why that actually means something, it's this right here. Right now, our politics since Roe v. Wade has been defined by there being a really significant minority in this country of conservative voters who are energized by the pro-life cause. These are the people who were obviously always going to vote for Donald Trump, no matter what he did in 2016. If this continues to spread, and I think this is going to continue to spread,

given the makeup of the Supreme Court, we are going to see the activation of a democratic voting base that has not cared about this issue. We were debating this with a friend of ours a few weeks ago, and they said, well, look, this isn't going to change politics because of the fact that there weren't that many voters in 2020 who were actually voting on abortion in the affirmative sense. Only 3% of the entire electorate. That 3% is going to start expanding now that it has been activated. You're now going to see, I still think Texas is safer for Republicans, but you're now going to see liberals in Texas, not even actually, let's be frank about this for a second, even

moderates. I think the number one problem that you have happened, given the echo chamber nature of our tribalist politics, is that conservatives overestimate the percentage of the population that is actually relatively okay with the Roe v. Wade status quo. Yes. That is the part that's going to be very difficult here. Yeah, I think that the – and, you know, like I said last time, I'd rather gouge my eyes out than talk about this, but this is the truth, which is that it is incredibly politically salient. It absolutely could change the game whenever it comes to the Republican map of 2022.

Now, how you feel about it or not, I do think that there should be some honesty around the politics, but I don't know. There's also a potential that it doesn't change anything. I do, however, see the GoDaddy situation, kind of the corporate, you know, the corporate pushing of this, and in general, always look to what do the Democrats think that they can win on? There's a reason that Biden and the White House have been hammering this home every single time that they talk about this. And look, the media obviously is all in on their side as well. So as you saw with Afghanistan, with Republicans, that can go for you. It can also go against you. And it usually does whenever it comes to that issue. So anyway, I hope I did a better job this time of explaining that topic. Let's get to the final one. This is fascinating. And the data here is

really something, Marshall, I want you to explain both to me and to the audience. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is a new Wall Street Journal investigation. Quote, men are abandoning higher education in such numbers. They now trail female college students by record levels. So get this, in 2020, the college gender gap has surged. 59% of college students are women, 40.5% of college students are men. And if you look even further, Marshall, it is predominantly young white men, regardless of class status, both poor and those, when you compare poor and working class white men to those of young black, Latino, and Asian men from the same economic backgrounds, they are the ones who are kind of leading the way in dropping out. So look, there's always

going to have been a little bit of an imbalance within college, but 60-40, all within a year, and a dramatic increase in that, especially whenever it comes to socioeconomic status, is absolutely crazy. It's going to change higher education for a long time. So what's going on here? Well, it's not just going to change higher education. It's going to change our country. Yeah.

Because the key fact in this Wall Street Journal report, it's probably paywalled, but I really recommend people try to find it as much as they can. Because once again, this is actually, I don't want to overstate this, a game changer as we look to how the next couple of decades are going to play out. There's been a huge actual decline

in the number of individuals enrolled in college over the past decade. And 71% of that decline is driven by young men. Like that is the key fact. So it's not just the fact that there's this imbalance. Because like you said, there's always, since we've really been in this post-60s period where women were increasingly educated, it's really starting to shift in one direction. So a couple really obvious things.

It is incredibly clear that the college status quo is not working for young men. I don't quite understand the racial part of this, because that's actually really fascinating, and that's something that's going to take 10 other conversations to unpack here. But the key thing here is it's really not working. And what's so frustrating to me, I know this is frustrating to you as people who came up during the 2000s, we've had this conversation about

we need apprenticeships, and we need to do this, and we need to teach people, you know, the micro dirty jobs thing. We've had this discourse for decades, and it hasn't actually changed the fact that this hasn't actually changed. So this is the type of article where it's not quite clear that you and I are going to come up with a perfect conclusion and solution, but we actually need to have a leadership class in this country who could say, hey, look, this actually isn't working. This is a big issue because the

final part here, we talk about this on the realignment all the time, but education rather than race is increasingly becoming the dividing line along our politics. President Trump did much better with working class blacks, Hispanics, Asians, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, especially who are men and women. So, as we're seeing whether or not you went to college, whether you went to grad school, becoming more of a delineator of whether or not you're going to be a Democrat or a Republican, you're going to see a further imbalance there. And that's going to really, that's going to be huge. Yeah, you really don't want this people. I really mean that, which is that when you have this level of change, and then you increasingly split people who are

not only just doing gender and race, but then you split even more so along college lines, that you are setting yourself up for a big problem whenever it comes to your sheer ability to understand one another. Whether you attended for your college degree or not predicts almost everything with great probability about how you feel about Black Lives Matter, how you feel about wealth inequality, how do you feel about capitalism, how do you feel about wages, how do you feel about America, good or bad. Every single one of these things is what really comes into play. I had our graphics guys cut this graphic. Go ahead and take a look at this next one up there on the screen. And you can see exactly what we're talking about there in terms of the class status. So there you see amongst people who are between $45,000 or less of income, you can see exactly the declining rates. I mean, for those who are

just listening, you are seeing a drop from 60 to 40% there in terms of the number of people who are dropping out. But then as you go kind of along the income spectrum for enrollment rates, yes, when you control for educate or for income, it is still, you see a decrease. You don't see even close to the same level whenever it comes to, whenever it comes to men who are dropping out of college. You know, the race one, and I'll poke the bear here, what they actually get to in this is what they say is that for minority students, there has been an increasing culture of talking about diversity, talking about a decline in racism or, you know, an emphasis on, you know, inclusivity and all that. While there hasn't been the same necessarily for

white students, I know, you know, I know that that's a controversial statement to make, but I personally would explain a little bit about why you might see that. There's also just maybe a class angle here, which is what you got to, and were pointing out to me, is that within this, there was a guy who was just like, honestly, I just want to start working. So if it makes sense in particular, if your choice is between not even necessarily a trade school but like a working job with not necessarily a good wage but not a bad wage either versus a community college online, I mean I'm pretty sure I know what I would pick. elements of college and you make it a pure cost-benefit analysis, then you start to see the interview a guy here is making $15.50 an hour packing boxes in an Amazon warehouse. Once again, not a great wage, also not a terrible wage if you're living in Perrysburg, Ohio. So when you look at it from that perspective, you're like, okay, I totally understand how that might work. Yeah, and just my last bit on here. This conversation is hobbled by the fact

that there is a really long gap between the way higher education looks and all these implications. So, for example, the Wall Street Journal article points out, if you go to college, you still make a million more dollars over your lifetime than when you went before. So you could look at that and say, hey, how would you not go to college, guys? It's basic math. Yeah, you make $15.50 for the next two or three years,

but you should actually think about your overall lifetime. Here's the problem. That's lifetime. That's actually looking at people in, frankly, even a different country. I'm talking about the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s. You are looking at these young men, and they are not buying that argument to the same degree. And this is also something that plays into the increasing cost of higher education and those immediate facts there. Number two, we talked about this last week on the show, but this is where the higher education thing becomes a major issue with it not really changing enough during COVID. You see a system that increasingly doesn't work for people, that increasingly seems unfair. And there's just a real inability to have a serious operational conversation along how it looks like to actually move forward instead of just having a very vapid superficial conversation about needing alternatives.

Yeah, that's actually a point that I would drive home, which is that clearly something's going on, it's wrong, and we need to fix it. And as you said, part of the problem is, and naturally, look, I jumped to this too. You're like, okay, we need to fix it and as you said part of the problem is and naturally look i jumped to this too you're like okay we need more like building trade school or it doesn't work this is actually the truth in terms of the funding i'm not talking about the schools themselves funding and the emphasis on that it has not worked whatsoever especially because largely it's still paired with the broken financial institutions broken financial system in terms of lending lack of uptick lack of of promise. The states are all over the place because, again, education is local. It's very local in terms of what they fund, what they don't, what their tuition is, all sorts of these

types of things. It all comes into play. I look at this, though, and as you said, it's going to change the whole country because if you need a college degree in order to get a certain type of job, then you're going to about to change the whole face of white collar work, white collar workplace in terms of what are the types of people who are going to be working in these institutions. Then you realize that those institutions run the whole country. So you're going to have a gender imbalance there, a class imbalance even more so than we already have. Again, I'm beginning to see just the breakings of parts of natural coalitions that we already have in society. And the worst possible thing that we could have is men versus women even more so and include the class and the college element to that, clearly need to figure something out in order to fix this system.

Yeah, and look, the real last thing here is that, and this is also fascinating too, and this shows why institutions don't really have the mental framework to actually handle this problem. If you actually look at college though, they put on the article, most actual administrators are still men. Oh, right. So imagine for a second you are, and there actually probably is, some good faith college administrator watching this episode. You say, hey, you know what? Let's actually have a men's center.

I went to University of Oregon. University of Oregon was actually cited. There is actually a men's center. That conversation at an institutional level is going to seem kind of crazy because they're going to say, but wait, aren't most of the deans still men? That's a good point. Because this is the problem we're facing here. There is this legacy college system that due to tenure

and due to the way these typical bureaucracies work, still looks like it did in the 1980s. But we are still stuck in the here and the now, and it's really going to be those 18 and 19-year-olds in Ohio who are left behind by that. 100%. That's exactly right. Wow. You guys must really like listening to our voices. Well, I know this is annoying.

Instead of making you listen to a Viagra commercial, when you're done, check out the other podcast I do with Marshall Kosloff called The Realignment. We talk a lot about the deeper issues that are changing, realigning in American society. You always need more Crystal and Saga in your daily lives. Take care, guys. Okay, let's get to my monologue. Most of you might have heard it at this point, but our friend Joe Rogan contracted COVID last week. He posted an update on Instagram in which he described getting the virus and throwing a bunch of different therapeutics, including ivermectin at it, which made him feel better

after just a few days. Now, more recently, he tested negative for COVID. He's feeling great by all accounts. And look, we wish him the best, because that's what people should do when people fall ill. But that's not what our friends over in the mainstream media did. No, no, no, no, no. They took great relish in Joe Rogan's illness. The New York Times literally did a push notification to all of its subscribers so that they could relish the fact that someone who has expressed views contrary to the mainstream would fall ill. But really what pissed people off about Joe was his use of therapeutics and in particular ivermectin. Now, for our YouTube masters, let me say at the top, I am not recommending anybody do

anything with respect to COVID except for getting vaccinated, something I have done myself, something Crystal has done, and which the science is incredibly robust as to its benefits. But that does not mean I am going to push false narratives or information that may undermine, in some people's views, the case for the vaccine. Unfortunately, that is what the mainstream media chose to do when it came to COVID and ivermectin. They welded both their hate for Rogan for being more popular than them with a deep and undying hatred of anybody who advances the alternative view of COVID treatment. And the worst part is that in their pursuit of trying to undermine the case for ivermectin, they actually themselves purveyed just as much misinformation as vaccine skeptics and have probably hardened many anti-vaxxers in their

views by doing so. So let's review. It starts with Rolling Stone. Not really a relevant name since they're literally fake story about a rape on campus, but enough cachet still to make people pay attention. They published this story, quote, gunshot victims left waiting as horse dewormer overdoses overwhelm Oklahoma hospital, doctor says. Now, if you're unfamiliar, people have been using the term online horse dewormer to describe ivermectin. And while yes, that is one use case, it can also, you know, be prescribed by a doctor for human consumption. That's a pretty serious claim that Rolling Stone is making. Gunshot victims literally denied treatment and died. That's horrible. serious claim that Rolling Stone is making. Gunshot victims literally

denied treatment and died. That's horrible. There's just one problem. The one person who the Rolling Stone story quotes, they don't even work at the hospital anymore. And the hospital says that the story is complete bunk. But by that point, it's too late. The story reached complete escape velocity. Rachel Maddow picked up that story and it went mega viral. Dozens of outlets started parroting the story, saying that the people were dying in ERs because of overdosing on ivermectin and that the Rolling Stone story itself called Joe Rogan a conspiracy theorist for pushing it. Yet, as time progressed, Rolling Stone was forced to release two different corrections to their original story and effectively retract it. But that doesn't matter by this point.

The misinformation was spread and now it's over. The entire episode is very revealing for a number of reasons. First and foremost was the view into which and how tech companies treat so-called misinformation. Whenever it's on the side of pushing the vaccine, there is to date, now five days later, no label by Twitter, YouTube videos, and cable news segments on MSNBC pushing this false story about ivermectin all remain completely uncorrected or standing on a variety of these platforms. What this really means is that the entire misinformation industrial complex, or fact checkers, the tech people, and more, it's completely BS. It's an enforcement

regime on facts or misinformation that runs counter to the establishment narrative while lies that push the establishment narrative themselves are now allowed to stay up, but are actually even probably allowed to trend and set the narrative for days in terms of mainstream public opinion. And again, I say this all as someone who is passionately for the coronavirus vaccine. The most edifying messages I receive from all of you are those who say, you know, I was afraid, but I listened to you and Crystal and I trust you guys and I decided to get vaccinated after reviewing the information for myself. We have a test group of billions of people, okay? The vaccine is safe. But also, as someone who believes in the vaccine, it's on me to acknowledge the

uncomfortable truths about it. Like say, I don't know, I still got COVID. Not just that, I got sick. But as I have said, society-wide, it decreases the chance of infection, which means it decreases the chance of spreading it to somebody who might have a much harder time with it. And of course, it provides as near to certainty as medically possible, you will not get hospitalized and die if you get coronavirus. I believe that by acknowledging those truths, by acknowledging those common counter arguments from the unvaccinated, that it gives me more credibility when I discuss it and what I believe. But instead, the establishment and the media in this case have decided to quash dissent when in reality, that is actually only going to make things way worse. Nothing about this case have decided to quash dissent when in reality that is actually only

going to make things way worse. Nothing about this story has anything to even do with ivermectin. If you're wondering, the evidence around it seems pretty mixed. Some countries have seen success, other large studies have seen mixed results. The facts themselves don't really matter though to these people. What they really want is to ridicule people who are not vaccinated and in their ridicule, they really actually want ivermectin to be poisonous and they want to see people suffer because it gives them great morally righteous glee to see people getting sick. And in that righteous glee, they abandon their journalistic standards and actually end up pushing completely and totally fake news. And in the obvious view

into that fake news, you see exactly how so many millions of people came to distrust the medical establishment and vaccines in the first place. It's a circle of hell. And most of it starts with hatred for other people instead of compassion. And I think, Marshall, that the entire cycle around this whole Rolling Stone thing was really revealing on a number of reasons. One more thing, I promise. Just wanted to make sure you knew about my podcast with Kyle Kalinsky. It's called Crystal Kyle and Friends, where we do long form interviews with people like Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, and Glenn Greenwald. You can listen on any podcast platform or you can subscribe over on Substack to get the

video a day early. We're going to stop bugging you now. Enjoy. Okay, Marshall, what are you taking a look at? Yeah, here's what I'm thinking about. It is obviously the almost 20th anniversary of 9-11. And I know there's a lot of listeners here who actually weren't even alive during 9-11 or they were a little too young in terms of the 1990s to actually remember this. But 9-11 really changed everything for you and I.

Yeah, changed my whole life. I'm one of the last people who remember being able to actually go through security to greet your parents when they get off a plane. That is entirely different. But on a broader level, 9-11 led to the war in Afghanistan. It led to the war in Iraq. It led to the Arab Spring. We are coming from a period where our entire politics, almost every single decision we made from, for example, Barack Obama bittering Hillary Clinton in the primary. Yes. What was a huge argument that he made? He said, unlike Hillary, I opposed the war in Iraq after the war in Afghanistan. Yeah.

Why did we continue our presence in Afghanistan past 2008 onto, frankly, last week. It's because President Obama said the war in Afghanistan, and actually, frankly, I agree with this position, so I'm not trying to joke on this, but in 2008, that was the war that made sense. That was the good war. Iraq didn't make sense. The point here is that for you and I, this has defined everything.

And what I want there to be more of a conversation around, and there are a bunch of folks, George Packer, Ross Douthit, we've had them on the show, we've talked with them before, who are trying to move this conversation around. And there are a bunch of folks, George Packer, Ross Douthat, we've had them on the show, we've talked with them before, who are trying to move this conversation forward. But what got caught up in the partisan wrangling around 9-11 and around the Afghan withdrawal is what are the choices we're going to make moving forward? This period has actually closed. The Vietnam War back in the 70s, that was just as, if not far more contentious than this was, but there was a period in 1975 after Saigon fell where the country had to move forward and make some big choices. So what are the choices we're actually having? I'm curious what you think we

should be thinking about as we look to that point. It's interesting. We have that New York Times sheet. Let's put that up there on the screen. It kind of encompasses all of this. Is 9-11 a day, or is it an era? And it's interesting, you know, when we discover and look at new narratives, I just watched or started this new movie on Netflix called Worth, which is about actually assigning economic value to the victims of 9-11. And it's like, there's all these little micro stories, but you blow it up, it changed everything. Why did it change my life? I was an Indian kid living in College Station, Texas. Well, let me tell you something.

It changed the social environment in terms of the acceptance around all different religions and views. It changed the way that, you know, personally I saw the orientation that a lot of people had towards foreigners and towards the idea of like a different type of the 1990s America, which prevailed. Then we had the war in Iraq, which was crazy and just shredded social trust and made it so that, including me as a teenager, or not even a teenager at that point, just losing all faith in the government whatsoever. Like zero back in 2004, realizing that the WMDs were fake. And it was all a lie. I couldn't believe it. I mean, it was like stunning to me. When you have that baked into you and you've seen America not just lose its credibility on the world stage, lose its credibility with its own people, and then lose its ability to project power globally, it's just sickening. Add in the financial crisis, it changes everything.

And so that lack of optimism, I really do feel as if we are back in some 1977 type America. You know, there's a lot, you know, the right obviously wants to make Joe Biden into Jimmy Carter. I don't think that's the correct analogy for a number of reasons, but the age is actually quite similar. When you think about what was the late 70s defined in? Lack of trust, Watergate. The economy was all over the fritz. Crime is completely out of control. New York City is going broke. You have lack of dynamism in the American economy, a feeling of when you go to college, it's not going to work out for me. Now, is that going to manifest itself in the Reagan years? Probably not. Things have changed a lot,

but it's going to change the way that you or I, for example, I think you or I will always probably be 10 times more skeptical of intervention than somebody who was born to yesterday, right? Because they just don't remember. I remember people coming home in caskets, a hundred people a month from Iraq, getting blown up in Baghdad. Or, you know, you watch, I remember watching a guy blow himself up live on CNN during the ISIS war. That's going to stick with me forever. Or the Syrian civil war, or any of the other, the fallout from all these things. It just changes your whole orientation. So just like the fact that the people who lived through the Great Depression were always kind of stingy and they're always like saving stuff and putting it under the bed or,

you know, distressful of the financial system very miserly. I think we're always going to have that like with us, the actual 9-11 generation. And it is fascinating because now we have fans, we have viewers who were, they weren't even alive. And they're like, I don't understand why you feel so passionately about Afghanistan, like one way or the other. It's like baked in. I'm like, yeah, but I remember going in. Like, I remember what it was like. And I remember the promises. And so you feel even more betrayed. I don't know. I think it is going to change everything. I do think that it is a doldrum period of America, very reminiscent of the 70s. And some say in some ways worse in terms of polarization, probably not as bad economically. And I don't know where that leads.

I honestly don't. Yeah. And look, the key thing here is two recommendations for folks. One you should watch. One you don't have to read, but you should think about. So one, Woodstock, 1999. It's on HBO, HBO Max. It's a really great documentary.

The Ringer did it. It's about the attempt to bring Woodstock back 30 years after the original festival. And what it really captures is this pre-911 era. It's a bunch of late 90s suburban college to high school students who just feel aimless. Nothing matters. The second reference I'll make is the whole end of history idea. This is Francis Fukuyama. He's out at Stanford. This idea that after the Soviet Union fell, after the Cold War ended, everything was just kind of settled. There's going to be wars. There's going to be conflict. But actually, liberal democracy really works. Actually, NATO is fine. Actually, we're going to increasingly be peaceful, this, this, this, and that. 9-11 blew all that up. And if you're really wanting to see an artifact of how different

everything was, President George W. Bush, when he was actually running for office, he said he was going to be the president who wasn't interventionist. Yeah, in 2000. He looked at Mogadishu in Somalia, the Balkan conflict. He said, you know what? Bill Clinton was way too interventionist. I'm actually going to be far more restraintist in my use of American power. 9-11 changed all that. I think this is something that people really don't understand. And I think my number one frustration with the rights take on the Afghan pullout,

and you talked about this in your monologues, is that a lot of folks are saying, wow, we've learned nation building is over. We'll never do this again. This is globalism. This is this and that. A lot of these same people they'd seen George W. Bush in 2000 would have said, man, I want that guy to be our president. That is what happens when people do not look at the era we're living in and think really deeply. Because what I strongly suspect and why it's very important for us post 9-11 generations to think about this is, what are we going to do when there is another attack? Because once again, we didn't just wake up. Because once again, we were just,

America did not wake up in October, 2001 and say, you know what? It's time for nation building. It never works that way. There are questions and there are events, there are strategic and tactical decisions. And I just think it's so important that all of us as we move past this anniversary, that we actually think hard about the questions we're facing and don't just be purely reactive because that is where I think the generations prior to us failed. That's how you sleepwalk. That's how you sleepwalk. That's how you sleepwalk yourself into Afghanistan and into Iraq. And then you stay there.

And then you're 10 years. And then you build the assumptions. And that's why I was so concerned with the Afghan coverage. I saw exactly baked in, especially with the ability for the right to just turn itself on a dime. I was like, oh, these people, they're going to be war chest beating. Let's go in and get them. We got to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here. You see the script is laid for the exact same thing to happen all over again. It was terrifying. And actually, we have a great guest

standing by, Ross Douthat, who's got a new piece on the American empire itself. Let's get to it. Joining us now, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat himself. He's the forthcoming author of a new book, The Deep Places, which I had the privilege of being able to read before a publication date in a couple of weeks. Highly recommend you guys go and pre-order that. We'll have a link down there in the description. Ross, it's great to see you. Thanks for joining us, man. Thanks for having me. It's great to be back. Absolutely. So Ross, we have you on today to talk about your latest piece on the American Empire, Afghanistan, what's being revealed really by where we are today. Let's put his tear sheet

up there on the screen. Another one that we'll have there in the description. Ross, tell us the argument that you're trying to make here in the piece and really what you discovered from the whole Afghanistan situation. Well, so there's been a lot of like, you know, end of empire vibes, I think is one way to put it around our retreat from Afghanistan. And I started the column by talking about this video that circulated that where a reporter was following a bunch of Taliban fighters into an abandoned hangar that was filled with sort of, you know, decommissioned U.S. helicopters. And what was amazing about the video was the Taliban fighters, I assume, were wearing stolen U.S. military gear. So if you've just been watching the video with the sound off,

you would have thought they were a team of U.S. soldiers coming in. And somebody on Twitter said, well, this is like, you know, the Visigoths and Vandals, you know, putting on legionary armor and or, you know, are adopting Roman last names, even as they in the piece is that, you know, there's sort of three zones of American empire, if you will. There's the sort of continental empire that, you know, the one that includes Alaska and Hawaii and the 48 states. And then there's sort of the post-World War II empire, which is basically the military umbrella that we put over Western Europe and parts of East Asia. And then there's the sort of world empire, the one where whenever we get really hubristic, whether in Vietnam or then in Iraq and Afghanistan, we try to basically sort of Americanize by force of arms. And that's what's failed here, right? It's that kind of, you know,

we're going to not just be, you know, a commercial empire where everyone watches Disney movies around the world. We're actually going to use, you know, use American military might to sort of make the least American parts of the world more like America. That's what's failed. That's not the same thing as the fall of the Roman Empire. It's more like, you know, the Roman legions losing battles in the German forests or the Parthian deserts. So the question is, then what are the consequences for losing on those frontiers for, you know, the inner parts of the American imperium? Yeah. And before I follow up, I just want to highlight how important you delineating the three rings are,

because there are some folks who've over-exaggerated the implications of pulling out from Afghanistan, which, once again, you could leave Afghanistan, you can pull back in Yemen, you could question the presence of Somalia, but that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with Germany,

South Korea, Japan. And I think it would be an over-exaggeration to make a broader claim about what that means for this. But here's a question for you. Sagar and I just did a segment on 9-11 and how we thought about it on the 20th anniversary. At a generational level, we were in fourth grade, around as young as you could be, and still tangibly understand to a certain degree what went on. You were in college at the time, I believe, but also if you're looking at the conservative movement, that was a period where Max Boot was triumphantly writing about how America is an empire. Howard Zinn was right, and actually we're going to own that. So can you just talk about how seeing the right and just even the center really evolve around this discourse around America's third rung? How has that really felt over the past 20 years?

I mean, it's been an incredibly depressing and dispiriting experience, I think is the best way to put it. You know, I was a senior in college. I was a young conservative. I edited for my sins, the conservative newspaper at Harvard. So, you know, I was there for the year after 9-11. And I'm not, I'm not sure what the right word is, but, you know, I was, I was all in. And so was everybody I knew on the right, except for, um, you know, a few devotees of Pat Buchanan and one friend who was sort of a hyper realist who ended up working at the state department, um, and, and would sit around in D.C. and tell us all why we were wrong. And the Iraq invasion was going to be a disaster. And happily, he you know, he actually is famous. Elbridge Colby and he has a new book out about the threat of China.

So he may be in charge of Republican foreign policy at some point. And he was he was right. But everybody else was wrong. Everyone I considered sort of the sensible center ended up being wrong. And in a way that just, I think, has had a sort of toxic, toxically cascading effect on American institutions, the Republican Party, the relationship between American elites, center left and center right, and the country as a whole. You know, America, in the end, the sort of paleo-conservative and far left critiques of America after 9-11 were not 100% vindicated, but got a lot of things right.

We didn't know what we were doing. We imagined ourselves to be in this heroic crusade, and mostly it turned to ashes. You know, it's fascinating, Ross. You nailed a dynamic which I found so frustrating in the wake of all the Afghan media coverage. You wrote, quote, you have a GOP who postured as cold-eyed realists under Trump, suddenly turning back into eager crusaders, excited to own the Biden Democrats, and relive the brief post-9-11 period where the media treated their party with deference rather than contempt. Why do you think that dynamic is so both familiar, intoxicating to people in the American political right? And then what are the lessons that you learned, having participated and seen it for yourself, as to where that can lead you in the long run? I mean, I think that, you know, when people talk about sort of the biases and assumptions of the media, the two places where the media, elite media, let's say, like the institution I work for, I guess, tends to be or has in the past tended to be most sympathetic to conservative ideas are hawkish foreign policy and deficit reduction.

So the post 9-11 moment was this moment when, again, not everyone, but almost everyone became a hawk. And a lot of, you know, a lot of conservative ideas about the world, the world is a dangerous place that we're not just, you know, marching into a glorious, a glorious, you know, marching across the bridge to the 21st century or, you know, whatever the Clinton rhetoric was. A lot of those ideas seem to be vindicated by the terror attacks. And some of those ideas were vindicated. Like, I think there is a sort of there's a version of conservatism that was vindicated by terror attacks. It just wasn't the version that ended up making policy.

But all of that meant that there was this window after 9-11 when, you know, the media treated Republican politicians with deference. And it took a certain slice of conservative and right wing ideas, the slice associated with foreign policy, much more seriously than you can imagine much of the media taking conservative ideas at any time since. And, you know, again, I was young then. And, you know, you did feel for a couple of years like America was not just a country, but like the intellectual classes were moving to the right, which, again, is very nice if you were a conservative and if you were a Republican politician. And you did. You got a mini dose of what that looked like with the Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was mismanaged, was handled badly, did deserve criticism. But out of that criticism, you had this brief return of a sort of, you know, centrist and Republican hawkish sort of overlap that I think Republican politicians like, and understandably. It's nice to have the media on your side.

Something I'm really curious about, Ross, because I really like how you set up that the the far-left Howard Zinnian, Noam Chomsky style, and paleocon, more realist right, tended to actually be really correct with their cautions about the actions being engaged in after 9-11. But what my concern is, is I entirely disagree with the more forward-facing visions of these two ideologies actually advanced. So I think their critiques are very helpful, but I actually don't think that paleo-economism was a particularly helpful what-should-the-world-look-like ideology. It's not electorally popular, and I actually don't think it's a good policy prescription. And then two, I also think that the more left-leaning foreign policy vision isn't also a useful one to actually understand the choices that we have going forward. So how do we, if we're thinking of these ideologies as having useful critiques, how do we prevent ourselves from overcorrecting? Because if we're going to look at this post-1960s institutions don't work vibe here. We love vibes during this discussion. We could basically agree that the unifying theme is we lean too much into things. We're too much LBJ, Kennedy, new frontier. We could go to the moon. We could remake Vietnam. We could do the

Great Society. If that goes too far, then the globalization train goes too far. How do we not just swing too much again? How should we think about this? Yeah, I mean, I think that there are, there's sort of a divide within, I would sort of say, people younger than me, especially, who think about these issues in foreign policy, where, for all that there's still this kind of, you know, hawkish media tendency that can resurface. Generationally, people who lived through the 9-11 era think we screwed up really, really badly. That's, I would say that's a very strong under 40 consensus. And then you have the division where the question is, does that mean, you know, on the right, a kind, you know, a kind of paleo conservative sort of come home America conservatism and on the left something something similar? Or does it mean a kind of pivot to realism of some sort and a focus on essentially great power competition and China. Right. And I think that's sort of the likely division in terms of what what Afghanistan means.

And but I think you also have, you know, America also. I think that the danger in what you see in Afghanistan is also just an indicator of American incapacity. Like we failed here, not just because we made a mistake trying to nation build or, you know, not just because Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, but because it really is true that American institutions don't seem to work very well. And to the extent that that has been sort of more fully exposed by the withdrawal, you would expect sort of rival powers, Russia and China above all, to sort of draw some conclusions from this and look for further ways to sort of test our capacities. And that is the place where I think, you know, the hawks, the hawks talk way too much about credibility, right? The idea like you have to stay in Afghanistan for 50 years

to prove your credibility. Well, no, that's not necessarily a good idea. But there is a germ of truth to that, that like the act of withdrawing from Afghanistan in what it exposes about American weakness does expose us to further risks in more important theaters. And that does have to inform American policymaking. Like, I mean, I think that this is what the Biden White House wants to do. They want to, you know, sort of do more in East Asia to contain China and getting out of Afghanistan, they think helps them do that. And in terms of like personnel and money, it does. But there are costs to, you know, in a sense, letting the world see our nakedness, which is sort of what's happened in the last month. Finally, Ross, your book, The Deep Places, it is a journey of a memoir of illness and

discovery. Why did you decide to write the book? Just give people a bit of a preview. Sure. So this is not about the decline of the American empire. It's about my experience with chronic illness and Lyme disease over the last going on six years. So it's a personal account. It's a memoir, as the subtitle suggests. But it's also a book, I think, that's very relevant for the age of COVID, because it's

about sort of the limits of scientific and medical knowledge, the failures of medical establishments, and kind of, to my own great surprise and unhappy shock, what it means to get sick and realize all the ways that you can be sort of on your own. So I think, you know, it's a book for people interested in the specific subject, but also interested in the larger issues that the pandemic has definitely opened up. Well, I'm glad that we could have you on. And like I said, I highly recommend it. We'll have pre-order links down there. Ross, really appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining us today. Absolutely. It's always a pleasure, guys. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming.

Thanks, everybody, for watching. We really appreciate it. If you for joining us today. Absolutely. It's always a pleasure, guys. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. Thanks, everybody, for watching. We really appreciate it. If you can support us today, it just means absolutely the world. Link is down there in the description. It's so awesome to be able to do this with you guys all the time. Marshall, tell everybody where they can find you and me normally, regularly, the realignment, et cetera. Yeah.

Once again, everyone, huge, huge, huge thank you. I had a blast doing this. I was nervous coming in, but it's really fun and really realizing there's a real community around this show is actually a game changer.

I hope those of you who asked me to look at the camera more were rewarded with the rest of my mug. It's fun looking at soccer, but there's also an audience out there too.

But no, most importantly, you can check out the Realignment podcast. We're on YouTube. As we said, we are so close to crossing 50K. And we had an amazing episode that's coming out today. It's with Ben Mesrick.

He is the author who wrote The Accidental Billionaires, which inspired The Social Network, one of our favorite movies of the 2010s. It's all about GameStop. It's all about Reddit, social networks, finance, Wall Street, Why Occupy Wall Street Failed. That's on our YouTube channel now. It's also available wherever you listen to your podcasts. And we'll be posting a clip on Wednesday as well too where you can come and see me every other week there too.

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