Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Best of Week 4/17: Ukraine War Rhetoric, Musk vs Twitter, Stock Ban, Dems' Future, DC Corruption, & More!

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

Krystal and Saagar talk about Ukraine war developments, Elon's Twitter bid getting rejected, momentum on the stock trading ban for Congress, 2024 Dems, Amazon Union polling, Libs of TikTok vs Lorenz, and a congressman describing how DC really works!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. worthy mainstream by becoming a Breaking Points premium member today at BreakingPoints.com. Your hard-earned money is going to help us build for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for you. Today, we are back in beautiful Washington, D.C. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. And thank you to everyone who tuned in for the live stream at New York City. We had a blast. The comments on it were really positive. So we'll be looking for more opportunities to do similar things. Yeah, we're going to do stuff like that again.

Yeah, it was a fun format. I think people enjoyed sort of how we switched it up. In the show today, all right, big moves with regard to Elon Musk and Twitter and total media freakout about the whole thing, which is very revealing in many ways. We also have some new comments from Joe Biden's pollster who helped him to win the presidency, saying that this is the worst political environment for Democrats that he has ever seen, which I think is just, I mean, pretty undeniable. But for him to admit it, he had some interesting comments here. Also, movement on the stock ban for members of Congress will tell you what the sort of sticking points are and where that lies in the process. New news about CNN Plus. You guys know we can't resist. How much the wheels are already coming up, big layoffs and budget cuts already planned. We also have Jordan Cheriton in the show for an update on union efforts and union busting efforts over with Amazon. Okay, a couple other announcements for you here, guys.

First of all, we are not going to do a normal show on Thursday. We will have content to post every single day like we normally do. I, unfortunately, have suffered a death in the family, so I'm going to be attending a funeral, and it is Soccer's birthday. Yeah, that's right. And Marshall is not available to fill in, so we just said, you know what, guys, we're going to call it this week. We tried our best. Yeah, we tried our best, but we're going to record a bunch of extra stuff, so we won't leave you high and dry. Another thing that we will reveal at the end of the show, we have at long last gotten the Lifetime members plaque complete.

It is in the studio. It is sitting to my left as we speak right now. It was a very difficult logistical challenge to figure out exactly how to pull this off. Especially Made in America.

Do you know how hard it is to make stuff in America? We can tell you a whole thing about it. Yes. And finally, last announcement before we start the show, is thank you to James for putting together

the newsletter. We're going to continue forward with that because he seems to like doing it and you guys seem to like getting it. Our premium guys really love it. It is a reminder. It's basically a written roundup of the entire show. It includes all the links, all of the elements that are within here. So if you want to check our stuff, what exactly that we're

citing and go and read deeper for yourself, that is something that we make available to our premium members. We want to make the show not only to be able to watch, to listen, but in order to consume it in the best environment possible for you. Something we've been working on for a long time and I hope you guys really enjoy it. Yeah. And by the way, guys, we have some other announcements coming up this week, new partnerships we're continuing to look into. More people. More content, more people, more folks in the circle of friends here over at Breaking Points. The Breaking Points extended universe. The extended family here. So stay tuned for that. All right. With all of that out of the way, let's get to the very latest in terms of Russia's war in Ukraine.

President Biden making some new comments, continuing to up the rhetorical ante in ways that I personally find to be less than productive. Let's take a listen to his latest comments. I call it genocide because it's become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being able to be Ukrainian. And the evidence is mounting. It's different than it was last week. The more evidence is coming out of literally the horrible things that the Russians have done in Ukraine. So here's the trajectory, guys. You remember first President Biden made some comments off the cuff that Putin was a war criminal. Then he sort of codifies it, puts out an official statement,

really leans into that. So it wasn't just, you know, one sort of flippant comment. Then he says he wants him to actually be tried as a war criminal, something that our own war criminals have never subjected themselves to. And now we are moving up the chain of rhetorical escalation here, saying that what Russia is engaged in in Ukraine is, in fact, genocide. And just to put the definition of genocide out there, because sometimes we throw these terms around loosely without really thinking through what they are and what they mean, it was a Jewish-Polish legal scholar who coined the term in 1944. And he said that the term doesn't necessarily signify mass killings. More often,

genocide refers to a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight. I think that certainly could apply to what is happening in Ukraine right now. So I'm not saying that the term is inaccurate in terms of, you know, Putin has clearly not just a war on Ukrainian soil and a desire to annex parts, if not all of the country, but also really denies that Ukraine is even a thing. So there is some justification here. But the broader picture, as we always try to point out, is that, look, ultimately, we want there to be peace. We want there to be negotiated settlement. We want there to be peace. We want there to be negotiated settlement. We want

there to be an end to the violence. And it's very clear from the president's words and from the administration's posture that they're not really interested in that. And Sagar, we talked last week in New York about Ron Klain also made some comments on a podcast. He said, I don't want an exit ramp for Vladimir Putin. I don't think that's our concern. Our concern is punishing the Russian aggression and defending the rights of the Ukrainians to have the kind of future that they deserve. No one is denying the Ukrainians deserve to be free. They deserve peace. They deserve all of that. But when you don't want an exit ramp for Vladimir Putin, that means you don't want peace. That means you actually want Ukraine to continue suffering. And we're going to bring you some more reports on the civilian casualties here. You want this war to continue because you're more interested in punishing Russia than ultimately reaching a settlement here.

Yeah, and look, the words of a president matter. That was the very first thing that Joe Biden said whenever he was running for president. In 2019, you can all go back and watch his announcement video. But here's the problem. The enduring legacy of never again is burned into all of us. And I think that's a good thing. I actually do. Post-World War II, we decided that it was a just cause that 400,000 Americans died in order to restore both peace in Europe and to stop the genocide of Hitler and the Nazis. The greatest regret of the United States in the 1990s is that they didn't do anything whenever it came to the genocide in Rwanda.

And that is why at the time, if you go back, the Clinton administration refused to use the word genocide. There's a famous clip of Susan Rice refusing to use the word from the podium at the State Department. And the reason why was because if we acknowledged it as a quote-unquote genocide, that would require and compel action on behalf of the United States. So there's actually a two-pronged problem here. If this is a genocide and we do nothing about it, then that begs the question, why aren't we doing the maximalist approach? Why are we not bombing whichever Russian contingent is responsible for the war crimes in Bucha? Why are we not taking out chemical weapons factories or denigrating the Russian ability to wage war? Now, there's a grand strategic reason we're not doing that.

It's because Russia is a nuclear power and because doing so would very likely invite a major escalation between a war between NATO and the United States. And so Biden needs to choose his words more carefully towards an actual strategic aim. Instead, he's speaking aimlessly. Putin is a war criminal. This is a genocide. And he doubles down on genocide.

The thing is, I don't think it is aimless. I think it's very intentional because they don't have any intention of bringing this thing to a close. I mean, that's just become increasingly clear. At the beginning, I was sort of 50-50, whether it was just, you know, they're just reacting and bumbling through and it's just all response to whatever's happening in the moment. But I think it's become increasingly clear that their only goal here ultimately is to punish Russian aggression to the point that Putin gets pushed out of power. I mean, that's what Biden let flip in that famous moment that, you know, they kind of cleaned up, they kind of walked back and then he kind of also leaned into.

I think that was revealing what the true aim is here. And I think that that's foolish. I don't think it's going to happen. And ultimately, I think it's going.S. administration is really actively standing in the way of peace at this point and guaranteeing that we are going to enter this new Cold War era of a new Iron Curtain and a new world divided and a new conflict and competition, which is wonderful if you're an arms dealer or weapons manufacturer. You know, it's wonderful for the neocons here in this country. It's, you know, their greatest dream.

But it's a disaster if you actually care about a sort of, you know, if you actually care about peace, it's ultimately a disaster. Yeah, to me, it's all about ambiguity, which is that whenever Biden leaves terms open like genocide and war criminal, he is inviting a position of the United States in order to use military force. This is something that we all know in our DNA. Rightfully, we're good people. We don't want to see people massacred across the planet. But when you use rhetoric like that, and by the way, it's not just me saying that. I've heard even from many, even quote unquote,

like moderate type interventions. Marshall is one of these people. And he was denigrating the Biden administration. He's like, you can't say that because if you say that, you are saying the United States should be bringing the full force of its power. We have shameful times in our legacy, turning away Jewish refugees in the 1930s in order to not antagonize the Hitler regime. I mean, remember, like these are things which we've all been taught correctly in graduate school as a black mark. And so when you, as the president of the United States as the president of the United States and the leader of the free world, use this type of rhetoric, you justify and actually open yourself up to the question of, well, why are you not taking direct military action in order to

stop this? And we know why that answer is, and we should acknowledge that. Right. That's right. And that's why you see actually a majority of American people saying we're not doing enough. Yeah. Even though we have taken extraordinary actions, both in terms of, you know, the weapons support, the intelligence support we've provided, the training we've provided to the Ukrainian military over years and years now. And, of course, the economic warfare that is of almost unprecedented scale that we have launched against Russia at this point. That's how you get to a place where you can have taken all of those extraordinary, and some of them, I think, foolish and morally wrong actions and still have people feel like, yeah, but you're not doing enough. It's because from the beginning of this conflict, you've had a certain contingent here in Washington who was perfectly willing and comfortable to say, this is World War II again, this is Putin again, this is, War II again. This is Putin again. This is, you know, and to throw around language like genocide, which as you said, you know,

Americans are good people. The country has not, certainly the leadership has not lived up to the values that America is supposed to be all about. But the American people by and large really do believe in those values and support those values. So when you casually use those terms, it does absolutely open the door for people saying, okay, then why aren't we doing more? Why aren't we, isn't this a just cause? Why aren't we using our men and women to stop the atrocities? Right. And look, I mean, I just have to repeat it again, which is that yes, what can happen in Ukraine is horrific. What can, what's going on there there is catastrophic. And Biden's not descriptively wrong whenever he says that Putin does not acknowledge Ukrainian identity as a sovereign people. This is a long time coming in the history of not just Russia, many of the

subordinate peoples to Russia. I mean, I actually just saw a fascinating thing today about Russian troops from Eastern Siberia who are Buddhist. You know, it's like, and they're being conscripted and deployed to Ukraine. Really? Wow. What do these steppe people have an interest in fighting in Ukraine? You know, it's like, this is ludicrous. So many, many people of different types of ethnic groups have long suffered under the great Russian thumb. However, that doesn't mean that we should risk a nuclear war

in order to try and intervene within that country. And when you use language like this, I'll just repeat it again, the words of a president legitimately do matter. And just so you know, it's bipartisan because President Donald Trump also called it a genocide the day after and he called it a holocaust previously. Yeah, and we've called on his rhetoric as well. And we should call on their rhetoric. So when you have the two leading political figures in the United States, it depresses me to say that they're the two, but they are, of the two factions and the president and the former president, likely next president, you put that together, it's not a good situation for U.S. policy. And you have to understand the broader implications of the machine that that wars up here in D.C.

But the last thing I want to say about this, too, is just on the hypocrisy front. Of course, we've talked about a lot about Saudi and Yemen. But if you're following the news out of Israel, how you can apply the term genocide to Russia's aggression against Ukraine and not what Israel has been doing to Palestine for decades, I don't think you're applying an even standard there. Let's go ahead and move on to Elon Musk and to Twitter. So on Friday during the live show, we had the breaking news that Elon Musk had offered $54 per share to Twitter and that Twitter was considering it. We can now bring you the news that Twitter has rejected that offer with a so- called poison pill. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So the Twitter board adopted

this poison pill after Musk's $43 billion bid to buy the company. Now, it's a little complicated, so let me just try and explain it to the best of my ability. The way that these poison pills work is that they were invented in the crazy hostile takeover days of the 1980s, where the Twitter board says that if any person or conglomerate accumulates more than 14.9% of Twitter stock, they will begin issuing millions of more shares to broader public investors. The reason this matters is that the Musk offer is a per share offer. So what it would do is A, it would dilute the stock, but B, what it would do is make it much more of an expensive ability in order to offer to buy the broader company, especially whenever you create millions of shares out of thin air. It would significantly inflate the purchase price and make it much more difficult in order for Musk and them to acquire the company.

Now, this has spawned a lot of discussion around corporate governance, shareholders, and more. And the way that we have to understand this is, while yes, it matters as to who the broader shareholders are, publicly traded companies are subject to the governance of their board of directors. Those board of directors, despite owning less than 2% of the entire company, which is less than Elon Musk, which is less than even Vanguard and many others, still have the ability to reject

and determine the course of action for the company. And it really raises a lot of questions of like, okay, how exactly do these things run? It seems a little ridiculous when you think about ownership and then corporate governance, but it's a longstanding corporate practice in order to try and reject hostile takeover efforts. Apparently Netflix did the same thing when Carl Icahn tried to run a similar thing on the company back in 2012. That's the most recent example of a tech company kind of rejecting these hostile takeover type bids. Let's put the next one up there on the screen because what you can see is that there's also a lot of behind the scenes shenanigans which are happening, which is that Musk himself now is no longer the major Twitter large shareholder. Now, Vanguard Group actually upped their stake in the company all the way up

to 10%. Now, we don't exactly know the reason why Vanguard has decided to up its stake. It does seem very much in direct reaction to Elon Musk. And perhaps it's an effort to perhaps influence the board more and perhaps show that they are allies in the system. It just, look, many of these board members and BlackRock and other large shareholders don't have any interest in Elon Musk taking over the company. And, you know, not unfairly, because the one thing I do want to say is this. Musk gave an interview on Friday where he said, quote, I don't care about the economics at all of Twitter. He's like, I view this as a editorial project of which I want to protect free speech. I don't care

about the business of the company. So if you're a shareholder, I mean, that's not the best thing. At the same time, Musk is offering you a buyout. And it's kind of hilarious that Twitter's board is actually being advised by Goldman Sachs in terms of how in order to defeat all of this. Well, it turns out that Goldman Sachs itself has a sell rating on Twitter and says that the price target on it should be $30. So by their own analysis, the Twitter as a company and a business is terrible. And using Musk's metric, he's offering you an insane- He's offering to overpay.

I mean, not just overpay, almost double what the Goldman Sachs says that the company is truly worth, which is kind of hilarious. So you put it all together, the Twitter board then has outright rejected it. We don't yet know how this is going to play out. So things inside of Twitter are a bit chaotic.

However, we do know this, that Musk has said that there was a plan B that he said that was on the stage. He said he is looking to work with possible other shareholders. So this saga is not over yet. I think the best way to think about it is Marshall made this point during our live stream. I thought it was excellent, which is that this is like him buying a newspaper. He wants to look at this thing. He's like, I have a vision for Twitter. I don't really care about the business.

It's actually kind of a terrible business if you look at it. And so this is the vision of the world that I want to see. Well, and there's so much that's fascinating about this. I mean, first of all, like, as I've said before, I sort of view all these billionaires the same. But there's a lot of, like, partisan filtering of which billionaires people like and which ones they're comfortable with. And we're going to get later to, like, the media freak out over this that you certainly did not see when Bezos was buying Washington Post, for example. But I think if you do think of it in that framework of this is like buying a newspaper, then people start to understand more like, oh, then this isn't just purely a money-making venture. Because that's what makes this so unusual is usually when you

have these hostile takeover bids, activist investors, all of these activist shareholders, all of these things, it usually is about, I think this company from a financial perspective is being run poorly. I think we could make more money here. Not like I think their values are wrong. And so you have this complicated mix of like ideology and financial incentives that makes the picture confusing for people to understand whose motives are what. In that live stream interview that you referenced,

Elon Musk spoke to the TED conference. It was so cringe, whatever. I can't believe it's still around. I know. I was thinking the same thing. I was like, oh, we're still doing this? Anyway, he spoke to TED 2022 in Vancouver in a live streamed interview. And he partly laid on his vision for making Twitter's algorithms more publicly accessible, something I would certainly welcome. Limiting content moderation, something else I would certainly welcome if it's done in a consistent and, you know, again, transparent way. He acknowledged he's not sure that he's actually going to be able to pull this thing off and buy

Twitter, though he did say he has sufficient assets to fund the deal if accepted. You know, most of his assets are tied up in equity in his companies. So he'd probably have a big tax event if he had to, you know, he'd have to like sell his stock or'd probably have a big tax event if he had to. He'd have to sell his stock or whatever and have an actual tax event and pay some taxes. That's not a bad thing. But Musk did say there is a plan B if his initial offer to buy the company and take it private, which he called his best and final offer, is rejected. But he isn't saying what that plan B ultimately is. So the big thing to take away from the poison pill that's been adopted here and Musk's comments from, you know, directly from him is that this is far from a done deal.

Yes. Whether or not he is ultimately able to pull this off and ultimately able to, you know, take over Twitter. And he wants to take it private, by the way, too. That's the other plan here. And I completely believe him that, you know, his motives have to do, they are not just directly financial. And so, yeah, if you're a shareholder and you're just in it for the money, even if you don't care at all about content moderation or free speech, if you're looking at this guy who's going to take it over and is like, I don't really care what the returns ultimately are, yeah, you're probably not going to be too excited about that. Yeah. And, you know, this is keeping with his behavior. I actually read over the weekend,

reread actually, I think it was a 17 book, a biography of Musk, Elon Musk, Tesla, SpaceX, and the quest for a fantastic future. I highly recommend it if you want to kind of understand how Musk ticks. This is longstanding in his behavior. If you look at SpaceX, for example, he refuses to take the company public because he does not want SpaceX subject to the same whims of Tesla. As you've seen with Tesla, like short sellers, quarterly earnings, he's like, you cannot plan for the future or the realistic company whenever you're subject to the whims of the stock market. So even though Tesla, I mean, SpaceX, I think is worth like 70 something billion dollars, refuses to take the company public exactly for this reason

and doesn't want to be subject to the street. So he has a longstanding kind of love of private companies. And the only reason he even wanted Tesla to go public in the first place, because at the time, he actually needed the money, and has long hated kind of Wall Street's machinations all behind the scenes. Some interesting, potentially hopeful movement, guys, on the congressional stock trading ban. Let's go ahead and put this insider report up on the screen. So a bipartisan group, 19 lawmakers, laying out three key parameters for a stock trading ban following the House's first hearing on the issue. So important that the House actually had a hearing on reforming the rules around stock ownership in Congress. They are planning to, this bipartisan group is planning to pressure the Committee on House

Administration to move forward on an outright ban on stock trading by members of Congress, according to a source with knowledge of the effort. You have Democrats like Jared Golden of Maine, Abigail Spanberger of Virginia. You also have Republicans like Matt Gaetz of Florida, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, very odd fellows, kind of a mix of folks here truly across the ideological spectrum too. You've got the corporate wing represented, the moderate wing represented, you've got the more progressives represented, you've got right wings like Matt Gaetz represented here as well. And so the three key sticking points that we really wanted to make sure to highlight for you because there are very

different directions this bill could go. And it could turn into something that's just like sort of the toothless virtue signal that has a million loopholes that people can get out of. Or you could have something that is actually consequential and actually has a meaningful constraint on members of Congress and what they're able to do. So the first piece that is a point of contention is whether or not to include spouses and dependent children. So there's a lot of different potential bills floating around. Some of them include the spouses and dependent children, people like Nancy Pelosi's husband, Ro Khanna's wife,

the adult children who are still dependent. That piece is really important to making this thing ultimately have teeth. Because if the spouses, if the husbands and wives can still trade stock, this ultimately ends up being fairly meaningless because obviously your spouse trades. So that's a really important part. And it seems like pressure is building in the direction of making sure that these spouses and dependent children are included. The other one is this question of some people are saying, like, oh, the blind trust, this is really fair because it's expensive to set up.

And then, you know, I can't be a member of Congress because I can't afford the fees. The vast majority of you are millionaires. I don't want to hear it. Well, and not to mention, and, you know, credit to Abigail Spanberger, I'm not a huge fan of her, on this one, she's like, okay, then just sell it. You're not a fan of blind trust. That's fine. Just divest. No big deal.

So that's the other piece is pushing towards divestment or blind trust. And then the last one in this one also really matters is, okay, let's say you violate the act, then what happens? Are you going to actually give this thing some teeth so that there's a significant fine and real consequences for violating the ban on stock trading? Because what we've seen with the Stock Act, which just requires transparency, which ended up being important because it helped to galvanize public pressure around moving further. But it's routine that members just don't file the stuff they're supposed to file. Yes. And there's no consequence for it. It's like a $200 fine or something utterly pathetic,

and no one seems to really pay attention or ultimately care, very few people. So that's the other piece is making sure this thing has actual teeth so that members have to comply. And also, did you know that there's no public record disclosure required on whether you actually paid the fine? What kind of enforcement mechanism is this? That's nothing.

Ludicrous. Literally nothing. This is what happens whenever they are in charge of regulating themselves. And the only check on it is our public outrage. That's right. So from the beginning, lay out the timeline. Unusual Whales on Twitter begins publishing reports as to how exactly these guys are beating the market,

which is crazy because the best paid people on Wall Street routinely do not beat the market. Then we begin talking about it here on our show. It begins to become a meme on the internet. TikTok gets a hold of it. Gen Z gets really invested within the story. It becomes a groundswell. And eventually what happens is Nancy Pelosi is asked about it after other journalists began to do investigations into stock trades, bipartisan members of Congress. She says, well, it's a free market, all of that. That was a great moment for us because obviously she looked like the out-of-touch, ultra-net-worth, high individual that she is. It was a mask-off moment. And the public was like, hey, screw you.

You shouldn't be able to trade stocks. This became – I mean, I saw Dave Portnoy talking about it. I saw people on the left talking about it. It became a real piece of the internet zeitgeist. From there, Congress had to begin to respond. John Ossoff introduces a bill. Josh Hawley introduces a bill. There are now 20 separate bills that are working their way through Congress. However, the establishment is fighting back in every way that they can. We know that Joe Biden was supposed to have it in the draft vision of his state of the union was supposed to call for a stock ban on Congress. And it was taken out. Every other laundry list, check the box thing was in that state of the union.

Oh, identity politics, every little identity politics, every LGBTQIA gets a little checkmark. But stockman? Oh, no, we can't have that whatsoever. That's what the priorities are in Washington right now. So just goes to show you, really just shows you how powerful that the people inside are fighting back against this. And remember, the average net worth in Congress is well over a million dollars. Most of these people are wildly, wildly rich and successful, which is great. It's a free country.

And if you want to keep making money, don't run for Congress. If you actually want to serve, then you have to give up that part. I mean, service. Think about what we ask the people who sign up in the uniform. That's right. Our service members. They get paid nothing. Do we think about what we ask the people who sign up for in the uniform? That's right. Right. Our service members, they get paid dog, like nothing. They don't get paid well.

Their lives are subject to the whims of the military. They have all sorts of restrictions on what they can and can't do even outside whenever they're off duty. But we recognize it as a service. And then we take care of them after they leave the uniform. Sposed to anyway. Yeah. Well, we should. Obviously, we don't do the best. Burn pits, VA reform, et cetera.

But there's a social contract. Now, with Congress, we seem to have thrown all of that completely out of the window and let these people become wildly rich. I mean, Nancy Pelosi and her husband have increased her net worth by something like $100 million since she first entered office. That's crazy town. With active trading of options and things based upon things which are moving through Congress in which she's the Speaker of the House.

It's ludicrous. I think it's important to think about why there's been movement on this because it's so unlikely, right? Because this is something that actually impacts directly members of Congress's ability to cash in on their position. So why is there any movement on this thing whatsoever? And I think when the snowball really started to pick up speed was actually when Kevin McCarthy said, hey, we're going to run on this in the midterms. Yes, that's what made this movement so powerful. Because if it was just on the right, then Democrats would just dismiss it and ignore it. If it was just on the left, then Democrats would also just dismiss it and ignore it because they're perfectly content to, like, stick it to their own base all day long.

But since you had it coming from all parts of the political spectrum, it made it very difficult ultimately for them to resist and also made it so that, you know, some of these members realized that it was to their political benefit to try to get out in front of it and be the face of some sort of reform effort ultimately here. So that's what made it so incredibly powerful. And I'm talking in my monologue today about Christian Small's Amazon Labor Union going on with Tucker Carlson and the freakout over that. But if you really want to have something that actually happens in this country, you have to have a movement that brings in some different ideological perspectives. That's the only way you ultimately really can put pressure on these people. Otherwise, they just respond to their donor base, and that's that. So I think that has been such a critical part of why there's actually been movement, why you've just had the first ever House hearing, why you have so many different versions of this bill, why the provisions are being debated right now.

It's one of the few hopeful things within the actual political system. And so to study this and understand how this all went down is so important. So I think the two key moments are Nancy Pelosi mask off saying, well, it's a free market. That comes because she actually subjected herself to some question, get asked the right question and actually says what she thinks, which creates this large level of outrage that causes the right to jump in on it. Kevin McCarthy saying we're running on this on the midterms. And then you were kind of off to the races to put forward some kind of proposal that people are going to respond well to and feel like you were actually somewhat responsive to their needs. Yeah, it really is just an amazing, amazing story that we should all, once again,

chat out to Unusual Wales. He's the guy who started this whole thing and we owe him a very big debt. Some of the early speculation for 2024 on the Democratic primary side. And first of all, it's extraordinary that it's even a question who the Democratic nominee will be. It's really more of a question on the Democratic side who the nominee would be than it is on the Republican side. If Trump runs, he is all but certain to be the Republican nominee. And in fact, polling bears out that he is in a stronger position as not the president currently with the Republican base than Biden is with the Democratic base, which is extraordinary in and of itself. But let's go and put this Washington Post tear

sheet up on the screen. So they have, these things are so silly, but they have ranked the top 10 Democratic presidential candidates for 2024. And in a gigantic snub to Vice President Kamala Harris, they have actually placed Pete Buttigieg in front of her in line. So top contender, they have President Biden. Of course, that makes sense. He is the incumbent president. You would think he would be a lock, but he's not a lock. But anyway, he's in the pole position there. Previously in this list, they had Kamala ahead of Pete, which also should be a no-brainer. Sitting vice president,

I mean, very commonly throughout American history, of course, the vice president ends up going on to be the party's next nominee. But they make the case here, and I think not incorrectly, that she hasn't exactly delivered in the vice presidential role. Really, it's been an opportunity for her to highlight how not up to the task and not up to the job that she ultimately is. And listen, I'm no fan of Pete. I'm no fan of Kamala. Their politics are basically the same, which is sort of like just pure ambition combined with standard issue neoliberalism. But Pete at least ran an effective campaign, whereas Kamala didn't even make it to the Democratic primary to have a single voter cast their ballot. The entire list,

let me just read through the list and then we can talk more about Kamala and Pete. So, one is Biden, two is Pete, three is Kamala, four, they have Elizabeth Warren, LOL. Five, they have Amy Klobuchar, also LOL. Six, they have Roy Cooper, who no one is even ever heard of. The North Carolina governor? He's the governor of North Carolina. Yeah, even I had to be like, who's that dude again? I was like, I think that's the governor. Right. So governor of North Carolina, who literally no one's ever heard of, Roy Cooper. Sherrod Brown, who, you know, he's not like a crazy one to put on the list. They love this guy's profile and he has good labor politics, which I really appreciate. He's sort of like a Midwestern populist figure, senator from Ohio, still wins in a state that has trended hard right in recent years.

And, you know, the thing with him, he took a pass last time around. And the thing with him is like, on paper, he's kind of appealing because he can win in this tough state. And like I said, he's got this kind of like labor populist orientation that I find appealing. But then when you hear him speak, it's not very, he doesn't have a lot of natural charisma. Maybe that's a selling point. Maybe people like that he just feels like, you know, a little bit less of the sort of polished politician. But anyway, that's Sherrod Brown. Number eight, Cory Booker. Why? Again, remind me how he did in the primary last time. Remember, Andrew Yang beat him in order to get on the stage. Yes, great.

That's a good memory there. Number nine is even more perplexing. Gavin Newsom. Yeah. Let's do the French laundry guy. Literally, who wants that dude? I mean, other than him. He clearly wants to be president.

Is anyone else interested? No, but that's the kind of person who makes this list. And number 10, AOC, who, you know, I think has made it so that she is never going to be in a position to win a national election. I don't even think she could win statewide. I'm just going to be nice. Okay. So one of the things that I'll put in here that was interesting is they said, you know, they were trying to figure out who might be the progressive, who might be the person that like the Bernie types could get behind. And let me read to you what they say here about Elizabeth Warren, who they kind of, you know, put into that slot, even though obviously Bernie world not so much in love

with Elizabeth Warren anymore these days. They say Sanders camp has suggested Biden will face a progressive challenger in 2024. But exactly who would that wing of the party line up behind? Politico reported recently that top Sanders aides have gotten involved in setting up the field for 2024, but by pushing for Ro Khanna to run rather than by building up Warren. Sanders and Warren have often been allies, but their 2020 presidential campaigns got pretty ugly with one another. The Center for Massachusetts also has a reelection bid in 2024, which she has said she'll pursue. It irks me that there apparently is some effort from people around Sanders to kind of like put a candidate forward as if the grassroots base that supported Bernie wouldn't have something to say about that. And, you know, there are plenty of things that we've praised Congressman Conner for. I think he's been pretty good on foreign policy.

But in recent weeks, he's been really, it's hard to distinguish his rhetoric from sort of the standard issue, Democratic lane, you know, corporate Democrat lane of the party. He's got the stock issue, too. He's got the stock problem. Yes. His wife has invested in these military industrial complex stocks. And he said like, basically, oh, that's fine. There's no problem with that. Spouses should be able to do what they want to do. What are you doing right now? And he also, he just gave an interview with Politico where he said that the problem with Build Back Better was that progressives didn't compromise fast enough or far enough with Joe Manchin and that he didn't think that, you know, that Joe Manchin was he seemed to indicate he didn't think Joe Manchin was corrupt.

It was just an ideological difference, which again is like at this point when you've seen like the money gets from the oil and gas industry and the direct profits into his pockets from the coal industry, you still think that this dude is just like, oh, acting in good faith? That's kind of absurd. So anyway, it irritated me that they would think that they could just foist a candidate onto a grassroots base and think that they were going to just accept them without any question. It's ludicrous. It's ridiculous also when you put it that way. It actually kind of reminds me sometimes of the MAGA wars when people are like, no, this is the real America first. And you have like MAGA people around Trump who are trying to define what it means. And it's like, no, it's just only Trump gets to decide. And I think in this case, even Bernie doesn't really get to decide because at the end of the day, as we saw with Trump's endorsements, it doesn't always work out.

People are people. They think how they want. Many people who say they are Trump supporters say, look, I like Trump himself, but I'm not going to do everything that the guy tells me. And that's what bothers me also about the Sanders camp. I'm like, you don't speak for the Sanders movement. The Sanders movement, I think at its best, was an amalgamation and a coalition of a lot of disparate groups. You have people all the way from a Ron Paul libertarian perspective to the AOC like identitarian wing to the economic populist, the union folks, and then, you know, like the Linda Sarsour's and Tamika Mallory's of the world. Like it was always kind of a strange group of bedfellows, which is

fine. I mean, that's what political movements are. Yeah, exactly. Many times they have internecine like war and they don't agree on everything. But Bernie was able to speak to a very large group of people. And why? I think he was probably the most successful progressive politician of my lifetime. Well, he had a genuinely working class, young, working class, multiracial base. I mean, that was the core. I mean, remember when we used to look at where his donations came from? It was like Starbucks workers and Amazon workers.

And lo and behold, look at who has this grassroots movement now. So anyway, yeah. Listen, it's also this is how the Washington Post is spitting it, and it may not be totally accurate, but that sort of irritated me. Well, I think the main story out of this is that Kamala's number three. I mean, that's what it is, which is that the Secretary of Transportation, who took time off while he was doing his clearly very important job, is the guy who is beating the sitting Vice President of the United States. In Washington, I can guarantee you this caused a stir. I bet you that she threw the newspaper or whatever. If she still reads newspaper, I don't actually know.

Oh, she definitely reads this kind of stuff. Oh, I bet she freaked out. Definitely. reads newspaper i don't actually know oh she definitely reads this yeah oh i bet she freaked definitely and her comms director and all these people are absolutely like how dare you and threats are being made behind the scenes so in that regard this thing makes me smile because you just know the simone sanders and all of them of the world are so pissed off uh watching pete budaj eclipse them and look these elite games do matter. Let's be honest. In terms of the DNC,

in terms of the people in this town who matter, they all read that list and they all probably privately agree. It just shows you how awful of a politician that she actually is. Well, that's the thing, is if you're a candidate running to be in sort of like the Bernie grassroots lane,

this kind of crap really doesn't make a difference. 100%. Do you think that there's a single Sanders voter who's like, the Washington Post says I should get behind Elizabeth Warren this time? You know, no. But if you are trying to play the inside establishment game, these sorts of things do matter. And especially this is sort of stuff that the donor class reads. I don't know if you all remember, we covered reports that there were like already secret meetings of the billionaire and the hundred millionaire class to try to figure out how they could push Pete ahead of Kamala in line. But the bigger picture here too is just they have apparently done one of these lists before and they've always assumed like, let's just take Biden out of it because we assume that if Biden runs, he will be the nominee. But they actually go through this one and say, you know what,

looking at the polling, that's not at all clear because a YouGov poll recently found that only 21% of Democratic-leaning voters said Joe Biden would be their choice. 21%. So in the same poll, Trump had 43%. Not sure, undecided, had almost as large of a percentage as Joe Biden did. And by the way, so it was 18% who said they didn't know. And by the way, the next two in line were Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders, who each had 14%. Now, Bernie has all but ruled out running again. I mean, he's too old. Yeah. And, you know, he still seems like physically, mentally sharp or whatever. But he had a heart attack during the last campaign. Listen, we cannot have an 88-year-old president. Yeah.

So, I mean, listen, if he ran, I'd still support the values and the vision. But I don't think he's on the table this time. But that basically just pointed to the fact that there is no consensus in the Democratic Party that even the base of the Democratic Party is like, I'm not sure about Joe again. And they're like, and Kamala's not looking so hot either. How can you be sure? It is hard to understate how extraordinary it is to have a sitting Democratic president and have this level of total uncertainty about who the next nominee might ultimately be. Blood in the water. It is really pretty wild. Let's get to this next part. Go ahead and throw this up on the screen here, guys. We are looking at some new poll numbers

that show that 75% of Americans think that Amazon workers need a union. 83% of respondents aged 18 to 34 back Amazon Labor Union. 71% of young Trump voters support the Amazon Union. So that shows you, I mean, there's a little bit of a partisan divide here, but it really is overwhelming support for workers to have an Amazon Union. And one of the things that I found really interesting here, Sagar, is that, you know, we've talked about before how Amazon, the company itself, like people like it. It's convenient. You get your stuff really quickly. And they found, in fact, Amazon had a 91% approval rating of people that like it. But people were able to see both like, I enjoy getting my products quickly and

having the everything store there and the convenience that that entails. But I also really strongly feel that their workers should be treated decently and have some say in their workplace. So I found that really, really interesting. And, you know, it really, the support was across the board. There was a little bit of a generational divide here. So older Trump voters in particular were probably the most skeptical, but they still, still 66% of older Trump supporters also thought that, you know, Amazon workers should have a union. So I think it also puts into perspective all the freak out that we talked about yesterday about Christian Smiles, who's, of course, the president of Amazon Labor Union going on with Tucker Carlson. And like the fact that these,

one of the arguments that I saw made online about why he shouldn't go on is because Tucker's audience isn't persuadable. And it's like, Tucker's audience is apparently already persuaded. Yes. At least a significant part of them are already on board. So, you know, you're actually going, when you go on any network, whether they're speaking to a right-wing audience, a left-wing audience, a liberal audience, or anywhere in between, you are likely to find a lot of receptivity because the support is so incredibly overwhelming. Look, YouTube comments are not obviously a good metric in order to judge things. That being said, I actually was curious when I looked at the comments on your monologue yesterday, because I knew it was going to resonate with some Tucker and conservative folks, there were an overwhelming number of comments. And look, our audience is also disproportionately very young. So millennials and Gen Z almost entirely make up like 90 something

percent of the people who watch the show. So that's another reason I'm curious. So I'm going and I'm reading the comments and overwhelmingly people are like, hey, Crystal, you changed my mind on unions. Or they say, look, I'm still skeptical of big labor and of a lot of the people talking about social justice and that stuff. But Chris Smalls seems like a legitimately good faith activist who's just fighting for better workers' rights. And also, it's true, the basic argument of we need some balance by the workforce against this giant behemoth, nobody disagreed with that. See, that is the most powerful, which is that when you disaggregate this from broader identity politics, culture war fights, how can you look at the second largest employer of individuals in the United States having all the power over its

workforce and say, hey, maybe they should have a say in how long their break is and their wages, working conditions. You know, Americans are good people. They don't want to see people taken advantage of. Most people also still believe in free market capitalism. So they'll look at that and say, look, Bezos, it's cool you got rich, all of that. I think you should probably pay more taxes. But the people who built your company for you should have a say in their day-to-day lives. How many Americans at any level of the stack,

quote unquote, are able to relate with your boss just says, and it makes you do something that you know is ridiculous, but you just have to blindly follow. And that level of indignity compounds across your life. And it makes you depressed. It makes you feel like less than human. And you have to go and explore, you know, you have to go take a drink or smoke a cigarette or whatever, just to forget your problems. I mean, that, how much of that is, how much of that am I describing of the everyday life of the average American? I don't think that's going to go away ever. But, you know, having some say in that, it has real consequences for people's lives. It's huge.

I think people want to they want to order stuff from Amazon. They want to feel good about ordering stuff from Amazon, you know. And I think everyone sees how extraordinarily profitable. I mean, the billions and billions of dollars that Amazon raked in from all of us during the pandemic. And so there's also an awareness of like, no, you could afford to treat, like this union is not going to destroy your business. Like no one's going to believe that about Amazon. They feel like you could afford to treat your workers

a little bit better and let them have a little bit of say in their workplace so that they don't have to suffer the indignities that we've talked about here. I mean, one of the things that Chris always talks about and other Amazon workers that we've spoken with always speak about is just the inhumanity of having this automated system that like hires and fires you. You're not even dealing with a human being. And New York Times, we talked to Jodi Kantor, remember, about what a mess their HR system is through all of these automated processes where people are getting fired for no reason, through no fault of their own. And there's just like no recourse. You can't even get a human being on the phone to explain what the hell happened

or to try to get your job reinstated. So that's the kind of like automated algorithmic tyranny that they live under every single day. There was actually a post that was floating around. Amazon had posted at one of their facilities on Easter Sunday. So these workers who came in on Easter Sunday, they were like, thanks for coming in on Easter Sunday. As a reward, if you have this high, it was like 315 rate. I don't know what that translates to, but I'm sure it's some sort of nightmarish warehouse pace. Then you get entered into a raffle for chips and a soda. It's like, that's your reward for us giving up our holiday and coming in and slaving away for you. It shows the level of contempt that they have ultimately for these workers.

So I think it's extraordinary. I just want to highlight, you know, at this point, because union favorability is so high, because there has been such a shift in consciousness during the pandemic of who does what in this society and who really makes this thing run. And there's been a lot of, you know, people who were previously sort of invisible in the society, warehouse workers doing the work behind the scenes have become a lot more visible to folks who understand the incredibly essential work that they've been doing truly to keep the country running. And so it's easy to take for granted that there would

be this positive sentiment in favor of a union at Amazon. But this is a complete sea change from just not long ago at all. I mean, when I was doing regular Fox News hits, the anti-union stuff was every day, all day. It was very popular with the base. You know, we'd had decades of anti-union propaganda, convincing people of all sorts of lies about what unions actually are and what they actually mean. And I do think that with Chris Smalls and with the Amazon labor union, obviously, I was very critical of AOC and others for not showing up for them when it really counted, when they were before they ultimately cast ballots. I think it's ended up being a blessing in disguise, though, because it means that they haven't been associated with any sort of partisan camp. That's what I said. They just are in and of themselves, you know, and sort of judged on the merits of what they're doing. So it makes it hard to just put it into a partisan space.

And I do think that's part of what's contributing to these very high numbers. We talked about this yesterday. You know, Staten Island is Trump country. I don't think a lot of people realize that. Guess who they're all watching? Tucker. So they're like, oh, you were on Tucker? That's like a big thing, you know, in terms of credibility for him. And I think that the reason that all of this matters is, if anything, the more grassroots it is, the better that it is going to succeed. The less it gets attached to our culture war and to our broader American political agenda, the worse that a political movement is going to fare. So Chris, God can barely believe how exactly this has all played out in the last several hours. So let's start from the top, which is that there is an account called Lives

of TikTok. You guys have probably heard about it. Joe Rogan has talked about it. It's a very popular one. I think it has around 600,000 followers by the time I checked this morning. Now, yeah, 650. There we go. So this account surfaces videos making fun of liberals on TikTok. Often it can be trans stuff, identity stuff, LGBT, whatever. You know, I identify as a dog or I identify as a-

It's a lot of culture war. It's critical race theory. It's for the culture war mills. That's what this account is. That's right. Sometimes it's funny and sometimes I find it offensive and that's what it is.

Yeah, I mostly find it funny. So this person has been doing this now for about a year, maybe a year and a half or so. It's become a very popular following and it's definitely become, frankly, in my opinion, one of the most important kind of conservative activists in the entire country, if you care a lot about the culture war. And I'm saying that as an objective statement in terms of the level of influence that it has had. Now, that account has been run anonymously. The author has, or I guess the owner of the account, has done some interviews, but has gone to great lengths in order to protect her anonymity.

She's done interviews on Fox News. She's done interviews on podcasts as well, but has said that she doesn't want to reveal her face simply because of how much of a target that she is for many of the online harassment crowd. Well, we found out late last night that journalist Taylor Lorenz, who we've talked about here, who has decried online harassment, who broke down crying on NBC News because she says that people are coming after her and her personal identity. I don't want to minimize that. I actually think that that's awful, and I don't think anybody should have to experience that. Well, it turns out that she doxed this woman and revealed her name. Now, I'm not going to read her name here on the air, but let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Now, she points to the anonymous

impacts deep and far-reaching movement. Its content is amplified by high-profile media figures. She's appeared on Tucker Carlson. It's been referenced on Fox News. And then immediately begins to quote all of these fake identity experts about how the account is bringing violence against trans people or violence against people for simply highlighting videos that these people post themselves publicly, and then saying that this is in some way inciting harassment. And Crystal, what I found most objectionable, number one, she tries, of course, in order to tie this to Joe Rogan. She's like, oh, Joe Rogan cited it once as further evidence

that he's some crazy right-wing activist. Even though if you go talk to Joe, ask him how he feels about trans people, he'll tell you in his own words. But the second thing is they literally link to her real estate license and they reveal her name. They say exactly the, not just area of New York, but the specific neighborhood of New York that she lives in, citing who this person is. And that level of identification is just ludicrous, especially in the context of this entire article, which is meant to paint her as some sort of hate mongerer. Now, I personally think there is a story to be told about the Lives of TikTok account. I've spoken about it offline privately with my friends. Like I said, I think it's crazy that this account came out of nowhere and legitimately became probably the most

important right-wing account in the entire country. And I don't mean that, like I said, I mean, I think it's probably single-handedly responsible for the Florida legislation on not being able to talk about sexual identity to kids who are K through three. I think it's probably responsible for, along with Christopher Ruffo, for a lot of the critical race theory legislation that has gone across the country. And objectively, when you look at it, that story is interesting. And I think it should be told, actually. But instead, this is just a bad faith critique. And it's clearly meant to dox her and to ruin this woman's life. And it's just, how can Taylor square that with what she has done and said about what has happened to her?

That's the part. Yeah. Is if you are Taylor Lorenz and you have put yourself out there as like, oh, I can't be criticized. Yeah, or harassed. Because that means that if you criticize me, you are intentionally causing people to bully and harass me. And that is, you know, out of bounds. If you say my name, she has said out of bounds. If you say my name, she has said that. If you say her full name. That is out of bounds. How can you then turn around

and write a story like this and not apply that same principle of aren't you inciting harassment against this person? Yes. Now, I think this story is a little bit complicated because I think this person really walks the line of whether or not they should count as a public figure, right? She would very much say, I'm just a private citizen doing my thing. But to your point, number one, the account is very influential. And number two, she has done, you know, public interviews. I think she was on with Tucker Carlson and she's been on other podcasts and things like that as well. So there's a very blurry line here as to whether or not this individual should be viewed in the light of just a private citizen doing their thing or a public figure. However, there is zero doubt that Taylor Lorenz is a public figure who has chosen a career working at some of the most prestigious and well-known journalistic outlets in the entire country. So they're not on a par here is what I'm trying to say.

I think that this comes back to they're basically jealous that, and I relate to this, that the right wing is so good at the culture war that they're able to conjure out of thin air this language about, you know, critical race theory and like insert it into mainstream conversation and make it a campaign issue just like that out of nothing. Sure. Right. And the left and liberals in particular are just not good at doing that. And so I think there's a frustration with how successful all of this has been. And again, I share that frustration because I think, you know, I was just reading in Florida, they banned like 42 math textbooks that just talked about, had nothing offensive in them whatsoever. I mean, this stuff has gone completely over the top. The law is about you can't make anyone

uncomfortable when you're teaching history. I think that's all completely ridiculous. And I think it is censorship that is a problem that nobody who cares about free speech and having open and honest discussions should support. But the real problem here is that they're just sort of jealous that the right has been so good at this and that they're unable to do it themselves. So rather than directly going after the arguments, rather than offering their own effective counter-narrative, the strategy is instead, let's destroy this person, let's destroy this account, let's somehow tar Joe Rogan as part of this program because they've made him into his own sort of like cultural signifier, culture war issue. And that's the direction they

go in. But listen, I think the big thing here is just the kind of hypocrisy to be someone who, on the one hand, cries about being a victim of harassment if you dare talk about them or criticize them. And on the other hand, going out of your way to, you know, reveal the identity of someone who clearly wants to remain anonymous. And of course, you know, there the identity of someone who clearly wants to be, remain anonymous. And of course, you know, there's going to be harassment of this person. I think, I think your point you're making is very important, which is that, look, if this person, uh, lives of TikTok was spreading falsely editing videos and then posting them or, uh, posting fake videos, then that's a whole other discussion. But guess what? There's not a single thing that's in this article. Nothing false has ever been posted. And I think that one of the

reasons the account is so powerful is because it simply just clips what these people are saying and then plays it for you. And you're like, oh my God, I can't even believe this is real. I can't believe this person exists. And that is why I think it has been so successful. So when you look at it, there's no critique or to, or engagement, really, with why does the account resonate in the first place? What are some of the stuff that they are posting, which is doing very well? If you can find evidence of her posting something fake, be my guest. To my knowledge, that has not yet happened. So when you look at what this is and why it's resonating, why exactly people feel fed up, I mean, I would dispute that it came out of nothing.

I mean, I think there's a very real organic movement behind a lot of the things that Libs of TikTok highlights and that she basically focused it, posted some of the most extreme examples, and made people aware of how insane some of this stuff actually is. So anyway, the story, in my opinion, is this account really has come from, like you said, nothing. It literally didn't exist. And then became one of the most prominent accounts in the United States. That's crazy. I think it's a cool story, actually. And if it was a liberal account, it would get hate geographic treatment of like, oh my God, how this account is changing the world. And, you know, like this one is, oh, we got a doxer. She's anti-trans. You know, they throw all the worst labels.

Yeah. Well, and I also want to be clear. Like, the account, most of what it does is, like, repost what the cringiest libs say on TikTok. That's what it is. It's like, and so that's another thing that, like, personally, I don't like this content when it comes from the left or the right of just picking out, like, the most ridiculous person. Sure.

And trying to, like, this is something we really avoid doing on this show. There's a reason it's never been played. You'll never see us doing the, like, Karen melts down over whatever. But, like, I don't like that direction of politics using anecdotes to smear an entire group of people. Yes. But that's not to say, I mean, that is done commonly online. It's like we're unusual in the fact that we don't go in that direction. It's not a crime.

And most of what the account does, like I said, is, like, repost the cringiest lib content on TikTok that you could possibly find. And also add, like, she does add some, like, commentary to it. Okay, I mean, fine. Right. I just want to accurately, like, represent what the account is. So it's not like she's just reposting. She also is adding her commentary. That's not a crime.

And in a democracy, you have to accept that there's going to be, however you feel about the issues that she's mostly focused on, you have to accept that there's going to be information out there that you don't like, that may even be offensive, that there are people who hold views that you don't like that may even be offensive. And so the instinct to instead of engaging with, offering a more compelling argument, offering a more compelling vision, having your own version of Libs of TikTok or whatever that is as effective, the instinct to instead use the power that liberal mainstream outlets have to try to shut these things down, I think that's a bad direction for democracy. And I also

think that it doesn't work. Like, I don't think it's going to be successful. I think probably Libs of TikTok is now going to be bigger than ever. So congratulations. Absolutely will be. And, you know, in terms of the email, look at the text in which Taylor talks about her little piece on Libs of TikTok. Put this up there on the screen. She says, on deadline. Hi, Christina. I'm a tech reporter at the Washington Post. We are running a story exposing the woman behind lives of TikTok. Not featuring, profiling, none of that. Uses the word expose directly in an email to a source. Also, I love this. If you'd like to comment, please let me know within the next hour. Let me tell you something. Giving somebody only an hour to comment is a BS move, which is made specifically in order to make sure that they don't actually have time in order to formulate a real response and is done so that you can say you reached out for comment but didn't.

And of course, Taylor is saying, I'm just doing standard journalistic practice. And you know what? Unfortunately, you're right. That probably is standard journalistic practice, but it shouldn't be. And it just shows you that she doesn't abide by her own rules. And like you said, look, if you want to defend some of the things that lives with TikTok or counter it, be my guest. Please, I welcome you to try and do it. But, you know, attacking her and trying to dox her, A, she's going to be bigger than ever. Now we're talking about it. I don't think we've ever mentioned lives with TikTok before. No, we haven't. To my knowledge, we haven't. You know why? To stay away from a lot of the culture war nonsense. That being said, now, I'm saying, I'm reviewing obviously how I think about her, but also I have to defend the account. And I have to stand up for the ability for people to anonymously post what other people are doing in America in the year 2022. So I hope she's okay. That's the other part

that I think it's worth asking yourself is what was the news value of revealing this person's name? Right. So to do a story about it, to talk about how even how it came to be, that's interesting, you know, previous political affiliations, how it grew into something that is really significant and is helping to set a sort of right-wing agenda is getting picked up by Fox News on an almost daily basis. Yeah, I think that's newsworthy. I don't know what newsworthy, like what does it add to that story to actually expose this person's name and their profession and their real estate license and all of that. That just seems, I just don't see how that adds anything to the conversation that's useful to an understanding of the phenomenon

that's going on here. Absolutely right. Some very revealing comments were just leaked from Congressman Mo Brooks, who's right now running for Senate in Alabama, where he actually explains in detail one of the mechanisms for corruption that involves basically lobbyists buying committee chairmanships. This goes into a level of detail that even I didn't know this was exactly how it works. Yeah, so it's quite interesting. Take a listen to what he has to say. I'm sure that y'all are very much concerned about why our Congress is so unresponsive to the regular needs of American citizens. Why some of these policies that come out are so bizarre, so unfair, so skewered against

regular Jane and Joe citizens. The reason is simple. Special interest groups run Washington. And I don't mean that metaphorically. I mean literally. Now, here is how it happens. In the House of Representatives, I'll use that as an example because that's where I work. If you want to be chairman of a major committee, you have to purchase it. And the purchase price for a major committee, say like Ways and Means,

minimum bid is a million dollars. I'm talking literally here. I'm not talking metaphorically, okay? We have committees broken down by A group, B group, and C group. C are the cheapest. B are the most expensive, are middling. A is the most expensive. It's the most expensive because those are the committees that the special interest groups care the most about. So where does a congressman come up with a million dollars to be chairman of one of these eight committees? You can't get it from joe and jane citizen because joe and jane citizen back home they're not going to be contributing that kind of money they don't have it they need that money for their own family okay so let me finish let me finish and so you have to get it from the

special interest groups and with the special interest groups there is a quid pro quo. If you don't do what they tell you to do, they won't give you the money that finances your chairmanship. I had one guy who ran for chairman of the NRCC, which is where the Republicans pay their money for these committee assignments and chairmanships, just as the Democrats pay theirs to the DCCC. And this guy who wanted to be chair of the NRCC actually had a brochure. And that brochure had price listings written on it. And his argument for getting elected was, elect me, I will charge you less. Now, you understand how the public policy debate is corrupted.

We need to be in a position of power. You have to do what the special interest groups require, which undermines the public policy debate. The money now is triumph. And I'll give you a second example. So it's not Mo Brooks talking, but there's real evidence to back this up. Congressman Thomas Massie, who, who by the way endorsed me yesterday, yesterday afternoon. I should add that Rand Paul has also endorsed me from Kentucky. He had a

lobbyist come up to him and the lobbyist said look I will pay your $500,000 to be on Ways and Means if you will sponsor this patent bill. Thomas is brilliant. He has patents, MIT grad. And Thomas said, okay, I'll look at it. And he looked at it and said, no, this hurts the small and big. The people with the power and the money are going to use that power and money to steal the patent rights from the person who actually had the idea, who should be reaping the rewards of that idea. And so Thomas went back to the lobby and said, nope, I'm not going to do it.

The lobby said, okay, I'm not going to pay that $500,000. Thomas Massey got that published on the front page of USA Today, that story. And I saw it, and I'm going, finally finally somebody else in the House of Representatives who is honorable who's ethical and sees the corruption associated with this process and I went to Thomas said thank you for doing that and Thomas responded well I made one big mistake look good to me said well I talked about it in terms of buying committee assignments when really it's a ritual agreement you have to pay it every two years now the national media knows about this both political parties do it so neither party rises to the occasion and makes this a major public policy

issue that would increase exposure about what's getting done. But if you want to know why our government is not properly facing the challenges that are in front of the United States of America, that more than anything else is the reason. Wow. A million dollars. Kind of amazing. Yeah. I mean, of course, there's a lot to say about this. First of all, I have no doubt that this is how this actually works. And so it shows you it's not just like some of the things that we track in terms of the stock ban, in terms of like the campaign funds for actually running for election. But this is very, very close to just a direct quid pro quo of we will fund your committee chairmanship and you're going to be in charge of this committee that we have a lot of interest in. And we assume you're going to do

right by us ultimately. And see, this is the other thing, this committee that we have a lot of interest in. And we assume you're going to do right by us ultimately. And see, this is the other thing, which is that the way that—so there's a two-pronged problem here, which is that the alternative to this previously was the seniority system, which is obviously awful. You don't just want a bunch of geriatric old people luck into committee chairmanships because they happen to have been there for 40 years. That's how it was in the 1960s. The Democrats actually still abide by the seniority system for ranking members whenever it comes to their committee chairmanships, which causes us problems, as we can see. The Republicans, however, have rotating committee chairmanships. That's a good thing if it's merit-based. Instead, what it is is controlled by the central committee and by the GOP leader in terms of who gets a committeeship and who doesn't. Now, in that, what he's referring to there is the $1 million,

is that you have to have raised a significant amount of money, not just for yourself, but for the national party and for the committee to reelect. And by doing that, the political is then tied to your direct ability to have a chairman. Now, when you're chairman, why does that matter? The chairman decides which legislation gets to move in and out of committee, which gets to get debated, which gets to allow half petitions, he gets to schedule hearings, all of that. Has an immense amount of power over legislation. Also, don't forget, the House, the People's House, as written in the Constitution, is where all taxation legislation has to originate in terms of financing, appropriations,

and all of that. Not the Senate. The Senate has to advise on this, but they don't have the same level of impact. So then the chairmanship matters even more in terms of house ways and means, house appropriations. Those are the people, coincidentally, who get the most amount of donations and have the ability in order to have a significant amount of influence and get invited all around town and to the most fanciest dinners because they have such an immense amount of power. So that's like a short history of how the system came to be, but it's a perfect example of institutional corruption.

Yeah. And I know this stuff sounds boring, but I mean, how the committee ships get doled out, it impacts you in a way that you don't even probably know. Well, and then, of course, the other piece of this is, like, I mean, obviously this dude is hardly a paragon of virtue. Oh, sure. Like, you look at him, and I just pulled up his open secrets. He gets tons of money from, like, real estate interests and developers and also a bunch of sort of, like, military industrial or, like, space tech type of companies. So he's playing the game himself.

He's exposing the game here in this regard, but he is in no way are his hands clean. And it's interesting because as he goes on, the clip goes about five minutes. The whole thing is worth watching. You can take a look. I think I tweeted. I think Ryan Grom tweeted and others.

But he goes on to tell this anecdote about Jamie Comer, or not, sorry, Thomas Massey, different Kentucky congressman. Thomas Massey, who's kind of a libertarian, so he's credible in terms of when it comes to corruption and how he'd written this op-ed for USA Today exposing how all of this worked and how one lobbyist had offered to basically buy him this committee chairmanship. And then, not like just a couple weeks later, there he was after he had been decrying how terrible this was, there he was sending out invites to all the lobbyists in Washington to come to some fundraiser for him. So, you know, a lot of these people, they love, right, they love to posture, but then they're just as guilty as playing the same game as everybody else. So that's the other problem.

Nice little preview into the system there. Indeed. All right, guys. Thanks for watching. More for you later. This is an iHeart Podcast.