Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Breaking Points 6/8/21: UFOs, workers, Bezos, Obama, and more

Episode Date: June 8, 2021

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thanks for listening to Breaking Points with Crystal and Sagar. We're going to be totally upfront with you. We took a big risk going independent. To make this work, we need your support to beat the corporate media. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, they are ripping this country apart. They are making millions of dollars doing it. To help support our mission of making us all hate each other less and hate the corrupt ruling class more. We need you to support the show by becoming a Breaking Points premium member today.

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We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. So we're going to start by looking at what exactly happened when Trump was kicked off of social media. How did that impact his reach and his following? We're going to look at some major drama within the ACLU, basically abandoning their sort of core mission, something Glenn Greenwald's been talking about for a long time. Some new really pretty stunning details there. An interview with Obama that is quite

interesting for the answers that he did not give as much as the answers he did give. Some news on Jeff Bezos going to space. You and I will do our breaking points monologues. We've got Ben Smith from the New York Times to talk about all things media. So great show planned for you. A couple things that we forgot to mention yesterday. First of all, how do you like our new desk mats? Yeah, you like these little mats? This is all about protecting Sagar's beautiful and brilliant desk.

That's right. Making sure we don't get any scratches on it. Second of all, one thing we didn't mention yesterday was the normal schedule. So the normal sort of show schedule is going to be Monday, Tuesday, Thursday. Sometimes that's going to change. One week where that is going to change is actually next week. And we'll tell you. Stay tuned for more on those details.

Something that is very exciting, though, I think you guys will like. And we'll be posting other content to the channel throughout the week. We're going to be posting some clips from Crystal Conference, from the realignment, so you guys can get a little cross-pollination there, some extra segments that we'll post over the week. We're going to be posting some clips from Crystal Conference, from the realignment, so you guys can get a little cross-pollination there, some extra segments that we'll post over the weekends. And if you're a premium subscriber, we're going to be doing Ask Me Anythings every other week. That's right. So you can submit your questions and we will respond to as many of those as we possibly can. But with that, Saga of the New York Times taking a look at what exactly happened from a sort of like data metric standpoint when Trump was taken off of Twitter and Facebook.

I think this is an incredibly important story. There is something that in the last several months that's really coming to light, which is that the original argument around deplatforming was deplatforming doesn't work. You're just going to empower people. Actually, we have a scarier result. Deplatforming works and it works really well. As you saw in that graphic, on the left, you could actually see all of the different chatter that was generated by a Trump tweet, a social media post. So we're talking about organs, huge, multi-million dollars, sorry, multi-million people worth of interactions that were on the left. And Eric, put that element back up on the screen so we can see. That's right.

Let's throw that back up there because people need to understand this. You can see there on the right side of the screen, the number of millions of interactions that were surrounding some of his posts. Now, here's what they found. Of the dozen written statements and all these things that he issued from January 9th until May 5th, which was the day the Facebook oversight went ahead and showed there, before the ban, the social media posts with median engagement generated 272,000 likes and shares. After the ban, that dropped to 36,000 likes and shares. 11 of his 89 statements after the ban attracted as many likes as the median post before the ban, but not more.

So this is really interesting because what it's showing is you can circumvent deplatforming on a case-by-case basis. If you're the former president of the United States. If you're the former president. But if in general, about 90% of the time, you're still totally and completely screwed. And I think there's a lot of really troubling stuff here, which is that what you actually see is that posts quoting Trump's February 16th statements dramatically lower. There's a whole bunch of other interesting statistics in here. And what they show is, is that the 10 most popular posts judged by likes with Trump before the social media bans and then after, all fell dramatically. Before the ban, Trump posts garnered 22 million likes.

After the ban, 1.3 million across Twitter and Facebook. So we're talking about orders of magnitude. And this again is the president of the United States who had to shut down his blog, or the former president, who had to shut down his blog because it was getting such limited numbers of engagement. I think this is a really terrifying story though, Crystal, because what it does show is, and like we said, look, it's kind of nice. He's not around.

The media's reporting on him slightly less, even though they try to make it happen every once in a while. But that chart and the numbers starkly show that essentially two or three companies in America can decide whether whether, can decide whether you have a voice or not. That's just fundamentally anti-democratic to me. There was a lot that was really interesting about this article. First of all, if we could throw that graphic up one more time on the screen, because I think that chart is so important to look at. The world on the right, where there's like these little bubbles and he pops up now and again,

and then he goes away. Like, I'm not going to lie, that world's really nice, right? there's like these little bubbles and he pops up now and again and then he goes away like i'm not gonna lie that world's really nice right it's so much calmer there's a little more like substance you can get to everything's just not instantly stupid and polarized and obnoxious all the way across the board but as you're saying zogger even though on this particular instance yeah it's nice that he's out there a lot less, the consequences and the implications of this for everyone else are really, really significant. Because if you think Donald Trump and the right-wingers that maybe you don't like are the only ones who are going to be subject to this deplatforming, you're wrong. And we've already seen that you're wrong and we've already seen that you're wrong. And we have experience from, you know, even at the Hill with Rising,

before we put it on YouTube, no one knew it even existed. The fact that it was on YouTube and enabled people to see it, that's the only thing that gave it power. I saw the same thing at MSNBC, Keith Olbermann, who was like the biggest guy in cable news. He leaves, is fired, whatever happens with him at MSNBC, goes to Current, still on cable news, but no longer on MSNBC, vanishes. Gone.

Disappears. So, yes, it does actually work, and that's exactly what's scary. The other thing that was funny about this article, though, is even though you can see with your own eyes how dramatically attention fell off of all of his posts, and they even crunched the data for you to be able to like not only see that but know the specific numbers they still tried to frame the whole article around like but he's still it's still working he's still getting his but he still has a voice i'm like he's the former president and they went out of his way to be like 11 of his 89 statements got a lot of likes it's like wildly different than what it was before so the framing of it was really funny and really interesting to me. The other thing that they dug into though, which I also thought was kind of fascinating is they looked at different kinds of statements that he made.

So statements that he made basically attacking Democrats, those only got shared. And this is in the post ban era. Those only got shared by right-wing voices, right-wing news sites, Fox news, right wing personalities, et cetera, et cetera. The ones that he made attacking fellow Republicans, those would be shared by the right and by more democratic leaning or left leaning outlets. And I, I just found this particular paragraph amusing. They say the top shares on the right of that type of content, according to the global disinformation

index analysis included Fox and friends at cable news show News Show, and the right-leaning publication Washington Examiner. On the left, the top sharers included the popular Facebook page Stand with Mueller and the CNN journalist Jim Acosta. So it tells you a lot about who's still obsessed with Trump, even in this era. Boomers. They're called Boomers and Jim Acosta. I think the other fascinating part about this, there's a geopolitical thing that comes into obsessed with Trump, even in this era. They're called boomers and Jim Acosta.

I think the other fascinating part about this, there's a geopolitical thing that comes into this, which is actually recently Nigeria banned Twitter after President Buhari's tweet was deleted by the company. And what Twitter came out and said was that this was an attack on human rights. And this is something, obviously, look, a lot of MAGA media, they're like, Twitter, by its own admission, is violating Trump on human rights. And this is something, obviously, look, a lot of MAGA media, they're like, Twitter, by its own admission, is violating Trump's human rights.

Let's take Trump out of it, and let's look at this in the very abstract, which is that they recognize the power of their platform in a place like Nigeria and in a place where circumventing organs of power, being able to have free discourse and all that is important. But then when you lay it all out so starkly like in the new york times story and you just see how much is engagement has completely been dropped this is the former president what are they going to if you're average person you're done

uh... there's a guy named paul scala suma big fan of something that he has pointed out in his newsletter the lindy newsletter is step on molyneux and i'm not a big step of, something that he has pointed out in his newsletter, the Lindy newsletter, is Stefan Molyneux. And I'm not a big Stefan Molyneux fan or any of this thing. But from the starkness of he was getting hundreds of thousands of views on Twitter and Facebook and stuff. Now on his private whatever, we're talking like 2000. I mean, we're like, I mean, we're orders of magnitude, absolute exponents down level numbers. And I think that you put all of that together. It's a scary situation. These people have a lot of power. Trump actually talked a little bit about this yesterday on Fox. Let's take a listen to what

he said. You know, they allowed dictators that say death to America. That's OK. Death to Israel. That's OK. But with me, they take me off because they are radical left crazy people and they're destroying our country and they don't want to hear a sane voice. That's why they and it's a voice that has. And, you know, I was one of the top by far on Twitter and top on Zuckerberg said on Facebook. And, you know, and Instagram too, and you add it all up, it's hundreds. It's like, I don't know, I think close to 200 million people, they say, and they take that off. So once again, look, like his musings and all that aside, there is a level of truth there the lack of consistent Enforcement and of standards around stuff, you know first Trump got tagged then they were like, oh well We got a tag a few Chinese social media and then people were like wait But then you should also probably tag like all these other world leaders and then the world leaders themselves like Buhari

It's like yeah in America. You can't just ban Twitter. Well out there they're like no, you're done completely. Russia came out, even Putin and all these strong men came out and they're like if these people think you can ban my account, they're like you have another thing coming. Angela Merkel spoke out against Trump getting banned. I think it was a catastrophic decision at the end of the day. I understand how- Bernie Sanders spoke out against it too. Bernie Sanders spoke, because he's not an idiot. How much did Bernie raise for his campaign? $200 million? A lot of money. I think it was $250

million if I remember covering it at the time. Vast majority of that came from email marketing and from Facebook and from Twitter. AOC, it raises the most amount of money in all of Congress. She's never dialed for a dollar once in her entire life. That is the power of Facebook. Is AOC ever going to get taken off Facebook? No, she's far too identitarian. But what about the next one? What about Anita Turner? What about the next generation of a progressive? That is somebody who is 100% reliant on the internet in order to fuel small dollar donations. And I could easily see Ilhan or Rashida Tlaib getting taken down because they have views on Israel that are not considered acceptable.

And that is the one thing, like when I listen to Trump, on the one hand, yeah, he's got a point. Obviously, I think the censorship and the cheering of censorship from quote unquote liberals, which should be the opposite of what an actual liberal value set would look like, I find outrageous. I find it incredibly troubling. I think this is like an essential question in terms of democracy. But also conservatives only see this when it happens to them.

So even he says this thing about like you can say death to Israel. Israel has a program where they work directly with Facebook to identify people that they find to be problematic. There's no corresponding program for Palestinians. And, you know, when there's extremist views. So we covered and we talked about on Rising the number of Palestinian journalists and activists who were targeted and taken off of social media. So this is just this is another issue that Trump has basically ruined. Yeah.

And look, it's on. Because he's for cancel culture for people who he doesn't like. Most right wingers are 100 percent. This was the Mike Lindell famously the my pillow dude when he starts his free speech platform. And he's like, but there's not going to be any cursing or pornography or taking the Lord's name in vain. They want the cancel culture to be dictated by them. That's their beef. It's not that they actually have a principle here. Now, that doesn't let liberals off the hook for like the fact that they abandon any principles in this fight either. But he ruins all of these conversations because also everybody's Trump derangement syndrome gets triggered. And if he's saying this, we're going to be over here

saying, no, we're for more censorship. We want Facebook and Twitter to have more power. We want them to ban more people. We want them to ban more people We want them to ban you for life. This happened yesterday. Actually, I'm glad you Reminded me. I want to speak out on this Rebecca Jones who I did a monologue about over on rising total charlatan Absolutely lied about her role. She was some supposed whistleblower on Ron DeSantis all of that Yeah, okay out of the way can't stand her did a takedown you can go and watch that that being said she was suspended from Twitter yesterday and Ron DeSantis actually put out a statement saying that this is a long overdue action and I'm sorry governor but that's not what we're all

about here look he's been out front he's been out front on deep platforming Wow look according to Twitter she was creating bot accounts in order to like defend herself which is extremely cringe behavior. All of that being said, yes, maybe it's a violation of the terms of service, but he put out a statement celebrating it. I don't celebrate her getting taken off social media. She had a large platform. She actually targeted me personally, talking and disparaging me, all of that. It's all good.

It's all in the game. I'm a big boy. I did a segment. I will have to live with her criticism of that. I'm totally fine with that. It's all good. It's all in the game. I'm a big boy. Like I did a segment. I will have to live with her criticism of that. I'm totally fine with that. So I'm out here and I want to be absolutely 100% on the record. I'm 100% against her to getting taken off of Twitter. I think she should be reinstated and she should be allowed to say her, you know, ridiculous musings as much as she wants because it's a free country. And this is the problem with the hypocrisy of it. Glenn pointed that out, which is Governor DeSis is celebrating her being taken off of twitter and that's

wrong it's just a little and it is a little bit where if you're gonna work champion people being taken off when you don't disagree when you disagree with them you know get really upset one of the people you agree with the taking off then it just becomes a hell scape where everybody's driving all the way down to the bottom. So I'm glad that I put that out there. That's just about power. It's not about any kind of principle.

And that's where most of these people are acting from. The liberals are acting from that. Because, look, it worked. It has definitely defanged Donald Trump. It has made him less of a force to reckon with. You said, and I think that this might be true, that if he remains kicked off of Facebook, he may not run again. That is a tremendous amount of power.

But you see the same exact games being played on the right. That's a stunning example. I missed that from DeSantis because he was also, remember, he was the one who signed that law that you're not allowed to de-flatten Florida. You're not allowed to de-platform any politician. And there's fines and all this stuff trying to plant his flag in the ground for if there is a Republican primary absent Trump or even possibly posturing to be Trump's VP, something that Trump this week didn't rule out. And now you see not only did he not usually what they do is they just stay silent on the examples that don't benefit them. They don't actively celebrate it. The fact that he actively, affirmatively went out and celebrated it. That's really something. At the same time, we've got this thing going on with the ACLU, actually dovetails quite

nicely with this entire discussion. Kind of a continuation of the whole discussion. So the preeminent organization that is supposed to be fighting for free speech, even and maybe even especially when you wildly disagree, not just disagree, but find that speech to be offensive. The ACLU, which became famous for, among other things, defending the rights of the KKK to protest and march in the streets and all of those things. They're essentially, according to new reporting from New York Times, we can throw this tear sheet up on the screen. There is a major internal battle right now over whether the ACLU is going to continue in that vein. They start with this anecdote of a famous professor, longtime lawyer David Goldberger.

They're having a luncheon to celebrate him, and he's listening to the speeches at this luncheon. And you can see the quotes up there on the screen. He says, I got the sense it was more important for the ACLU staff to identify with clients and progressive causes than to protect free speech. They go through, this is wild to me, in their annual reports for several years in a row from 2017 to 2019, the words First Amendment and free speech cannot be found in the ACLU's own annual report. On the other hand, there were many, many words about Donald Trump and their leader, their role as leaders in the resistance about Trump. That's what their annual report was all about. And apparently where a lot of this like sort of started to fall apart is after Charlottesville, when the ACLU took the side of the protesters who wanted to march there. Of course, that devolves into a totally disastrous racist monstrosity.

Heather Hare is murdered by one of the white supremacists who was there. That's not the fault of the ACLU. That's the fault of law enforcement and like the total mess that that devolved into. Not to mention, of course, the people who perpetrated those acts. But it was after that that the mission of the organization really started to change. At the same time, they were flooded with cash in the Trump era because they positioned themselves as taking this leading role in the resistance against Trump. And so as they're hiring and bringing on new people, they didn't bring on one single new lawyer focused on First Amendment and free speech. But they brought on a bunch of activists who are much more committed to these different progressive causes, progressive causes which, by and large, I support, but are sometimes in conflict with the central goal of free speech. And they say blatantly that now they want to consider whose groups, whether they're allies, how their allies in the progressive movement are going to be impacted by the cases that they take up. Again, this is the polar opposite of the mission of this organization for generations, where it didn't matter whether it was a liberal cause and they

defended many liberal progressive leftist causes, including, you know, pushing back when people are being smeared as communist sympathizers and all of that. That's really how they, that's right. They started off world war one with people who were conscientious ejectors, like all of that secular objectors in public schools. But what gave them so much credibility is that they would also defend the rights of people with whom they vehemently disagreed. And that mission seems to be completely fallen by the wayside in the post

Trump era. In the words of Noam Chomsky, if you're not for free speech for people that you despise, then you're not for free speech. That's right. That's it. And look, Dennis Parker, who's quoted in this story, who was the head of the racial justice program at the ACLU, said this, quote, First Amendment protections are disproportionately enjoyed by people of power and privilege. As in, the First Amendment protections are themselves not to be venerated by the ACLU in his position there. I think that's absolutely stunning. And let me include, though, the pushback that's included in this article is, hey, everything that Black Lives Matter did was enabled by the

First Amendment. Yeah, filed it under, you know, what comes next. And look, all of this is just absolutely ridiculous, and it comes down to a single thing, Trump. If you want to talk about Trump derangement, it's the ACLU. What happened? The ACLU, according to this, raised $300 million under Trump. The ACLU budget tripled, and its core of lawyers doubled. They actually have the same number of lawyers who specialize in free speech, though, as a decade ago. So all the new lawyers, all the new funding has to go to perpetrating all of the new recurring donations that are coming into them. I saw this firsthand. I remember it very clearly. As the ACLU

continued to side with the Trump, against the Trump administration time after time after time, they fell into the MSNBC syndrome of the fact that their entire base are anti-Trump people and they are not going to tolerate them standing up for people like at Charlottesville. Can't stand people at Charlottesville, can't stand white supremacists. Many of them are American citizens and they first member rights which was in the case so be it it's probably better off that way and this is the thing that these people don't seem to understand we've seen this over and over again which is that now

the a c l you cannot even put itself in a situation where it can even do like a token case of trying to stand up for free speech another thing that met up i think is in sterile pal the author of the story great great news journalists it's a phenomenal piece it's lengthy and you should read all the points out that at can in terms of campuses they refused to insert themselves in many cases on behalf of students this is the same organization which in the nineteen sixties stood up for students who are protesting against vietnam these are the same thing that

defended high school students there are their right to be secular. I mean, I can go, so many famous cases which paved the way, I think, frankly, for you and I to be able to exist in modern public society. And look, I grew up in a town where George H.W. Bush's library was. It wasn't so fun speaking out against the Iraq war. And I bet you you thirty years prior i would have been silenced and i said whatever i damn wanted much to the chagrin of a lot of people and it's because of people like the aclu who paved the way for high school students rights all from

the very beginning in terms of their free speech protections all of that has been completely abandoned by this organization in favor of an agenda where they say, well, you can't protect trans lives or black lives with First Amendment protections because you have to be able to silence the violent voices against them. That's just not the case. And it actually flies again in the face of every modern social justice movement in American history, in that we had violent, often terrible debates, and some of them actually devolved into actual violence. But ultimately, what happened here? And I think it was better off because we had more free speech

in this country. Ryan Grim made an interesting point, which is that, look, you can imagine people holding the views of the people who have come to work at the ACLU and are trying to change what free speech means and who gets to benefit from it and who doesn't. But it's pretty hard to imagine people who hold those views going and working at the ACLU. Like, go work at a progressive organization that's just going to back your view and that has that mission. Like, this is the anathema to what the ACLU has always bedrock been about. And they do talk in the article about, you know, there have been other times of tension within the organization where it's like, ah, should we really be defending the KKK here?

But they've done it time and time again. And there's an anecdote at the end of the article, kind of the kicker of the article that I think is really interesting and really revealing. They talk about New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was trying to block the KKK from rallying downtown back in 1999. And the Klan was anathema to Mr. Siegel, who was leading the New York chapter at that time. But he fought like a cornered cat, they say, for the Klan's First Amendment rights. Did I give anyone else a veto? No way, he said. I would have compromised my integrity. But listen to who joined him in fighting for the rights of the KKK to march and protest in New York City. He drew support from the black publisher of the Amsterdam News and from Reverend Al Sharpton, who filed suit in support of the NYCLU,

that's the ACLU in New York. Mr. Siegel recalled receiving a standing ovation from a black audience. He recounts, a woman came up and said, you did the right thing. If Giuliani could shut down the Klan, he would do it to us. Of course.

That's the point. Yes. That's the point right there, is if you have a principle, you have to apply it across the board. It's just what we were just saying about Trump and the right and Ron DeSantis and all of that.

Same crap applies to liberals and to ACLU. And it's a tremendous loss. I mean, this is an organization I have respected for so long. Same. And that I think has done some of the most, at times, wildly unpopular and truly courageous bedrock foundational work in American society. And if they're pulling back from that, which it appears from this article that they very much are, we need either to reclaim the ACLU or we need another organization that is actually going to support First Amendment rights and free speech across the board for everyone. Like you said, I mean, it means a lot.

I remember Bush lied. I had a very cringe button that I would wear, which said Bush lied. People died. Which is true, by the way. But did not go over so well in College Station, Texas, home to the Bush family and more, and got into a vehement argument. And I remember actually a teacher even saying, hey, he can say whatever he wants. And it's because of people like the ACLU. And that means a lot for people who are in college, especially at times of immense national

tension. This was like 2003, where you're not supposed to say a single thing, right? And this was conflated with speaking out against the troops. This stuff really matters. And whenever you abandon it, you are losing so much in untold, how many opinions are going unvoiced or like how many people are not saying

what they really believe. And then all that leads to is just a total and complete catastrophe. Yeah, indeed. Hey guys, so remember how we told you how awesome premium membership was? Well, here I am 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 crystalandsager.com, which you can click on in the show notes. We wanted to get to a very interesting interview. You found this. This is great. With Barack Obama. So President Obama sits for an interview with Jewish Insider, sort of. It was one of these deals, which I always think is kind of bullshit,

where they email the questions. Oh, that's right. Yeah. And then you respond. Totally fake, because obviously someone else can draft your responses. You have time to think about it and parse and come up with the most pablum whatever in response. But look, if the former president wanted to give me an email interview, would I accept it? Probably. OK, it's better than nothing. So he does this bullshit email interview with the Jewish insider and we could throw this tear sheet up on the screen. He doesn't answer a single question about Israel or Iran. So basically, the two biggest, most significant issues in the Middle East right now, and the interviews largely focused on Middle East and foreign policy

and some on him and his relationship with the Jewish community, he just completely does not respond whatsoever. And so here are a few of, here's what they say. They pointed this out in the interview too. They say, in a recent interview with Jewish Insider, his first with a Jewish publication since leaving office in 2017, Obama shied away from discussing tensions with that community in more detail. The former president avoided every question touching on Israel and the Middle East

that we posed to him. Of the 13 questions sent to the former president listed below in full, he provided answers to just five, focusing on the history of black Jewish relations, the capital siege, the state of American politics, and the rise of anti-Semitism, among other topics. Here's a few of the questions that he did not answer. They asked him, in your view, what did the pro-Israel community, and they name check AIPAC in particular, get right? And what did it get wrong during your time in office? No response.

They also asked him on Middle East issues, did you feel less inhibited in your second term? Does that partially explain the U.S. decision in 2016 to abstain on U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlement construction? Important question. No answer. Ask, there was a question about, hey, what's going on with Arab countries, including the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan, normalizing ties with Israel? What do you think is behind that? No answer there. And also, do you feel as if there's any hope for Iran's pro-democracy demonstrators?

No answer there either. Oh, yeah, I remember 2009 well, actually. There are a number of other questions about JCPOA. Zero response on what were really the most substantive questions here. And again, in an interview with a Jewish publication, after what we all just witnessed, the happening in Israel and Gaza, the only time he even says the word Israel is he's talking about something that happened at the Israeli embassy. That's it, a speech that he gave.

That's the whole thing. I mean, what incredible cowardice. Look, this is who he is. And this is, Matt Stoller coined this around Obama, and I believe this. He's the Instagram president, which is that the moment he leaves office, he decides he needs to create him and Michelle, not just his former presidents, into lifestyle brands. Becoming literally had stadium tours, okay? That was one of the best-selling books in the whole country. I don't begrudge the Obamas for their success.

I do. But what it is is that they created themselves into pop culture figure icons. The Netflix series, having their own production houses, $60 million book contract. All of that is created in an image where they can't actually be offensive. They've actually made, they've made it the ultimate jump where if you want to make real money in this country, never talk about politics. You need to go and become some anodyne culture figure. Kelly Clarkson or something like that. Again, that's fine.

It's all good. You know, like Taylor Swift. Like these people are post-political in that everybody across the aisle likes them. Obama found out the hard way it's actually bad for business to be political. So what did they do? Well, he goes and starts hanging out with Richard Branson. That's his very first vacation is with a bunch of billionaires and celebrities on a private island in the Virgin Islands. Once again, look, congrats, man. You really did make it. Obama's life story is actually inspirational. I've been

to the part of Hawaii where he grew up. But the real fascinating thing to me is that the more he has to protect now his hundreds of millions of dollars in interest, the more we reveal himself for who he really is. He's not going to touch anything controversial in this. I actually recently saw this. Obama is imploring the Obama Foundation, the business community in Chicago, in order to speak up against environmental activists in order to build his new presidential library. Oh my God.

It literally, literally saying Obama implores corporate leaders and business community to head back, to head against environmental activists who have concerns about the Obama Foundation and the new Obama presidential library. Can you think of anything more perfect? I mean, that's like the story of his entire presidency. That is the story of his whole presidency. Was like punching left and, you know, demonstrating his moderate conservative bona fides and avoiding taking stands on anything controversial as much as he possibly could. me mad about this is that former President Obama really does occupy a very unique place in American history by dint of his trailblazing status and the trust and rapport that he has

with a very broad swath of the American public at this point that actually goes beyond just the hardcore Democratic base. He is in a position to be an incredible moral leader at a moment in time that is desperately crying out for people to be courageous moral leaders. Of course he's abandoned it. I mean, it's completely obvious here. You can't say a word about Israel during this time when we just saw the mass of what happened in that country and just like the outrageous policies and institutionalized apartheid. You can't say one thing about Palestinian lives. Nothing.

I mean, it's to me, it's an unconscionable level of complete cowardice. You're already a wealthy man. You're already extraordinarily popular. You're already extraordinarily powerful. What are you protecting exactly? That to me is just what's so sad here. I do want to give him credit on one answer though, that I thought was a little bit courageous given the

present moment. It shouldn't be, but it is a little bit courageous given the present moment. And actually again, fits with the other things we were talking about, the free speech concerns that we've been talking about in this show. He gets asked about safeguarding the first amendment and they say, look, the right for its part supports bakers who refuse to make wedding cakes for gay couples, but then they draw the line at boycotts of Israel. The left sees things the other way around. Where do you land on this dynamic? What role, if any, should the state play in keeping the marketplace free of bigotry? And how can it do so while safeguarding First Amendment rights? Typical Obama. He's got a long wind up about, oh,

I see they're concerned. I'm a constitutional law professor is the first thing he says. Yeah, we got it dude, we know. We all know. Everyone knows. But he comes down in the right place. He says, there are obviously limits to free speech, including when it directly threatens someone else. And I think the state has a role to play in keeping people safe. But beyond that, I believe the purpose of free speech is to make sure that we are forced to use argument and reason and words in making our

Democracy work you don't have to be fearful of somebody spouting bad ideas Just don't argue them make the case as to why they're wrong win over adherence That's how things work in a democracy, so I do want to give them a little bit credit for what I thought was a strong Answer that it's sure yeah, you know it's like great. Thank obama better than i think it's like you know this was one of the wouldn't have surprised you know if you take the opposite view no absolutely yeah i mean and i bet you that michelle and all the other people around him were pressuring and otherwise this is the thing he was one of the greatest politicians of the age people get mad when i say that sorry is one of the best

public speakers ever on record in modern American politics. 2008 could have been probably one of the biggest turning points in modern American history if he had taken his presidency in another way, actually ended the wars in Iraq, in Afghanistan, fulfilled that mission. Remember how many people came out and voted for Obama. It was crazy. He won one of the huge majority, white working class voters. Everybody came in for Obama. It was one of those things where within what, a year, it was over and it led to his own presidential downfall in terms of the Tea Party

backlash and more. And it was because of this, I don't know what else to call it. I don't know what to say. Like it's just a very, there's a huge level of cowardice whenever it comes to his inability in order to engage. And what he's decided his legacy will be is identitarian, which is that the first line, Peter Baker wrote this, the first line of his obituary was written the day of his election, first black president. It could have been much longer, right? It could have been five more sentences around changing the country, ending the war and all that. He decided to stick with that and turn himself into a lifestyle brand. It's actually more of a tragedy than it is anything else. He's bought into basically the brand of the totally content free version of identity politics

that's like Jamie Dimon kneeling in support of Black Lives Matter in front of a bank vault. That's a great, yeah. That's, that's kente cloth. That's what he's, because look, it's something that his billionaire buddies are comfortable with. It doesn't challenge them whatsoever. It doesn't challenge him and his family and their position whatsoever. So that's what he's leaned into. Your point is really important, I think, about how when he was elected and it wasn't just that he was elected. Democrats win in a landslide. Right. They come sweep in the office. Super majority in Congress. Super majority in the Senate. It was crazy. You can't even wrap your head around that at this point. Large majority in the House. Right. All the levers of power. And you're at this moment of total crisis and collapse.

And when, what I talked about yesterday in my monologue was this new research about 21 different Western democracies from Thomas Bacchetti and how they've failed to address inequality, even as like, where is the class consciousness? Where is the class war as inequality mounts and mounts and mounts? He points to two exceptions to that failure to combat inequality and the fact that elites are increasingly consolidating, educational elites in particular, in left of center parties. And that's Ireland and Portugal. And what was the main factor that led to those countries diverging and maintaining a class-oriented politics, it was the fact that they had, in the wake of the financial crisis, left parties that seized the mantle of class politics and offered policies that were going to help everyone in the population, the broad working class.

Now, look, America is very unique. It's very distinct from every other country on the planet, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But that was the moment right there in the crash and immediately thereafter to chart a different course for this country, to change things, to use the crisis in the way that Rahm Emanuel, very like in a very sort of like, you know,

it's an uncomfortable thing to say, but yeah, never let a good crisis go to waste. They had the moment right then to remake the direction that America was going, to offer people something that actually made sense, that gave them hope for the future, that gave them a substantive vision they could buy into instead of the like reactionary culture war bullshit hell that we're living through now. And he didn't do it. I mean, there's just, and, and look, he's not like the worst president in history or anything like that, but it was such a critical moment. And he's such an intelligent person that he had the ability to see the turning point. He had the ability to see where things

needed to go and completely failed and continues to just be a profile and moral cowardice. I think he, look, I think he was too smart for his own good. I think there's a lot to be said for that. You actually would much prefer some union wheel and deal and politician at the time because at least you could just very clearly cut. The book behind me, Freedom from Fear, one of my favorite books, is exactly about a purely non-ideological man. His name was Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Most people remember him as the progressive. No, he didn't believe in any of that. And that's fine. He just recognized this is what needs to be done in order to save this country. He said, or one of his advisors said at the time, he'll be the last president of the United States if he fails. I still believe that to be true. But speaking of class politics, we've got some fun news. You can see a great name there on the screen. Jeff Bezos, let's go to this one. Let's a great name there on the screen. Jeff Bezos. Let's go to this one. Let's put it up there on the screen. Jeff Bezos will fly aboard Blue Origin's first human trip to space.

So this happens shortly after he will be stepping down as CEO of Amazon. He'll be taking that trip to space next month. With the rocket company be founded two decades ago basis is actually always been obsessed with space it's something i learned uh... when reading a lot about him he's actually going with his brother now look there's a lot to be said here but i think what it actually comes down to is this which is that this is an obscene display not because i'd judge bet jeff bezos for having a rocket company,

but because what do we know? What we recently reported in our last week at Rising with Ryan Grim, which is that the senator from Washington, Maria Cantwell, actually had specific appropriations written into the bill in order to benefit Jeff Bezos' company, Blue Origin, and the exact money that NASA was unable to get their hands on. So let's put that in correct context. Bezos weaponizes his clout in the state of Washington with his ownership of Amazon, he's the world's richest man, his ownership of the Washington Post,

so he can guarantee some sort of political benefit and all that, in order to leverage additional billions of dollars of funds to his new space company, or his space company, which is not even nearly as successful as SpaceX, by the way. All of that. In the billionaire spaceship competition he's losing. Within the space realm, he's a loser. And with all of that, so he can take a little joyride to space. I'm not saying he didn't pump billions of dollars of his own money into all that. And I think he actually has done a lot of benefit whenever it

comes to space exploration, something I'm a passionate believer in. But whenever you see it so clearly of, I'm going to space with my brother, a certain level of Bezos and of Amazon is about his vanity. That's it. And vanity projects, when you're worth a hundred and something, whatever, billion, 170 billion or whatever it is right now, they have consequences for the rest of us. Those are taxpayer dollars. I'm not like a deficit hawk. And if funding Blue Origin was going to be exponentially greater for America, go for it. But that's not what's happening here.

For a bunch of luxury space travel for fellow billionaires. So he can go to space. I think it's wrong. We're basically funding go to space. Congratulations. I think it's wrong. We're basically funding his little trip to space. I think it's completely wrong. He released a very highly cringe Instagram video with his brother because he invited his brother to go along with him, and they have this whole phony setup, like we're seeing live the moment when he asked his brother to go,

which of course, I mean, it's all right. Maybe it was. I don't know. All right. I don't want. Okay, whatever. But what he says about why he wants to go to space, he predicts that he'll be a new man after his journey. Quote, it changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity.

It's one earth. I want to go on this flight because it's the thing I've wanted to do all my life. That last part rings really true. Like, I'm going to go because I want to go. But his idea of, like, connecting with humanity, you, like, ask the workers,

how about you connect with humanity by going and talking to some workers in your warehouses or delivery drivers? How about you connect with humanity that way? The other thing is, I wanted to ask you about this. Yes. This seems a little bit fake because if you read the details of what's the thing called Blue Origin? Blue Origin.

What it actually does, it goes up to like the technical lowest point that's considered space and hangs out there for a couple minutes and then comes back. Yeah, that's what billionaire travel mostly is. Because I think for laymen like me that don't really pay attention to this stuff, when you say space travel, you think of something very different. You think of orbiting or going. No, they just literally go up to the lowest point that can technically be considered space, experience weightlessness, and come back down.

So I also feel like the whole thing is a little bit fake and a little bit different than what people would expect. It's hokey in that, look, the billionaire, the people who are going to pay $35 million a seat, like, that's what they're paying for. And, look, I mean, if I had the money, I would do it, too. I think that's awesome. Would you? Oh, 100%. In order to see the curvature of the Earth and the blue of the ocean, shoot me up, okay?

I'm good at that. I'm ready. But, yeah, look, if I had to choose, I would much choose like lower Earth orbit or interplanetary space. That's something that we don't have to go all the way down. But you're correct in that it is a cheater's definition in my opinion of that. But you actually found and we'll tie in the actual element of this. When you put this all together, how did Bezos get his wealth? Let's put this up there, Ryan Cooper's tweet, which is that Amazon allotted 11 minutes and 15 seconds for two drivers to transport a 59-part ottoman

to a customer's room of choice, unpack it, and assemble it. Now, that's really important because, as Ryan Cooper shows, you can actually see the serious incident per 100 full-time employee equivalents at Amazon across 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. Amazon warehouses there on the left and non-Amazon warehouses there on the right, which is that the brutal efficiency of this company, once again, look, Amazon is awesome. These leather things which are on the desk, I got them overnight. That's crazy. They were

literally able, I clicked order. The next morning, I was able, I woke up and the lady was right there giving it to me. It was like 5.30 or whatever in the morning. That's insane. That's actually like a crazy development, but this is the price. And it's not day one anymore. You know, at Amazon, they have this mantra called always day one, which is that it's like, it's always there, but it's not like, we have to admit this. You're worth personally over a hundred billion dollars. You're a trillion dollar company. And one of the things that we discovered in the industrial age is that whenever you saw the rise of industrialization, obviously we had workers that were treated horrifically, but actually what happened is that unionization made both the companies with

mega profit margins stronger in the long run because of unionization, which then created middle-class wealth in towns like Bethlehem and more, which created the conditions for those towns to thrive for decades, middle-class livelihood and stable corporate governance. These are two very, very good things, But Amazon has virulently remained anti-union. They will remain that way. Probably it's like within their ethos. They would rather, like what they'll do is they'll raise pay to like $17 an hour or whatever. But at the end of the day, you've only got 11 minutes and 15 seconds to transport a 59-part ottoman to a room of choice, unpack, and assemble it. And oh, I just saw Walmart issued all of its employees free Samsung phones.

And just by the way, all those phones, they'll track you all the time. Everywhere that you are. So enjoy your free phone. I mean, I don't know what to say. Well, something about our mats, going back to getting our mats overnight. Like, and this is something that Kyle always says. He's probably said it publicly. He's definitely said it to me.

He's like, I would like to check the box that's like, I'll get it a day later. If you can promise me that no driver is going to have to like shit in a bag or, you know, warehouse workers be exploited and their bodies ground down to a pulp. I'll wait a day on my order. I'll pay a little extra on my order to make sure that that doesn't have to be the case. And so the fact is, this is the end result of late stage capitalism in America, where the only thing that matters is profit margins. The only thing that matters is bigger, bigger, bigger. The only thing that matters is how much money you ultimately make. And so the Vice article is about they have this

new service that they're sort of piloting, where now your delivery drivers, not only do you have this like already totally brutal and exploitative job, but you also are now being asked to unload, deliver and unpack and assemble heavy furniture pieces. They received no training on how to do this. Vice actually has the training video, quote unquote. And it's just like these two people with robotic voices being like, ask the customer, did they like your service? That's it. That's the training. You guys have all put furniture together. Some of you may be good at it.

Some of you may not be good at it. I'm not particularly good at it. It would take me a freaking long time. So the fact that they're just pushing this on these drivers with, of course, outrageously, wildly inaccurate estimates of how long the time is going to take. And again, these drivers, they face severe consequences up to and including losing their job if they don't meet the insane metrics that Amazon sets for them. So they have another example here. Drivers were allocated less than three minutes and 44 seconds for two drivers to transport a king-size Casper mattress.

Those are the ones that are all folded up and you have to take them out and whatever. To their customer's room of choice, unpack it and install it. Mattress weighed 104 pounds. Three minutes. You get to do that. Okay, another driver had less than seven minutes to deliver and assemble a 234 pound dining table That's what they're asking these workers to do crazy totally is ready totally insane and again This you can see this in the overall stats the number of workplace injuries that Amazon sustains versus their competitors.

It's absolutely brutal. And so to bring it all back around, Jeff Bezos is going to connect with humanity by going to space. I hope he connects with his workers from space as well. Wow. You guys must really like listening to our voices because here I am again, asking you to become a premium member at crystalandsaug.com so you don't have to hear these pleas. And as annoying as I know this is, it's not a Viagra commercial like you're going to see on cable news. So go ahead and count your lucky stars. As you're about to notice, the free show does not include the discussion

after each of our monologues, which is one of our premium benefits. Help us beat the corporate media today. Get access to the full show. Take care, guys. At the same time, Crystal, what are your breaking points today? Well, a shocking new video is making the rounds on social media. First, let me give you a little bit of background here. Miners at Warrior Met Coal in Alabama, they've been on strike over unfair labor practices for months now. 1,100 workers have been protesting low wages and subpar benefits

since early April. What essentially happened is these workers agreed to take a huge pay cut a few years back when the previous company called Walter Energy filed for bankruptcy. The new company that emerged from bankruptcy has a bunch of private equity owners, along with the old CEO and owner of Walter Energy. But workers, they've been left out of the newfound prosperity. According to the miners, all they're really asking for is to get back to the pay that they were earning five years ago. They've been met with every strike-breaking tactic in the book, from hired thugs to drone surveillance to scab labor. But what I'm about to show you represents a shocking escalation.

In two separate instances, picketing miners and their supporters have been intentionally struck by cars. Take a look at this. You can see one of those instances here in which a UMWA representative from West Virginia is hit by a boss's pickup truck as he attempts to walk across the road to a picket line. Absolutely outrageous how they think they can operate with total impunity and be protected by a thoroughly bought and corrupted political system. By the way, for anyone who supports these miners and wants to support them financially, I'm posting a link to their strike fund in the description box for this video so you can back them there. It has been tough times for these men and women and for their families.

Whatever support and solidarity you can provide would go a long way. So while these miners have gone all in on a visible, declared public strike, there's some signs that there are a whole lot of workers across the country right now engaging in their own low-key general strike after bearing the brunt of pandemic era death and exploitation, silent, unspoken, uncoordinated collective action that is reshaping the face of the labor market. It's actually all very passive-aggressive. So the first sign was when bosses started complaining about how they couldn't find any workers to come back to their crappy low-wage jobs. A rash of articles and social media posts

complained that the $300 unemployment benefit was keeping workers lazy and at home, rather than where they belong, flipping burgers for $7.25 per hour, or waiting tables and being harassed for even less. How dare working class people consider an option other than persisting in low paying jobs for employers who treat them as disposable. Next, at the higher end of the labor market, we started hearing increasing demands from CEOs that their white collar workers return to the office or else they wouldn't be considered good little employees any longer. Listen, guys, it's nice that you were able to see your kids and shit during the pandemic, but now we need your butts back in your cubicle seats

so we can make sure nothing exists in your life except for work. The CEO of WeWork made this memorable contribution, arguing that you can sort the wheat from the chaff in your company by seeing who wants to come back to the office. Those who want to come back should be considered more engaged, while, quote, those who are least engaged are very comfortable working from home. Now, white-collar workers, they're not just accepting this attitude, though. According to FlexJobs, 58 percent of workers who did their jobs remotely during the pandemic said they would

absolutely look for a new job if they cannot continue their remote work arrangements. We've also seen a huge jump in the number of workers who are considering job changes, who have already quit, or who are planning to move to a less stressful and lower-cost part of the country, all with the goal of shifting the work-life balance back in the direction of life. And more data just continues to pour in. A new column by Neil Irwin of the New York Times argues that workers are beginning to gain something that they haven't had in a long time over employers. A tiny little bit of leverage.

I don't want to overstate things here, but there are some interesting signs. The share of job postings that say no experience necessary, that is shot up by two-thirds, indicating that employers are in less of a position to be choosy. The dollar amount that's necessary to lure a non-college-educated worker into the workforce has jumped up almost $10,000 since 2019. Half of employers who have largely blue-collar workforces are finding it difficult to retain their employees. That's a spike of 19%. So to sum it up, something is happening up and down the income scale. People got a little bit of money in their accounts from unemployment checks, child tax credits, and direct stimulus.

They had a year that one way or another turned their lives upside down and gave them also a chance to reassess. Those with the money and luxury of reordering their priorities are considering that maybe work doesn't have to be the sole locus of their identity. But even those who are living paycheck to paycheck are seeking new lines of work, moving away from the brutal frontline tasks that were so hard hit during the coronavirus. A backlash to this teeny tiny flex of worker power is, of course, already well underway. The right wing is all in on trying to make unemployment more brutal and terrifying to force workers back in exploitative situations. The Biden administration seemingly embracing some of this framing. FDR talk has gone along with Biden's plans for new social spending. The $15 minimum wage and the pro-union, pro-act have completely disappeared from sight. The pro-corporate side, they only know how to answer labor shortages

with punishment and sticks. It's all unemployment cuts and work requirements and cultural shame and stigma. The left response is to be happy, of course, about any marginal improvement in labor market conditions while recognizing that the big business cycle may occasionally give it, but mostly the business cycle take it away. Any modest gains for workers can be immediately erased by the next Wall Street created crash or bubble. Without a clear list of demands and policy wins, slight short-term improvements will be immediately lost to decades of grinding exploitation. But it's all interesting. Kind of provocative, isn't it? To see the impact of a pandemic-induced collective action happening organically across classes and industries. Now imagine if that action became intentional, became coordinated in

an actual general strike, if the demands were made clear, the adversarial nature of the action explicit. Just like the miners, there'd be no guarantees and you'd be in for a whole lot of abuse. The media, of course, would ignore what's going on for as long as they possibly could. Then they demonize it. The corporate bosses would lash out in ways that might be a little more sophisticated, but would amount to the same intent as hitting workers with cars to scare the next one stepping out of line.

For now, solidarity to these miners. Don't let up the pressure and the attention, and I am all in on the passive-aggressive general strike. The gains may be small, and they are likely temporary,

but at least they offer a glimpse of what's possible. And Sagar, we keep getting... It's me again, guys. We hope that you're loving the show. If you have any questions, you know where you can ask them. Go to crystalandsagar.com, become a premium member, and then you'll get to participate in weekly Ask Me Anything.

The link is in the show notes. What are you doing for your breaking points? Well, you guys know I love UFOs. And now that you, our fans, are the only people who are my boss, it means I can talk about it as much as I want. And luckily, while we were off, a major development in the UFO world occurred with the Pentagon, preemptively trying to get ahead of what looks to be a stunning report due in the next several weeks, analyzing its own data regarding the UFO phenomenon. Now, the report is due out for members of Congress, but because I used to cover the

Pentagon, I know their little tricks. The Pentagon hates Congress because it legally has to tell them all their secrets, at least ostensibly, and that usually means that those secrets, at least some, become public. Therefore, when you know something is about to come out, and Congress is going to leak it, what do you do? You leak it yourself on the condition that the people that you leak it to write the story the way that it's best for you and serves your interests. That's exactly what happened Friday with the New York Times, where the headline blared, quote, government finds no evidence aerial sightings were alien spacecraft. Oh, wow. That's huge news, right? They ruled out aliens for UFOs?

Yeah. They forgot to add this part, quote, but they still cannot explain the unusual movements that have mystified scientists and the military. Oh, so basically they have no evidence it's aliens and no evidence that it's not. Critically within the story, the forthcoming UFO report concludes that some of the UFO sightings by U.S. military aircraft have no discernible human explanation. Furthermore, they rule out, at least for now, something even more important, that the technology,

at least according to them, is not top secret US government technology. And then if you read even further, you get this bombshell line, quote, one possible explanation that the phenomena could be weather balloons or other research balloons does not hold up in all cases. The official said, because of changes in wind speed at the times of some of the interactions. So this is huge. The weather balloon explanation has been a number one response from the professional debunkers. And now you have the military itself saying, nope, according to the data, that's not it. But still, that's not everything.

All of this leads to an important conclusion. The Pentagon is gaslighting the media into reporting that they have found no evidence of aliens, when in reality, the news is that they have evidence that the phenomena they have encountered are not human and that they are themselves just ruled out the most possible conventional explanations. More so, the Pentagon is doing its best to avoid admitting to the American people the most basic thing. They have no idea what UFOs are. Now, personally, I'm okay with that. But because so much of their authority rests upon convincing people otherwise,

they are pointing the media in the opposite direction, telling reporters there is, quote, worry among intel officials that China or Russia could be experimenting with hypersonic technology. Now, again, this is simply more CYA from the Pentagon. They are pointing towards a hypothesis which has no evidence to back it up, but fits conveniently within their narrative. If it's a China or Russia problem, well, then, of course, they can call Congress. They can say, hey, we need more money or we need more contracts in order to keep up. I've said before, this is not a PSYOP created to get more funding in the first place, but the PSYOP could be trying to deal with the forced disclosure of UFOs and channel it in a direction that they know best. Overall, I'm coming and covering this to reveal something that I've

learned when reporting on foreign policy for my entire professional life. The media are water carriers for the defense industrial complex. And on the subject of UFOs, the situation is not different. They wrote basically what the Pentagon wanted them to. And it's not a coincidence that it was the exact same headline from CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times. It's manufacturing consent. It's worse than having an agenda. It's simply being uninformed and then doing what the people who control information flow want you

to do. The problem itself is a deep lack of curiosity. The state of our political press today is such that they are more interested in litigating which member of Congress is for a January 6th commission than rather than interrogating a government report on whether there may be alien life on this planet. Now look, maybe there's no aliens. I have no idea. What I do know is that the government has covered up the UFO phenomenon since the beginning. The only reason we are as far as we are today is because of the dogged work of journalists like George Knapp and Jeremy Corbell, and because of whistleblowers from inside, like Luis Elizondo, Christopher Mellon, pressuring elected representatives to force the hand of the government machine. And I think, Crystal, that it was very important.

Joining us now, the New York Times' Ben Smith, media columnist there for The Grey Lady. It's good to see you, Ben. Thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me congrats on the new show pretty yeah that's why we wanted to have you want i actually remember one of my favorite columns part of the thing actually inspired this was about the rise of new media it was one of the second or third ones they you actually did there in the times around about how people who are newly famous are famous to you so to speak like

we have new rise of internet celebrities, not necessarily generally known to the public, but very well known to a select group. And at the same time, so we have media outlets like ours, you also have the thriving, really, of your own paper. What do you think that the juxtaposition of those two tell us about the media story that we're in right now? Yeah, I mean, I guess, as you described it, there are two big things going on. One is that, like, as in every, at least every digital industry,

the biggest things are getting bigger, you know, Google and Facebook. And then, you know, on a much smaller scale in the news business, the New York Times, Disney and Netflix. I mean, and it's, you know, what used to be a landscape in news of, you know, dozens and dozens of big metropolitan newspapers is now, um, this, you know, is now increasingly just a couple of giant players. And then almost inevitably at the same time,

lots of new small stuff is, is springing up in the cracks in the sidewalk and people, there's a new technical ability, which you are doing, to reach an audience directly and charge them. What is the assessment or analysis or feeling within those larger organizations? And what is the term of art you prefer? Elite media, legacy media, corporate media?

You probably don't know corporate media, but I would be interested to know your term of art for that space that we're talking about. What is the assessment and feeling there about the rise of people on Substack, platforms like ours, other institutions that are sort of coming from the grassroots up? Is there awareness of it? Is there nervousness about it? Is there condescension, contempt towards it? What's your assessment there? Well, for my own purposes, I would say mostly contempt. Yes, just speaking personally. Right.

Personally, yeah. No, I mean, honestly, these big institutions are doing really well. Like, I don't think there's any sense at the Washington Post or the Times of sort of panic about Substack, right? I mean, these institutions are really thriving using the same kind of digital subscription businesses. I mean, I think the folks who are panicked are the kind of medium-sized players, the regional newspapers, the kind of medium-sized websites

that are seeing on one hand that, you know, where their most successful employees are, you know, either going to go work somewhere really big or go out, strike out on their own. And I think it's very hard to hold those kind of like middle spaces right now. I mean, I do think in the big newsrooms, there is a real tension around, essentially, on one hand, there's this new push for kind of egalitarianism through the labor movement and for a sense that everything, that salaries in particular should be, and work, you know, nobody should be working too much harder than anybody else. Nobody should be paid that much more than anybody else.

And then on the other, there is just this reality that somebody who is more of a star, whether it's because they work harder, because they are more popular for whatever reason, can just leave and make way more money. And so Ben, this is what I'm curious from your perspective, which is that, is this good or bad for journalism? Because, look, I mean, we'll be honest, like, in terms of news gathering and all that, I haven't seen anybody do it yet quite the right way from a subscription model.

So I know that there's a new substack, I believe, correspondent at the White House who now has a hard pass, who has a substack, Hunter Walker, formerly of Yahoo News. but in turn it was brand new i think literally the road is that it's a really strong daily poster there's a few elements of actual news gathering and reporting but few and far between amongst many of the sub-sac literati or even frankly among shows like ourselves so what do you think that means for the future of actual journalism,

which is something I came up in and care a lot about? Well, I mean, first of all, I'd say, you know, opinion is a form of actual journalism. Don't sell yourself short. Interviews, you know, like this one. Your utter contempt for us aside. It's not reporting, the kind of reporting that takes a while and might not pay off, that isn't going to generate an email every day, that isn't necessarily going to tell the audience what they want to hear every day, doesn't fit so easily inside this kind of subscription model and does,

you know, is the core, I think, right now of what makes a place like the New York Times essential to subscribe to. It's not that it'll tell you what happened yesterday. It's that it'll have huge revelations about key stories. Our strategy has been to make sure some segment of our audience hates us every day. So sort of like equal opportunity in that way. Ben, I also wanted to ask you about New York City politics, because you came up in that world, better than almost anyone. What's kind of your assessment of where the New York City mayoral race is right now? And I also want to ask you in a minute about your column about Anthony Weiner, which is quite fascinating, too. I mean, you know, the interesting thing is that there is this sense, I think, particularly among black New Yorkers who are a huge part of the Democratic primary electorate, that safety is the key, is the biggest issue. That shootings

are way up, that there's a sense in Manhattan at least of a disorder that comes from a lot of offices still being abandoned. So a lot of the, I guess, more white liberal Manhattan voters feel it there. And so a race that everybody thought a year ago was going to be about police reform and about kind of pushing the progressive envelope is about, has become a race about, you know, about cracking down on guns and the leading candidate, an ex-cop who's promising a sort of, you know, reformist law and order platform. And it was fascinating to me, Ben, I remember your column on Andrew Yang. What did you, there was a lot of original takes around Yang coming in, the outsider candidate and more. He's become probably more conventional as the race, as the course has moved on within the race from a media perspective, but also just the way that you've observed him. What do you make of his candidacy? And what do you think it actually means to New York City politics? Like, is it the

actual death of the machine or is the machine actually still pretty powerful in the end? The death of the machine was like 30 years ago. People talk about machines and there are places where they matter, but the machine hasn't really elected a mayor, maybe since David Dinkins, but who also had a lot of other stuff going on in his favor. And so so I think, yeah, I mean, you know, yeah, I mean, in some ways, you know, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg have been mayor for most of the last 20 years. And so the last 30 years. And so the notion of kind of a charismatic outsider is kind of more in keeping with the way New York is run than the notion of kind of a hacky Democrat. But yeah, I mean, I think Yang's appeal was there's this sense that the city's coming back,

that there's this broad sense of optimism that is competing with a freak out about crime. And I think he sort of speaks to that. But also part of the problem is, you know, his big idea is printing money and giving it away. The city can't print money. The constraints of local policy and a kind of administrative job with a balanced budget are just narrow. Like there's not, there's not that much space for innovation. There's a lot of space for kind of really, really good administration. And so I think there's a sense that voters are looking for that. And Yang has no experience. Yeah. And then do you see this as kind of a classic like left in disarray type of a narrative, too, because you had Diane Morales positioned herself as sort of like the leftiest

candidate in the race. And now that campaign seems to have imploded. Her staff workers are abandoning her. They wanted to form a union. They marched on her own headquarters. Then old interviews emerge, old by which I mean like a year ago, in which she's backing Cuomo over Cynthia Nixon and embracing a lot of not very progressive policies. Scott Stringer hit by two different sexual harassment or sexual assault allegations, both of which I would say, you know, nobody knows what happened there. But there are some holes, significant holes in the stories of both of the women making these allegations. But that didn't stop the progressive movement from completely abandoning him. Now you have an attempt to coalesce around Maya Wiley, but it's so late in the game at this point where if you had had one candidate who was like the clear choice of the left, do you think that they might have had a fighting shot at actually winning the mayoral race? Or are these safety concerns just too primary for that to have even worked out in

this cycle? I think it's a good question. I mean, I think if AOC had run, you know, would she be winning right now? I think, I don't know. I mean, I think Maya Wiley is a pretty strong candidate. There is this, you know, Diane Morales' campaign collapsed just in the most spectacular fashion I've ever seen, right? It was really just devoured itself. And I think really not only did it, you know, destroy this kind of that corner of the left's chances in this race, but I think made the sort of whole New York political universe at least think, wow, these people can't, you know, you can't let them near your campaign, right? Like this sort of internal disarray that was just kind of spectacular to watch. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, although I think a lot of those staffers, at least some of them moved over to the Wiley campaign, which is interesting too.

You have a great and fascinating column up right now about Anthony Weiner. We can actually throw that tear sheet up on the screen. What made you want to write about him? What was it that you wanted to dig into or think about with Anthony Weiner? I mean, you know, partly I'm just obsessed with the mayor's race, honestly, and was looking for an excuse to write about it. But he's a guy, you know, I've covered him for years, played a minor role in his political collapse. And I think that when you get, you know, when you're at the bottom of the media pile, you do develop an interesting perspective on media. I mean, he's a guy whose career I don't think you can rehabilitate him.

He's a convicted sex offender. And yet also, on the other hand, you know, he went, unlike a lot of people who've been in Twitter jail, he was in federal prison for 18 months. And so there's just this question, what do you do with somebody like that? That kind of interests me. Oh, it's fascinating. Well, we encourage everybody to go and read it.

Ben, we really appreciate you joining us our first week here at Breaking Points. Thanks very much. Thanks, Ben. Congratulations. Good to see you. Thanks, Ben. Appreciate it. Thanks, everybody, for watching Breaking Points.

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And I am so, so excited. Thank you all to the premium members, lifetime members. Can I also just say, premium members yesterday got a little treat with a little bonus outtake. Unintentional bonus outtake of yours, which they seem to really enjoy. You could hurt me first. Yeah, you guys are really pretty. You want to know the behind-the-scenes magic? It's me being like, God damn it! I mean, normally we're perfect.

That was just a really rare instance where we weren't absolutely perfect on the first date. But yeah. Yeah, all right. So congratulations. Welcome to what it really looks like back here whenever the cameras turn off. We appreciate you guys so much.

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go ahead and leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps other people find the show. As always, a special thank you to Supercast for powering our premium membership. If you want to find out more, go to crystalandsager.com. and never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, no, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car

and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. This Pride Month, we are not just celebrating. We're fighting back. I'm George M. Johnson, author of the most banned book in America. On my podcast, Fighting Words, I sit down with voices that spark resistance and inspire change.

This year, we are showing up and showing out. You need people being like, no, you're not what you tell us what to do. This regime is coming down on us. And I don't want to just survive. I want to thrive. Fighting Words is coming down on us, and I don't want to just survive. I want to thrive. Fighting Words is where courage meets conversation. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios.

Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast.