Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #11: Political Corruption, Trump Comments. Worker Polling, and More!

Episode Date: November 6, 2021

Krystal and Saagar talk about corruption in American politics, Trump's comments about Israel, polling on the worker strikes, and more!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/Daily Poster: https://www.dailyposter.com/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. is irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week

early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process.

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David Sirota, the founder and editor of The Daily Poster. He joins us now. David, it's good to see you, man. Thanks for joining us. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. So David, you got a new piece that we wanted to highlight here. Let's put it up there on the screen, which is that the democracy crisis that is never discussed. What is the argument you're trying to make here, David? Look, we hear a lot about January 6th. We hear a lot in the media about the Republican effort to restrict voting rights in some of the states in the country. What we don't hear a lot about in the discourse, in the conversation, is the other crisis that's humming underneath the American politics, the other democracy crisis,

which is what people want versus what the government is actually doing. And I think the reconciliation bill debate is almost a perfect example of that. If you take a look at what the Democrats in Congress have been cutting out of their reconciliation bill. It almost perfectly matches up with exactly what the public is telling pollsters it most wants out of that bill. The best example of that is the most popular potential initiative in the reconciliation bill is the proposal to allow Medicare to finally be able to negotiate lower drug prices across the board. That provision is the provision that has been held up from being added into the bill. It has been watered down. It was threatened to be taken out for weeks and weeks and weeks. It was ultimately hollowed out. I mean, the provision

that they're now talking about putting in there is the most absolute minimal version of that provision, and it barely got in. And if you go through all of the other things that have been taken out of this bill from the beginning, what you see is it matches up almost perfectly with exactly what the public says it wants, paid leave, an expansion of Medicare. Look at taxes. Most of the serious proposals, not all, but most of the serious proposals to tax billionaires and the super rich have been watered down or taken out of this bill. Even Joe Biden's pollsters have said that this is the single most popular set of provisions, taxing the wealthy, out of all the 30 economic proposals that they tested. So again, what we're seeing here is the reconciliation

bill debate is an almost perfect example of how Congress is doing exactly the opposite of what the public says it wants. And David, one of the things that you said last time, I think which really resonated with people, was about Trump and about where exactly people's misfaith in government comes from. Well, give us this, you know, your take on this in the context of what happened in Virginia. Sure. I mean, I think, look, Virginia didn't give voters all that much of a real choice. I mean, you had on one side, you had the DNC's corporate money man, Terry McAuliffe. On the other side, you had the Republican former CEO of the Carlyle Group. I mean, this is the this is the classic, you know, worst of all worlds kind of choice.

And at the same time, you had the Democrats not delivering, at least not yet, its reconciliation bill, direct help to people. You've had headline after headline after headline for months about the Democrats in Congress and Joe Biden essentially abandoning their most popular proposals. So then everyone wakes up and says, how did Virginia go to the Republicans? And the answer should be obvious. When the Democrats do not use their power to deliver real help to people, guess what? People are willing to vote for the other party. What we see at election after election after election is that voters keep voting for change, any kind of change.

And when they don't get change, they keep voting again for change. So that's why I think you see these elections swing back and forth. It's not necessarily a Republican vote or a Democratic vote. It is a change vote from a population that wants change and is not getting it. And then finally, David, you know, we've seen different developments here around the SALT tax. Bernie Sanders said that he was going to vote against it. There's been some movement on that whatsoever. How do you expect that one to shake out? The fact that they're willing to go so to the bat for that, but as you said, all of the provisions are being taken out that people generally support?

I mean, it's such a good example. I mean, the SALT, the state and local tax debate, where a full repeal, let's be clear, a full repeal is probably the single most regressive tax policy that you can pass. Most of the benefits of a full repeal of that cap on how much people can write off of their state and local taxes, a full repeal of that is a most of the benefits go to the richest 1%. And you've seen the Democrats from affluent blue state districts demanding that that be put into the bill. Demanding that while, for instance, a full Medicare expansion apparently is, quote, too

expensive, right? They're talking about spending $400, $500, $600 billion on a repeal of these caps. Again, a huge gift to the wealthy. The way I see it working out is, look, you've seen Bob Menendez just yesterday, the New Jersey senator, not some great progressive. Even he came out and said, essentially, look, a full repeal is ridiculous. It would just simply enrich the millionaires. And he's from New Jersey, where a lot of those districts, those members of Congress are pushing

this. So I think what you're going to end up seeing is a raise of the cap, certain levels of income moving up so that people under that income threshold can take advantage of it. But a cap on, I think it's, you know, it might be 400,000, 500,000, which I think is probably still too high, but at least not allowing, you know, hundred millionaires and billionaires to be able to write off their entire, you know, mansions and estates in this. I think that's where this is headed. Well, we'll see how it all shakes out, David. Really appreciate your reporting. Of course, we're in partnership with you and we've given our link to our premium subscribers there

for a discount to your yearly subscription. Very proud of that. And we really appreciate you joining us, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much. Absolutely. And we will see you all later. Some really interesting news that we have been following from the very beginning. Senator Richard Burr, you guys might recall, he's the Republican senator from North Carolina. Well, it was exposed in 2020 that in February of 2020, right before COVID was about to hit, that Senator Burr made quite a bit of a, you know, tidy little stock profit

selling right before the large market sell-off. It was revealed that he had what was privy to non-public information classified briefings at the time in terms of coronavirus that was about to hit the United States and obviously cause a big stock market crash, which it did in March of 2020. Well, there's been some even more investigation here. Let's put this up there on the screen. The SEC says that Senator Richard Burr had material non-public information with regards to the COVID economic impact. But here's the crazy part. After Burr dumped his stock, he called his brother-in-law. His brother-in-law then called his stockbroker

the very next minute. So what does that tell us, Crystal? That's ProPublica report reveals that from the SEC, that the senator had material non-public information about the coming pandemic, and then his brother-in-law dumped the stock right before the big crash in March of 2020. And the amazing part here, again, is that him and his brother-in-law only spoke for 50 seconds. And after that 50-second call, whatever happened the very next minute, the man is calling his stockbroker and getting him to go ahead and sell his stocks to also get a very tidy profit. Imagine that. So look, doesn't take a genius to figure out what was going on here. And it's just really what is depressing is why does it take like two years

in order to figure this out? This has been almost two years that this information has been available and slow. Everybody knew what happened the moment that it was even reported in terms of the stock trades. And now the more material that comes out, the shadier it looks. Recall that Senator Burr actually had his, I think his phone seized by the FBI and all of that. But, you know, no movement there in terms of the Department of Justice. So

it just goes to show about how much of a crapshoot it is to actually try and hold these people to account, despite the fact that everybody looking at this knows exactly what happened. It's blatantly obvious he denies wrongdoing, et cetera, et cetera. The SEC also revealed they have an ongoing insider trading investigation going on into both Burr and the brother-in-law. So, again, just to go through the timeline, okay, he receives material non-public information. He dumps $1.6 million worth of stock. Then he calls the brother-in-law, talks for 50 seconds, and then the brother-in-law immediately calls his broker and also dumps a bunch of his stock. And then, lo and behold, shortly thereafter, weeks later, market crashes. They both, of course, escape unscathed.

The part that made the Burr aspect even worse is that while privately he clearly knew that the shit was about to hit the fan. Publicly, he was saying to his constituents and to the American people, we've got this handled. This is no big deal. We're going to be fine. All of these things. So privately, he's telling at least one of his loved ones what's really going on and what market moves he needs to make to make sure that he escapes unscathed and wildly misleading his own constituents. Disgusting behavior. And of course, this fits into a broader picture that we've been talking about a lot here of the endemic corruption at the Fed, in the judiciary, and certainly throughout Congress. The fact that members of Congress can hold and trade stocks while they are actively engaged

in receiving these briefings and crafting legislation that has a direct impact on the market is totally freaking insane. It is insane. Even making this trade, forget about the insider trading and having the knowledge and all,

just having these stocks and making the trade, that should be totally illegal. I mean, in any sane world, that in and of itself would be completely illegal. So this just exposes one more time. We talked about recently how there's people on TikTok who are just trading stocks based on what members of Congress are doing. Amazing. Because of things like this. Yeah, there's no faith in the system. How dark is that? That they just assume, because they're not stupid, that Nancy Pelosi and Richard Burr and all the rest of them

are the moves that they're making with their stock portfolio, that they may have some little bit of insight into what's actually going on is why they're making those moves. Yeah, and that's what it is. Look, we have covered so many of these. Federal Reserve has now banned stocks. Congress needs to ban stocks tomorrow in terms of active trading for all these people and their family members. That's actually something that Dave Portnoy was one of those people who raised that. I would love for this to gain

some real juice in the actual electorate because people know the system is rigged. They know it's corrupt. But here it is, call by call, millions of dollars made while you and your family, try and think back to that time. How many people lost so much value in their 401k or whatever? Try and think back to the terror. I mean, would have been really nice, right? In order to make sure that you would have had that type of information and that type of security whenever your business closed or whenever you lost your job. That's what Senator Burr had. And that's not right. And how many more Senator Burrs are there? How many Paul Pelosi's, Nancy Pelosi's, Mark Warner's, all these other people have made use of their office in order to personally enrich themselves while supposedly benefiting you? It's outrageous. Disgraceful. Utterly disgraceful. So there you go. State of the corruption today.

Enjoy the day, guys. We'll have more for you later. Fascinating moment from an obscure interview that Donald Trump recently did on a conservative radio show where he says quite a few inflammatory things about Israel. Let's take a listen. Well, you know, the biggest change I've seen in Congress is Israel literally owned Congress. You understand that, 10 years ago, 15 years ago. And it was so powerful. It was so powerful. And today it's almost the opposite. You have between AOC and Omar and these people that hate Israel. They hate it with a passion. They're controlling Congress. And Israel is not a force in Congress anymore. I mean, it's just amazing. I've never seen such a change.

And we're not talking about over a very long period of time. But I think you know exactly what I what I'm saying. They had such power, Israel had such power, and rightfully, over Congress, and now it doesn't. It's incredible, actually. That is something else. I saw somebody who was like, what dimension of chess is this? Yeah, this is like 9D chess. It's fascinating. He goes, Israel literally owns Congress. He goes, but right, so he's like defending it.

And he's like, and now it's bad that they don't. That they don't literally own Congress. Acknowledging a truth which is, you know, well, acknowledging something which has been very politically controversial to say, and then saying that actually that was bad, and saying that AOC and all of them are bad for not being owned by Israel. That seems like kind of a good thing to not be owned by a foreign country. This is always the thing about Trump. He's always just willing to just go. For example, I remember this on the Supreme Court

thing. They would, the right would hide for a long time on abortion and more behind like textual, whatever, you know, all of these like, Oh, you know, read the constitution. Really? All the voters cared about is they're like, we want pro-life judges, but nobody's ever said that before. That was the stunning thing about Trump. He was the first candidate to just be like, I'm only going to do pro-life judges. And the evangelicals were like, finally. Like, he just said it. There's no more, you know, all of this.

And that's why people responded to him. And, you know, it's like whatever he does, whatever he does, stuff like this. I mean, obviously what, you know, all of the organizations that came out and said that saying this from a left-wing perspective is ridiculous, you know, and that, you know, that's none of that is even true or it's anti-Semitic, that they're not, they're just going to ignore this, but it's just totally floated under the radar. It really is totally crazy whenever, with this interview. You'll recall Ilhan Omar tweeted something about, like, it's all about the Benjamins when it comes to the influence of pro-Israel voices in Congress. And she was widely, roundly condemned as, this is anti-Semitic and you can't possibly say that. And I understand that this taps into some deep tropes and stereotypes about

the Jewish people. And so I do think you should be careful about using that sort of language. At the same time, you have to acknowledge the truth that, you know, money is how this town operates. It's not just about Israel. It's about pharma and it's about oil. And if you want to understand how that works, just look at the dog pile that this reconciliation bill has become because of those moneyed interests and those who have a particular agenda with regards to Israel, that agenda largely being like total unequivocal support in all instances

and massive military aid to Israel, they also donate quite significantly. And that is part of why they have had so much sway over both parties for years and years and years and why the fact that there were even a few dissenters, and it is still just a few dissenters from that orthodoxy, is so stunning to people. And that's what Trump is commenting on. So number one, he confirms the trope and goes way farther than Ilhan Omar. It is actually very anti-Semitic to say that.

Ever when— It's true, right? Yeah, absolutelyic to say that. Ever when, yeah, absolutely, to say their own, that they own the Congress. Okay, so first of all, you say that, and then you're lamenting the fact that they don't fully 100% own the Congress anymore. And again, this is the dude who ran on America First, who's now like, I liked it when Israel owned Congress and how dare AOC and Ilhan and whoever else not be fully owned by a foreign country. And this is just a lot going on.

There's a lot going on. It reveals some of the inherent contradictions in Trump being America first within his own White House and their own foreign policy, which, you know, continues to play out to this day. It really is just amazing to me that he's willing to go so much farther than even the most hardcore Israeli critics, but from the right. Therefore, everybody just completely shuts up about it and you're not going to hear about it anywhere else. Yeah, no one quite knew what to do with it. We took notice here on the show. We decided to dance on that third trail because what the hell. I mean, also, I mean, he's the former president. When you say something like this, I'm like, whoa. Whoa.

Yeah. Pretty remarkable. All right. All right, guys. We'll have more for you later. Got some new polling out from More Perfect Union. They've been doing a fantastic job covering a lot of the labor action that's been happening across the country. And so they put a poll into the field asking people how they feel about labor

unions, whether they would support unions at their own place of work, and whether or not the current strike wave is, quote, long overdue. They found majority support for each one of those things. So 58% of Americans say they view labor unions favorably. 54% say they would support a union at their own place of work, which I think is really significant because a lot of times, especially for white collar workers, it's like, oh, that's a nice thing for like, you know, if you're working at the dock or whatever, but I can't imagine having it in my own, for me, it's not for me in my workplace. And then you've got 53% saying that the current strike wave is long overdue. One of the things that they point to here as well is that there are some class politics involved in the way that these numbers ultimately break down. Lowerincome Americans more strongly supported each of those sentiments than higher-income

Americans. So, for example, the strongest support for having a union at their workforce came among those who make less than $25,000 per year. A full 58% of those individuals said, yes, I would like to have a union at my workplace. But the differences were not that vast. Among the wealthiest respondents, those who made more than $150K per year, 52% said that they would support a union at their workplace as well. So you can see, though, here how politically for Democrats, forget about obviously like the values of workers should have power in their workplace, and that's a good thing and helps to rebalance the scales, etc. But politically, they make the point, if Democrats actually care about trying to win back some of the voters that they've been losing over the years, leaning into their support for labor,

leaning into support for unions and putting policies on the books that will make it easier for workers to unionize could be a path back to some relevance with some of the people that they've lost. Yeah. No, it's interesting. And whenever you look at the polling in particular, and I think the problem that everybody runs away from this is that many of these people are just cross-partisan. A lot of union people voted for Trump. A lot of them either voted for Bernie or a lot of them also just sat at home and said nobody really supports me. So actually supporting these type of labor actions requires you to go beyond traditional mold of politics, which makes it so that there's not a lot of benefit in the short term, like media coverage. It's interesting.

I saw somebody out on Twitter was like, hey, who's done the best coverage of labor strikes? And all the replies were like us. And I'm not just bragging here. Us and the guests that we have on the show. Right, and the guests that we have on the show. Jonah Furman, Tim Kelly. Yeah, but here's the reason why. There's not that many people covering it.

It's like maybe, what, five, six, really? I mean, sure, some of it goes viral on Twitter. But in terms of the coverage on Washington Post, CNN, or, you know, I mean, NBC News, I mean, they do more segments on January 6th subpoenas than they ever do about the millions of people who are either switching their jobs, thinking about striking, supporting the strikes, massive strike across. We've had so many guests here of the people actually on strike. They're willing to talk to you. It's very easy. Not that hard. We're a small business here and we can secure interviews, but that's just not a road that they want to go down because also we were talking about this too. Many audiences are not conditioned to

care as in people know where the clicks are. It's always in the culture war. It's the easiest thing on earth, either side, but building up an audience and explaining to them why this stuff matters and getting people invested, that's the hardest thing in the world. And they just don't want to put in the time. One thing we've been really proud of that we've talked about privately here is that when we first, you know, from the beginning of Rising, we covered worker action because it was important. Teacher strikes. It was important to us. Teacher strikes, the coal miners who were parked out on the train tracks, blocking the train. I mean, that was an incredible story. Strikes, we had union presidents, we had workers. And in the beginning, those segments didn't get a lot of use. People didn't click on those segments.

And over time, we've seen, we've stuck with it because we think it's so central and so critical. And people have started to care more and more. Or it's possible that just people who already cared about this started to find our stuff more and more. But the point is that, you know, a lot of times I think content creators just take like whatever happens to click as the end-all be-all and not think about their responsibility to, you know, to bring people along, to present them with like, here's something that actually you might not off the top be interested in. But if you dig into this, this is actually really significant. And maybe over time, you start to build either a different audience or you start

to bring your own audience along with some of the things that are happening. So we're really proud that our audience has a lot of interest in these issues because we think they're so vital and so incredibly important. On the politics of all of this, you know, Trump was terrible on labor. His NLRB, National Labor Relations Board's pick were all basically union busting lawyers. They took aggressive action. I mean, they were terrible. They were on the side of the boss like, in spite of what he verbally said. Biden has promised to be the most pro-union president in history.

Most pro-union president in history. And yet, when it comes to the fact that we had striketober and tens of thousands of workers walking out, authorizing strikes, you know, threatening to walk out, they still hung on to this legalistic, like, oh, well, we can't really say anything about this. We can't really get involved here, which is nonsense. And look, the fact that it would be controversial, frankly, is a good thing because that would generate coverage. It would generate buzz. It would demonstrate who's on which side really. And one of the things that's most vital in politics is exposing the correct

divisions. And so if Biden intervened on the side of workers, when the workers are dramatically popular with the public right now and dramatically in the right, it would expose a division in a way that would, I think, be beneficial to the country, but also would be, you know, politically beneficial to the Democratic Party. But and they're not going to do that, apparently. And all the talk, the proact and whatever seems to fall by the wayside. So there we are. So be it.

It's up to you guys. That's all I can say. It's up to all of you out there who are taking these actions. We appreciate you guys. Have a good one. We'll have more for you later. See you later. DNA test proves he is not the father.

Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily, it's your not the father week on I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John, who's not the father. Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the okay. Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon.

This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us, he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars.

Yup. Find out how it ends by listening to the okay.time podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.

Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024.

You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy. But to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.