Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #12: Sinema's Cash, Kamala Tanks, McDonald's Workers, Coal Miners, Getty Wedding, and More!

Episode Date: November 13, 2021

Krystal and Saagar look at the pharma money behind Kyrsten Sinema, Kamala Harris's terrible polling numbers, McDonald's workers quitting, coal miners striking, Pelosi's wealth friends, 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/Kim Kelly's Book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fight-Like-Hell/Kim-Kelly/9781982171056Coal Miner Strike Pantry: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/umwastrikepantry Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, guys. 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.

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to participate in weekly Ask Me Anythings, and you don't need to hear our annoying voices pitching you like I am right now. So what are you waiting for? Go to breakingpoints.com, become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys. Time now for our weekly partnership segment with The Daily Poster. They are always all over covering the corruption and following the money here in D.C. Joining us with his very latest reporting is Andrew Perez with The Daily Poster. Andrew, great to see you. Good to see you, Andrew. Thanks for having me. Of course. So you've got a bit of an update on the cash flowing to one Senator, Kyrsten Sinema, to oppose things that are supported by like 80 and 90 percent of the public. Let's throw this tear sheet up on the screen. Very latest, Pharma Front Group has spent $1.2 million backing Sinema.

The subhead here says a front group funded by Big Pharma is running even more ads, praising Kyrsten Sinema, who just gutted Dems drug pricing plan. What did you find, Andrew? Sure. So, yeah, you know, a couple of months ago, we reported that this group called Center Forward had spent, you know, actually a few hundred thousand dollars, up to six hundred thousand dollars supporting Sinema while she was kind of making moves behind the scenes to oppose Democrats' plan to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. And, you know, the latest is they've just just before Democrats announced that they had reached a kind of compromise with Sinema, Sinema put another like another few hundred thousand dollars on the air, launching a new ad campaign supporting her.

And the ad is something really, it's kind of like purest corporate propaganda you're ever going to see. You might think that they're selling a car commercial. There's some sports car going through the desert, someone racing on a horse through the desert. It's really the most vapid kind of propaganda you're ever going to see. And it's, you know, being done at a time when she has been boosting their donors. You know,

Center Forward has been funded significantly by Pharma, the lobbying group in D.C. They've given them at least four4.5 million in recent years, which accounted for about a quarter of its revenue. So this is a pharma front group that's masquerading as a kind of center, centrist organization. But it's really kind of flown under the radar. But if you look it up, there's actually a lot of people on Twitter in Arizona complaining about the ads. Interesting. You know, Andrew, I mean, this is just the latest in kind of what we've seen.

What else have you guys uncovered in the money behind cinema? Sure. story about the Medicare, Better Medicare Alliance, which had been pushing Democrats to, you know, not to include dental and vision benefits under Medicare as they'd kind of campaigned on. And they had spent, last time we looked, like a few, like about $500,000 boosting Sinema. And, you know, the other thing we reported on how she's seen a big influx in pharma donations over the course of this year. I think she's up to about $600,000 in just donations from pharma for her career now, including about $100,000 earlier this year. My personal favorite industry that Kirsten Sinema is getting lots of cash from is the quote-unquote multi-level marketing industry, which basically legalized pyramid schemes. She's the lone holdout on the pro-union, pro-act, which is a main priority for that, I would say, fraudulent industry to try to get

killed. So there's, you know, corruption stories of Kyrsten Sinema abound. Of course, I think we are really bearing the lead, which is her eccentric dress, I think, is what voters should really care about and really focus on. You know, what's your response to the fact that you really haven't run a single sartorial piece about Kyrsten Sinema yet in the Daily Poster? You know, we're looking for the right correspondent to handle that kind of coverage. I don't think it's going to be me, but we're going to find someone. Okay, good. Glad to hear that. Important stuff. Lastly, Andrew, you also had a recent piece. So the latest with the Build Back

Better thing is that the progressives, for some reason, were persuaded to go along with voting for the infrastructure deal, giving up all their leverage with this promise from the corporate wing of the party that we swear we're going to vote for this thing. We just need to get the Congressional Budget Office to tell us how much it costs. And then we promise by November 15th we're going to be ready to sign on to it. What is the latest going on there? Yeah, so, you know, just yesterday the Congressional Budget Office said that they're not going to kind of include the revenue in their kind of analysis here. They're not going to include revenue that's generated by boosting IRS tax enforcement of

really wealthy people who are known to be cheating the system. The CBO has actually estimated over, like, in recent months, they've looked at the same plan, at this plan that Democrats have to boost IRS enforcement by $80 billion. And they've said that it's going to raise about $200 billion, you know, net $120 billion. And yeah, they're not going to include this, though, in their score. And it's, you know, it's important because some, you know, kind of conservative Democrats have been holding out here saying they want to see the CBO score. They want to see that it that the bill is going to be, you know, kind of deficit neutral. But so CBO is not going to factor this into their score.

It's it's one of the, you know, larger revenue raisers in the in the bill. I think the Biden administration has been claiming that it would bring in 400 billion. You know, CBO's own estimates say that it'll bring in $200 billion. And, yeah, they're not going to factor this in other than maybe as like some kind of footnote. And it's, you know, it's kind of remarkable, too, because Josh Gottheimer from New Jersey is one of these Democrats who's demanding a CBO score before they move forward on this bill. And he actually has endorsed using this, like this same idea to capture revenue just recently. He wanted it to fund, you know, the so-called salt tax or salt cap repeal on state and local tax deductions that would primarily benefit wealthy homeowners. Yeah, he's,'s anyway, he endorsed this this revenue method.

And now now it's going to get excluded here and it's going to pose a potential problem. You know, obviously, all this conversation is sort of for not if Joe Manchin just decides, as we kind of read last night, that he wants to stall this bill further. Well, and because, as you already indicated, the whole thing's been stripped down so much from what it originally was because of people like Kyrsten Sinema and the money that has been funneled to them through various industry groups. Andrew, thank you for the reporting and thank you for your time. We really appreciate it. Thanks, Andrew. Thank you.

Of course. You guys enjoy your day. We're going to have more content for you later. Time for one of our favorite segments that we do here on Breaking Points. How unpopular is Kamala Harris? And the results are even more stunning than even we could have imagined. Put this up there on the screen. New poll from Suffolk University and USA Today. The only person less popular in this country than Joe Biden is Kamala Harris. Biden's job approval rating at 38 percent, 59, which is a disaster. That's like Trump-level territory in terms of where he is sitting. And Kamala Harris somehow manages to get even lower than that at a 28 percent approval rating. So granted, she doesn't have as high of a disapproval

rating, so I guess most of the people in the category just didn't know who she was. But in terms of the people who affirmatively like her, yeah, 28% of the American public. And maybe it has to do with really weird stuff that she does like this, where she was recently asking about the races of trees.

And this is not a joke. This is not like some not a joke. This is not like some cherry pick clip. This is real from a briefing of her with NASA. Let's take a listen. Climate adaptation strategies. Can you measure trees? Because part of that data that you're referring to in EJ is environmental justice. But you can also track by race there are averages in terms of the number of trees in the neighborhood where people live so we're talking about trees environment no look i know there is some convoluted explanation about environmental justice and all that but i think that pretty much just encapsulates really what harris is all about um crystal you also pointed

out that she's got a new political initiative to bolster her popularity with the billionaire class. And so she really is just the worst politician that I've probably ever seen in my life. Hillary Clinton. Hillary might have even given her a run for her money. Well, she's just empty. I mean, that's really the bottom line. She's just empty.

She's just an ambitious person who, you know, throughout her presidential campaign, this became incredibly clear. She kept changing her slogan. Yes. Every couple of months, they're having like a conference call to try to figure out what her core values are. You know, you're not going to come to your core values and your priorities by, you know, having a group of Democratic consultants tell you what you should be ultimately about. And so I think that that really comes across is that there is no sort of core there. There's no willingness or, you know, willingness or track record of fighting things that are actually important for the American people. The latest sign of just sort of bending the political winds that you were alluding to.

She's set to give a speech. We can throw this tear sheet up on the screen where she's going to say that singling out Israel is anti-Semitism in an ADL speech. So, again, sort of bending to the political winds there. And, you know, what I always come back to with Kamala is that this was all so obvious. Like all of the people in this town seem so shocked that she's unpopular, that she's not doing particularly well in the position of vice president. First of all, they gave her some of the hardest assignments, like go fix the border. Good luck with that. You know, but it was always incredibly clear that the public had that she was an entirely media creation.

Public had no interest in electing Kamala Harris to a national office. She had to drop out before her state even voted because or any state even voted because it was looking so embarrassing, even on just the sort of financial management of the campaign, which I actually always think is an interesting indicator of how effective people are going to be in terms of that like management, managerial type of expertise. She was a disaster there. Funds were misspent. Her campaign team was like at war with one another. There were different silos and factions and all kinds of infighting. And there just wasn't any enthusiasm for her candidacy because ultimately, what is there to be enthusiastic

about? What does she actually stand for and willing to fight for? We still don't know. Well, you know, I think that everything we're seeing in terms of the Buttigieg camp already leaking about how terrible she is, the White House itself trying to keep her on as strict a lockdown as possible, there is a deep acknowledgement. At the very least, they're like, hey, we messed up big time here. In terms of what to do, though, they don't know because she's also the appointed successor. And you can't abandon your vice president if you decide not to run, which is possible. And, you know, I would say, what, like a 40, 50 percent shot at this point in 2024. I think, you know, ultimately, if Biden can still walk, he'll probably still run just because, you know, there's nobody else that they have that can win.

But it really is. I mean, when you see these numbers, it is just stunning to see what the next generation they have picked or have waiting for them whenever it's their time to stand on their own. Yeah. Their solution to this Kamala mess is Pete. Yeah. Who is like only in terms of of public support, is only. Probably less popular. No, no.

I'd say he's largely better just because he actually did place in the Democratic primary. That's true. Whereas Kamala didn't even make it to the starting line. So I guess maybe. But it's a pretty grim scenario when you're like, you know, your hero who's going to come riding in and hopefully secure a win for you is Pete Buttigieg, who was so irrelevant that no one even noticed that he was not working during the supply chain crisis as Secretary of Transportation. So pretty grim. It was funny, there was a Democratic primary, I mean, these things are always sort of ridiculous this far

out. But Democratic primary poll that came out recently that had, OK, if Biden's not running, who do you want? Kamala's support in that poll had dropped like 20 points in just a couple of months. But she was still leading. She was sitting vice president. Second, I believe, was Bernie Sanders, who was like 300 years old. Yeah. And has no interest in running. He's literally like 90. Yeah. Not actually, but he's near. Yeah.

And, you know, I have a lot of great affection for Bernie Sanders. And if he runs again, I'll be there for him because it's way better. It's over, Bernie. Way better for him than Kamala Rape. So that's kind of where they are. All right. So, guys, we've been tracking the massive labor disruptions across the country, which are largely good. You have workers who are going on strike and authorizing strikes.

You have workers who are quitting en masse. And we've also seen a few of these incidents popping up where a group of workers at a restaurant or a Dollar General or whatever, they just decide, like, we're done here. We're leaving. We're locking up this door. We're out. So the latest one of these happened at a McDonald's. Let's put this tear sheet up on the screen. This is pretty interesting. There's a tweet on the screen. This is from Jeff Stein. He mentions an amazing moment in a story where McDonald's workers realized that their boss needs them more than they need their boss. Products of tight labor market among the kind we haven't seen in years. And he has a little screenshot of the article where Matt texts his colleagues that the regional supervisor had called him,

was trying to entice him to stay, but that he was not going to betray his friends. Matt says, she's desperate now. They agree, yeah, she really is desperate. And so effectively what happened here is this group of workers at a McDonald's, they were making, what was it, $9.25 an hour. And the owner of this McDonald's owned a number of other ones, and the workers at the other restaurants were making $15 an hour. So these McDonald's workers were pissed off. They thought they deserved at least $10 an hour. Okay, $10 an hour. It's not

a lot that they're asking for. They're not even asking to be raised to the wage that the other McDonald's workers in the same little chain of franchise owners were making. So they sent in a petition to the regional supervisor. They say Dustin Snyder was tired of the low wages, the 60-hour work weeks, and the impossible-to-please customers. So in early September, the assistant general manager at Adam McDonald, drafted a petition that laid bare months of building anger and frustration. We are all leaving, the petition threatened, and hope you find employees that want to work for 925 an hour.

Nearly all of the two dozen employees had signed it. A few added their own flourishes, like we need a raise or piss off, wrote another one. They responded and said basically, well, we're not going to respond to these sorts of threats. We're not going to lift your wages. And so all of these workers got together and basically walked out. There's a good end to the story, which is that all of them have been able to find jobs at higher wages. Lumber mills elsewhere. Making more. And this is not a particularly economically prosperous area. But even in this area, they were able in Bradford, Pennsylvania, they were able to find jobs that were making more than the $9.25 an hour. And this part is

really galling, though. After they all leave and had, you know, really tried to do whatever they could to get their wages lifted to $10 an hour, they drove by about six weeks after the walk-in, they drove by the McDonald's and there's a sign on the window, hiring pay starts at $10 an hour. Yeah, there you go. That was all they were asking for. A 75 cent raise. That was it.

That was all that they were asking for. And out of basically spite, the owner and the regional supervisor here wouldn't give it to them. And now that they're gone, they're realizing, we just can't get workers at that price. They're lifting the wage anyway, when they could have just given these workers a raise to start with and kept their crew together. Yeah. And you know, it's just amazing because they kept losing staff to Walmart. So when you're paying less than Walmart, something's going on, right? So they would point to entry-level jobs in the area at $13.75 an hour, or even Tim Hortons, which is paying $12 an hour. And that McDonald's just refused to increase its price. And finally, just to jack it up to $10,

what it took was all of them walking out. And I'll point to something we covered earlier in the show, which is that these Kaiser workers, Kaiser Permanente healthcare nurses, they're asking for a 4% raise. This is not – they're not gold diggers, okay? Like this ain't a lot of money. This is a pretty reasonable thing. From what I understand, people are eating more fast food than ever. So last time I checked, you know, they're making a pretty good amount of money. And it just shows you that the fact that they were even able to get all the jobs immediately after they quit shows that the power of the labor market right now. But I also was kind of sad when you read it because the guy, Dustin, he didn't want to quit.

He liked his job. He liked his fellow worker. He was an assistant general manager. He was like, I like being a leader. I like my coworkers. Like, we all have fun together. I just want to be paid like a human wage, which is normal in my town. And they were like, no, we're just not going to do it. And so him being the leader that he was, he said, fine, let's go. Let's walk out. And that's ultimately what happened. He said, let's walk

out. And he also pledged to his fellow workers that he would help them find jobs, making more than what they were making in McDonald's. And ultimately, they were all able to do that. I mean, there's a few things that are interesting here. I mean, again, McDonald's ultimately penny wise and pound foolish here because they they're ending up having to pay people more than ten dollars an hour anyway for a much less experienced crew of workers who have to learn the ropes and start from scratch and don't have this group cohesion that this previous group of workers clearly, clearly did. So that's one piece. The other piece is imagine if these workers had been in a union.

Then they wouldn't have had to leave and go elsewhere when actually at least one and probably several of them actually enjoyed working together and wanted to stay at McDonald's. They just wanted to have conditions that were respectful of them and that they were able to survive on. So if they had a union, they would have been able to have a strike, put pressure, have a contract negotiation. They would have had power in the situation other than just having to leave. So you can see the difference in how this plays out for these workers who just have to ultimately leave and go elsewhere. And fortunately, the labor market is such that they were able to make that work in this time versus the workers at John Deere and other places who actually have some leverage and some bargaining power collectively to get that better wage, those

better set of benefits to get rid of the two-tier structure, whatever it is that their grievances actually are, they can stay in the job that they may actually like, that they've been at for a long time, and be able to fight and bargain for those higher wages. So I think it's interesting from that perspective as well. Yeah. I mean, overall, we're just seeing the revolution all across the American economy. Media is really not covering it, but these are the real stories that are affecting real people's lives. So in a way, you like to see it. You do. You like to see it. Very interesting to see it.

We wish these workers all the best. Absolutely. And we wish you guys the best, too. Enjoy your weekend. We'll see you guys soon. So you guys know we've been tracking from early days that coal miners strike going on down in Alabama with the Warrior Met miners. They've recently had some big actions up in New York City protesting outside of BlackRock HQ. We wanted to get an update on what is going on with those

strikers. And so joining us now is Kim Kelly, fantastic labor reporter. She is a contributor to The Real News. She writes a labor column for Teen Vogue. She's also working on a book called Fight Like Hell, The Untold History of American Labor and has been all over this strike from the very beginning. Great to see you, Kim. Good to see you, Kim. Thanks for having me back to talk about my voice. Yeah, of course. So we have a little bit of imagery from that action that I referenced before the protest outside of BlackRock HQ. Let's throw this first tweet of yours up on the screen where you can see some video that the AFL-CIO put out of some of the protesting workers at the actions that they've been taking.

You say they really are living up to their motto. We are everywhere. We also have a video of Mine Workers president Cecil Roberts speaking outside of BlackRock HQ. Let's take a listen to that now. They're offering up themselves just like the civil rights movement, just like Gandhi, just like Moses, just like Jesus. This is as old as the Bible itself. It's as old as the teaching of the Lord that we must stand and take back what is rightfully ours, brothers and sisters.

And I want you to know something. Ain't nobody going to turn us around. Ain't no black rock going to turn us around. Ain't no warrior met going to turn us around. Ain't no judge going to turn us around. Ain't no warrior going to turn us around. Ain't no judge going to turn us around. Ain't no injunction going to turn us around.

There ain't no jail house going to turn us around. United we stand. Divided we fall. A wrong to one is a wrong to all. We fall around. The world is around. And as Dr. Keyes says, someday we'll all be able to say free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty.

We're free at last. God bless. One of the great orators in the labor movement right there. Kim, just give us an update on what's been going on. Sure. So kind of this has been in the works for a little while, but something that kind of added some fuel to the fire, if you will, is that last week in Alabama, a judge laid out a temporary restraining order against the union members

at the behest of Warrior Met, which forbid them from picketing or even, you know, restraining order against the Union and its members at the behest of Warrior Met, which forbid them from picketing or even just appearing within 300 yards of Warrior Met's mines or offices. So effectively killed off the picket line. So people are fired up and they have this action to look forward to already, wherein hundreds of miners from a variety of states, union officials from around the country, they bussed and drove and, you know, did what they could to show up in New York City and rallied

with a bunch of local labor folk who came out to support, and they led a march down Park Avenue, Park Avenue or Madison Avenue, one of those fancy ones living on the streets to Black Rock headquarters. Now they've been to Black Rock before and the reason they keep targeting them specifically is because Black Rock owns about a 14% share in Warrior Met. So they're Warrior Met's bosses and

they're allowing Warrior Met to continue to do all of these shady maneuvers to try and bring the strike. So the miners decided to show up and let them know what they thought about that. Yeah. I mean, I think it's important, Kim, that we give people some more background here, both in terms of BlackRock and Warrior Met. What is the core thing that these miners are fighting for?

So 1,100 coal miners in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, have been on strike over unfair labor practices since April 1st. Now, we're in their eighth month on strike, and it has been grueling. They are trying essentially to get back what was taken from them that due to the contract that they signed five years ago when Warrior Met bought the mines and came in, it slashed a lot of the things that they needed and had fought for in previous contracts, like $6 an hour taken off their pay. It messed with their benefits. It messed with their overtime, their time off. It really is just a terrible contract. And so they've been trying to negotiate a new one and a better one because

now the company is in robust financial shape and they can afford to treat their workers properly. Apparently, Warrior Mac has not seen it that way. Contract negotiations broke down and they've been out on strike ever since. And have there been any movement in terms of the company being willing to come back to the table whatsoever? And how are they moving forward? And we've covered here at John Deere, they're using this insane, insane idea of pulling the white collar workers in to do what the blue collar workers were doing. That doesn't seem to be going all that well for John Deere. But what sort of strategies has Warrior Met employed?

They've been, I mean, they've been using managers and putting them down on the long wall, which I've heard the miners describe as a pretty bad idea. If you can imagine taking somebody who works in an office and sending them 2,000 feet underground into an underground coal mine, it's a little dicey, to say the least. And they've also brought in an army of scabs, replacement workers. They've had billboards of as far away as West Virginia and Kentucky trying to entice workers to come down and help break the strike. And they've really, I mean, their production has fallen.

They've lost about $7 million already on this strike. They're really shooting themselves in the foot, but they still refuse to come to the bargaining table and offer anything meaningful. And, you know, they're trying to starve these people out. And over the past couple of months, they've ramped up efforts to actively break the strike by working with the sympathetic courts to get these injunctions and temporary restraining orders laid out. And they're not playing fair, to say the least. And the miners are fed up about it.

Yeah. I mean, what is the endgame here, Kim? How long do you think that Warrior Met Coal could try and hold out here? It's hard to say. I know that the union isn't ready to give up. I mean, they've been out there eight months. They're already making plans for Christmas. They're making plans for after that. They're dug in. The company wants to break the strike and the company wants to break the union. Their ultimate goal is to decertify the union and not have to deal with them anymore. And we've seen this repeat over and over throughout the history of coal miners in this country. The company tries to break them.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You know, this still isn't the longest coal miner strike we've seen in this country. I think Massey Coal has that honor, but it's a long one. And really, these miners need as much support as they can get at this point. So it's been a long haul, and it's turned violent on the company's part. So really they're fighting for their lives out there. Can you talk a little bit more about that, Kim? How can people support these minors if they're moved to? And also what is the spirit like of the families who are involved here? I mean, the best way to support them besides donating directly to their strike fund is to send material support to the women's auxiliary that they've been doing incredible work they've been putting together grocery bags and personal hygiene bags and baby bags for over 200 families every week relying on donations from local

community and from folks like you they've been keeping these families fed and they just actually sent out their first round of boxes for their Christmas toy drive. So these union kids are going to have a happy Christmas, even if their parents are still worried about what's going on. I know folks down there are tired. They want to go back to work. They want to be done with this. But they're not going to give up until they get what they need. You know, they've put in way too much.

Some of these folks have put in decades underground, sacrificed their youth so they can feed their family and have a decent job in a place that doesn't have a lot of those on offer. They're not going to give up, and they need as much solidarity and support as possible. One thing that is going to be fun for people watching from home is that the MWA is going to be expanding its efforts and it's going to be paying more visits to more places that are enabling this to happen.

So there's going to be more actions out there. And I would encourage folks to follow along with the UMWA's website and their social media pages for those announcements because I think December is going to be pretty wild. Awesome. Well, we'll have a link to the Stripe content and more in the description. Kim, really appreciate you joining us and giving us the update. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Kim. And thanks for staying on top of this, guys. Follow Kim at GrimKim on Twitter for updates on everything that's going on, and we'll continue to keep you updated as well. Great to see you, Kim. Thank you. Okay, a little bit of real-life Hunger Games happening here in the U.S. Let's put this up there on the screen. Ivy Getty, she is the great-granddaughter of John Paul Getty, the heiress to the oil fortune that he has amassed, married photographer Tobias Alexander Engel,

in a ceremony officiated by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi at City Hall in San Francisco. The Gettys, of course, have the famous Getty Museum, their California royalty. Billions and billions of dollars. And I really kid you not, this thing looks like it was straight out of District 1 in The Hunger Games. Put this tear sheet on the screen. We've compiled a few of the photos from the scene that you can see there. I mean, you can't even look at that first one in particular of city hall that they rented out covered in custom carpet. They bought this car. Um, they apparently, and this, you guys really

need to go and read this entire, uh, piece in Vogue because they, they describe it all very matter of factly. And they point to, um And they point to guests having these custom picnics and buying personally monogrammed pajamas for every one of the bridesmaids. And there was like a dozen bridesmaids or something like that. I mean, just like gratuitous amounts of wealth spent on all of this, the dancing and some of the photos that came out. I really do question the self-awareness of a person worth literally billions of dollars having such an ostentatious wedding like this. But the political side of it, you just can't even make this up, Crystal. I mean, San Francisco mayor was there. Nancy Pelosi literally officiated the wedding ceremony for

this billionaire heiress in the middle of all that's happening right now in the middle of Washington. Amazing. I would submit that if you care about Democrats winning, stuff like this is way more of a problem for you than CRT will ever be. Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, this is the issue. It's like you're supposed to be the party of the people. You're supposed to be like the champion and the little guy. And it's not just Pelosi.

We know that Congress overall, a bunch of millionaires, wildly out of touch. We saw, you know, this harkens back to Gavin Newsom and the French Laundry restaurant. Really like the most expensive restaurant in like California or whatever. Yeah, and I mean, listen, you can be friends with whoever you want and I'm not trying to like, you know, criminalize people having some amount of money, although I think it should be taxed at much higher rates.

But you have to realize that our ruling class, like they are in a totally different segment of society. Nancy Pelosi and these other people who are trying to make policy to lift up the lower class, like, when is the last time she officiated a wedding of, like, a working class person, you know, or had any— Actually, those people can't get married, Crystal, because they don't have enough money. Any real contact with people outside of that social set, like, these are their people. And I do think that that's important to realize. We talked about this study that Jacobin just did

about how to appeal to working class people. And one of the parts we didn't get into is actually, so not just the messaging, but who is the messenger really, really matters. And so voters overall, they actually slightly preferred female candidates. They actually slightly preferred black candidates. So, you know, your race and your ethnicity,

it didn't really make that much of a difference what your gender or your race was. But what they really preferred was working class candidates. And, of course, because of the fundraising circuit, the fact that you have to be able to have a whole network of rich people to write you campaign checks to ultimately get into Congress, that's who both parties look to, is the upper class, to elevate as candidates and put into office. So you've had rising diversity. It's not enough. We could do a lot more. But in terms of race and gender and those sorts of things, we have rising diversity.

The number of working class members of Congress, totally flat and almost non-existent. And those are the people that, you know, regular working class people actually would like to see and actually would like to vote for. So this is just a little tiny taste of microcosm. And my favorite tweet on the subject was that everyone in those photos are getting a tax cut because of the salt tax deduction. So that's who she really works for. Whenever she comes to Washington, she secured them their bag so that they could pay for a little bit more of the Hunger Games wedding. You love to see it. It's kind of funny. All right. We'll see you guys later. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

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