Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #14: 6 Months, Alec Baldwin, Kathy Hochul, Chris Christie, and More!

Episode Date: December 4, 2021

Krystal and Saagar talk about 6 months, Hochul's real estate money, Andrew Yang, identity fakers, rent prices, Chris Christie, Alec Baldwin, 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/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. of dollars doing it. To help support our mission of making all of us hate each other less, hate the corrupt ruling class more, support the show. Become a Breaking Points premium member today, where you get to watch and listen to the entire show ad-free and uncut an hour early before everyone else. You get to hear our reactions to each other's monologues. You get 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. 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. All right, guys, we have achieved a major milestone. It has officially been six months

since the launch of Breaking Points and the revealing of Sager's beautiful desk and our lovely fake brick wall and the bookshelves. I actually really like these bookshelves. I love these bookshelves. You found them. I would get these bookshelves for myself. You found them. They're pretty fancy. So anyway, we just wanted to take a minute to tell you a little bit about the milestones you've helped us achieve and also just to say thank you because it was very easy for me to think back to when we were stepping out on our own and how scared we were and nervous

because we had no idea if it was really going to work out. And you guys have been there for us in a way that we really literally never could have imagined. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We never in a million years thought that it would work out like this. And just to give you guys insight into how it's worked out, we've had 100 million views on YouTube since we launched, which truly, I can't even wrap my head around that. I literally can't wrap my head around that. We have never dropped below, since launch day, number five on the Spotify politics chart for podcasts.

Often we are at number one, beating the New York Times, Ben Shapiro, all of those. NPR. I mean, sometimes I look at the chart and I can't even believe it because it's us and then corporate media, corporate media, corporate media, and like Ben Shapiro. And it's like, oh my God. I mean, how did this happen? He spends a lot of money on marketing too. He spends a lot of money on marketing. And also he's been around for like 15 years. It's like we've been here for just six months. 656,000 subscribers on our channel. And it's just amazing to see those benchmarks, what they really reflect is how well and how amazing the show has been received by so many of you who helped us get here. We could not have built this set without your support. We fully upgraded our studio here, 4K cameras.

We have new audio equipment here so that more people can actually join us here on the set. This is the only 4K camera studio. That's what they tell us. What they tell us is that we are one of the most advanced studios in the entire city. We have plans in order to bring some more people on, expand the coverage, make it so that we can cover the midterms exactly the way that should be

covered that, you know, we'll have and tell people the stories that are actually not being there. Like the amount that we are able to invest and to bring you guys as much as we possibly can, you have no idea how much it means, but also we're really just getting started. So look, if you can support us, help us get more YouTube subscribers, hit the subscribe button there. I would love to hit 1 million by the end of the year.

I think it took us 20 months when we were at the Hill in order to hit 1 million. So if we could do it in under a year, that would be amazing. Yeah, we had a little bit of a better algorithm and more better monetization. But look, at least we own it. It is 100% ours. And in many ways, it's 100% yours.

What else? Subscribe, rate, whatever on the podcast. If you can't help us with the premium membership, the link is in the description. Really what it is is that, and we really are meaning this, we are using the money in order to invest into the business, as you can see all around us. We have, how many people do we have on staff? We've got, I think, seven, eight? Yeah.

Okay, math is hard. Something like that. Seven or eight. Just peek behind the curtain opening the kimono. We have eight people on the payroll producing this show every single day to the highest standards that we can muster. The graphics, a producer in order to pull the stuff and look out for stories and help us book. We have multiple people in the control room. I mean, I remember at the beginning of the show, they were complaining about the audio. And we were like, okay, we have to hire an audio person.

And I have an audio person in the studio every single day. And we've even upgraded the board on which the entire show is run. I know this is mundane stuff, but this is what it really means to run a high-end video production business here in Washington. We just want you guys to know that we're continuing to try to think of ways not only to improve the production quality, but also to continue to add value on the content side. And so the partnership with The Daily Poster is a good preview of the sorts of things that we're thinking about. People

who we really trust, who can bring, you know, exclusive content to you guys that you're not going to see mainstream anywhere else. That's really the sort of things that we're thinking through right now to make sure that, you know, day to day, but also as we head into the midterm elections, that our content is second to none, that you guys are really getting the best picture you possibly can of what's going on in our politics and in our country writ large. So that's what we're thinking about. That's what we're grateful for this holiday season is you guys. We get asked all the time, why do we continue to have any optimism over the country? And it really is you all because something that is so unique about this show

is we really genuinely have listeners and viewers from every corner of the political spectrum. Oh, yeah. Truly. Were you looking at some of those people Spotify wrapped who tagged us? No. So I went through all my Instagram mentions and all the people on their Spotify wrapped, it would be like,

breaking points and then like Chapo Trap House. Breaking points, Ben Shapiro. Yeah. Breaking points, Tim Dillon. Breaking points, some like Amy Schumer. And I was like, you people are all over the map. And you can see it too on YouTube. They'll tell you like what other channels people are watching other than yours.

And it's like, it's also, it's like Rogan. It's Jimmy Dore. It's Ben Shapiro. I mean, it really is. Kyle Kalinsky. Yeah. It's totally nuts. And also, sadly still, it's The Hill.

Oh, The Hill. Cringe. I do. Ryan's a good guy. Ryan's great. Yeah, Emily's great. Yeah. It's totally nuts. And also, sadly, still, it's The Hill. Oh, The Hill. Cringe. It's okay. Ryan's a good guy. Ryan's great. Yeah, Emily's great. Right. No, we all will.

It's all good. Yeah, it's all good. But anyway, so it truly is across the spectrum. We get messages all the time from people who are like, this is my political persuasion. We're like, and you like us? Yeah, we're like, okay. I'm like, okay. Sure.

Cool. The fact that that's possible in America, I think, is something no one would have believed. Do you remember the evangelical pastor who wrote in and asked us to not curse during the show? And I was like, you watch the show? Really? Another guy who's like, hey, I'm Mormon. You know, I have nine kids or whatever in my house. And he's like, please don't curse because I put you on the big screen.

I was like, wow, okay. I never would have imagined somebody like that watching the show. But But hey, it's all good. Yeah, we love that. We really take pride in that because we know that we're going to say things, if that's your ideological persuasion and it's not like ours, then we know we're going to say things that are probably going to irritate you and you stick with it anyway. So to me, that is a really good and healthy thing for the community of breaking points, but also for the country at large. If we could have more of that, things might be a little better out there. 100%. Thank you guys so much. It means the world. Love you guys. We'll see you soon.

Joining us now for our weekly partnership with The Daily Poster, we have a reporter for that outlet, Walker Bragman, who is out with a great news story. Great to have you, Walker. Good to see you, man. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, our pleasure. Let's go ahead and throw the tear sheet up on the screen here. The quote is, it's time to get back to the office. Facing a primary challenger and courting real estate interest, New York Governor Kathy Hochul is pushing to end remote work.

Just break down for us what you found here. So interim Governor Hochul has been pushing for really since the start of the month or last month to end remote work in New York. Now, she's not laid out any concrete actions that she's going to take, but she is encouraging employers to bring people back. Now, what's interesting is that that push was happening simultaneously with a surge in COVID cases. And I mean, that to me stood out like, that doesn't make sense. Why are we not encouraging remote work at a time when there's still a very real risk? Now, admittedly, a lot of people in New York City are vaccinated. But that does not necessarily mean that the virus can't spread or that there aren't

people who are vulnerable. And I tend to be of the mind that public policy should factor in the most vulnerable and this pandemic will not be over until it's over for, you know, those people. And Walker, one of the things you're pointing to here is that the real estate industry in particular is pressuring Kathy Hochul very hard. What did you find in terms of the financial connections here behind what she's pushing? So Hochul has long been supported

by commercial real estate interests. But what's interesting here is that she's facing a primary challenge from New York's Attorney General Letitia James. And James got a lot of real estate money too during her run. So the industry, I guess, is sort of up for grabs or maybe up for grabs. And so this position does track with an industry goal of getting everybody back into offices because the pandemic has seen a massive decline in the amount of office space that, that, that companies need. So, uh, that hurts, that hurts, uh, property values and, and, uh, it is

in their interest to get people back to, to normal or the pre-pandemic normal. Yeah, that was the part that was really revealing to me because I actually hadn't thought through the fact that anyone who has real estate interest, commercial real estate interest, are very much interested in getting people back in the office because otherwise there just isn't as much demand for your properties and you're not going to be able to command as high prices prices. So a lot of, you've seen a lot of sort of CNBC types making this push to making the case that, oh, people really need to be back and productivity is better. But we didn't actually find during the pandemic when people, when white collar workers were working from home, that they were any less productive. So what is the real case? Even once, I mean, to me,

even once we are beyond the pandemic, if we ever, you know, get to that point, I think people have enjoyed, in some respects, having the flexibility to work from home or move out of New York and to other cities and have more flexibility within their lives. Look, I think it was a game changer, honestly, in this and how work is going to be done. And I think we're sort of pushing against the, you know, the tide, and it's, it's somewhat futile. That said, look, I do think that this all sort of stems from the same place that there is this mentality in this country, that business interests are more important than human lives. And we have seen that on display throughout the pandemic, not just from employers who want their employees back, who are calling their employees back, or from commercial real estate interests who are funding or lobbying

politicians to push these back to work policies, but from the federal government, too. I mean, we our refusal to adopt an elimination strategy has led to hundreds of thousands of American deaths and these waves, these continued ongoing waves of COVID that we that we keep seeming to have. And so I mean, it's it's a it's a really big problem. I think it's a problem with our culture. You know, it's interesting too, Walker, because she brought back, what is it? She canceled elective surgeries in response to the Omicron variant. But as you're pointing to at the same time is saying, we have to get every New Yorker back to work. It's like, you have to pick one, right? Yeah. And this is where people lose. Because they see that these two things don't go together. So then other statements that you make

that may actually be true about say like, hey, you should go get a vaccine. Well, it undermines your trust when you actually are providing accurate public health information. You know, what's interesting to me is that the push to, or the order that allows hospitals to cancel, that allows the state to cancel elective surgeries, I mean, that's focused on maintaining hospital capacity. We're still dealing in public policy that has acceptable losses. That's the basis of the policy, right? If you're concerned about keeping hospital space open, it's saying we're not really going to contain the spread. We're just going to mitigate the damage.

And I think that is an unacceptable public policy outlook for anywhere. I mean, New York happens to be where I live. So it's really, it's frustrating for me on that level. But honestly, anywhere that that is the policy is really disappointing and disheartening. I mean, we have a study back in May suggested that 900,000 Americans had died by, you know, the true count because official numbers are undercounted. Every epidemiologist I've spoken to has said the official numbers, you know, they provide a baseline, but they're more than likely undercounted. So I think it's a real disappointing thing to see from the new governor who came in promising

that she would be different from her predecessor, you know, open and honest and whatnot. And we're seeing, we're not seeing that play out. Well, I think we probably have a slightly different view about, you know, what the realistic position is in terms of COVID policies. But where we, I 100% agree with you, is that real estate interests should not be driving or any other profit motive, whether it's from the healthcare industry or from real estate interests should be driving the decisions that are being made. They should truly be weighed based on public health and also quality of life, you know, even after the pandemic is over. If people were just as productive working remotely and they want to move somewhere else, they want to have that different lifestyle, they should be entitled to it. And it shouldn't be real estate interest or the boss

class who are really determining what that future of work looks like going forward. 100%. Walker, thank you for the great—go ahead. I was just going to say, at the very least, we should be encouraging remote work because that is something that can tangibly affect spread. And, you know, look, something like 80% of office jobs in New York City are remote capable. Yeah, simple. Great point. Absolutely. Thank you, Walker, for a great report. Thank you for having me on. Our pleasure.. Yeah. Yeah. Simple. Great point. Absolutely.

Thank you, Walker, for a great report. Thank you for having me on. Our pleasure. Glad to have you. Thank you very much. And thank you guys for watching.

Have a great day, and we'll have more for you later. So Andrew Yang joined YouTuber David Pakman. Actually, pretty interesting interview all the way around that I recommend you guys check out in its entirety. It's about 25 minutes long. Do it on double speed.

It takes you even less than that. But there were some of his comments in particular that caught a lot of people's attention on Twitter. Of course, Andrew is going forward with the Forward Party. He sort of left the Democratic Party. And his focus primarily is on election reforms. So ranked choice voting and making sure that, you know, people don't just have to pick between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party is kind of the focus of what he's up to. So Pakman asked him effectively, well, what would your coalition be? Who are you looking to appeal to and who are you willing to work with on this project?

Let's take a listen to a little bit of that. To make it really specific, if people on the right say the Republican Party is too centrist, I'm an extreme white supremacist or something like that. But I think we need to get, you know, we need single transferable vote or whatever and campaign. You still welcome that because you're on the same page on that one issue. Yeah, if they're going to help us transition to a more effective democracy, you know, I don't need to know what their stance is on things that I disagree with. People have a sense of where I'm coming from. But right now, I believe that there is an existential threat to the country as a result of the greatest design flaw in the history of the world. And if you will help us resolve that design flaw, then we can have a discussion about anything else under the sun at a time when the democracy

actually will stand the test of time. Very obviously controversial answer. Very provocative on Twitter. Very provocative answer. And he goes on to explain like, listen, you know, he obviously thinks these people are abhorrent and he thinks they will he has confidence that they will lose in the marketplace of ideas. So if they're partnering up for something like ranked choice voting, an open primary, something that would open the way to a multi-party democracy, they're effectively signing their own political irrelevance because they're going to be relegated to some like, you know, extremist fringe party that's going to garner very little electoral support. But ultimately, I mean, there's kind of this bigger, and I really, the interview was very interesting. Pacman asked him a bunch of interesting questions that I think you guys will find insightful as well about tech censorship and all sorts of things. But, you know, it gets to this bigger instinct in recent American politics where rather than expecting the voters to judge the politicians, the politicians are being asked to, like, judge the voters.

Yeah, that's a good point. And, like, cleanse their coalitions of anyone who might be outside. Look, if you're an extreme white supremacist, white nationalist, like, that's obviously not an edge case. But also there's so much shaming and calling. If you don't use the right language, if you're not there on every single issue, then you're also supposed to be pushed out of the circle. And it's quite antithetical to having any sort of solidarity and having a coalition to actually get things done. Yeah, look, I'm sure we'll get roasted for it, too, but that's how politics works. He's like, look, on this personal design question, anybody who wants to work with me,

I'll take their vote. After that, in this, you know, I mean, frankly, in the system that Yang is advocating for, these people would actually have less power than they would in a partisan democracy. That's exactly right. Because now they have influence within the party. You have a small group, which is really dedicated. I've talked a lot here about Nassim Taleb's tyranny of the minority, and the dictatorship of the small minority, and then the idea that they could then vote in a very partisan primary, setting the rules and the preferences for the entire population. I mean, under the rules that Yang is proposing, that actually would be neutered, and it would make it so that we would have a less extreme amount of politics in our actual democratic design.

So if you do care about silencing or at least trying to mollify or stop the influence of people who have abhorrent views, this would probably be the best way in order to get that done. But of course, nobody thinks about it from an actual policy and practical point of view. And Yang, to his credit, what I really like about this current iteration of Andrew Yang is after losing the New York primary, he seems to be returning to what made him him in the first place. And I think that having that honesty,

having, and really the willingness to just have a conversation with anybody under the sun, which I think is very important, he is being pressed and asked questions which you would never hear from the corporate media and then answering them, I think truthfully, to his actual stated aims. So I very much welcome this current iteration. I think it was very brave of him to say so, despite the fact that he's going to get attacked for it.

I think it's exactly the right attitude that you have to have if you're being really serious about what you want to get done. Yeah, and having them as like they're voting for this in some ballot initiative or whatever is different than having people with, you know, abhorrent views who are helping to drive the direction of whatever you're doing, etc. Like that's obviously a very different scenario. very interesting that happens when Pac-Man asks him this question, which is that you actually see Andrew sit for a second and think before responding, which is like, it's amazing how unusual it is for people to actually be sort of grappling with something in real time and not just spew out whatever talking points or cover story they think you ultimately want to hear. Now, as you know, for me, the jury is a little bit more still out on the new project,

on whether it's going to be effective. I also think that he really needs to get, you know, any sort of big money influence out of and say he's not going to take large-scale corporation, you know, corporate money or large-scale donations, because I do think that those things ultimately could influence the direction in a nefarious way. I'm much more concerned about that sort of influence ultimately. So again, I have questions about the project in particular. But I did think this exchange was interesting. And it is the sort of thing that I'm sure he knew in that moment that this is not going to sound good. And people are going to cut it.

And they're going to hate it. And it's going to turn off a certain percentage of the population. But he comes with what he believes the correct and the honest answer is here. So pretty interesting exchange. Very interesting. All right, guys. Enjoy your day. We'll have more for you later.

All right, guys. We've got a new potential Rachel Dolezal or Elizabeth Warren type situation on our hands. This one out of our friendly neighbors to the north. A Canadian woman who had risen to a top level position within the government has been outed as a fraud. She's been claiming indigenous heritage for years. Let's go ahead and throw this New York Post tear sheet up on the screen. Canada's Indigenous health expert Carrie Barasa loses job when her ancestry claims prove false. Here's the opening bit here. A Canadian medical researcher who rose to become the nation's top voice on Indigenous health has been ousted from her government job and her university professorship after suspicious colleagues investigated her increasingly fanciful claims of Native American heritage and learned she was a fraud. She was suspended on November 1st, five days after the state-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation published a lengthy expose on her background. I also read the expose because this is one of these stories that I'm just like, how do you, why and how do you think you're going to get away with this?

Let's go ahead and throw that investigation up on the screen. And effectively, what happened here, as best as we can figure out, is she originally claimed to be part of the Métis nation. And even convinced her sister that they had this ancestry. She brought in someone who was an expert who gave them some sort of lineage that persuaded the sister, at least for a time, that they did have this indigenous ancestry. But when Kali started to get suspicious is when the sister decided, like, I did my own research and I don't think I can claim this anymore, that this does not seem like it is a true reflection of, you know, where our people ultimately came from. And then you couple that with the fact that on top of the initial claims about the Métis ancestry, she started to add on other tribal lineages that she was affiliated with. So let's take a look at, this was a TEDx talk that raised a lot of

eyebrows at the time where she's claiming a lot of different ancestries that it turns out she was not connected to at all. Let's take a look at that. I'm Bear Klan. I'm Anishinaabe Métis from Treaty 4 Territory. And I want to acknowledge the territory that I'm in, Treaty 6 Territory, home to the Cree peoples and homeland of the Métis nation. I also want to acknowledge my ancestors who are clearly here with me. So it turns out that her people are actually like Russian and Eastern European farmer immigrants. Which is fine. Totally fine. Also, this is the other part that to me was actually the most gross. She also invented this whole childhood of trauma.

Look, I don't know if she suffered some trauma or another in her life or not, but what she said is totally inconsistent with who her parents actually are. Apparently, they were successful, well-known, middle-class business owners. She had a stable upbringing, at least from the outside, as far as anyone could tell, totally opposite the childhood of trauma that she described as rife with violence and addiction and sexual assault and poverty and all of these things. Some of them, I mean, the poverty part is provably false. The ancestry also now provably false. But I just, I just really don't understand. Like,

I mean, it seems like she also started leaning more into the traditional dress, which is also part of why her colleagues were like, what are you doing here? And they found it particularly gross too, that she invented this whole childhood of trauma, which kind of plays into these negative stereotypes of that community. Like, every indigenous person is, like, you know, a violent drunk or something like that. And so, it's quite incredible. Ultimately, I mean, this lady, she's just a con artist. That's what it really looks like. She said that her name was Morning Star Bear. Like, that's a veggie burger. It's real life. Look, I'm shocked. I don't know. This is a deep social pathology. This is not the first time this has happened. Dolezal was one. Here in DC, where I went to school, GW, there was some professor. Oh, really? Yeah, who proclaimed to be same thing, you know, professor of X studies,

long claim of history, totally false. She was just white. I don't get it. It's okay to be Russian, Czech, or Polish. You know, there's some oppression that happened in those communities, especially if you're Czech, Russian, or whatever that came over here in 1912, 1913. You could talk about the turmoil of the czar or whatever. Be proud of where you're from. There's nothing wrong with being from there. I really don't know. I mean, the fact that her parents were business owners and she had a middle-class childhood

shows that one of the best ways you can get ahead in current culture is to claim trauma and to claim some sort of special status. And I'm not minimizing people's actual trauma, but Harper's Magazine just came out with a big cover edition yesterday, I think, called Against Trauma. And it was exactly around how the social pathologizing

of the idea of trauma entering everybody's life has created all this weird speak about the way people talk about screwed up childhoods or whatever. And I'm not minimizing it once again, but it also claims a way to have social status. And when you have social status, then you have freaks and narcissists like this who glom onto it and use it and exploit it all the way to the very top of the value chain. And, I mean, it's repulsive how far she actually got with this.

Well, she got to actually have the benefit of the privilege that comes with her class status and not having that trauma. Again, I don't know every in and out of her childhood, and no one does, to say that, like, there's no trauma. But certainly the story she was telling— What she claimed is BS. What she claimed is totally BS, right? So she gets to have the benefit of that upbringing and then gets to use this feigned identity to carve out sort of, you know, a brand for herself, which is it really is. It really is something. And I have to say, too, I mean, listen, I really, you know, buy into the notion that race is there isn't this like hard genetic these, race is social construct and all of that. So I can theoretically imagine a person who doesn't have like technical lineage in a certain community, but authentically is culturally part of that community.

Like I can imagine that set of circumstances. That is clearly not what was happening. Yeah, that's not what was happening. That is not what was going on. In fact, I would say Rachel Dolezal, without, you know, recalling every detail and specifics of her particular case, like, I would say she had more of an authentic claim to she had really made efforts to, you know, be part of the community and sort of live that experience, all of those things. Like, I can imagine a theoretical set of circumstances where you would feel

a part of a culture that you didn't technically descend from. This ain't it. This person is just a con artist. Yeah, no. Bottom line.

It's psycho. And it just goes to show you what gets rewarded in our society. It's this stuff, which you can get away with this stuff for a long time.

I mean, look, credit to the news. I guess Canada's news is not as woke as our news, so credit to them. There's no way that we'd have done this here in the

U.S. So I'm glad that... I don't know, Elizabeth Warren did ultimately... She kind of exposed herself. Well, I was going to say, she played herself. There's no way the New York Times and all them would actually dug into hers. Charlamagne was happy to ask her about it. I know. Man, I will always give credit to that guy for asking her. I mean, here's what I would say.

Like, still the best... If you had to pick an identity in America and presumably in Canada, the thing that you would want is to be a rich person. Yeah. Right? I mean, that's the best thing. So she got to have the class status. And then because. She was probably profiting off of this, too.

That's the other thing. In terms of, or at least socially. And her job and all that relied on this. So, you know. Yeah, her job and all that relied on this. Yeah, her job, her chosen field, this was very advantageous, 100%. Anyway. These people are psycho. It's hard to understand. It's sick.

How do you not think you're going to get caught? And by the way, her whole family, they wouldn't say much on the record, but they said enough to be like, this is bullshit. And we want nothing to do with it, including the sister and the parents. Yeah, well, you know, I hope somebody who's actually, what do they call them in Canada? It's not native. It's First Nations or whatever. Right. So I hope somebody who's actually First Nation gets this post.

There actually are a lot of problems for First Nation and native people. Massive discrimination. Also here in the United States. Poverty, you know. The way these. Massive discrimination, poverty. The way these people have been treated, terrible. They have some great traditions and more. I actually read a book recently about people, Native communities in Alaska,

who have some overlap and share with people in Canada as well, about Eskimo. I forget what it is. I think it's called My Life with the Eskimos, about a Norwegian-American explorer who went to Upper Canada in the 1900s. Fascinating stuff, okay? Like, real, you could, like, you know, my parents are from India. I have a reverence for those type of cultures, their traditions, and more.

And so to have people appropriate that, like, literally, this is one of those, you know, real cases where this is happening, is disgusting. Yes. I don't know what to say. Agreed. All right. All right, guys. Enjoy your day.

We'll have more for you later. Some really interesting new data, frankly troubling data, from apartmentguide.com. They put out their monthly rent report and some pretty stunning numbers about just how much rents have spiked across the country. Let's go ahead and throw this map up to start with. So what you see here is the increase in rent of one-bedroom apartments in states across the country. Every single state has seen an increase. And you can see where some of the top states are. They're kind of scattered all over. Yeah, Oklahoma. Yeah, as we dig into the data, you see Louisiana, you see Florida, you see Oregon. As we dig into the data, you'll see some of the cities that have had the highest spikes.

A lot of them are in warm weather places, which makes sense. A lot of them also in cities that are relatively small, so 300,000 people or less. Right. But just to give you the top line numbers, so overall, one bedrooms year over year, price has increased close to 20%, 19.8% in one year. Two bedrooms, the picture is not much better. Price has increased year over year by 17.3%. Just to give you a little bit more data, here are the top 10 cities in terms of amount of increase. Those are the numbers at the top. You see Gilbert, Arizona, Long Beach, California, Riverside, California, Orlando, Florida. Again, a lot of places that are warm.

Birmingham, Alabama, St. Petersburg, Florida, Huntington Beach, California, Boise, Idaho. That's one I've been hearing about. Scottsdale, Arizona, and Irvine, California. And finally, for the two bedroom, biggest increase, you see places like, again, Orlando, Florida, St. Petersburg, Florida, Jacksonville, Arlington, Texas, Tucson, Arizona, Garland, Texas, Reno, Nevada, Fort Wayne, Indiana, random, New York, New York, different than what you might have heard on the right, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. So, a couple things that I took note of here. First of all, you see the movement to warm other places and driving up rent prices. You see, obviously, the pandemic abating and rent prices skyrocketing now that people can actually potentially have a job and pay.

And it does defy some of the narratives out there. I mean, a lot of the places that saw huge rent increases were actually in California, where the narrative has been, oh, California's over. Oh, New York's over. And everybody's going to Texas. At least from this rent price data, that doesn't necessarily reflect that. And then the most important piece here is, like, you know, when you see rent prices going up this much, this is a massive hit on people's wallet. It makes it so hard for them to be able to afford the other necessities of life in addition to just housing. I mean, housing price goes up by 20% and then your food cost goes up by like, what, 40%? I mean, that's a total disaster. Those are

the absolute basics in a single year. You're getting nuked. And for a lot of people who are on year-over-year leases, if you re-signed and are up for re-signing in 2021, you probably did see a significant increase. I have a lot of friends who this happened to, took advantage of COVID deals and now are looming and seeing like, oh, are we going to be able to re-sign this apartment or not? It's really becoming a problem. And they really point to this fact. Rent inflation is here until 2023. While the pandemic saw a drastic decrease in rent,

the trend quickly reversed as both renters, new and old, returned to cities. As the report shows, year-over-year rent price up by double-digit nationwide, a trend that is likely to continue. And the other thing that they point, oh, highest increase in more than 30 years. But what they really, this captures is internal migration within states and all over the country. That's the totally nuts part. So even within California, people said, okay, I'm going to the hotter parts of California. I'm going to the nicer parts because I'm working from home or I have the ability. That creates this competition over scarce resources, which

drives the price up. Boise, Idaho, from what I heard, was the same thing. Californians who wanted to pay lower taxes, still be on the West Coast time zone, be only like an hour-long flight or whatever away from San Francisco. Boom, they're moving to Boise. Same with Arizona. Scottsdale, Arizona, I'd heard a lot of Californians want to be able on that time zone or within an hour of the time zone, quick flight from home. Texas obviously was a longtime story, but it's not just Austin. There's a lot of others. And so that huge internal migration to Georgia, to Florida, to Texas, across the entire Sunbelt throughout the pandemic. As Derek Thompson said on our show, if just 10% of the white-collar workforce moves, that is the largest internal

migration in the United States since World War II and population redistribution. I think the whole country changed during COVID. I mean, it's like a totally, what, it's like an almost un-nuanced point to make at this point. But it's true. It's just like we had a huge, massive change, and that's disrupting everything. It's reshaped the workplace. The electoral map. The electoral map.

It's reshaped, I mean, the geography and the landscape of where people are moving to, seeming to seek out these smaller cities, which may be, you know, overall less expensive, even as the rents are apparently skyrocketing to match some of the larger cities. And then also part of why there's a big jump year over year is because a lot of places, New York City, I know being one of them, saw a big decrease in rent during the pandemic. And so now things are coming back and you're seeing, you know, rents increasing beyond even where they were before the pandemic as people are having to go back in some ways to work. Certainly people who, you know, work service sector jobs and those sorts of things have to be back in the city or town, back, you know, in the workplace.

So a lot of the internal migration, as you point out, has to do with white-collar workers, many of whom told their employers, like, I'm not coming back. Yeah, a lot of them were like, screw you, we're not coming back at all. And if you are going to make me, then I'm going to find another job.

And because of the tight labor market, many have been able to do that. So just another little indicator, number one, of how everything getting so much more expensive and so that even the wage increases that we have seen are being eaten into by the increased cost of essential goods like food and gas and housing, but also just the way that COVID has totally remade and reshaped our landscape in ways that we're only beginning to wrap our heads around. Completely correct. All right, guys. Enjoy the day. We're going to have more for you later.

Chris Christie has been on a book tour. We even covered it here on the show. He's been trying to hawk his book called Republican Rescue. He's painting himself, setting himself up to run against Trump, even if Trump does run again. He says we cannot be clinging to stop this deal. Oh, I completely agree with. But what did I tell you here on the show? If that's your position, then you ain't going to be working in the current Republican Party. And we have this hilarious piece that we can share with all of you. Let's put it up there on the screen. Eric Bowler, look, Eric Bowler is extremely cringe and one of those resistance Democrats, but the guy's got some reporting and we're going to give credit where due.

A senior publishing source with access to industry's book scan tells me Republican Rescue sold just 2,289 copies during its first week in stores, which constitutes a colossal publishing flop. That is a total disaster. On Sunday, Republican Rescue was ranked 15,545th on the Amazon Kindle store. So he's only sold 300 digital copies, about 2,000 copies of his book. Look, guys, just to give you an example, just to hit the bestseller list, you only have to sell 5,000 to 10,000 books. It's not actually that hard. So he's not crocking any bestseller list.

This is a total and complete flop. And it just goes to show you the appetite for what Chris Christie is selling is not there whatsoever. I mean, it's kind of insane. And he details, I mean, this guy was everywhere. He did every major show. Making the rounds. He was on This Week. He was on The View.

He was on Fox and Friends. He was on Fox News. He was on Fox Business. He was on The Daily Show. He was on HBO twice. He was on CNBC. And so there's a lot going on here because, first of all, it reveals none of those places have any sway with their audience.

Right. And we actually saw that when we were doing our book. Oh, we knew it as well. Yeah, 100%. Which did a lot better than Chris Christie's. A lot better. And was published by a really small imprint. Small imprint, yeah.

Ryan Grim's publishing house published it, and we got it out to press really quickly and all of those things. We didn't have nearly this media lineup. But we did a couple cable news appearances and nothing. I mean, there are very few hosts and programs where you actually see people watch you on there and then actually go out and buy books. And apparently none of these places on this list make the cut whatsoever. So it shows you how little sway they have with their audience, number one. Number two, it shows you that there was, not only was there not Republican interest in Chris Christie, there's also not liberal interest in Chris Christie. There's also not liberal interest

in Chris Christie. It was a total and complete misreading of the audience to think that they cared what this man had to say at all. Because if you're a liberal

like the guy who wrote this post, Eric Bullard, what you see, rightfully so, is someone who stood by Trump all the way

to the very end, you know, and was there helping him with debate prep and whatever. So you kind of look at this and go, who is this guy to now come and pretend like he's some hero? Liberals weren't buying it either. And then I think especially because Christie, if he was really trying to sell books, the way to do it would have been to lean into like an anti-Trump title and have some juicy tell-all.

Because some of those books from within the White House, whatever, that's the only one. so you know if he was really trying to sell books he should have went with some like blatantly anti-Trump thing and the fact of the matter is that he may as well have done that because he's nuked himself with

Trump and with the Trump base and whatever anyway to prop up a book that ultimately people are not interested in reading

because they don't believe Chris Christie has any real answers to offer about the future of the Republican Party unfortunately that's correct. So there you go.

There you go. All right. All right, guys. Enjoy your day. We'll have more for you later. Actor Alec Baldwin has just given his first interview, I think, since that horrific tragedy occurred on set with the accidental shooting of a popular cinematographer. He says something pretty interesting about how this ultimately went down,

at least according to him. Let's take a listen. She was someone who was loved by everyone who worked with and liked by everyone who worked with and admired. I mean, even now, I find it hard to believe that. It just doesn't seem real to me. You haven't said much in public since that tragic accident. Why speak out now?

I think the big question, and the one you must have asked yourself a thousand times, how could this have happened? You described it as a one in a trillion shot, and the gun was in your hand. How do you come to terms with that? It wasn't in the script for the trigger to be pulled. Well, the trigger wasn't pulled. I didn't pull the trigger. So you never pulled the trigger? No, no, no, no. I would never point a gun at anyone

and pull a trigger at them. Never. What did you think happened? How did a real bullet get on that set? I have no idea. Someone put a live bullet in a gun. A bullet that wasn't even supposed to be on the property. How do you respond to actors like George Clooney who say that every time they were handed a gun, they checked it themselves? Your emotions are so clearly so right there on the surface. You felt

shock, you felt anger, you felt sadness. Do you feel guilt? You said you're not a victim but is this the worst thing that's ever happened to you? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think back and I think of what could I have done? Alec Baldwin unscripted the newsmaking special event tomorrow night at 8, 7 central on ABC and stream on Hulu. So that's a promo for it. So the interesting thing there, obviously, is he says he did not pull the trigger. Very emphatically, right? Which, you know, I grew up with firearms around and learned to shoot when I was young and all that stuff. But I am by no means a weapons expert. So when I initially heard that, I thought there's no way.

Yeah, I mean, I personally thought he was lying. You have to pull the trigger. That's how that works. But I will say that I asked my dad, who is very into guns. This is his hobby and his passion for many years. He also is, like, you know, very interested in the engineering and the mechanics of it, et cetera. And so I said, what people think the gun that was used here was a Colt single action. And I said, is this possible at all?

Let me read you his text. He says, a single action means it has to be cocked manually by pulling the hammer back. If that has been done, then normally a light pull on the trigger could set it off, whether by a trigger finger or something else catching the trigger. However, for some older type revolvers, it is considered dangerous to have a cartridge in the cylinder where the hammer rests because it is possible for a bump against something to cause the gun to fire. I hadn't thought of this before, but under this condition, it is possible that the gun went off without the trigger being pulled. Most modern revolvers are designed so that can't happen, but there are still many revolvers around where it could, so it is possible Baldwin may be telling the truth. So that's per my dad.

Yeah, well, and you know, it's interesting because what George Clooney brought up, or sorry, what George Stephanopoulos brought up there about George Clooney is arguably more important to me than all of the semantics. What Clooney, I actually hadn't read this interview, so what he points to is that he was like, all of this stuff they're saying is completely crazy. So he was like, I've never heard the term cold gun. He goes, I've never heard of a lot of these so-called safety practices that they're doing there.

He said that it's very clear that a lot of the stuff that they were doing on the set was made up and was terrible in terms of standard safety procedure. Even more further, he says, quote, every single time I'm handed a gun on set, every time they hand me a gun, I look at it, I open it, I show it to the person I'm pointing it to, we show it to the crew.

Quote, everyone does it and everybody knows. Maybe Alec did that. Hopefully he did. Although initial police reports suggest that he relied on the cold gun call from his crew. So what we're pointing to there is that Clooney and many other high-level actors had said in the past that they have much more stringent safety procedures on their end and also in terms of how they interact with. The other thing is Alec Baldwin says, I did not pull the trigger. But as, lookc Baldwin says, I did not pull the trigger.

But as, look, once again, I did not grow up around guns. I've spent a very extremely, I think I've been to a range like four times. Even I know, you don't put the finger on the trigger unless you're intent on pulling it. And you're pointing it at somebody that it's, you know, in a very, very dire situation. And otherwise, you should have your finger off the trigger in order to avoid even that slight bump that your dad talked about it. So maybe Alec Baldwin, who I assume does not even know that much about guns, maybe he put his finger on the trigger, but did not pull the trigger. But even that slight amount of pressure in an older type of gun

could have led to the, I don't think they use the term accident, negligent discharge or whatever. Look, all of it is speculation. It's pretty interesting that he's saying that he didn't pull it. But like I said, it seems to be an amalgamation of terrible safety practice in the first place. Live gun or live bullet, now live ammo never should have been on the set, period. Inexperienced safety procedure. Other people in Hollywood calling him out, hardcore, being like, sorry, man,

you did not follow the stuff that we've all been doing for years. We also know that a lot of members of the crew were very unhappy. Yeah, unhappy with the safety conditions. Safety conditions and the work conditions, and several had just resigned in protest over some of the work conditions.

And the armorer who was supposed to be overseeing the safety protocols was very new. This was only her, I think, second movie that she had served in that capacity. And some of the things that they had said, too, like it never should have even been that producer who was handing a gun off. It should have been the armor. So even some things that have come out have been real red flags to people. Obviously, there were a million mistakes that were made along the way here to get to the point where it's even relevant

whether or not Alec Baldwin ultimately pulled the trigger or bumped the trigger or something happened. Because all along the way, there never should have even been live ammo on that set at all. How does that even happen is still a question that no one knows the answer to,

at least not publicly. Still waiting to hear on that one. All right, so we'll watch that interview, see if there are any other nuggets for you. In the meantime, guys, enjoy your day. We'll have more content for you later. Hey, guys, thanks so much for watching. That's right.

Just as a reminder, you can become a premium subscriber today. Watch the full show completely uncut. Our reactions to each other's monologues. You get to listen to it. You get to ask us questions. All that good stuff. Link is right there in the description or at BreakingPoints.com.

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