Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #15: Michigan Shooting, Inflation, Fed March, Cuomos, Gas Prices, and More!

Episode Date: December 11, 2021

Krystal and Saagar talk about the Michigan school shooting, inflation myths in the media, a staged march in DC, the Cuomo plan to avoid scandal, Dems gas prices blunder, 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. Guys, we've been following news from last week of a horrific school shooting in Michigan that left four Oxford High students dead. And more and more details have come out surrounding that shooting. And in a very unusual move, the parents of the, we'll say, alleged shooter have also been indicted, charged with involuntary manslaughter. Let's go ahead and throw this tear sheet up on the screen. It says, Dramatic Dave reveals details about the parents of a school shooting suspect. Here's how it begins. morning, James and Jennifer Crumbly listened by video conference from separate jail cells as they were charged with involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shootings of four Oxford High School students who the police say were gunned down by the couple's 15-year-old son, Ethan. So here's

some of the details. And by the way, the Crumblys fled. The police had to go and find them. Now, they say, oh, it was a miscommunication. We were planning to turn ourselves in. We were worried for safety issues. But the police say that it looks like they were definitely fleeing, that they didn't get into details. But they said the circumstances surrounding where they were found and how they were found indicates that they had, in fact, fled and tried to evade custody. So that's what the police officers are saying. But the details of that day and the reason why the parents are being charged are pretty remarkable. So they had purchased the weapon for their son

and, you know, had posed with him and taken him target shooting and all that stuff and left it unlocked in their bedroom. And that ends up being the gun that their son takes and, you know, massacres these four students. But there's more than that. The son was caught in class one day surfing the web looking for ammo for the gun. And they recovered text messages from the mom that was basically like, haha, no, I'm not mad at you. Next time, just don't get caught. But then even more chilling, on the day of the shooting, the parents were called to the high

school because he had drawn a, you know, a terrible picture that showed blood everywhere and indicated that, you know, he wanted to do harm to other students. The school wanted the parents to take the son out of school for the day and seek him counseling within 48 hours. The parents basically said, no, he's returned to class. No one searches his backpack where the gun was. And then later in the day, he commits this horrific massacre. And the other piece of this that is indicative of, you know, the potential fact that the parents should have and did have some concerns about him is immediately mom is texting Ethan and says,

don't do it when they hear that there's a school shooting going on. And dad calls in and says, I have a gun missing and I think my son may be the shooter. So those are the facts as they stand. And that's why authorities are saying you were wildly negligent in this situation. This is your kid, and you had every opportunity to intervene and get him help and raise warning flags. And you had some indications, obviously, that there were some problems here, and you did nothing. And that resulted in the death of four students. I completely support this. I think we should see a lot more of it.

It's been the same problem in so many of these school shootings. The Columbine parents, I mean, a lot of these people, look, maybe they didn't know exactly, but you know. So here's the clear cut case. The guy writes, blood everywhere. Can't get these thoughts out of my head. Pulled out of school, sent to a guidance counselor. Parents don't pull them out. You buy a gun. Any gun owner. I'm not even a gun owner yet. Soon will be. But whenever you have a gun and you don't have it secured in your house when there's a minor around, that is negligence.

It is like basic 101 beaten into anybody who is around firearms. Add in a firearm, a loaded firearm, which is then not secured in a house with a teenager who is having, you know, psycho problems. That's like a whole other level. It's a recipe for absolute disaster, which is exactly what resulted. It's a recipe for disaster. These people, look, gun ownership is a serious responsibility. When you have a weapon of death, and let's be honest about what it is. I'm not casting aspersions. I'm saying let's talk about what it is. It is a serious responsibility on you as the owner of said firearm in order to go out of your way both not to put yourself in a situation where you would have to use it. It has to be a moment of a last resort. And second, that when it is in your house, you have to keep it as locked and secured as possible while also balancing, of course, safety and everything. So they didn't take any

of those steps, and I think they deserve it. I think they deserve to be charged. I think they should go to jail for a long time. Once again, given the facts of the case, maybe there's things that I don't know, but the details seem clear as hell. Their lawyers' basic defenses, well, they had no idea, which, mean seems hard to believe it's pretty clear to me and look you either locked the gun up or you didn't and you didn't and so when that happens yeah i think you're criminally responsible yeah so i mean listen i'm not a lawyer or legal analyst so are there some technical requirements of the law that they do or don't meet i don't know either. As a moral issue,

do they deserve to be held at least somewhat responsible for what their minor son did when there were clear warning signs in the school trying to flag things for them all along the way? And by the way, there's questions too about the school

and some of the decisions that they made here. But the most direct line of responsibility is to the parents. Yes, yeah, no question. When a 15-year-old has access to a deadly weapon and it is left unlocked, and you have the kid looking up ammo and drawing pictures, saying he can't get thoughts out of his head about wanting to kill people, come on.

It's all red flag, red flag, red flag. One after another. And to me, it is incredibly damning that both of them instantly knew that it was their kid. Right. They both instantly knew he took the gun and this was him. I mean, that tells you everything about the lawyer saying, oh, they had no idea. Like that really shows that they had some indication that it could be that their child could be capable of such a thing. So we'll follow the cases it develops and any more information that comes out. But I do think it's a pretty significant development just because we haven't seen an attempt to hold the parents accountable and responsible in this way. In some ways, it's very controversial, but I agree with you. It is an appropriate direction to go in. Totally.

All right, guys. Enjoy the day. We're going to have more for you later. Time now for our weekly partnership segment with The Daily Poster. And joining us today to talk about some of the convenient facts that the media has been leaving out of the inflation discussion is Julia Rock. She is a reporter for The Daily Poster. Great to have you, Julia. Good to see you, Julia. Thanks so much for having me. Of course. So we've been covering here a lot how inflation is certainly top of mind for a lot of voters. We have, in fact, seen prices, especially of things that, you know, really take a hit in terms of the household budget, things like rent, of course, gas, food prices. And this is making a significant impact on American psyche. But what you've

reported out here is that there are significant parts of the inflation picture that are being left out by the corporate media. Just break down what you found. Yeah. So I just want to start out by saying, you know, the point you make is really important. Higher prices, especially of essential goods, are, you know, really, really challenging for people who, especially people who are already facing financial hardship. But we sort of went through some corporate media coverage of inflation and looked for things that were conspicuously absent from that coverage, such as, you know, corporations are seeing their highest profits in since I think 1950. Consolidation in certain sectors, such as the ones you point out, agriculture, are allowing corporations to jack up prices and leaving people with no no options to go elsewhere.

So I think those are sort of some of the main points. You know, wages at the very top have been skyrocketing. Executives are using this moment of massive profits to, you know, ask for more money. And so while it is true that, you know, prices are going up, that is challenging for people. The role of corporations in pushing up prices, juicing their own salaries has been sort of absent while rising wages among lower income workers or unions bargaining for bonuses or inflation adjusted wages are kind of union workers are being scapegoated for inflation. Right. Yeah, I think it's very important. You point to here like a 20 to 30 percent private jet inflation, you know, amongst rich people and others.

The heartbreaks phenomenon. Yeah, give us a few more examples of that because that's pretty good. Yeah. So, I mean, there's just so much money floating around at the top that, you know, there's sort of this phenomenon where rich people don't even know where to put it. So they're spending money on private jets or digital art, which, you know, there's sort of this phenomenon where rich people don't even know where to put it. So they're spending money on private jets or digital art, which, you know, is kind of this big speculative bubble right now. So some of those examples are sort of astounding that, yeah, 20 to 30 percent private jet inflation is just sort of unimaginable to me. Like, how could demand for private jets have risen so much?

But, you know, what this is coming from is the stock market, you know, has had a boom year. People with assets are doing very well. People who work at this, at these corporations, you know, at the very top that are seeing record profits are seeing, you know, bonuses for themselves and salary increases. And so they're just spending money on absurd things. And that is causing an increase in demand and inflation at the very top. Yeah. I mean, we covered a few of those examples here, too. The trophy trees. Oh, yes. One that really stood out to me of like, there are these bidding wars for trees now that people have moved at great expense, six figures to their house to serve as some sort of like status symbol. The yacht market has, the prices have increased.

You can't even get a yacht if you want one for years. And then the broker, they interviewed a broker who was like, people don't even use them to like go and be on the water. They just have parties on their, they just buy them to have parties. Anyway, that's a whole other world. But you know, one of the things you get to hear, Julia, is sometimes to the extent Democrats sort of, they don't really want to talk about inflation for a long time. They didn't want to pretend that this was happening at all. And that's not tenable anymore because clearly it's hitting people's pocketbooks and they're very concerned about it.

So another thing you hear is like, well, what can he really, what could Biden really do about it? It's really not his fault and he really can't do that much about it. You make the case that that is really not accurate. Yeah. So so one stark example is that in the past, during kind of these moments of crisis or kind of the crisis right now is this transition from people not spending very much money to spending much more money is that the president has enacted price controls on certain goods to prevent corporations from, you know, using that crisis moment to juice their profits. And that's something that Congress could give Biden the statutory authority to do. Probably not going to happen, you know, given the state of the Senate right now. But it is worth noting that some of the senators, you know, given the state of the Senate right now. But it is worth noting that some of the senators,

you know, thinking of Manchin and Sinema, who would probably be most likely, you know, to block something like that, are also the people who are using, you know, fear mongering about inflation to argue that maybe it's not the right time to pass the Democrat social spending and climate bill. So price controls are sort of one option for the government to step in and say, you know, we're not just going to leave it to corporations to use this moment to juice their profits and price gouge people. We're going to do something about it. I think and the other example that is that is more of a long term solution is, you know, investing in the types of things where a lack of supply, such as housing, is what's been causing higher prices for people for years. Yeah. The last thing that you get to hear is a lot of questions about what the Fed is going to do.

There's a lot of interest among inflation hawks of the Fed trying to act to tamp things down. What are the risks there? Yeah, so I think this is maybe one of the most important things that's been absent from coverage of inflation, which is that the Fed is sort of under pressure, is the term that's used. And I put that in quotes because it's not entirely clear what that means. But the Fed is under pressure to raise interest rates, to cool off the economy a bit. And it's really important to note that the flip side of that would be causing unemployment and slowing down the labor market recovery. And right now, kind of the thing that people have going for them, the thing that working people have going for them, even, you know, in sectors where inflation is outpacing the rise in

wages, is that for the first time in a long time, people can, you know, quit their job and take a better job. Because when the labor market is tight, when, you know, corporations are struggling to find workers, it gives workers a lot more leverage to ask for something better or look for something better. So it's really important to note that, you know, in these stories about how the Fed is under pressure to do something about inflation, what they're under pressure to do is cause unemployment. Yeah, that's a very, very excellent point. I'm really glad that you pointed that out. Thank you, Julia. Julia, thank you so much. Great reporting.

Thanks for having me. Have a good one. Our pleasure. And thank you guys so much for watching. We'll have more for you later. Something we're always on the watch for here at Breaking Points are obviously staged marches and perhaps false flag events. May sound conspiratorial, but given so much of what we know about state conduct from the Black Lives Matter riots to January 6th and many of these other right-wing groups to the indictments of the Gretchen Wittner people where there were actually more feds involved than actual conspirators. I think we're probably on balance right to be skeptical of any major event that takes place here in Washington. And recently there was one which caught our eye, not just ours, but a lot of people, a group calling itself, quote, Patriot Front marching on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Let's go ahead and play this video. You can see masked gentlemen wearing hats in uniforms, marching with shields and with American flags as well. And what you can see

there, Crystal, is what a lot of people flagged as a potential, quote unquote, staged event. Now, we don't know the truth. I want to say that at the very top. But there are some very suspicious things that happen in terms of popularizing and making people afraid of this. So this Twitter sleuth actually went deep into the person who was the very first to actually tweet about this so-called fascist march in Washington. Let's put this up there on the screen. This was the woman, okay? Now, her Twitter handle was Cheryl Llewellyn. Now let's go and put the next one up there, please. The next tweet actually shows that she had just created a brand new Twitter account immediately after tweeting the video saying happening now 500 men with riots shields are marching in Washington, DC., she went ahead and tagged a ton of journalists in

order to make sure that it showed up in their mentions. Go ahead and put the next one up there on the screen, please. What you can see is that people who claim to be experts then in the so-called Patriot Front then jump in to say how much they know they're going to travel by U-Haul. He tweeted actually, though, as a so-called expert about the Patriot Front for the very first time. And he was also right about the equipment. So how exactly did he know? And then put the final one up there on the screen, please, because what we see from these series of tweets from these accounts is that, look, there was no Google history for anybody named Cheryl Llewellyn. Joined Twitter a few days ago. Her video garnered a million views. Some of these

so-called disinformation experts were immediately able to retweet, amplify, and gain credibility to the video and more. Is it somebody who works for the government? I have no idea. But it looks pretty sketchy and it looks weird. It looks also like an event meant to cause panic and justify some sort of crackdown here in Washington. But we would be remiss, Crystal, if we did not say that there is a perhaps alternative explanation. Right. So what happened is after this chick gets called out for basically being fake, she then – the account transforms into from an anti-fascist, oh my God, this is terrible,

what's happening here account to actively supporting, to being an active supporter of Patriot Front. So interestingly, the Washington Post actually wrote this whole thing up with their headline being a white supremacist march in D.C. was pushed by a fake Twitter account, experts say.

Now, their explanation, which also would make sense, is that this account was actually a fake account set up by Patriot Front to call attention to their march. Because if you are a legitimate group that wants to get attention for whatever activities you're doing, this is also the sort of behavior that you would engage in, tagging a bunch of journalists, posing as just like, oh, sweet little innocent DC residents so troubled by this to try to get their attention and get it amplified in the media. If that was their intention, it worked very well. But I think it also raises a larger question about like, you know, all of these journalists and activists on Twitter who ultimately amplified this march.

From a fake account. A million views. Right. Coming, you know, that was initially reported on by a fake account. If this is a legitimate white supremacist group, you're giving them exactly what they want. Of course. You're giving them tons of attention. I mean, that's the whole goal.

They have, like, 100 people there. It's not that many people. And you're giving them millions of views and tons of traction and ultimately tons of power by doing that. Now, what the Washington Post says is that this group, Patriot Front, was sort of a splinter group after the Charlottesville Unite the Right catastrophe. Okay. That one of the leaders of the groups that was involved there, that I can't remember what the name of the previous group was, but anyway, goes and forms Patriot Front. His name is Thomas Rousseau. And the previous group was called Vanguard America.

And so this was like a new incarnation of one of the groups that was at Charlottesville is what the Washington Post is reporting. So that's what we know. That's all we know. It's fishy and I think that people, anytime they see these sorts of events which are obviously geared in one direction to inspire a sort of response, should be very skeptical about what's happening on the inside, who are the actors around it.

Don't immediately retweet and amplify. What did we learn from the Nathan Phillips video with that kid from Covington Catholic? Sometimes there's more going around. Many actors on many sides have a lot of vested interest in making sure you see one specific thing and to try and amplify it in one particular way. So that's what we're trying to do here.

A lot of people fell for this thing and thought there was some crazy white nationalist march here in D.C. I was here this weekend. Everything was fine. Well, the funny thing is, too, that the people, and this is a point the Washington Post article makes, is that if their goal, if this is a legitimate white supremacist group and their goal is to attract people on the far right fringe.

Well, they failed because those people all think that they're feds. And their faces are all covered. To be fair, a lot of them are probably still feds regardless. No way to know who they are. Track them down. See if they have any connection to the federal government. But anyway, that's what we know. There we go.

All right. All right, guys. Thanks for watching. We'll have more for you later. So, guys, we already covered some of the revelations that have come out about Chris Cuomo and him being fired by CNN for all of the things he was doing behind the scenes to try to protect his brother from any sort of allegations against him. But one thing that was lost in the new revelations that New York Attorney General Letitia James had put out of all these text messages flying back and forth between Chris Cuomo and Andrew Cuomo and Andrew Cuomo's aides and all these people is the fact that to try to rebut the multiple allegations of sexual harassment, at least one instant sexual assault against them. The playbook

that they turned to was the one that Joe Biden used on the campaign trail to rebut the allegations that he was facing by Tara Reid. So the Biden campaign effectively set the playbook for how Cuomo then responded and tried to dismiss all of the allegations against him. Let's put this Fox News tarot sheet up on the screen, which has the details. The headline is, Cuomo aides discussed Biden's response to Tara Reid claims after Lindsey Boylan went public against the governor. Let me just give you some of the specifics here, because this wasn't just like, oh, what did Biden do? And trying to remember. No, they were like very detailed of we are going to do it exactly like he did. One person said, pull what Biden said when he was

accused during the campaign. That was a message to top aides, Melissa DeRosa and Rick as a party. This absolutely did not happen, Lever then wrote, quoting the Biden campaign. He firmly believes that women have a right to be heard. This is just direct copying and pasting the Biden language and heard respectfully. That was what deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield had said. Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press. What is clear about this claim, it is untrue. And then they also said, I think the disgruntled former employee needs to come from a source or other Cuomo employee. Truth is, she stormed out, Lindsay Boylan, over allegations of her own misconduct to female employees and begged to come back.

I think we can victim shame on the record. These are the discussions that are going on. And later on that day, this aide told Team Cuomo, quote, And Biden can't never mention Biden in the denial part. Only the part about women. It elevates it. This will be a Cuomo's box who says there's simply no truth to these claims. So from the language to the approach to who is going to do the pushback, all copied from Joe Biden's successful efforts to sideline any traction with the Tara Reid claims against him. Yeah, and I think it all is just much more structural in terms of how they see the Me Too industrial complex or whatever at the time.

It's just so much on their side. Remember, Tara was famously denied by, what was it, Time's Up or whatever. They didn't have a representation. Oh, Tara Kearns out the Time's Up CEO was in league with the Cuomo brothers in trying to demonize and deflect against the people who were going after Andrew Cuomo. I mean, you just saw how on the CNN side, it completely fell apart.

On the Time's Up side, it falls apart. On Cuomo himself, all three of these people, supposedly some Me Too, you know, activist, Cuomo famous, Chris Cuomo famously, covering it all the time on his show saying, I'm on the side of women. I'm on the side of Me Too. Now, you know, it turns out he was actually ousted because of a new Me Too accusation. Same with his brother, Time's Up, having the Time's Up organization themselves be involved in the movement, corporatizing it, using their connections to the Biden campaign. So yeah, in a way they had the right playbook, right? It worked. It worked for Joe Biden. They bought off everybody at the top and they turned it into a weapon that they can use against people that they don't like and then they can keep it as a defense against the people

that they do. The one person who really they didn't count on was Letitia James. That's right. I mean, she's the one who did the initial investigation and did an effective enough job that there was just, there were so many claims that were made. There was so much evidence to back it up that he couldn't rebut it. And then the latest drop of information also coming from Letitia Jaynes with all these text messages. There was just no denying what was going on both with Chris Cuomo, with Andrew Cuomo, but also with Chris Cuomo. So otherwise, yeah, he had all this institutional protection. I mean, you really come to realize between Biden and Cuomo, Time's Up was not set up primarily to help women tell their stories or whatever BS they say. No, it was set up as a gatekeeping device to make sure

only claims that were going to go against Republicans ultimately got heard. This was also a mechanism to protect the people that they, you know, that they cared about ascending to political power. And so when it came to a Biden allegation, when it came to a Chris Cuomo allegation, well, those they pushed to the side were actively engaged, in the case of Cuomo, in the cover-up. Same thing, Human Rights Campaign, which is supposed to be civil rights organizations, supposed to care about social justice,

and the dude who was at the top of the organization gets caught also engaged in similar cover-ups and trying to pull personnel files of Lindsay Boylan in particular to try to smear her. I mean, it's pretty outrageous and pretty clear that he had, this is why he was able to get away with this stuff for so long. He has his brother protecting him with CNN from the press. He's got these supposedly Me Too organizations that are gatekeeping and protecting him as well. And so it really took this report to expose what was going on. And it's always worth saying, too, that, you know, the Me Too stuff,

because it involves sex and it's, you know, salacious and all of that, grabs all the headlines and was what ultimately forced him out. But never forget the stuff he did. Oh, yeah. In the nursing homes, cooking the books, lying about the COVID numbers, using his staffers who were supposed to be frontline, like responding to a coronavirus pandemic that was decimating the city right then. And instead, he's using them to write his book so he can make millions of dollars from an advance, giving VIP access to his brother. I mean, all of these things, every single one of them, utterly disgusting, morally reprehensible, and certainly impeachable. So we never want to lose sight of just the full picture of the many crimes that Cuomo was committing while he was in office. Absolutely right.

All right, guys, thanks for watching. We'll have problem for the Democrat. So they are scrambling for evidence that the Joe Biden administration is doing a lot to tackle the price of gas. So they tweeted out this excellent chart for all of you. Let's put it up there. I can't even get over this. So notice the Y-axis. The Y-axis with all of those different lines there spans from $3.375 to $3.415. So between two weeks, I think, because the X-axis is so terribly labeled, the price of gas dropped from $3.40 to $3.380. So a reduction of.02 in terms of the actual price of gas.

Two pennies! And they're bragging about that over two weeks. So, I guess, congratulations. It is perhaps, Crystal, one of the greatest self-owns in modern Twitter history. Everybody was dunking on this thing.

And I just, for those of you who are not on Twitter or online, you had to see this because they're so desperate to try. It's like, here's the other idiot. What else have I said here many times? The president is primarily, again, primarily not responsible for the price of gas. One of the reasons that you're not really supposed to take credit for low prices or for a good stock market is because then when it turns against you, you're going to be like, hey, hold on a second. I don't necessarily want to be tied to all of this. So by doing this, they're now making themselves responsible for the fact

that the price of gas is up by what, like 40 or 50% in the last year? Here's the amazing thing is they tracked down the genesis of this chart. So Matt Iglesias had been making a joke, and he put together this chart as a joke of like, ha-ha, see, here's how Democrats could message this, two-cent reduction in gas prices. And he's like, look, the infrastructure package lowered gas prices and came up with this chart,

again, as a joke. Ron Klain likes his tweet. And next thing you know, the DCCC is putting it out at like in earnest as not a joke. Totally missing that what Iglesias was saying was like mocking the idea of putting out a chart like this. So it is pretty incredible. But there are some new poll numbers that show you why they may be as desperate as they are. This is from the Winston Group.

I honestly don't know what their track record is, so a million caveats there. But unfortunately for Democrats, it generally tracks with the other polling that we've been seeing. Go ahead and throw this tweet up on the screen. So people were asked who would do a better job handling the economy, Republicans, with a 7-point advantage. Wow. Gas prices, Republicans, with a 12-point advantage. Inflation, Republicans with a 12-point advantage. And the supply chain, Republicans with a 7-point advantage. These are all of the things that are topping people's list of priorities and concerns right now.

And in every single instance, the Republicans are preferred. And let's be clear, the Republicans have, they've actually come out and said they're not even running on an agenda in the midterms. Like they're being out, like upfront about it. Like they just, their only interest is in attacking Democrats. They're not even pretending to put out some sort of positive legislative agenda that we could debate about whether it's good or bad. They just are attacking Democrats. And even with that utterly embarrassing and pathetic state of affairs where they're all so obsessed with Stop the Steal

and all this nonsense, they're still beating the Democrats. It is a dire, dire situation. They don't have to. When you're owning yourself so hard with graphs like this and trying to take credit for a 0.02% decrease in the price of gas, what are you doing there? No wonder. And listen, they have set themselves up for the red wave in 2022. I think it's 100%

their fault. Every time we plan the show, I go, where is the president? I mean, look, I was around for Obama too. The president usually talks a lot, has events, you know, comes out in front of the cameras, speaks about this press conference or whatever. He's never here. And even when he is, yes, he'll do one thing on Omicron, but then that's it. Boom. You know, completely out of it. This is why Americans feel like Biden is not focused on the stuff that actually matters to them. Because frankly, he's not. And even if he is, there's no way for us to know because he doesn't tell us anything. Maybe he's not capable of telling us anything, but setting himself up for a gigantic, embarrassing loss in 2022. And it's his own fault. I really believe that. I mean, look, infrastructure is nice. The package that they put together is woefully insufficient, even to get the current infrastructure needs we have like up to snuff, but that's fine. But it's also not the sort of thing that like is going to hit people's pocketbooks where they feel like an instant, an instant jolt. The larger program has been pared back to the point of being totally pathetic.

Matt Brunig has been doing a great job running the numbers on even, you know, people keep saying, and I've said, oh, universal pre-K. Well, at least that's good. No, no, no. This is not universal pre-K. Right. It's being left in. First of all, it doesn't fund the entire program. It's being left largely up to the states. And we know that many states, even some blue states, have said they're not sure that they're going to go forward with the program. So even the paltry few things that have been left in it are nowhere near what is being advertised. And oh, by the way, Manchin is now saying, yeah, I don't know if we're going to get to that this year. So being pushed off indefinitely into the future. So even the patheticness of the paltry things being less than advertised are probably not going to pass.

And it's all his fault. I mean, he had a window at the beginning when there was goodwill and there was pressure to get something done because the economy continued to be in free fall and all of those things when he could have gotten some real items passed that people felt in their pocketbooks to try to combat what has been very effective and very energizing for the Republican-based culture war messaging. They didn't do any of that. Biden is totally uncapable. I mean, I don't even know if it's a matter of like will. He's just incapable of sort of, you know, asserting himself and using the bully pulpit to make people feel like, all right, we're getting this thing together and things are going to head in the right direction. So that's how you end up with running against literally nothing in terms of a legislative agenda and still losing dramatically.

It's pathetic. Truly. All right, guys. Thanks for watching. We're going to have more for you later. This is an iHeart Podcast.