Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #42: Democratic Base, European Lifestyle, Airline Chaos, LIV Golf, & More!

Episode Date: July 2, 2022

Krystal, Saagar, and friends talk about the Democratic base being angry, European countries, woke union busting, Dem inaction, airlines, phone bill, LIV golf, & 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/Matt Stoller: https://mattstoller.substack.com/James Li: https://www.youtube.com/c/5149withJamesLiKyle Kulinski: https://www.youtube.com/c/SecularTalk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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out. Time now for our weekly partnership segment with The Lever. Joining us now, the founder of that wonderful outlet, the one and only David Sirota. Great to see you, sir. Good to see you. You got a big think piece out this week that I think is really important that I think everyone should take the time to read through fully and sit with. Let's go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen, you say, it's time for Dems to fear their own voters. We are here because GOP politicians fear their base while Democratic politicians don't, and that must change. that has not succeeded in persuading normie liberal voters to be on their side in holding these Democratic politicians to account. So just take us through a little bit of your argument here. Sure. Look, conservative media has spent 20, 30 years conditioning Republican voters to demand things of their politicians and holding those politicians accountable. I think it's fair to say that the MSNBCs of the world, the elite media, corporate media, that media sphere has spent

those same 30 years conditioning normie Democratic voters, liberal voters, to never demand anything of Democratic politicians or hold them accountable. And I think that roughly explains why we are here at this moment watching the Supreme Court produce a flood of right-wing rulings. We know that dark money went in to buy the Supreme Court. We know that Republican, huge amounts of Republican money went into putting in place lawmakers who would approve those Supreme Court justices. So you have that on that side. And it also explains why you have Democrats who, in response to those right-wing rulings, are saying they basically can't do anything other than send out fundraising emails because they expect the Democratic base voters after 30 years of that conditioning to never demand that they do

anything and never electorally hold them accountable. So I think it really does explain this asymmetry here where you have the Republicans and the American right on the march now producing rulings at odds with what public opinion actually wants, and a Democratic Party who's officially on the side, at least in their white papers and in their rhetoric, officially on the side of what the public wants, but unwilling to really do much of anything to stop what's going on, even as they control the lawmaking apparatus of the federal government. You might have forgotten that based on their behavior, but they still control the lawmaking branches of the government. What led to this situation? Because I do think Republicans are much more responsive to their

base. Conservative media is much more willing to sort of push Republican lawmakers to be responsive to that base. And you just don't have that on the Democratic side. Like, where did that sit down and shut up? And it's your responsibility to vote for us. And if you don't, that's on you, not on us. Like, what is the origin story of that vibe in the Democratic Party? It's a really good question. I think part of it traces back to the mythology that was created surrounding George McGovern. I think that after McGovern lost the 1972 race, that became a cautionary tale baked in to how Democrats told themselves their own story. And that story that they told themselves was the left is why we lost that election. The left is why we lose elections.

And of course, the opportunism behind that story was from the corporate right of the party, which didn't like the New Deal, which doesn't like the left. And so out of that came the kind of idea that the left, the progressive base, the democratic base of the party, the democratic wing of the democratic party is the real problem. And that what we need to do is constantly triangulate against that base of our party. And anytime that base of our party. And any time that base of the party tries to hold politicians at the top of the party accountable, that's bad. That's the McGovern cautionary tale. So I think that mixed in with a corporate wing of the party that benefits from that narrative, that gets to seize power and control the party through the storytelling of that narrative has benefited

from that. And that's why I think we're here. That's why you had Rahm Emanuel, who famously embodied this when he was chief of staff for President Obama. He was literally, it was a scandal because of the language he used, and I won't use the language here, but he insulted in very profane terms, uh, progressive groups that were simply trying to, or had proposed pressuring conservative Democrats to support something as modest and moderate as the affordable care act. And the idea was that the democratic base of the party should not be holding democratic politicians accountable because that is politically and electorally toxic. And they argue politically and electorally toxic to the project of defeating Republicans. I mean, it's all nonsense, but I think that's the cultural story.

So I think you've got, you know, at this point, thanks in large part to Bernie's two presidential campaigns, you've got maybe 30 percent of the Democratic Party, let's say, that has a real critique of Democratic Party leadership, frustrated with their inaction, kind of sees their failures, understands more or less the arc of how we ended up here. And then you have maybe 70% that has largely bought into this idea that, listen, we may want more things, but it's just not possible. And we got to kind of go with the flow so we can win elections because stopping the Republicans, they're an existential threat. And that's got to be our number one through 10 priority on the list. Do you see, we've been talking about this on Breaking Point some this week, and we talked, you and I on Lever

Live about this this week as well. Do you see some cracks emerging in that storyline that has been fed to the overwhelming majority of the Democratic base? Yes. And I think this is a silver lining that's good. I think that what we're finally starting to see is the mainstreaming of the anger at the Democratic party, not from the far right, but from the Democratic base. And I happen to think that's a really good thing. There was an NBC poll that showed, for instance, two thirds of Democratic primary voters want their lawmakers to try to push for big change,

even if it risks not passing, as opposed to one third who want the opposite. That is a suggestion that suggests that the nonsense of we have to go small in order to do things or in order to not antagonize the Republicans, that the Democratic base, large swaths of the Democratic base no longer believes that. There was another poll that showed a plurality of voters do not believe the idea anymore that the president can't do anything in the situation that the current president, Joe Biden, is in. There is another stat. Joe Biden only has a 25 percent approval

rating among people 18 to 34. So a complete collapse among of support for the Democratic president among young people who are truly sick of it all. I think all of that is a good thing for this reason, because if you look back at history, everything basically that you love, that the Democratic Party, that it has produced in history, Social Security, Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, I could go through the list. That didn't come because people were just mindlessly cheering on Democratic politicians. That came because people forced Democratic leaders kicking and screaming to finally respond because those Democratic politicians felt electorally threatened. They felt existentially threatened in their jobs.

And so I think if this is the turning point, if the Roe case, the overturning of Roe, is the catalyst for the mainstreaming of a realization that the only way the Democratic Party is going to produce is if voters, normie Democratic voters, get more engaged and make actual demands, then that turning point, as horrible as that overturning of Roe is, that's the silver lining there. Last question for you, David, because, you know, I said something to the effect when we were talking on Lever Live about a similar, like, you got to hold him accountable. And I sort of cringed at myself when I said it, because it sounded a lot like, you know, the people were like, pull Biden,

don't worry, we're going to pull Biden left when he got the nomination, which I was always like, that's not going to happen. Like, we know what this guy is and we've seen what he is. And none of that has actually worked out. They're still managing somehow to blame the left, even though he's completely rejected the ideas that have come from the left. So be a little more specific about when we say, hold them accountable, what does that actually mean? What does that look like? And how does that play out? Sure. Look, I think first and foremost in Democratic primaries that conservative Democrats need to have challengers all the time, really strong challengers. And it doesn't take many wins to scare the rest of them into thinking

through whether they want a primary the next time around and whether they want to deal with a primary. That's the dynamic, by the way, that you have in the Republican Party. The Republican Party, Republican candidates are afraid of their right. The Democratic Party candidates essentially take their left or the progressive base for granted. Because the Republican Party, they have primaries all the time. The Democratic Party, the culture is to look down on primaries, try to prevent them from happening, to kind of scoff at them. So I think that's one of the major ways that the Democratic base has to get over the idea that primaries are bad. Primaries are good. That is the democracy in the Democratic Party, or at least it should be. And it hasn't been enough for a very long time. I think that

Congress has a lot of power to do things that Biden may or may not want. There's a lot of focus on what Biden should do at the executive branch level. He has not signed a stack of executive orders. It's totally unacceptable. It's a total betrayal. But I think that when I think the Democratic Congress has plenty of power to send things to Biden's desk and to and to make him try to choose whether to veto bills or or sign them. Now, obviously, you have the filibuster. That's a huge problem. But I also think that it's outside of the sphere of legislation in the sense of even raising awareness of what's being slipped into bills, what's not passing, what executive orders aren't being signed to essentially educate the Democratic

electorate about what the party could do and what it's not doing. Because I agree with you. I don't necessarily think Joe Biden in right now is going to be wake up one day and decide to move to the left or be more responsive to the to the Democratic base. This is a long term project. This is 30, 40 years of culture that needs to change inside the Democratic Party. And I think maybe I'm a hopeless optimist, but I think we may be at the turning point where that entire culture starts to change right now over not just one election, but many elections and many legislative cycles. The last thing I'll say about this, which I think is really important, is they always had this, pardon the pun, but Trump card of you got to vote for us because we got to defeat the Republic. They're terrible. Donald Trump is awful. That is all certainly the case. And the media really backed him up with this story that you got to go with the centrist Joe Biden because he's the one that the, you know, theoretical

factory worker in the Midwest or whatever is going to feel comfortable with and vote for. And now that he's in office and we see how terrible his approval ratings are and we see that he's losing in head-to-head rematches against Donald Trump, they really don't have that ability to say, you got to stick with us because of electability. And so I think that also opens up a potential avenue here because it is very hard to overcome. I understand why people say, you know, we'd like to do more, but God, we just got to make sure that we hold on to the White House. I don't think they can lean on that this time around because he is in such a manifestly

poor position in order to get reelected. I completely agree. That point is such a good point that it has usually been that you have to not be responsive to the base in order to win elections. That's been the argument. I think it's a lot of nonsense, but that's been the argument. And when a president is decent in approval ratings, the argument has some salience. Now that argument has collapsed. I would argue that Biden, Bidenism and the corporate wing of the Democratic Party has gotten everything policy wise that it wants. It got an infrastructure bill. It did not get the build back better bill. It has not gotten a new New Deal, if you will.

And now it is sitting there with some of the lowest approval ratings heading into a midterm that we've seen in in modern history. So, in other words, they got everything they wanted. The left has very little, if any, legislative power in any real sense. And that was supposed to result, according to their story, in them having hugely sky-high approval ratings. Instead, their approval ratings have collapsed. It is a political crisis of epic proportions, which proves the point, in my view, that by crapping on the base, by putting their foot in the eye of the base of the Democratic Party, that's actually the key, not only policy problem, it's the key political problem, which basically creates an opportunity for millions of Democratic voters to realize that, to be educated about that, to see that in practice and say, you know what, the way to actually try to win elections, to not only do good things, but to also defeat the Republicans, is to actually deliver a real agenda, a popular agenda that we, the Democratic base, actually wants. Well, I think you could be right that there might be ultimately a silver lining to, you know, what is ultimately an atrocious decision. So we will definitely be watching to see how it all plays out. David, great to see you as

always. Thank you. Thank you. Some interesting comments from Charlemagne, the God in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning of Roe versus Wade. He really is one of my favorite commentators, favorite interviewers of politicians, definitely, because he just does not give a single fuck. So here's what he had to say, knocking Democrats for their failures to protect women's rights. He said, and I quote, what we witnessed on Friday was the cowardice of the Democratic Party catching up to them. He claimed Democrats have known, quote, what Republicans have been planning for decades because Republicans have never hidden their agenda. Very true. They have shown and told us what play they are going to run. For some reason, Democrats never crafted a defense to stop them. Yes, it's easy to point the finger at Donald Trump

and Mitch McConnell, he said, but I feel like the cowardice and inaction from Democrats caused a lot of this. And he specifically cited former President Barack Obama, you know, saying that he would codify Roe on the campaign trail, having a supermajority and doing nothing. I mean, it's just undeniably the case. And to hear someone like Charlemagne say this and hear it echoed, you know, certainly with young protesters, a lot of just regular kind of normie libs waking up to the fact that Democrats have had decades to prepare for what they knew was coming. Barack Obama had the chance to do something about it. Joe Biden had the chance, at least after the leaked draft came out, to prepare some kind of response, some kind of agenda, some kind of some path forward for Democrats and absolutely nothing. No, I mean, I think what's interesting is to watch kind of more identitarian, more just non-traditional political constituencies who generally put a lot of faith in the Democratic Party and into the media be like, hold on a second. Wait, you said in 08 you were going to

codify it into law when you actually had the votes, and then you didn't do it. So why didn't you do that? And Obama has not been—this would be a great question to MSNBC the next time they score their Obama question. Somebody should ask him, like, wait, why didn't you do that? Well, you were in office and you had 60 votes, he'd probably say, well, you know, I only have so much on my plate. The presidency is like a ship. You can only steer it in a couple directions. Obamacare, all of that, how did that work out for you politically? I think these are great questions to ask any of these leaders. Even you could go back as far as, what, 93, Bill Clinton, I believe, ran on the exact same thing. I don't know about codifying, but Safe, Legal, and Rare came up with that standard and probably had a better chance than anybody at actually passing something in 93 whenever they had control of Congress. That also isn't really something that people really discuss.

So there is a political failure and a legacy all at the time when, like you said, I mean, the conservative legal movement has been very open. They're like, we're going to open our doors. This is what we're doing. All the way back. Here's our plan. Here's our organization. This is the track we're on. Like, it was all out in the open. Ever since 92, they were like, hey, President Bush, you need to appoint somebody who is going to return. Actually, people still in that community despise Anthony Kennedy and President H.W. Bush for putting him on the court because he codified, was it Casey, right? The 1992 case law. He's the one who basically forced things in that direction. They're like, never again. We're not going to do Casey again. So that's when they started putting even more pressure on the presidents and conservative presidents specifically in order

to ramp up their scrutiny for who they were going to appoint to the court. That's why there really hasn't been a quote unquote squish on the court, at least on Roe versus Wade since then, because of a massive political organizing effort on their part. Yeah. And you know what? If you're not going to do anything about it, at least don't lie to people and try to fundraise off of it. I mean, if you're just, if you're like, yeah, there's nothing we can do. And even if you get us reelected, there's not really anything we can do about it, but at least we won't be the Republicans that try to pass a nationwide ban. At least be honest about that. Don't send out these fundraising missives, send us $15 pretending like you've got some freaking plan that you don't when all you really have is like whatever your cringe poem, Nancy Pelosi, that you're going to

read and no real plan of action. Don't do that. I do think with this in particular, there is a little bit of an awakening among these sort of core Democratic base that sees so clearly. I mean, the perfect example is here's Pelosi. Oh, she's reading her poem. She's so sad. She's so upset. You literally just dragged an anti-choice lawmaker over the finish line by a few hundred votes. I mean, the hypocrisy of that is so in your face that you just can't deny that these people are not serious. That, you know, as Charlemagne says, this is a lot about their cowardice and their inaction that led to this point ultimately. So, you know, he's one who's not afraid to, he had Pete Buttigieg on the show and he kind of pushed him on some things.

Of course, he's the one who- You should push him on why the freaking airlines don't work. He absolutely should. He also, you remember he had that famous moment with Elizabeth Warren where he was like, oh, so you're the new Rachel Colajal. I loved that. He pushed Biden, the you're the new Rachel Colagell. I loved that. He pushed Biden. You ain't black. That was you ain't black.

You ain't black moment. Famous. So it shows you what you can do when you don't care about access, when you aren't in the club, in the same club. And Kamala going after her. And she was like, I'm sorry, Charlemagne. We were running out of time. He's like, they're trying to pretend they don't hear me.

Yeah, that's right. That was a great moment, too. So anyway, I think it's an interesting sign of how people are feeling. And the last thing I'll say is Biden won the primary based on electability. He no longer has electability. I mean, he no longer can make the case that if you look at polls, you can no longer make it. You got to stick with me, though, no matter how disappointed you are. So I do think it opens up a new avenue of critique and potential challenge to him.

Absolutely. I always cause a little bit of a stir online. Crystal, you know I'm a little bit of a shit poster. Yeah. And found myself getting canceled by the continent of Europe. People are very upset. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So this guy, Pierre Richelson, he tweets this. Okay, serious question. What keeps the average American that can afford it from moving to Europe? Please enlighten me. Beyond the please, beyond the being able to afford it, here's what I said. I've all long hated Eurocope online.

So here's what I said. Europe is substantially poorer, more racist, less dynamic, much less free than the United States. Food is bland. The coffee tastes like shit. The weather is mostly awful. Their primary cultural export is tourism, and they have less say in the affairs of the world. I followed it up and said I would rather drink gas station coffee for the rest of my life than another bullshit seven-euro espresso in your average euro capital and then i just followed it up with another tweet of myself drinking a nice full american drip coffee uh crystal what do you think are you on

the euro side has started a shit storm when i start getting like i get mentions of like come get your boy he's ruining the brand this is a very broad brush with which you are painting an entire continent yeah that's true that's true i stand by it though number one there is a very broad brush with which you are painting an entire continent. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I stand by it, though. Number one, there is a lot of wonderful food in Europe. I have not been to Italy or Greece, but I love the cuisines of both.

I've been to both. They're both fun. And I have heard wonderful things. Yeah, they're both fun. I have been to Spain. Spanish food, I think, is also wonderful. French food, I will say, is overrated, and everybody's right when they say that English food does suck. So on food, I think you have an array of amazing options depending on what country you are in. In terms of them being less free, I actually

really disagree with this one because it depends. So my definition of freedom includes having the sort of positive liberty of social programs that allow people to live and thrive and achieve and have happiness. And if you look at the sort of well-being rankings of our country versus Europe, we do terribly. I mean, first of all, of course, they have universal health care. They have a lot more social security. Look at France. People who have kids are way more supported, certainly in France, but in a lot of these countries. So I do not buy at all that they are less dynamic, that they are substantially poorer when you consider the mass amounts of inequality that we have. So you have much more broader shared prosperity in europe um the weather again really depends like spain has some wonderful weather italy has some wonderful weather i don't know

about that here's the thing about italy thing about italy consider this they get as much sunlight on the average square miles on italy as boston okay that's how far people forget how far north europe is it's like living in ma. Listen, Maine is nice to visit. You and I have very different weather preferences. That's true. You love the heat. I fucking hate the heat. The humidity during the D.C. in the summer.

No thank you. So definitely disagree on that. There's a lot of like that Mediterranean climate is amazing. These are the healthiest. Can't be amazing. You with your health nut. You're not wrong. These are the healthiest places in the world.

Well, that's actually not true. I'd rather live in Okinawa is much healthier. But this is the blue zone, the Mediterranean diet, healthiest place in the world, walkable, beautiful cities. And even this idea, their primary culture of export is tourism. Yeah, because people want to go there because it's really nice. They don't invent anything. All right? When's the last time you had an invention,

a major world-changing invention? The richest Europeans move here. Hold on. Our economy is based on Wall Street financialization. That's our whole thing. No defense. Our innovations are like rapid, what's it called, rapid trading?

What's the name for that? High-frequency trading. High-frequency trading. But they copy that from us. They can't even do that for themselves. Our innovations are like high-fre frequency trading, CIA coups. That's one of our great innovations. Yeah, but they also can't do that anymore. They invented it. They're just better at it. It's not like our economy is some marvel of innovation productivity or anything like that.

It's a marvel of tax avoidance, rigging the political system, and hyper-financialization. That's our major export around the world. So look, I do love where I live. I have no intention of moving to Europe, but I do think that there are a lot of things that we could learn from the Europeans that would make us a lot happier here at home. What keeps the average American that can afford it from moving to Europe? Listen, home is home, right? Home is home. Even if you have a critique of home, home is home. If you can afford it,

your quality of life here is better. I'm just going to say it. Oh, that's true. Well, I mean, if you can afford it. If you can afford to move to Europe, there's no way you're going to have better quality of life than anywhere else. Yeah, if you're on the happy side

of the income divide in America, it's great. Oh, I actually saw a hilarious tweet, which was like, listen, if you can afford to Europe, you're probably going to get the best healthcare in the world because it's more expensive here. You know what? That is really

actually true. So better question is- Okay. I just want to address one thing on this freedom point. I agree with you. Certainly, it is better to be a probably lower to middle-class person in Europe than probably anywhere else on the globe. But also, they don't have actual guaranteed bill of rights. So you can just have your assets seized. You can't own a gun. The cops there, I mean, I've been rolled up on cops in Poland and elsewhere, but for the color of my skin, I might add, it's very convenient they didn't go after anybody else. But listen, I got no recourse in a Polish court or same in the, even in the UK, you know, in the UK, they can just cancel your passport and kill you. You have no actual rights. The home secretary of the UK can just be like, you know what? You're

not a citizen anymore. And then they can drop a drone on your ass. So listen, I would just say, these are very, very vital things to the American way of life. As far as the food, look, it's mostly a joke. Here's the thing, guys. I'm Indian and I grew up in Texas, which is both probably too, so I have exposure to Tex-Mex cuisine and Indian cuisine, which are probably what? Some of the most spiced foods on the planet. My preference, Burmese food, Thai food. My top cuisine is South America, the Middle East. I love the Middle East. That's why even Greece is bland to me compared to a Jordan. Doesn't London supposedly have the best Indian restaurant?

I was going to say. That's why people were like, oh, we've only been to England. I love London. They have the best food. They have my favorite food. You can get food from all over Asia on top of that. I would put any mid-tier American city against most Euro capitals outside of maybe Paris and of London, simply because even in Chicago, you could go eat the most diverse array, both of your pierogies and whatever Polish food people are eating these days, with some Thai food, some Japanese food, all of that. Not the case in the rest of Europe. So they can keep their—and also on the coffee, it tastes like shit.

I'm sorry. I'm sick of these bullshit espressos over there. I don't have an opinion on the coffee. I don't have a well-formed take on the coffee, so I'm going to let that one go. But I know others would dissent greatly, and I represent them. You, rep them. Yeah, whatever. But on the freedom point, you know, even on the gun-owning piece, like, okay, so you have a right to have, you know, an AR-15 when you're 18 years old. But compare that freedom to the freedom to live in a neighborhood that isn't, like, you know, crime-riddled and violent and worried about your kids going to school where there's going to be mass shootings.

So I think even on that level, like, you're only looking at the sort of negative freedom side of the coin and not the positive freedom side of the coin. So, again, if you look at the happiness statistics, Europeans on average, happier than Americans, much less inequality, much less violence, especially gun violence. So I do think that they have some things going for them that, again, I love our home. It's a nice place. I enjoy living here. This is my place. But I think that you are giving the Europeans a bad rap here. Well, I'm mostly just enjoying seeing them all get pissed off.

They're like, oh, yeah? And I'm like, they're like tweeting at me from your 700-square-foot flat with, like, six people crammed in it, driving a car that looks like it's a child's toy. Enjoy it, folks. You can keep it. I'm loving our way of life over here. I would rather go to Denny's. I'll say it.

That's disgusting. So in the wake of Roe versus Wade being overturned, there were actually a number of corporations that came out immediately and said, you know what? We're responding to this by we're going to provide a benefit to our employees if they have to travel out of state to get an abortion. We are going to cover that. Starbucks, however, which has been engaged in an astonishing, truly groundbreaking union busting campaign as Starbucks stores unionize like wildfire across the country, they went in a really special direction with this. What do they got? Put this up on the screen from Stephen Greenhouse. So Starbucks said all partners who are enrolled in their health care plan would have access to those benefits traveling across state lines for abortion.

But it added it could not make promises of guarantees about any benefits for unionized stores. And Stephen Greenhouse's editorial here is that it is sad. Starbucks exploits the Dobbs decision overturning Roe to engage in some union busting tricks. Starbucks offers all employees enrolled in its health plan access to abortion travel, but claims it can't promise that benefit for its unionized stores. Now, this is consistent with some bullshit that Starbucks has been pulling before, which is potentially illegal union busting tactics, claiming that, oh, we're going to offer new benefits to workers, but not our union employees because, well, we just, we're actually not technically allowed to do that, which is complete nonsense. Of course, if you have a union, you have to bargain with that union. That's the process of collective bargaining. Do you think that they're really going to say no to a new benefit? It's ludicrous. But so they're using

this as an opportunity to further their gross union busting tactics. Yeah, I think it's funny because they continue to do this woke union. They're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll raise wages, but not for the people who are in a union. How is that even possible? And what are they claiming that it's a contract violation? They're like, well, we have to negotiate a separate contract. I mean, that is when you have a union representing a store, you have to do collective bargaining with the union. But they're just saying like, oh, we can't even offer it to you. When it's like, no, no, you offer it, and then the union decides what they want it or not. Of course, they're going to say yes. Like, why would you say no to an additional benefit? So it's ridiculous. And like I said, it may even be

in violation of labor law, as many of their actions have been found at this point to be in violation of labor law. It's funny, I've been listening to this book from, I don't know, it's from maybe 2013, Rana Foroohar's Makers and Takers. And she talks about, the book overall is good. There's not a slam on the book at all. It's actually very interesting, very prescient for the moment that we're living in now about the financialization of the economy, et cetera, et cetera. But she interviews Howard Schultz for the book, and he's talking all about how progressive they are and how important it is to invest in their employees. And that's going to be great for the long term, making sure that you have people in the community who can afford to buy your coffees, the sort of Henry Ford model and all of this. And then you see the way

Starbucks, above all of these companies, has really actually been the worst in terms of union busting. I mean, Schultz came out of retirement. Just to bust the union. Just to come back in as CEO and try to destroy these unions. He called it an assault on the company. There were heads that rolled at the executive level because they allowed this union effort to take root. And it really is quite extraordinary to see. It's a very mask-off

moment for all of their supposed progressive principles. You know, they were willing to go, they were willing to do a lot of things that were supposedly progressive, but when it came to actually respecting their workers enough to let them have a say in the workplace, that was completely off-limits. And they will use, like, weird, woke weird woke union busting tactics like this to try to accomplish their ends. Yeah. I mean, they know who their workforce is. They know how they can try and use these as wedge issues. I mean, Amazon and all that I'm sure are not that far behind in using this stuff. Yeah. The only thing that can stand up to this is the government. So, you know, NLRB needs to take a look. Yeah. A hundred percent. So as you guys know,

as we've been covering extensively, of course, the Supreme Court in a landmark ruling overturning Roe versus Wade. Now, not only have Democrats had literally 50 years to prepare for this moment, but even within this administration, they got a head start because this decision was leaked. We all knew it was coming. And so you would think that they might have been prepared for it. But they weren't. Puck News actually has this report that their response has been so lacking and embarrassing that even Republicans are shocked at how little they have actually done. Put this up on the screen.

This is Puck News. They say the GOP inside conversation on Roe during the past few days have been talking to Republican operatives across D.C. They were all careful not to gloat, but they've also been shocked at how little the Democratic Party is doing to fight back. Here is how this begins. This is from Julia Yaffe. She says, you would think that with a month of advance warning about how SCOTUS was going to rule, Democrats would have been better prepared for the day that Roe versus Wade finally fell. And yet when it happened, Democrats did what Democrats do best, make memes, get mad at each other, and do little of consequence. Don't forget,

Pelosi did read a poem and send out a fundraising email. So they did do that. Yeah. So this is what a GOPA said to them, quote, if I were the libs, I would be putting forward a flurry of legislation, like making birth control free and widely available. If you say it's not widely enableable enough, go after that, cover the gaps, don't go for the big stuff, split the GOP conference as much as you can, force people to vote. If the goal is protecting women or advancing legislation, you could actually pass, take every possible pretension that you possibly could. You know, another interesting one is actually what Matt Iglesias and some others have been pointing out, which is that Planned Parenthood and the other choice groups are refusing to allow votes on exceptions because they don't want to decouple exceptions from Roe, and they don't have the votes, frankly, for Roe right now. But, I mean, that seems like a decent strategy.

If you have 60 votes for exceptions in the life of the mother, like, shouldn't you pass that? And rape and incest. Right. But that's my – exceptions and rape. And it's like, well, hey, you should probably pass that unless you want the talking point, though. Well, and you have – you actually – you have a majority of Americans who also fear that – who expect that this decision on Roe will lead to the overturning of Obergefell is the latest point. And there's 56% of Americans that they think that's coming next. I mean, Justice Thomas mentioned it specifically.

Yeah, go pass codify gay marriage. I mean, even if you think it's an outside chance, like, get that shit in writing and make sure it's done while you have the chance. Another one is now there's questions about whether states like Texas are exploring banning women from interstate travel to be able to get abortions in states where it is still legal. Codify, make sure that that is clearly illegal as well, because the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh kind of indicated maybe this would be a problem, but they did not say it clearly, and states are moving forward with this. So the idea there's nothing you can do is just not true. And there are many avenues they could pursue that, as you say, would really put Republicans in a tough spot who are out on a limb on this and in crazy, you know, extreme positions and really beholden to a very radical fringe on this issue that's very well organized.

But nothing. And again, they had time to get this all figured out. You really would think if this was a functioning political party at all, the minute this came down, we would have a list of legislation, talking points ready, ready to go, ready up on the screen next, more to this point. They say Democrats could have codified Roe in 93 with Bill Clinton and congressional majority. They could have done it again in 2009. They had a super majority and Barack Obama had promised it would be the first thing he'd do in office, but they didn't. Why? This is from an article that is in the conservative national review. So again, it's not just, you know, people like me and AOC who are like, where the hell are you guys? It's liberals. It's Perry Bacon Jr. in The Washington Post. It's lots of liberals on Twitter who are like, what's going on?

And it's Republicans who are quietly like, I can't believe they're not doing anything. Well, they're just, look, they're bad at their jobs. They are so bad at their jobs. There's no other real way to put it. Indeed. Whispers after Roe versus Wade. Who can save the Democratic Party? Well, let's put this up way to put it. Indeed. Whispers after Roe versus Wade. Who can save the Democratic Party? Well, let's put this up there on the screen. CNN, The Washington Post,

many other quote unquote thought leaders are pushing Hillary 2024. Chris Silliza says the whispers have started and he points to a bunch of writers who have said that Hillary could be the one person. Now is her moment. The Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe creates the opening for Hillary to get out of stealth mode, start down the path towards declaring her candidacy for 2024. Ellis's argument, he's the conservative writer, by the way, is centered on Joe Biden will be 82. He's too old to run.

She, of course, would only be in her 70s. She's not too old. He's not the only person. Juan Williams, you know, the former Fox News commentator, let's put this up there, riding in the hill. Hillary can rescue Democrats there in the midterms. How exactly? He says, Clinton is exactly the right person to put steel in the Democrats' spine. Bring attention to the fact that ultra-MAGA Republicans, as President Biden called them, are tearing apart the nation. Keep talking and talk louder, Hillary, is what Juan Williams says.

So, look, the drumbeat is there. She actually was asked on television recently. She said that she's not planning it right now. She did not rule out the run. Look, she's too much of a narcissist, I think, to ever actually rule out, but maybe a third time's a charm, Crystal. That's what the intelligentsia wants.

Oh, my God. I want to die. I hate it here. I really wasn't taking this seriously because the first article about it was from a conservative writer. Yes. And we've seen this before.

This is something Republicans love to do to like get everybody going. Oh, Hillary's coming back. Oh, Hillary's coming back. And here's the case, the like wink and a nod case for Hillary. But then when Juan Williams wrote it and then when Chris Silliza

like did the whole CNN thing, like the whispers are starting. I was like oh my god and this is the price for not uh explaining to people clearly after 2016 exactly how and why she failed and allowing her instead to shift the blame to sexism Russia gay, gay, Bernie's mean, Jill Stein, Susan Sarandon, whatever. I mean, it is so deranged what these people, these people still think that like Susan Sarandon is the reason that Roe versus Wade was overturned. That's right. Literally. And so this woman has not only had one bite of the she had two. I mean, she's lost in two presidential races. Democratic Party first was like, we don't want this. And then the whole country was like, we don't want this.

It is such a sign of sheer decline and decay and collapse within the Democratic Party that this could be even posited without being completely laughed out of the room. And yet, you know, I mean, she's definitely not going to run against Biden. And I think Biden, as I laid out this week, is definitely running, assuming that he lives that long. But, you know, if it was like a wide open primary, I don't think it's crazy to think that she would throw her hat back in the ring because she's looking around like we all are at how weak, you know, Kamala and Pete and all the rest are and thinking, why not me? Because that's what she's always thought. Now, she has denied outright that she would ever consider. So, we'll just put that in there.

But the fact that this is still raised with any level of seriousness in this town just shows you how dumb and out of touch and completely laughably absurd all these people are. Yeah, I think that's right. We've covered here pretty extensively. Maybe more than any other news program just how screwed up the people are. Yeah, I think that's right. We've covered here pretty extensively, maybe more than any other news program, just how screwed up the airlines are. And we've gone into depth on some of the issues. In particular, what they did is they took a gigantic taxpayer bailout during COVID under the stipulation that they would keep their staffing as is. But then they used the, you know, the time during COVID to sort of push out some of their staff, push out some of their pilots, induce them to retire. And then rather than, when things ramped up, paring back their flight schedules to recognize that they had much less staff available to fly those planes and staff those planes, they continued to push forward.

And so you've had thousands of flights canceled. You have customers that are lined up for hours outside of customer service with not enough staffing there either. You have, you know, they've also bilked passengers out of an absurd amount of money that they should be entitled to in refunds that instead they give them like some credit for a future flight. So it just really is out and out fraud on the airline's part. Now, the person who is in charge of the agency that could deal with it, this is Secretary Pete Buttigieg. And so Bernie Sanders is actually now kind of calling out Pete and demanding that they actually hold these

airlines to account. Here is one of Bernie's top longtime aides, Warren Gunnels, laying out exactly what Senator Sanders is proposing. He says, fines of $55,000 a passenger for flight cancellations that can't be fully staffed, full refunds for delays between one and four hours, plus meals and lodging for four hour plus delays, fines of $15,000 a passenger for non-weather flight delays, two plus hours. So really going after the fact that the airlines are booking people on flights that they know damn well a good chunk of are probably not going to happen. Because the way Derek Thompson laid it out for us is like, in the theory, in the abstract, if every single thing goes perfect, yeah, maybe we can fly all these flights, but they have to

build in the fact that nothing is ever going to go completely perfect. Yeah, maybe we can fly all these flights, but they have to build in the fact that nothing is ever going to go completely perfect. And so they're booking people on flights that ultimately, you know, are going to be canceled and it's completely predictable. No. Yeah. This is crazy. And also John Fetterman, you know, had put out a proposal on this, but I just think it's a major indictment of Pete Buttigieg. Like, what is he doing? He has the capacity in order to actually act against these airlines. At the worst that he's done so far is what? Called them for a Zoom call. He's like, please, let's all do a Zoom together. And then he was like, please schedule more flights. Please do better. And they were like, yes, sir. And then his flight got canceled the very next

day. Yeah, and he had to drive. So look, I mean, it's a complete, it's complete BS. And it should be, it's full within the Secretary of Transportation for his ability to levy fines upon the industry if they find wrongdoing. Airlines are heavily basically being subsidized during the coronavirus pandemic. We paid them $55 billion. They pocketed the money. By all accounts, they have not been using it fairly. And now things are a total mess. So the Fed should get involved. I mean, the airlines, like I said, they blame air traffic control. Call the bluff. Fine.

Get some military air traffic controllers in there. If that really is the case, let's find out how much it is. You know, put them on the spot. And let's make it so that America can move again. It's like basic stuff like this that makes you feel like the country's falling apart. It is falling apart. Yeah, it is. You're like, oh, I can't fly anywhere.

Or I can't fly anywhere properly. Gas is $5 a gallon. You know, getting a It is falling apart. Yeah, it is. You're like, oh, I can't fly anywhere or I can't fly anywhere properly. Gas is $5 a gallon. Getting a car is insanely expensive. A credit card, everything charging on that. Try taking a vacation in terms of what all the costs and all that stack up to. So look, the basics of life are what people care the most about. And that's where the Biden administration continues to fail every single day. Indeed. It really is dramatic. Indeed. So Dave Portnoy, the head of Barstool Sports, he came out recently and said something interesting.

He said, look, if if Roe is overturned, I'm going to vote for Democrats. Now, it's surprising to hear from Dave Portnoy because, you know, Barstool Sports is viewed as, fairly or unfairly, I don't know, but they're viewed as more right-leaning. And Portnoy has done a number of appearances on, like, Fox News and Fox Business, and so people got the feeling that, you know, Portnoy probably leans significantly right. But he surprised everybody when he came out and said look roe i think i believe in roe versus wade i think it's correct and uh i'll probably vote for democrats if roe is overturned so he hasn't backed down from that he sort of leaned into that position and all of these friendships and acquaintances and alliances that he made with right-wing

commentators is now going up in flames. Because I know they like to pretend like, oh, the cancel culture mob is solely on the left. But there are countless examples of right-wing cancel culture, and any semblance of disagreement, major or minor, gets you kicked out of a club you know these sorts of people purity test to the high heavens and so dave portnoy is now witnessing this firsthand and he's sort of shocked by it so here's what he said on twitter this was to be expected but i still get a kick

out of people who have sucked my dick for a decade straight invited me on their shows a million times and now disagree with me on roe v wade and suddenly I'm a pussy and an idiot. So let's look at this. Listen, I enjoy Barstool. You guys are irreverent. You're funny. You know, you celebrate manhood and sports and all the things we like about competition and meritocracy. Five minutes later. You know what? Let me turn off the music because it might get copyrighted. Good luck against your lib tormentors, bro. You're dumber than you look. Dude didn't respond with a kingpin gif when I defended this tool against Business Insider.

Just another grifter pussy. Wait, what did that say? Just another grifter pussy who showed his ass. And take the 10K I sent to your fund and send it to a crisis pregnancy center. Chump. So Bongino went off on him, and he fired back at Bongino. I find people like Bongino immensely insufferable. And by the way, I'm not saying that none of this exists on the left,

because it does exist on the left. And you guys have seen it with your own two eyes. People who, look, I could agree with you on 94% of issues, but that's 6% of issues where we disagree? You're irredeemable. You're the enemy. You're the problem. And now I'm going to take that and begin to malign your intentions and malign you as a person. Man, I hate people like that. And it's a very common thing nowadays where it's like you're simply the enemy if you disagree on anything.

Very rarely nowadays is it a thing where it's like, no, seriously though, agree to disagree. Agree to disagree. You know, I still like you, we're still friendly, we can still get along, we can still talk, you're still my brother, etc. That doesn't exist much anymore. So anytime I come across somebody who I feel like does that, does the agree to disagree thing, it's like I automatically like them. Because like, okay, look, a mature adult

who is not socially maladjusted and super weird, you know, I talk about this all the time. When it comes to, for politicians, the standard is a little different because it's, I care about purity of policy when it comes to politicians. I really don't care about purity of character. Whatever flaws you have in your personal life, that's different. I don't care. Everybody's dealing with their own demons, etc. That's totally fine.

But I do care about purity of policy when it comes to politicians. But when it comes to, whatever, other commentators or just friends in your life or family members or whatever, you can't, you can't take a stand on purity of policy or character because people are just colossally different. Everybody's on their own journey. Everybody has their own ideas. Now those ideas can evolve and change or stay the same, but you just deal with the individual at hand. You know, are, are they a good person in their heart? Do they mean well? And as long as they do, it doesn't matter if they disagree with me on everything.

You know, and that's just not a thing nowadays, especially in, you know, the political commentary arena. Dan Bongino expects, you know, the complete lockstep with his views. It's a very authoritarian way to live your life. And so because on Roe versus Wade, there's a disagreement. Now, Dave Portnoy is the enemy. And I do respect the fact that Portnoy is not shutting up about this. I do respect the fact because a lot of people, as soon as they get that little taste of the

disagreement, you know, a little taste of, like, the pushback, to appease everybody, they just back off of it or start saying the opposite, you know, take a position that they don't even really believe. Portnoy's not doing that. Portnoy's like, no, I think Roe vs. Wade is correct. I believe in the right to choose. And even getting all this pushback,

he's like, did I stutter? I didn't stutter. So, you gotta respect that. Now stutter? I didn't stutter. So you got to respect that. Now, again, I don't know. Portnoy was like me too. And I think the story fell apart. And so it was like a false thing. And he got a lot of defense from the right.

So that's why he felt like almost a natural alliance in a sense with them. But now what he's witnessing is, look, man, you step out of line once. And you're, what's the phrase? Persona non grata? Is that the phrase? I have no idea. But anyway, not surprised. You know, the right is purity testing into oblivion.

We've seen this on the left as well. I guess my message, my main takeaway in this whole thing is like, if you know somebody has pure intentions and if you know they have a good heart, then just have a conversation, be normal, be friends, be acquaintances, talk it out. Don't burn bridges and, and malign intentions and, and be a total douchebag and a dingbat. It's really weird. It's really weird. And and anybody who like i pride myself on trying to maintain a strong semblance of normiedom you know i don't want to lose my brain online which has happened to a lot of people and i think everybody should pride themselves on normiedom in a sense you

should you should be proud of yourself if you're able to you know not fly off the handle at tiny disagreements and burn bridges and malign intentions. And here we see Dan Bongino is like the quintessential example of somebody who's just lost his mind in the political space, lost his mind and tolerates zero disagreement. So there you have it. Hi, I'm Matt Stoller, author of Monopoly-focused newsletter, Big, and an antitrust policy analyst. I have a great segment for you today on this big breakdown. I'm gonna talk about the merger between Sprint and T-Mobile

that took place in 2020 and how it caused everyone's cell phone bills to go up. Now, there's a bit of a happy ending to this story, sort of, not that happy, but it's not all gloom. Okay, for starters, remember the un-carrier marketing shtick from T-Mobile? For a few years, it was the biggest marketing story in wireless, maybe in corporate America. T-Mobile CEO John Leisure, often wearing a magenta shirt and a leather jacket, would attack his own

industry as arrogant and greedy, and he would promise simple plans, unlimited data, low prices, transparent fees, and the business press just ate it up. A lot of people feel that companies themselves are soulless, that CEOs are buttoned down, and that if you do become anything other than that, it's going to hurt your business model. You are a living, breathing example that that's wrong. Hello, who's this? This is Lisa. Lisa. John.

What's up? Oh my God, can I just tell you, you are the best CEO on this planet. Yeah, but that's easy because most CEOs suck. Corporations should be fun and spontaneous. Yay. Okay, but most of all, they should cut prices and deliver what consumers want. And that is what T-Mobile did. From 2012, when he became CEO, Leisure cut prices for cell phone plans.

And this price war affected the whole industry. Prices dropped, on average, by 6.5% a year until 2019. There were lots of new offerings, new deals, better phones, better customer service, all the things you'd expect from competition when companies are trying to get your business. But that price war came to an end in 2020. And last Friday, the Wall Street Journal published an article saying that the industry is no longer lowering prices. Prices, in fact, are starting to go up. Here are some examples. AT&T raised the cost of its older wireless plans by up to $6 for single lines and $12 for family plans. Verizon raised prices by up to $12 a month on some of its data plans and slapped a monthly per smartphone fee of $2.20 on business plans and raised consumer

wireless plans by $1.25 a month. And T-Mobile raised fees on older plans by $0.31 a month and its activation and support fees by $5. What happened? Well, we can thank this guy. Yes, Mr. Fund CEO himself, John Leisure. You see, the real cause of the Uncarrier strategy was not a charismatic CEO, but an antitrust suit. In 2011, there were four real competitors, national competitors, in the wireless market. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile. And that's one too many if you are a telecom CEO.

According to the Balanced Economy Project, when a telecom market has four rivals, four competitors, there's actual competition, and they fight over market share with better prices and better products. But if a merger happens and reduces the number of rivals in that market from four to three, prices go up on average by 16.3% per customer. And that they looked across 33 different countries, so it's a pretty robust finding. In 2011, there was just this situation. AT&T sought to buy T-Mobile because there were four carriers in the market and they wanted there to be three. So if they bought T-Mobile, they would only have three competitors and everybody now could raise prices or at least stop prices from going down. Now,

the Obama administration was generally pretty bad on corporate power and antitrust, but in this case, they did block the merger. Now, Leisure became CEO of T-Mobile right after this suit. And T-Mobile was the smallest of the carriers, so he tried to get share. And he launched the un-carrier strategy and marketing campaign as a result of the antitrust case. He launched a price war. But what happened is that executives across the industry became increasingly agitated over lower profits, even as this price war continued and consumers were benefiting. Deutsche Telekom, which has owned T-Mobile since 2001, saw removing one of four players as essential to cashing out. The AT&T-T-Mobile merger didn't go through, and they

were like, we got to find something to get rid of one of the competitors in this market. In 2015, Peter Ewins, T-Mobile's head of strategy, told Leisure that if we can't get 4-3 consolidation, the industry is on TV all over the place with his magenta clothing saying, we're working for consumers. They are trying at that time to consolidate the market so they can stop lowering prices. What happens? Okay, enter Donald Trump's new telecom-friendly administration. Now, I don't want to get partisan here because the Democrats are pretty close to corporate power, and so are the Republicans, but don't want to get partisan here because the Democrats are pretty close to corporate power, and so are the Republicans, but they're close to different industries. And the Republicans tend to be closer to the telecom industry. Well, immediately after Trump took office,

Leisure texted the higher-ups at Deutsche Telekom, and he said that, quote, the regulatory environment will never be better than now for a four-to-three merger. To highlight this point, he then added, quote, big prizes, so smile and get to the table. And they did. Sprint and T-Mobile decided to merge and launched a massive lobbying campaign to get the Trump administration to allow the merger. Remember that super fun CEO? He had a lot of fun in Washington, D.C., and both Sprint and T-Mobile spent tons of money at the Trump Hotel to get their merger through. And it worked. Trump installed an ex-Verizon executive, Ajit Pai, at the Federal Communication Commission, which oversees telecom mergers,

and Pai let T-Mobile buy Sprint without a challenge. In fact, he said it was a good merger, it was good for the public interest. But a number of state attorney generals, led by Letitia James in New York, did sue to stop the merger. Unfortunately, a Bill Clinton-appointed judge, Victor Marrero, heard the case and ruled against the states and for T-Mobile. Marrero did so because, for a number of reasons, one of which is that the federal government said, oh, this is a good merger. But also, throughout the process of buying Sprint, T-Mobile executives and the trial had promised that they would continue its, quote, past pattern of aggressive competition with AT&T and Verizon, and that the merger would therefore not result in higher prices, end quote. But as

soon as the merger closed, prices started going up, as Deutsche Telekom's CEO publicly bragged after the merger closed, it's harvest time. Indeed, here is a price chart for wireless telephone services showing what happened before and after the merger. That sort of says it all. It turns out that, yes, Ledger had lied to the judge. Shocking, I know. Now, T-Mobile was blocked by the merger agreement from raising its prices directly, but it raised prices in other ways, by hiking fees, passing through increases in the cost of third-party benefits like streaming services, denying use of its network to its rival DISH,

which was a condition of the merger, as well as increasing the cost of devices and handsets. T-Mobile also destroyed independent wireless dealers, shrinking the number of stores and forcering onerous terms on the remaining wireless dealers. T-Mobile also immediately started spying on its customers by expanding its surveillance ad business, which is exactly the kind of invasion of privacy that Google and Facebook engage in because they don't have a lot of competition. So the merger didn't just hurt T-Mobile customers. It changed the industry, and it kind of hurt all mobile customers. Without

price competition, AT&T and Verizon are now hiking prices and will likely keep doing so. Now, to be fair, some of the promises of the merging parties were kept. For instance, Sprint and T-Mobile executives got the large bonuses that they were promised for getting this merger through. Leisure himself received more than $137 million estimated out of the deal in a severance payment promised to him on completion of the merger. Yes, immediately after the deal, he stepped down as CEO, probably so he wouldn't ever have to look at the color magenta again. Now, normally, after such a fiasco, there's nothing to be done. Executives lie to a judge, a merger goes through, everybody but Wall Street loses, the end.

But in a recent antitrust suit, this was filed just a couple of weeks ago, plaintiff's lawyers in a class action suit representing consumers are suing T-Mobile and its owners, Deutsche Telekom and SoftBank, on behalf of consumers. And they are calling for a reversal of the merger and for damages based on what they show are unfair price hikes. Now, could a breakup happen? Could these private plaintiffs get what they want? Well, last year, the Fourth Circuit heard a similar suit and ordered a breakup of a company called Jeldwen,

which is a window and door producer that cheated competitors. So it is possible. There is precedent. Now, hopefully this case goes to court, and part of the remedy will be clawing back the $100 million-plus compensation that went to leisure. Lying to a judge to enable an illegal merger, also a phone company can raise our cell phone bills, is wrong. No one should get a perjury bonus, no matter how much magenta they are willing to humiliate themselves by wearing.

Thanks for watching this big breakdown on the Breaking Points channel. If you'd like to know more about big business and how our economy really works, you can sign up below for my market power focused newsletter, Big, in the description. Thanks and have a good one. Hey there, my name is James Lee. Welcome to another segment of 5149 on Breaking Points. And today I want to talk about golf, specifically the PGA Tour's developing war against the Saudi's new live golf tour, because I think it provides us with an interesting case study of how institutions function, what their purpose is, who they're beholden to, and what kinds of external pressures they respond to. Now, I know some of you maybe aren't regular viewers of golf, or maybe a lot

of you aren't regular viewers of golf, so I a lot of you aren't regular viewers of golf. So I want to take a quick second to lay out the basics. Like most professional sports, professional golf is more or less organized regionally and dominated by these monopolistic leagues. In the United States, the premier organizer of competition is, of course, the PGA Tour. In Europe, you have the European Tour, now known as the PGA Tour. In Europe you have the European Tour now known as the DP World Tour. Those two tours are often viewed as having the most cachet and relatively on par with one another in terms of competitive quality. And then there are these other various affiliate tours around the other parts of the world, the Japan Golf Tour, PGA Tour of Australasia, the Sunshine Tour in South Africa,

etc, etc. So like I was saying, the PGA Tour has pretty much held a monopoly over professional golf tournaments in the United States. They bring together the biggest sponsors with the most money, the best players, and the most fans. Prize money is awarded to players based on how well they do in the tournament. The winner makes on average north of a million dollars. The top half all come away with some money and the bottom half unfortunately receive no money at all. So a big difference here between pro golfers and maybe other professional athletes is that outside of individual sponsorship money, a paycheck is actually not guaranteed with participation, like in most other sports.

But all that is changing. A golf tournament funded by Saudi Arabia is asking questions of how the sport is run and what, if anything, the sport stands for. At the Centurion Course in the south of England, some of the world's best players have gathered. It's an exciting time. I think it's exciting for the game of golf and I'm excited to be a part of it. Excitement all round. And this is a series

of eight tournaments aimed, we're told, at giving players more freedom. Live Golf has given them the opportunity for another pathway to be the independent contractors, go play where they need to play, when they want to play for more money. That's right, more money. And of course, the money is not really the controversial part here. It's the source of that money that's sparking the controversy, with live golf being backed by the Saudi Arabian government, a country with rampant human rights abuses, most notably the murder of dissident Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but they also happen to have extremely deep pockets and have been poaching players with guaranteed money just to participate in their tournaments, from millions to tens of millions of dollars for some veteran players and

even hundreds of millions for the top players. Quote, the widely reported figures include $200 million for Phil Mickelson, $125 million for Dustin Johnson, $100 million plus for Bryson DeChambeau, and between $20 and $30 million for the 46-year-old Ian Poulter. Now, in every professional sport dispute, the narrative of millionaire versus billionaires gets thrown around a lot. But the reality is there are actually a lot of golfers that are just grinding it out, playing a game for a living, no doubt, but not exactly living a glamorous lifestyle. For example, Andy Ogletree, the golfer who finished last in the first Live Golf Tournament, made $120,000 for playing in just that tournament alone, compared with just $38,000 in two years on the PGA Tour since he turned pro

back in 2020. So you could see why golfers would want to join the Live Golf Tour. What is it about Live Golf that attracted you? You know, ever since I was first introduced to this idea, you know, I thought it was, you know, great for the game of golf. You know, I was excited about the new format, you know, kind of a new kind of golf that, you know, I think is great for the game, is great for the fans? Nope, it's not that. Like we've already covered, golf is already played all around the world. So I don't really see how live golf is going to grow the game. It's just about the money. And to me, the truth is always the defense. And I think sports fans are

more or less okay with pro athletes being honest about the money. I mean, yeah, sure, there's a certain glory to competition and winning championships, but a lot of incentives are financial, so we get it. You don't have to beat around the bush with us. Just in, 9-11 families released a statement moments ago saying, quote, Phil knows exactly what he's doing, and he and his fellow lived golfers should be ashamed. They're helping the Saudi regime sports wash their reputation in return for tens of millions of dollars. Joining us now, CNN contributor Bob Costas. Bob, great to see you in person. Hi, Brianna. What do you think of the controversy and how Mickelson responded to it

yesterday? Well, he's trying to smooth things out, but this is blood money. There's just no two ways around it. It's blood money. This is Saudi blood money. We know all we need to know. I'm not going to defend Saudi Arabia, obviously, but come on. On morality, are we really suggesting that we expect the same, if not higher, standards from pro golfers and actual public servants who will take money from just about anybody. And to give golfers some credit, some have taken a stand while others have taken the money. I don't think we can or should expect much more than that.

In a recent interview, Hall of Fame golfer Greg Norman, the CEO of Live Golf, fired back at the PGA Tour for being hypocritical, saying, quote, Look, if they want to look at it in prism, then why does the PGA Tour have 23 sponsors within the PGA Tour doing $40-plus billion worth of business with Saudi Arabia? The European PGA Tour has a golf tournament, the Saudi International, that's still in existence since 2019, Norman said. And during that Saudi International, there were PGA Tour players who were given rights and waivers to go play there. I mean, the reality is the amount of money that's flowing around all throughout the world, there's no side that's truly clean. Yeah, you have one side definitely more evil than the other. We have capitalists, full-throated capitalistic greed on one side versus straight up murders on the other. But the fact is, so far 20 of the top 100 players in the world and six of the top 50 have already joined live golf with more on the way. And that leaves

the PGA Tour terrified, so much so that they've taken unprecedented action to ban any golfers who teed up in a live golf event from future PGA Tour competition. They've also announced eight additional events with a $160 million total purse for top players in no-cut tournaments with a guaranteed payout similar to the live golf events. Now, when asked where the money came from in a recent press conference, the commissioner of the PGA Tour was basically forced to admit that there was always a little bit more money all along. Jay, as you mentioned, through the resource allocation plan, it was announced today that purses will be raised at those eight events moving forward. Just wondering, where do those increased funds come from and if they were readily available why weren't they being offered previously like i said earlier we're we're running a business

so the changes that we're making which will be roughly 45 million dollars in incremental purse is coming from a combination of sponsor contribution you know ways to continue to sell more within those events themselves, and our reserves. In reserves, you see, the PGA Tour's decision to go to war with live golfers, shaming them at first, even getting the 9-11 families involved, and when that didn't work, punishing them by banning them from future competition, isn't because they are human rights advocates or bastions of democracy or principled actors against evil. They're doing so to preserve the PGA Tour. That's it.

That's why all of a sudden they're willing to shell out more money because their survival is being threatened. Which brings me to the point I wanted to end on, which is a case study on institutions, their purpose, who they're beholden to, and what kinds of pressures they respond to. Machiavelli wrote in The Prince, quote, a prince must have no other objective, no other thought, nor take up any profession but that of war, its methods, and its discipline, for that is the only art expected of a ruler. The analogy I'm trying to

make is that for any institution, PGA Tour included, the ultimate goal is self-preservation. They don't exist to serve players. They exist primarily to maintain their monopoly power over players. Who they actually serve are those who enable them to fortify their war chests and defend their monopoly, namely capital, the people who control that flow of money, aka, in their case, multi-billion dollar corporate sponsors. And if I can take a brief detour from the Gulf and make another analogy to another almighty institution, the United States Congress, which I believe functions in a very similar way. I don't think it's really an accident that Congress has such low approval ratings.

It's not that the Democrats and the Republicans don't know how to govern. It's that good governance takes a back seat to their real priority, which is, once again, self-preservation. It's not really incompetence that explains why they haven't raised the minimum wage or haven't been able to lower the prescription drug prices. It's that they were never meant to. And one final thought, just my two cents. Any appeal to morality or tradition from any institutional power is done with some degree of obfuscation. The truth is that institutions really have no morals or traditions at all, other than to preserve their power.

The PGA Tour doesn't care about human rights any more than Republicans care about life or the Democrats fighting for the little guy. Appeal to morality and tradition is a technique used to appeal to human emotion as a form of control. You shouldn't do this because the money is dirty, you can't vote for them because they're bigots, or you can't vote for them because they're radical liberals, etc, etc. The unfortunate truth is that in today's society, there are no more morals. There are no sides. There's just money. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's discussion about golf and about how institutions function. If you found this interesting and would like to learn more, please check out my channel 5149 with James Lee, where I release weekly videos

relating to the intersection of business, politics, and society. Link will be in the description below. Of course, subscribe to Breaking Points. And thank you so much for your time today. This is an iHeart Podcast.