The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3522 - We Forgot the Lessons of Iraq and the ’08 Recession in One Week w/ David Dayen
Episode Date: June 20, 2025It’s casual Friday. Today in studio for the first hour is writer and editor of the American Prospect, David Dayen. Sam and David dive deep into the SENR Bill, the Genius Act and the Big Beautiful Bi...ll. Of course we check in with the looming potential American invasion of Iran. And we close out the first half with the NYC Mayoral primaries. If you live in NYC remember to vote and don’t rank Cuomo. In the fun half we dig deeper into Iran, including Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth getting boxed out of the plans and discussions. ICE has a standoff with the LA Dodgers We take phone calls and lot more. Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here!: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here!: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here!: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here!: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase! Check out today’s sponsors: RITUAL: Get 25% off during your first month. Visit ritual.com/MAJORITY to start Ritual or add Essential For Men to your subscription today. SUNSET LAKE: Use the code LEFTISBEST to save 20% at SunsetLakeCBD.com on all their farm fresh CBD products for people and pets. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech Check out Matt’s show, Left Reckoning, on Youtube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon’s show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza’s music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder – https://majorityreportradio.com/
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The Majority Report with Sam Cedar, where every day is casual Friday.
That means Monday is casual Monday.
Tuesday, casual Tuesday.
Wednesday, casual hump day.
Thursday, casual thurs.
That's what we call it.
And Friday, casual Shabbat.
The majority report with Sam Cedar.
It is Friday, June 20th, 2025.
My name is Sam Cedar.
This is the five-time award-winning majority report.
We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA.
On the program today in studio.
executive editor of the American prospect David Dayant
also host of the weekly round for that weekly round I'm competing with myself today
exactly we have somebody else on that we'll we'll talk about that in a moment
also on the program today wait a minute also the co-host the organized money podcast
organized money dot FM
Money.fm.fm. Also on the program today, Trump supposedly to decide Iran attack within
two weeks. As U.S. spy agencies say Iran not even decided yet on pursuing nuclear weapons.
Iran responds as missiles land in Israel as its iron dome becomes more porous.
Gaza, meanwhile, suffering an Israeli-made drought, according to.
UNICEF. Appeal's court rules Trump can keep the National Guard in L.A. for now.
Trump's Medicaid gutting reconciliation bill gets a bird bath.
Meanwhile, DHS puts new limits on congressional oversight visits to detention centers.
James Clyburn joins Palantier, right-wing billionaires, and Michael Bloomberg in endorsing
Andrew Cuomo, the New York mayor's race is only four days away.
Ice denied access to Dodger Stadium.
As Trump gears up for more Democrats wondering at which remote desert island are Hakeem
Jeffries and Chuck Schumer vacationing.
All this and more on today's majority report.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, Emma Vigland out today.
and not necessarily
filling in for him.
I mean, he would have been here anyways.
I was planning on it.
But David Dayne,
the executive editor of the American prospect,
David, your camera's right in front of me.
Where am I?
Where am I looking?
Right there?
Hey, how you doing?
Hey, what's up?
How's going?
Welcome.
Is this your first time?
Not your first time in studio.
No, I've been in studio a few times.
But it's the first time you've been sitting in that seat.
Well, there you go.
So there's a first time.
time for everything. And have we coordinated today? Uh, it's a casual Friday and, uh, it's always
casual Friday as what I was just told in the open. There you go. For me it is. But in terms of
the way that this is dressed up Friday for me. It really is. Uh, and we've, we've sort of crossed
paths. Um, let's get right into this, uh, because we've got a lot to talk about, obviously.
Was there ever a busier time in the news? I mean, you, my goodness.
Yeah, it's, there's a lot going on.
I mean, I remember the days when you would do the news briefs for Fire Dog Lake.
That was like a different life.
Many, many, many, many moons ago.
But we never had anything with like these many sort of competing stories simultaneously.
Well, one thing I said or Saw said this week was that the Democratic Party, it was in the midst of forgetting the lessons of the Iraq war.
and the global financial crisis in the same week, right?
So, you know, compressing that time, along with everything else that's going on, obviously, is quite stunning.
And we're going to talk about that Genius Act, and we're going to be talking about, obviously, Democrats, or at least Democratic leadership,
and maybe even just broadly speaking, Democrats' response to the potential for imminent war with Iran.
But first, let's get a sense of what the timing is.
of what the way. And in Iraq, we had the F.U., which was the Friedman unit.
Right.
That was six months when everything was going to become clear at any given point.
Right. The next six months are crucial.
That was Tom Friedman, New York Times colonists. That was his ever-present.
And it literally went on for about five years, he would say, at periodic times.
The next six months in Iraq are crucial.
And the amazing thing, too, about it is you would think,
if it's just five years, that would be only 10 Friedman units.
That's right.
But they overlapped many times.
Right, every couple months.
Every couple of months, it would be another six months.
So there could have been something like 25 or 30 FUs during the course of that Iraq war.
Donald Trump has something a little bit more.
Donald Trump has sped up the...
It's more like what my contractor tells me.
Is that right?
We're going to finish your kitchen in two weeks.
There's no question.
We're going to have it done completely in two weeks.
And you're still eating off of paper plates.
Three months later.
Here is Caroline, is it Caroline Levitt at the White House briefing room or press briefing yesterday.
Regarding the ongoing situation in Iran, I know there has been a lot of speculation.
amongst all of you in the media regarding the president's decision-making
and whether or not the United States will be directly involved.
In light of that news, I have a message directly from the president, and I quote,
based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations
that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future,
I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.
That's a quote directly from the president for all of you today.
There's about 45 different qualified.
in that right um i i i you know concept of a plan there's a concept of a plan there and
we have heard the the use of two weeks many times by don't trump in fact here is a um here
is a compilation there it is that was uh doing this daily show style yeah who was put who put this
together we've we we found it uh somewhere online here it is this is a uh maybe it's
Blue Georgia that did this compilation
of Donald
Trump and his
leaning on two weeks.
You trust President Putin.
You know in about two weeks.
In your mind, is Ukraine doing enough
to get this to get this?
I'd rather tell you in about two weeks
from now. Do you still believe that Putin
actually wants to end the war?
I can't tell you that, but I'll let you know
in about two weeks. I think you're going to find some
very interesting items coming
to the forefront.
over the next two weeks.
We've got the plan largely completed,
and we'll be filing it over the next two or three weeks.
We're going to be having a news conference in about two weeks.
I will make that decision, I would say, over the next two weeks.
And I'll be making a big decision on the Paris Accord over the next two weeks.
At some point in the next two weeks or three weeks,
I'm going to be setting the deal.
Over the next two, three weeks.
But about two weeks, within two weeks, in two weeks, in two weeks.
You'll be hearing about it a lot more in the next two weeks, maybe in 100 years from now, maybe in two weeks.
I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.
It's a stalling tactic, and more often than not, people forget that he had said two weeks, and it gets reset.
But there are, in this instance, there is a lot of movement in terms of naval activity and in terms of,
Air Force activity, getting set up, I would imagine Marines, too, getting set up so that in the
event that there is a strike, protecting the many, many bases, military assets, commercial assets
that the United States has around the world. That's what he could be setting up for. I mean,
I mean, I think also, you know, Trump certainly believes in what was.
known under Nixon as the madman strategy, right? You have to believe that I'm so crazy that I'm
going to drop a bunker buster bomb, a nuclear bomb, whatever it is, on you so that you'll come
to the table and negotiate. And so, you know, there's a bit of gunboat diplomacy here where
he's setting up the guns. And he wants you to think that he's crazy enough to do it. So I think
that's certainly part of this. The irony is, of course, that they were in the,
the middle of negotiations when Israel. I mean, so it's not, it's unclear to me what it is. Like,
I have not heard what the, well, and also an articulation of what the roadblock was in coming to.
I don't know that there was one because it was. Well, that's my point. It's like, what is the,
but it's clear what happened is that Israel kind of jumped the gun. They didn't, they don't want this
negotiation to happen at all. And so they started bombing. And Trump saw his buddies on FROX news.
put a lot of neocons on saying, isn't this great, and thought, hey, I want to take credit
for that. So maybe I'll get involved. And so, you know, I don't know that it was, I don't think
the sequence was there's an impasse and therefore I'm going to start bombing. The sequence was
we're negotiating. Israel disrupts the negotiation and Trump, who has the brain of a gnat,
like, moved to Israel side. And then, but what is the ask? If the theory is, it's the
madman theory. I'm using this madman tactic as a way of attempting to well I mean I think there
were some impasse not full impasses but maybe things that were holding up the negotiation one is
I think enriching the uranium on Iranian soil I think that was one of the the the things that
the US wanted that Iran was you know not willing to give up so I mean I certainly there are
points within the negotiation wasn't over and so having the most leverage in the negotiation if you
believe that that this is what this does to trump uh you know means that if you if you start
threatening then maybe you get a better deal um what also strikes me is the idea i mean you know
people have compared this obviously to uh the iraq invasion um and
And what strikes me is that, and you recall this, I'm sure, it was a two-year project.
I mean, literally, maybe a year and a half from December of 2001 to February, March,
March, I guess, ultimately of 2003.
Right.
And the machinations to build support for invading Iraq, which had nothing to do with
9-11, you know, there were Dick Cheney's leaking through Scooter Libby to the New York
Times and then going back and citing the New York Times on television to build this support.
You had Colin Powell essentially destroy his credibility for, you know, really the rest of his
career he spent trying to make up for this, going up and lying and holding a while of anthrax
at the U.N., Condi Rice, talking, you don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
To be a mushroom cloud.
And, you know, you had Thomas Friedman going out there talking about how we were going to bring free.
I mean, they're liberal hawks, you know, they were building bipartisan support.
You had Kenneth Pollock, the case for war.
And, you know, there was all this other discussion.
But I think I think you have to see this is almost cumulative, right?
You know, part of that was how David from, David from, our friend now, right, David from writing a state of the union address, calling, talking about an axis of evil.
And that axis of evil included Iran, included North Korea, included Iraq, and Iraq, and Iran.
And so all of this sort of built-in suppositions that animated the war with Iraq are still active, particularly.
particularly around we have to stop.
It's an existential threat if Iran gets a nuclear weapon.
That is an unstated premise that has gone through the last 20 years.
So when this flares up again, you can just pick that talking point right off the top of the pile.
The difference is, is that the entire, it seems, U.S. intelligence apparatus, like across whatever it is,
the 18 agencies have said they have no nuclear weapon program and haven't since 2003.
Right.
And so it seems like it would be a hard sell, but it also feels like it's completely almost irrelevant.
Put up this poll.
You can see Democrats, independents, Republicans.
No.
Most of this is, do you think the U.S. military should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran?
There is no party, no demographic that is a full yes beyond 23 points for Republicans.
It's 15 for Democrats and 11 for independence.
And then overwhelming majorities for the answer being.
know and yet it doesn't seem like it mean we'll make a difference per se i mean it certainly
it certainly doesn't make a difference on the republican side and we shouldn't let them off the hook for
that massy uh tom massy the uh congressman libertarian congressman from kentucky has a war powers
resolution to say that that only congress can determine you know whether or not the u.s goes to
war and no Republicans have signed on. Zero. So the realignment, the Republican realignment is one guy
on this issue. And then on the Democratic side, you have a handful. That seems like almost like
not a realignment. It's not. And on the Democratic side, you have a few dozen who have said, both in the
House and the Senate, Tim Kaine is doing a War Powers resolution. Bernie Sanders put out a no war with
Iran Act. And many House Democrats have signed on to Massey's resolution. But at the top level of
the party, that's certainly not what you're seeing among Democrats. Yeah. And I want to talk about
that because you and Ryan Grimm from Dropside News and a couple other folks that you both work
with did some great reporting on the dynamic that exists in Congress right now.
in terms of whether they're getting out there
and articulating an anti-Iran war, essentially, narrative.
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Okay, so David Dayn, here I am.
It's becoming clear to some folks that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries
have been completely absent in terms of pressing the brakes on what appears to be,
well, it definitely is the Israelis trying to bring, to pull,
America into this war, you know, beyond the fact that we have provided all essentially the
weaponry that they have used so far.
This piece in the New York Times by Peter Beinart, where are Schumer and Jeffries?
Trump might take the U.S. to war.
Where are Schumer and Jeffries?
Well, we sort of know where they are.
Well, we actually know explicitly now because Jeffries, as we were going live here,
Jeffrey's released a new statement on developments in the Middle East, is what he calls it.
And it starts off with the boilerplate that you hear from a lot of members of Congress, particularly supporters of Israel.
Iran is a sworn enemy of the U.S. can never be permitted to become a nuclear-capable power.
Israel has a right to defend itself against escalating Iranian aggression, and our commitment to Israel security remains iron class.
Now, he goes on to say that the authority to declare war belongs solely to the U.S. Congress and that Trump should refrain from engaging in military action without the explicit approval of the House and that aggressive diplomacy resulting in an agreement that permanently halts Iran's nuclear aspirations is the most appropriate course of action at this time. That is a statement that came out literally at around noon today.
But you see how the sequencing is of it, that it starts with everything that Israel kind of wants you to know about this situation, that Iran must never have a nuclear weapon, and that the U.S. is steadfast in its alignment, its stance with Israel.
And then it gets into sort of, you know, the process stuff.
But what it sounds to me like is that, you know, there is this sense that, you know, there is this sense that,
because of war powers that the Congress should be the one to authorize war with Iran, not the president.
And it seems like Jeffries would be fully willing to do that as long as he has the opportunity.
As long as he has the opportunity to vote for it.
We should also say, and there's a couple of things that in that statement that I find sort of fascinating.
One being, Israel has the right to defend itself against escalating Iranian aggression.
I it is so hard to wrap my head around that like how to is how is escalating Iranian aggression defined here when Israel attacked them presumably preemptively but according to them but of course it was not preemptively because there's been zero evidence that they were preempting anything at all I mean and well I mean the idea that Iran must
never have a nuclear weapon, if anything, this is encouraging Iran to get a nuclear weapon,
something that our own intelligence agencies have been saying, they don't seem to be terribly
interested in doing it.
The interesting corollary to Trump saying, I'll make this decision in two weeks, is Benjamin
Netanyahu saying that Iran is three months away from delivering a nuclear weapon.
Starting in the early 90s.
That's right. He said for 30 years, Iran has been a few weeks or a few months away from having a nuclear weapon. And so you can define escalating aggression as their alleged activities towards granting a, getting a nuclear weapon, which they've apparently been doing for 30 years. They're not very good at it. They're going to get there, but it's monkeys on keyboards apparently ever in Iran. So, you know, you have to believe the kind of mania.
that Netanyahu has about Iran's activities in order to believe that there is any escalating
aggression. And can we talk about Chuck Schumer? It couldn't have been more than two weeks ago.
Yeah. Putting out a video, I mean, of all the issues that the Democrats should be expending their
energies on, putting out a video complaining that Trump was too close to a deal with Iran.
Yeah. What kind of bull is this?
And that it involved a side deal and no side deals.
Yeah.
No side deals.
That's the problem.
I mean, we will win.
I didn't know you were going to go full Schumer there.
Believe me, I'm going full Schumer.
This is just, it is borderline insane.
And you guys at the prospect with DropSight did some amazing reporting here on what APAC has been involved in over the past, I guess, a couple of weeks.
Well, really, since the first bombs were falling in Tehran.
No side deals.
So since that time, APAC, which is the large political action committee, they really got to work.
immediately contacting members of Congress and telling them, you have to put out a statement
that says that you stand with Israel, that, you know, Iran must never have, all the things
kind of that Jeffrey said in his preamble. Iran must never have a nuclear weapon. Israel has a
right to defend itself against escalating aggression, and we stand with Israel. Those are kind of
the talking points that Iran wanted members of Congress to get out.
my sources tell me that they were bombarding members of Congress with these messages, particularly
House Democrats. And one of them got a hundred calls from APEC saying, you have to put out a message,
you have to put out a message, you have to put out a message. So what is it? When, when APEC calls
a member of Congress a hundred times, like, is that, like, is that on their personal cell phone? Like,
is it a text? Like, how does it?
It could be any number of things. Yeah. I mean, I think on the cell phone, I think text of members, you know, maybe there's chief of staff, maybe to people in their office, their legislative director. But giving the overwhelming sensation, it might not be from the same person. It might be from allies. It might be from donors who are alive with APEC. But this overwhelming sense that you have to do this, you have to do this. And so, you know, when I heard about that, we put a bunch of people to work.
and said, all right, let's go to every House Democrat.
Let's look at their website.
Let's look at their social media.
Did they do this?
Did they align themselves with APEC and Israel by using these talking points?
And what we found was that 28 members of Congress, House Democrats in particular,
issued statements exactly saying, I stand with Israel.
That's an incredible coincidence.
28.
But they would use those exact same talking points at that exact time.
Those exact words.
Another 35 expressed unequivocal support for Israel without using those magic words
stand with Israel, but giving the same sentiment.
And then another 16 expressed what I would call softer support with Israel,
maybe not the same inflammatory language, maybe not exactly the same talking points,
but giving the sense that they stand with Israel.
So that's almost 100 members of the House caucus and was within a few days.
Sometimes by the next day, the day after the bombing started, that was APEC, basically having a metric to say, see the Democrats stand with us, they stand with Israel.
There's another way of expressing that, and it seems to me it's like, well, there's some side deals are okay.
right um that's crazy side deals and the Cuban missile crisis side deals man I mean
they're we're talking about Iranian ones um this so and I think I think there are two things
to say here number one this is APEC wanting to maintain their dominance in the Democratic Party
one of the things they did on the member statements that did not follow their talking points that
that blamed Trump for his failure of diplomacy or that said that, you know, the Congress is the one
who determines whether or not the U.S. goes the war or whatever, that, you know, APAC would put out a statement
in response to any, any of those statements that fell short of those, you know, their expectations,
basically, saying, consistent pattern, J. Street and Dorsey's issue anti-Israel statements.
J Street is the pro-Israel pro-peace organization, and they are jockeying for power
with J. They don't want J-Street to get too much of a foothold in the Democratic Party.
And so A-PAC not only wants a bunch of statements that they can point to and say,
see, they're following our lead here, but they also want to cut off the idea that there
would be any support for J-Street within the Democratic Party.
I mean, I think this is, I think, on some level,
the classic roadrunner thing
where the coyote runs off the cliff
and makes it out about 40 feet or whatever it is
and is still running
and doesn't realize there's no road there anymore
and I think we are
I don't know if it's a year or two away
maybe less maybe more
of that happening in the Democratic Party
and a lot of I think there's going to be a lot
I think that's going to end up being
a lot more difficult
for Democrats to be able to sort of
kowtow to APAC, regardless of how much money they bring in
down the road.
Especially if an actual strike happens
and that's as catastrophic as we think.
And because, you know,
this, it's almost guaranteed, it seems to me,
that if the United States explicitly attacks Iran,
because frankly, you know,
It's, I think it's, it's very hard to imagine that U.S. has not been involved in these attacks in some fashion or another, but they have enough, uh, deniability that Iran can also deny to itself that the U.S. is involved.
But in the event that there is an explicit, um, uh, involvement by the U.S., it seems to me there's no way to avoid at least significantly more, uh, you know, involvement.
And I don't know what that looks like.
I can't imagine it involves, you know, any type of ground invasion.
That would be absurd.
But the idea of a protracted, like, you know, bombing.
And then, you know, some form of like international terrorism seems to be, you know, I would imagine, is on the table if the United States start getting involved in that.
And, you know, who knows what they're.
You were there in 2002 when the majority of Democratic senators and I believe a substantial number of House members, House Democrats, gave President Bush the authority to go into Iraq.
And then the next year in those presidential primary races, you had Howard Dean come out very early and said, what I want to know is that was the speech.
speech. It was the why I want to know his speech. It was at the California Democratic Party
Convention. He said, what I want to know is why are the Democrats the ones who are
cheerleading for this war in Iraq? Yeah. Why, why is our party collaborating with
the Republicans? And that, that really, I think, set the stage for about 15 years or 20 years
of a sea change among at least a substantial faction of the Democratic Party. And of course,
in 2008 who wins the Democratic nomination, someone who was early out in front
against the war of Iraq, as a state senator.
At the end of the day, you are going to look back at what you did here as a Democrat
in elected office in Washington.
And if you kind of oppose this rush to war, you're going to find that the public really
supports you and you're you're you're going to look pretty good for a long time and if you
were in favor of it you're going to find yourself having to explain yourself from the next summer
of years yeah uh it's interesting if we if we have time we should touch on the new york
mayorality uh race because i know you guys are doing some uh real coverage actually uh with
whitney wimbish is is uh coming out with a piece and she of course writes uh for our a m quickie
as well as and now she's our new staff writer doing a great job and uh yeah
She's been focused on the rain.
I mean, it's, it's GeoTV weekend here.
Yes.
What, what are you think it's going to have?
Well, wait, we'll get to that in a moment because I want to talk about the big bill.
But I do think the interesting thing we should also say about the invasion of Iraq is that starting as early as the Clinton administration, there was that similar buildup in terms of providing all of the sort of like sales pitches and whatnot that you would need to invade Iraq.
even but but it took the bush administration you know 14 months to do it in this instance i think
like you know we have now been trained that like oh the idea of the u.s unilaterally doing this
with iran uh and you know and we i we i haven't seen i mean we're not having uh large
anti-war protests at this point like you know in the way that we did with the i mean it took
months uh for that stuff to happen last time this could happen so quickly that you know we're
already involved before we know it. Yeah, I mean, that's where you started this, that it was a year
and a half, like, build up, build up, a real sales pitch effort. And here it's just sort of a given,
oh, we're going to bomb Iran. Yep. And, yeah. Well, we shall see. In the meantime, there's also, like,
another bomb, essentially, and it is winding its way through the Senate. This reconciliation
bill.
Yeah.
And you have a piece out just, I think, yesterday about what it's just going to do to not
just to Medicaid.
And never, I don't even know if you touch on Medicare in there because of the sequestration
that could potentially follow from it.
There are actually a couple things.
But, yeah.
The entire sort of like medical system.
Yeah.
That's going to be.
Like, I don't know if there's ever been a single bill that I remember.
remember, at least in the 20 years that I've been doing this, that has such dramatic implications
for daily life for so many millions of Americans in a negative way.
It's going to affect every American at some level.
And as you've talked about the fact that we're in this news vortex going on right now,
where we have immigration stuff and protests and and and this iran situation with israel it's not
getting a lot of attention and it's hard to get traction on it we're doing a daily or almost
daily newsletter called trump's beautiful disaster because you know bill's called the big beautiful
bill um uh so we went back to the 90s with a 311 reference uh beautiful disaster song by
I didn't ban there.
But anyway.
So, and, you know, we're covering it because of this impact.
But it's been hard to break through.
And I don't think people realize the extent to which this will have such a massive amount of disruption, particularly in the health system.
So right now, the situation is that a number.
number of rural hospitals in particular are struggling to survive. There is a report that says
one third of all rural hospitals, and that's about 700 hospitals across the country, are at
risk of closure right now. And if you take a trillion dollars out of the health care system,
which is kind of what this will do, mainly by cutting Medicaid, that's the primary thing,
and moving 11 million people off the Medicaid rolls, you're going to
get a situation where suddenly the budgets of these rural hospitals will just go into the toilet.
I mean, Medicaid is often the biggest line item in these budgets.
You're talking about a program that has 73 million people right now.
For revenue.
And, you know, I mean, some hospitals complain about low reimbursement rates in Medicaid,
but there are programs that boost that that are also being attacked in this bill.
There's this program where the federal government will kick in extra money.
so that doctors will accept Medicaid and hospitals will accept Medicaid.
And that was cut in the Senate bill.
That is the provider tax, right?
It's not quite the provider tax.
It's a different thing called state-directed payments.
But those have been attacked in the Senate bill.
Don't those provider taxes pay for those state-directed payments?
No.
The state-directed payments come from the federal government.
The provider tax is a separate thing that is a way for states to get more resources
in Medicaid.
And what happens is the state taxes a hospital.
Let's say the state taxes a hospital $100.
But what they say is also we'll reimburse you more through our Medicaid program by $100.
So the hospital is held harmless.
They're paying a tax, but they're getting the money back.
But when you increase those rates and the state pays $100, Medicaid is a federal state program.
So the federal government is kicking in some of that money.
So by doing this circulation, it's a way to get the federal government to pay a little bit more.
Right.
And the state direct payments are supplements on top of that.
So there's two things going on here, right?
And both of those are being cut by the Senate bill in particular.
The Senate bill ends up being more egregious than the House bill, which is sort of shocking.
It's crazy.
It's crazy.
And so what does this mean?
There are hundreds of rural hospitals that are likely to have to close because of what happens in this bill.
And what does it mean when a hospital closes?
There are sick people in the hospital that have to be moved.
And if you're talking about a rural hospital, it's probably have to be moved an hour, two hours, three hours away.
And that could be life-threatening in and of itself.
the second part if you have a city a rural town and they lose their hospital it's an anchor for the
community these are often the biggest employers right in that community you could obliterate an
entire town by losing their rural hospital and then three for patients now my the nearest hospital
to where I live is three hours away if you have a heart attack if you have an emergency situation
you might not be able to get to the hospital in time.
If you have a loved one that has to stay in a hospital somewhere else,
you might have to pay to, like, go to a hotel so you can see your loved one
and help them through a time when they're sick.
There are real burdens for patients.
And then think about the burden on the remaining hospitals.
So all of a sudden, they're getting patients from a larger area.
And, yeah.
If you cut Medicaid, doesn't that mean that those 11 million people who lose, they get healthy and never have to go to the hospital, right? Isn't that the theory?
Actually, what happens is those 11 million people no longer have coverage, but if they're sick, they're still going to go to the hospital.
And we have a law in this country that says if you are in an emergency and you go to in the emergency room, that you have to get treated.
And that is called uncompensated care.
So if that person can't afford it because, you know, they don't have enough to be on Medicaid and they don't have health insurance,
they're going to basically go and get treatment without getting paid.
And that's a burden on the hospitals.
And then it ends up being a cost that is picked up by private insurance and by essentially the public dole.
More by the hospitals, right?
Because the hospitals are the one giving the treatment.
And not getting paid for it.
But they passed that.
Well, they asked for higher payments, but they might not be able to wrangle
higher payments out of the insurance companies.
And the other part of this is that more people are going to be coming in.
Whether they're insured or uninsured, they're going to be coming into that hospital.
Hospitals are already understaffed.
They already need more physicians.
They already need more nurses.
If you had a weak wait time to see a doctor before, maybe it's two weeks now.
And the health care system is very,
interdependent. If you have something go down in one side of it, the other side is going to
be affected. I mean, we, you know, we saw how supplies had to be moved within the hospital
system. If you have shut down a bunch of public hospitals like Andrew Cuomo happened to have
in the run-up before COVID, there are hospitals to get overrun in terms of the burden and
cost and whatnot. And so this is going to have, and we should say,
that as little attention as it has gotten relative to the implications of this,
look at the polling on this.
Let's play this clip from Harry Anton on, is that his name, Harry Nton?
Yeah.
On CNN.
He's never seen polling on legislation look worse, but it's...
It's a soft intensity, though, right?
Because people don't really know about it.
People don't know about it.
is clip number we have this yeah yep and of course there's other elements of this bill and
uh but this is one of this is like sort of the where the biggest chunk of money in terms of
cuts are coming from that's right where is support for this mega bill you know i'm really
really surprised when i look at polling data i look at it every day but the amount of
approval for this bill. Holy cow,
my goodness rate this. You know, you mentioned
the KFF, Paul. We're talking about
29 points underwater on the net
favorable rating. But that matches the
Kinnepiak University, Paul, from last week.
When it was 26 points
underwater, oh my God, you need Greg
Lugainis to get that far underwater.
And I mean, we're talking about a negative
41 net favorability rating among
independents in the center of the electric.
You rarely ever see pieces
of legislation or proposed pieces of legislation
as unpopular as this. But
Here you see it in two polls, 26 points underwater and 29 points underwater.
No good.
Extry, X-Extry.
Read all about it, mister.
I know.
It's 26 points underwater.
I mean, did this guy fight in World War II?
I don't know.
He's one of the doughboys.
But I mean, this is pretty stunning, but also does not seem to have, I mean, what are the prospects?
Well, let's first talk about the bird bath.
stuff because there's a lot of stuff in this bill that came from the House that goes into Senate.
It's a reconciliation process, which means they only need 50 plus one to pass it.
It is not subject to a filibuster.
However, there's a set of rules named after Robert Byrd, a now long-deceased, former Democratic
and former Dixiecratic.
Yeah.
Senator from West Virginia.
And tell people about those bird rules and the process in which it gets, it goes through what they call the bird bath.
So this is a budget reconciliation bill, right? So in order to qualify for that special status where it gets, it can be passed by 50 votes, everything has to have a primary budgetary purpose.
And it's not just that it has to have a budgetary purpose, because if you cut $10 here, then that has a budgetary.
purpose. That has to be the primary reason why it's in the bill. It cannot be a policy that is
sort of masquerading as a budget item. And because, you know, once this rule was established,
senators got more clever about trying to reach their policy goals through budgetary means. And so
the Senate sort of arbiter, the parliamentarian, the famed parliamentarian, is the one who decides,
nope that actually you're trying to do policy there and that doesn't qualify under the 50 vote standard so we're going to kick that part out of it and the parties the two different parties basically go to the parliamentarian file almost like what would be this is weird yeah they should put these on television the the the democrats in this case the democrats say i raise a point of order about this part of the bill and i say that this actually has a policy purpose and not a budgetary purpose and then there's a debate between the democrats
staff and the Republican staff with the parliamentarian present, and then the parliamentarian
eventually makes a ruling. And that ruling is that this either gets to stay in the bill or this
has to go. And we actually got last night some early answers on some of this stuff with three of the,
you know, every committee in the Senate has a different part of the bill, three committees that have
lesser parts of the bill, they got rulings. And the biggest thing is a yet another kind of
survival from a near-death experience for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. So in the
bill, the way that the CFPB is structured is that they get their money from the Federal
Reserve. They don't get their money from the budget. So the question is, well, how do we ding the
CFPB, if it's not budgetary, they're not on the budget. So what they did was they said,
okay, we're going to put a cap on how much money the Fed can give the CFPB. And that cap will be
the zero percent of the Fed's available resources. In other words, we're going to zero out the
budget of the CFPB. Well, the Democrats challenged this and said, you're just trying to kill the
CFPB. You're not trying to save money for the budget because it doesn't save money for the budget,
not directly, and the parliamentarian agreed with the Democrats, and they kicked that part
out of the bill. So the CFPB will still get its current complement. There is actually a cap on
CFPB resources, and it's like 8% of what the Fed has. I forget the exact number is like
$600 billion or something. I'm sorry, $600 million. But anyway, so that's out of the bill.
And to be clear, Congress can pass whatever it wants to.
It's just about having the special rules for this special process.
The special rules that allow you to avoid the filibuster.
That's right.
And there are a couple, I mean a couple.
There are tens of these provisions at least within the.
So this, yeah, CMPB is an example.
There was an artificial intelligence ban.
There's a whole array of.
There's another one that got thrown out last night, which was,
the Republicans tried to repeal the cafe standards for cars,
which is an emissions standard, tailpipe emissions, for cars and say, you know,
cars have to have an average miles per gallon of 35 by X year.
They tried to repeal that and say that would save money.
And the parliamentarian said, no, that's, you're trying to create policy.
And that we're throwing out.
You know, the parliamentarian was sidestepped, essentially, when they essentially used the Congressional Review Act in a sort of a misappropriated way.
But this is a key point, right?
Because this is the first time things have been kicked out of the bill.
And John Thune, is the Senate Majority Leader, has said, we're going to abide by the parliamentarian.
However, as you just said, they sidestep the parliamentarian in one preempt.
previous case. Just a few weeks ago.
On a separate bill. They also did it
for this bill. When they were
doing the budget resolution,
and now we're going to get into
real wonky stuff. This is getting into very
wonky stuff, but this is very important
because we're talking about the baseline, right?
Right. Of how we
approach the tax
cuts that are
set to expire. Right.
And before we get to
that, let's explain
this other dynamic that exists with the bird
rule, which is it needs to be deficit neutral 10 years out from the bill, right?
Basically, it cannot create deficits after the 10-year budget window.
Everything has to pencil out after that first 10 years.
You can have it spend money or, or, you know, be a deficit in those first 10 years, but
after that it has to be neutral, which is why very often what we get is tax cuts that will
expire right in 10 years which is which is what happened in the trump tax cuts of 2017 it the trump
tax cuts of 2017 actually expire at the end of this year and that was to make it look cheaper and also
to part you know pencil out the budget neutrality outside the budget window and um but when we
talk about baseline right even though these tax cuts must expire right so so
By virtue of their very existence, they could not exist if they weren't to expire at the end of this year.
However, there's some.
So the way it goes is there are two baselines you could use.
There's a current law baseline and the current policy baseline.
The current law baseline is what does the law say?
And the law says that these tax cuts expire in 2025.
And therefore, if you extend them, it will cost the amount of the tax cuts in 2026 and 27 and 20.
and 29 and so on.
If you use the current policy baseline, the current policy is these tax cuts are in place.
So if they just stay in place, that doesn't cost any money because it's just the same
budget baseline as we have this year.
And this is a really key point because of the rules of, not just the rules of budget
reconciliation, but also what it looks like to the public.
Does it look like these things cost $3 trillion?
dollars or does it look like it's the difference between that and the bill looking like it saves
money over the next 10 years right so uh the the senate is really really interested in doing a
current policy baseline the republican senate the republican senate and uh the democrats have said
well that violates any standard because you could just pass a reconciliation bill saying
Medicare for all, but we're only doing it for one year.
And then the next year pass a reconciliation bill that says Medicare for all permanently,
and that doesn't cost any money because it's current policy.
Right.
So is that really what you want to go for, Republicans?
So when Senate Republicans came up against this on the budget resolution, which kind of sets
the terms for the reconciliation bill, they said, well, we don't need to ask the
parliamentarian about that and they just ignored the parliamentarian didn't even ask her and they left
it up to lindsay graham who is the uh left it up to the budget chair who is lindsay graham and he said
yeah sure we'll do current policy baseline now we're in a position with the bill itself where
uh democrats are going to challenge that and they're going to have the same debate in front of the
parliamentarian this time and i think you know i think some of these other things like cfpb or
or CAFE rules, Senate Republicans will maybe probably not pick a fight over that, but if the
parliamentarian says that the current policy baseline is out, this is the big, this is that's the biggest
fight.
That's the biggest fight.
And there may be a situation where they ignore the ruling of the chair, which they have
the ability to do.
But Foon promised they wouldn't do it.
But, you know, that's, we're going to see the rubber hit the road once that gets a
big one. I mean, because, like, the AI regulations, that could drop out. We already have
people in the house. We already have a couple people in the house who already say, I regret voting
for the bill with that. Big Tech is lobbying furiously for that, because it would ban all state
regulations of artificial intelligence for the next 10 years. And that includes a whole host
of products because AI is in everything now, suppose. Not that, and not only that, but it's
defined very broadly in the bill. So it could be, you know, real page.
uses an algorithm to
make its recommendations on
how landlords can jack up
rents, that could be
considered AI and so states
and cities cannot do regulations on real
page. It has a
huge set of implications.
And so those smaller things
they may drop out. We're going to start
seeing this and this stuff is so
Byzantine that, you know, outside
of like a couple of small
podcasts, frankly, people are
not aware of this.
big one being though that what is the baseline what what are we going to determine the cuts and
and you know the argument that um i saw stephen miller make uh i think it was on so on ban and
no it was on with cudlow if you could believe it uh was um you know there's no reason to expect
that taxes are going to be any different tomorrow than they were today right which of course
is like what are you talking about this entire this entire this entire
entire bill, this tax regime was different than it was the day before you passed it.
They, if you extend this out, you just extend this logic out, there was a billboard on Fox News
that said that this bill saved $8 trillion.
And the way they got that is they said current policy baseline, that's $0.
But also, look at all the economic growth that this is going to spur if you extend the tax
cut.
Well, that's the laugh.
Which costs $0.
Right.
they said oh that's three trillion dollars that's going to so so that saves the government or adds
revenue of three trillion dollars to the government and then they said but also look at all the
money we're collecting from tariffs which isn't in the bill at all but they said that's another
three trillion dollars and and so they put this thing together and it literally said that that this
bill saves eight trillion dollars i don't understand why they even bother to like to grab why not just
put out a number and just instead of like trying to have to reverse engineer where you're getting
these figures for it literally just numbers floating in the air and they just shove them in there and
they're meaningless it just feels like we don't have a media broadly speaking that has the ability
to push back on these sort of completely fake narratives that exist um all right let's turn to one
other thing that i know you've been following the genius act i feel like this is
is, like you say, within two weeks, it feels like we may both unlearn the lessons of the
Iraq War and of the financial crisis.
This does feel like what it would feel like watching essentially the Clinton administration
sign off on the repeal of Glass-Steagull, but almost...
I mean, I think closer.
It almost feels worse because it feels like this crypto stuff.
is going to spread in such a way that it will be almost impossible to get a handle on it,
and it's just going to run, like, this feels like it could be super cataclysmic, maybe in five years,
10 years, 15 years, don't know when, but.
Look, I mean, we've been here before.
We've seen this happen before.
At the end of the 90s, as you say, Clinton, not only signed the repeal of Glass-Steagel,
but the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which basically says you can't have any regulations on derivatives.
And within about seven, eight years, we had a financial crisis that was based on people using a lot of derivatives to make bets on the housing market.
In 2017-18, the only real bipartisan bill that passed in the first Trump term was a deregulation, basically a repeal of certain parts of the Dodd-Frank Act,
particularly for large community banks or large regional banks.
Within five years, six years, you had Silicon Valley Bank, which was a large regional bank, completely blow up.
And if we didn't have crypto isolated from the regular financial system, that probably would have been worse.
But that was a mini crisis that happened.
And several large regional banks went under because of that.
Now you have this stable coin bill, the Genius Act, puts a regime together, a pretty light-touch regulatory regime for stable coins.
It will allow, I know you've had people on the show talking about this, but it will allow for companies.
We've now seen Walmart and Amazon say that they might put their own stable coin together.
Walmart bucks that you will use to have to pay for items at Walmart or items at Amazon.
We could see that out of meta for Facebook.
You want to use Facebook Marketplace.
You've got to use a meta-stable coin.
You want to use X as a financial tool.
You might have an X dollar that is a stable coin.
We're now seeing private currencies that are being set up across the economy.
We're going to see that as a result of this bill when it passes.
Because, by the way, the House hasn't passed it yet.
There's still more to be done.
the House probably will pass it, but they might also bundle their own ideas with it.
And they want to do a market structure bill, which would basically strip the SEC.
Security is an exchange commission of regulation of a lot of digital coins and give it to the commodity futures trading commission, which is smaller and also friendlier to crypto.
Right. So, you know, there's still work to be done. It remains to be seen. But the Senate passed the Genius Act this week with, I believe, 18 Democrats.
Democrats that were in support along with pretty much every Republican.
And that, of course, is because, I mean, almost explicitly because of the enormous crypto money.
But it feels like, I mean, broadly speaking, what it feels like we have now is essentially like the problem we had with shadow banking, except for it's really just creating a whole new class of banks.
but without any of the capital requirements essentially of actual banks and I guess presumably
allowing for all sorts of other derivatives and financial products that would come out of it on
the back end and could theoretically be traded like you could have secondary tertiary markets
trading on the Walmart dollar whatever they call it you know the first of all I'm so excited to have to
go to every different place of business that I buy things at with a different kind of money.
Well, it's sort of like this. It's like, you know, it is as if, you know, I remember in college
going to Jamaica for spring break. Right. There were riots in Kingston at that time, so it was
very, very inexpensive. But the hotel we say, you couldn't buy anything with cash. It all had to
be these like plastic beads and you would buy all these plasticies you wear it around your neck and then
you would just pull it off to buy like you know rum punch and then it's like it's a hop skip and a jump
to workers at walmart being paid in these of course and now it's like i couldn't take that anywhere else
yeah and the the real problem is is that these companies are so massive and they're dealing they have
their own essentially economies it could be backed by nothing and could fall apart at any point because
What we've seen with the stable coins that exist now is that there was one point a couple of years ago where every single one of the major stable coins was under investigation by the federal government for precisely that reason, not having enough disclosure of what they were actually backed by.
And a lot of those investigations have been canceled out by the Trump administration whose private organization has its own stablecoin.
U.S.D.1, that's part of World Liberty Financial, which is part of the Trump Organization.
And yet this level of corruption that we're seeing with Trump's forays into crypto did not move almost a single Democrat to head off this bill.
And then you had, I think maybe the funniest part of this, Adam Schiff, the senator from California, saying,
I am introducing a bill to block Donald Trump from introducing a stable coin.
And he did it after voting to pass the Genius Act.
He did not make it a condition of his vote.
I'm really shocked to hear that.
So, I mean, what will happen to vanilla banks at that point?
Like, what's the point of them?
It seems to me they'll just move their operations into, like, they'll just, the bank will
exist over here is this sort of some type of like side a project and their main business would be
to be the sort of like unfettered by regulation bank one of the amazing things in my view is how
community banks did exceedingly little to try to fight back against this bill there were some community
bankers in a couple states texas illinois that actually opposed the bill and worked you know to lobby
Congress against it. But the national group, the Independent Community Bankers Association,
did nothing on this. Do you think they just didn't, they weren't aware of the implications?
No, I think they were fully aware of the implications, but they took a dive. And, you know, often the
national ICBA is aligned with the big banks. And the big banks don't have a problem with this
because they can, you know, use, they can issue their own stable coins. They're big enough that they
Yeah, or they can...
They're going to just do a rival to play.
They can profit off of trading from this.
The independent banks are a really endangered species right now, the community banks, because of, you know, what might happen if this bill passes.
Crazy.
What's going to have, before I go, what's your call?
What's your gut feel here on New York City mayor's race?
I am going to check the weather and tell you.
I just saw some, I guess it was maybe the past day or two.
The early voting numbers look great from Ron Donnie.
And that's because of where they're coming from?
Because where they're coming from.
They're coming from Brooklyn and Manhattan.
His weakest boroughs are like the Bronx.
And this is off the top of my head.
but in uh brooklyn it's like a hundred and thirty two percent more yeah um uh all the businesses
have zoron posters it it is um it's crazy in manhattan also a hundred thirty two percent
or something like that could just be pulling forward votes uh you know there's a finite amount
that is correct which is why i just checked the weather right on monday it's going to be in the
high 90s. On Tuesday, it's going to be 100 degrees at 2 p.m.
Yeah. And my sense is that if we look at enthusiasm, banking those votes is important in
banking those votes are important, particularly for Cuomo. Right. Because I do not think.
You have an older electorate that might not come out in a hundred degree weather. And I just think
that the support for Cuomo is not as intense.
It may be larger, but it may not be as deep.
And when you have an obstacle to voting, this is the sort of the classic thing, right?
That's interesting.
I mean, you know, seeing that Maris poll that came out that had kind of at a 10-point race,
very much in line with Cuomo's internal polling, it seems to me that there is a larger
electorate for Cuomo at the moment.
Although that gap is shrinking.
I think that gap is shrinking, but I also think that, like, look, you know, I don't know how many of these voting places when there's a line if it's not out the door.
And I don't know how, in a hundred degree weather.
In a hundred degree weather, you know, I've met one Cuomo canvasser.
This is a completely anecdotal story.
I grabbed, he handed me the thing.
I walked like a half a block and I'm like, I wonder.
And I went back and I'm like, what is it you like about Cuomo?
And the guy is like, I like getting paid.
I like the check that he gives me every week.
And so I went back up to where I was going and then walked back.
He was gone already.
One thing that's interesting is I just got to the area just yesterday.
But the ad war that is happening for, and it's all anti-Mamandani.
Oh, total.
Is pretty staggering.
In fact, Zoran today went to the city board of elections and said,
you have to raise the cap because the super PAC money that Cuomo is getting is something like $24 million.
So you have to allow me to spend more money above the cap because of all of these super PAC resources that are coming in.
Yeah, I wonder, I wonder in a new, in a, in a primary, you know, in 95 degree weather, how much cable television ads impact the election.
I mean, I don't.
What about that globalizing and defada controversy?
I just don't think that's going to be as, I think that was already locked in.
You mean the people who were going to vote against Mondami for that reason already were going to vote against.
We're already going to vote against them.
And if anything like, you know, so I think like the Lander cross endorsement gives a permission structure for people who might have been on the fence.
I mean, I think it's really going to come down to you going live on Tuesday?
Well, we go live every day.
On election night.
Oh, that's a good idea.
I may.
I have your ideas.
I'm the one coming up with these things for you.
I mean, it's, you know, I play softball on Tuesday nights.
But maybe.
I don't want to block your softball.
But maybe I will do that live from my softball game.
There you go.
Live from the dugout.
Exactly.
Checking Twitter for the.
The, but I think it's really just a question of who turns.
out. And I think that's a much harder, as good as these, these polls are. And I think like in the
Maris, I think it's very reputable pollster. I think it's very, very difficult to assess who's
going to come out. Right. You look at like the last primary, like five people came out to vote for that
in the last. In the Adams, the Adams Garcia race. Yes. This is going to have much higher turnout
than that. I mean, well, that's what I'm saying. And people are more engaged in this race. I think it's going to be,
I think it's conceivable. It could be.
50% higher, maybe more.
And there's also a lot more sophistication about rank choice voting that did not exist that time.
Right.
And so I think it's just...
Right, because that was the first one.
So you think like the escalation in terms of knowledge and engagement from one to the first race to the second race is pretty exponential.
Yes.
And so this is, and it's also interesting Matt's putting this up here.
let's just go through this um uh bill de blasio who i think never ever ever got enough credit for
nor did he do himself any favors until like he seemed like never to talk about it right but this um
his uh universal pre-k which he fought tooth and nail with quomo over yeah i mean quomo had basically
tried to put a poison pill in that would kill it at one point but it was so amazingly popular right
And Cuomo got significantly weaker after just happenstance after this fight with Bill de Blasio.
The pre-K and three-k...
Three-k...
You mean three-year-olds going?
Yes.
It means the last two years prior to kindergarten...
Right.
...are universal, are paid.
Right.
And, you know, by the city, essentially.
and it is huge.
It is so massive.
And I think we're not for COVID, we would see huge gains in education achievement.
So I don't know.
That's we'll see.
Andrew Cuomo fought, tooth and nail against that.
David Dayn, I know you're going to get to lunch.
Thank you so much for.
Thanks a lot.
Good to be here.
Always a pleasure to have you on the program.
All right.
Thank you.
folks we will put a link to
the American prospect
also to the weekly roundup
and to big it's not big money
organized money organized money
the podcast that is focused on
issues of
power and money concentration
in our society
got a great one this week you'll like on Hollywood
yeah
is this about the streaming platforms
yes about streaming it's with
Richard Rushfield from the Ancler
it's terrific oh fantastic i mean zazloff and um uh malone have just raked in the money they have
destroyed the entertainment business although i hear rumors it's coming back a little bit over the
past month but uh well now they created this a separate company for the cable network yes
which is kind of like when you create a bad bank it is like a leverage buyout toxic assets
it's like toys are us so they will go away yes it's toys are us and joanne's fabric
right honestly um and and of course uh the reason why the businesses in the in the crapper is
because they spent billions of dollars on this streaming stuff and without a business model
without a single clue as to what they were doing it is literally uh my experience on peacock
uh was indicative of this a completely sequestered product that is like
cable all the deficits of cable but none of the benefits of streaming or the internet or whatever
it's fascinating i once had somebody on air america say to me um the last CEO who drove the thing
you know it was like three feet under he drove it to like nine feet under and i was telling him
like, you've really managed to completely screw up this company in an incredibly impressive
way.
And he told me, maybe this was earlier in his tenure, he said, you know, when I was a program director
at some Washington, I can't remember a station, it was a sports show, we had generally
Jim Stevenson, I'm making up the name
I can't remember, who was a columnist
with the Washington Post.
Come on. And I would tell him
the rule
is you're not allowed to talk about
anything you've written about
and you're not allowed to write about
anything you're talking about.
And he goes,
and we're going to do, what we're going to do
is we're going to have
a
a centrist
radio station
but the most progressive
We have to start with the obvious one.
We're going to, we're going to, we're going to take on Huffington Post.
And I was like, you know, this is impressive because you are probably the first guy in 30 years
who is going to try and develop a completely horizontal business model.
What you really should do is open up a shoe store and refuse to advertise on either the website
or the radio station.
And he just looked at me like,
ooh.
Like, it was the dumbest thing I had ever,
ever, ever heard by a guy who had
that kind of watch and shoes.
It's cool that that's the type of person that runs the world.
Honestly, it, you know, I've said this many, many times before.
I mean, the guy actually had donated to Mitt Romney
when we looked up his only, it's only,
but that wasn't the issue.
But for people to assume, like, oh, my God, there must be some type of right-wing plant that is purposefully sabotaging Air America.
No, it's just that you can't conceive of the level of incompetence that exists with a guy like that.
I mean, very good at selling people who have no clue but a lot of money on what to do.
So much of the world operates in that way where somebody's got a ton of money.
and they don't know they have no touchstone as to what they want to do but the first guy walks in
wearing you know good shoes and a watch and drives up in a nice car they're like this guy must
know what he's talking about and that's how we get such a f-ed-up world it's all right there
Last name, Zier.
Anyways.
Could not myself.
I'm sorry.
Could not help myself.
Folks, it's your support that makes this show possible.
You can become a member of the Majority Report by going to join the Majority Report.com.
When you do, you not only get the free half, free of commercials, but you also get the fun half.
You can IM us.
and occasionally we were just talking the other day Matt and I like we got to we got to dig up all these old majority report shows Brian we were saying that we got a project for our summer intern and make these now I know I've been saying this for like eight years but this time I mean it when Dane came in I said you know our project this summer is to clean up the office
And Dane was like, that was your project last summer and the summer before that.
Also, just coffee.coop, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate.
Use the coupon code.
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Next week, big week.
Big week next week.
Obviously the New York City mayoral race.
I guess we'll find out if we're going to be involved in a massive,
Middle Eastern War?
That may happen.
I'm waiting for July 4th.
So we can do an Independence Day.
And we're going to do an Independence Day speech when we bomb Iran.
Got to hope to Seymour Hershey's wrong about his sources,
saying it's going to happen this weekend.
This weekend?
He says soon this weekend, probably tonight or tomorrow,
so the markets can open on Monday is what Hirsch is saying.
But, you know, he has pretty deep sources in military and
are complex and he can be wrong sometimes.
I mean, hopefully.
His track record as of late have not been
has not been stellar.
Yeah.
But I think, look,
the argument that
they are taking this time
to
do what they can to
position
U.S. military,
naval, air force,
uh in a way to respond to iran's response makes sense to me and the idea that you know
you would say uh two weeks when really all you need is four days to do this also makes sense to me
um but i want to remind people like apparently they're not even like pete higsith is not even
involved in the uh conversations they have bypassed phegst who just in case it who just in case
you forgot was the secretary of defense we'll talk more about this in the so-called fun
half but um you have a military that has stripped out well we'll talk about it in the you know
because i want i want to have time to to to go into this but the it seems to me that it's
hard to imagine a less opportune time, not that there should ever be an opportune time,
to engage in the potential of an ever-increasing and spiraling regional conflict
based upon how little experience it appears the top military brass has right now
and how you have a defense secretary who's sort of out of the loop
Pete, I have you here just to say yes.
Pete, you're here so we can shoot protesters kneecaps, okay?
we don't need anything more from you.
Pete, the best thing about you is that you don't know how to pronounce posse comitatis.
Go have a drink.
And so, uh, go have a drink.
You sit at the bar.
And if we need you, we'll call you.
We know where you'll be.
Yeah, we know we'll be.
We'll call the bartender.
Exactly.
All right.
Matt, what's happening on Left Reckoning?
Uh, yeah, left reckoning.
We'll have a show probably talking about Iran.
also a preview of Monday show,
but we talked to Adam Gaffney about Medicaid cuts
and the impact of that
and also did a little bit of,
I mean, talk about Blinking,
looking the other way about another bout of genocidal violence
in Tigribe between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
So check that out, patreon.com slash left reckoning.
Next week, we're going to have guests on the Scrametti decision.
I think that'll be Wednesday.
We have Chase Strangio who argue the case.
I think we will have a Leah Lipman on on some of the other Supreme Court cases that we've discussed.
We're going to have Gaffney on to talk about more about the implications on medicine, essentially, in this country in the wake of the bill.
We've got a bunch of other stuff next week.
It's going to be a packed week, and then, you know, who knows.
Who knows what could happen, frankly.
And, of course, the mayor's race on Tuesday, Tuesday night, I probably will do some, like,
live updates from my softball game.
It's quite a crew there.
I wonder who there.
There's going to be a wide array of people voting, voting habits at my,
softball game um all right see you in the fun half three months from now six months from
now nine months from now and i don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six
months from now and i don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than
it is three months from now but i think around 18 months out we're going to look back and go
like wow what what is that going on it's nuts
Wait a second. Hold on. Hold on for a second.
The Majority Report.
Emma, welcome to the program.
Hey.
Fun pack.
Matt.
Who?
Fun hack.
What is up, everyone?
Fun pack.
No, me, Key.
You did it.
Fun pack.
Let's go Brandon.
Let's go Brandon.
Let's go Brandon.
Bradley, you want to say hello?
Sorry to disappoint.
Everyone, I'm just a random guy.
It's all the boys today.
Fundamentally false.
No, I'm sorry.
Stop talking for a second.
Let me finish.
Where is this coming from, dude?
But dude, you want to smoke this?
7-8?
Yes.
Hi, who's me?
Is this me?
Yes.
Is this me?
Is it me?
It is you.
It is me?
I think it is you.
Who is you?
No sound.
Every single freaking day.
What's on your mind?
We can discuss free markets, and we can discuss capitalism.
I'm going to just know what.
Who libertarians?
They're so stupid, though.
Common sense says, of course.
Gobbled e gook.
We fucking nailed him.
So what's 79 plus 21?
Challenge met.
I'm positively clovery.
I believe 96, I want to say.
857.
210.
35.
501.
One half.
3-8.
9-11, for instance.
$3,400.
$1,500.
$6, $5,000, $3 trillion sold.
It's a zero-sum game.
Actually, you're making a think less.
But let me say this.
Poop.
You can call it satire.
Sam goes to satire.
On top of it all, my favorite part about you is just like every day, all day, like everything you do.
Without a doubt.
Hey, buddy, we see you.
All right, folks, folks, folks.
It's just the week being weeded out, obviously.
Yeah, sundown guns out.
I don't know.
But you should know.
People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore.
I have a question.
Who cares?
Our chat is enabled folks.
I love it.
I do love that.
Look, got to jump.
You got to be quick.
I get a jump.
I'm losing it, bro.
Two o'clock, we're already late, and the guy's being a dick.
So screw him.
Sent to a gulaw?
Outrageous.
Like, what is wrong with you?
Love you, bye.
Love you.
Bye-bye.