4/9/24: Trump Attacked On Abortion Stance, The Rock Refuses Biden Endorsement, RFK Staffer Says Goal Is Help Trump, Young Billionaires All Nepo Babies, Blackstone Housing Takeover, Amazon Fake AI Grocery Store, Jesse Watters Hates $20 Fast Food Wage, Bibi Vows Rafah Invasion, Bibi Begs For WW3 With Iran Strike - Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
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the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that,
let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday.
We have an amazing show for everybody today.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
What do we have, Krystal.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Indeed, we do a lot of interesting stories to dig
into this morning. So Trump making some very noteworthy comments
on abortion that Republicans, Democrats a lot of response to
that one. Joe Biden already out with an ad on
abortion that we want to share with you as well.
The Rock is saying that he regrets endorsing Joe Biden
last time around, and he will not be repeating that

(00:50):
what he describes as a mistake this time.

Speaker 4 (00:53):
So kind of interesting.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
There so very noteworthy comments from an RFK junior state
director his state drive of New York saying basically, vote
for RFK Junior in order to elect Trump, so bringing
those comments and also the RFK Junior campaign's response to
what she is saying. There, for the first time in
thirty years, according to Forbes magazine, none of the young

(01:16):
new billionaires on the list are actually self made. What
does that say about us? It's about our economy, about
our society, about the future. Investors meanwhile, are taking over
even more of the real estate market. Always important to
track that Amazon is killing their just walk out stores.
Turns out the technology never worked. It was kind of
a farce, the whole thing. So we'll break that down
for you net. Yahoo is announcing a date for that

(01:40):
Rafa invasion. We also have some updates on what's going
on with the ceasefire talks. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren is saying
that there is more than sufficient evidence to find that
Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Obviously that is very significant,
and doctor Tree to Parsi is going to be here
to look at how Aroan might respond to that Israeli

(02:00):
attack on their consular building.

Speaker 4 (02:02):
So a lot that's going on this morning.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Yes, that's right, before we get to that, we do
have big things coming. I'm going to keep it.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
I'm going to keep it short this time, it's coming.
If you want to be the first to hear about
it Breakingpoints dot com, you can become premium subscriber and
you can help support our work as well as some
other major plans that we have for the coming election season.
We really appreciate you. But as CHRISTL said, we're going
to go ahead and start with abortion. So Trump had
quite a bit of a dust up yesterday releasing some
new comments, although not particularly all that new, for what

(02:29):
his abortion policy would be if he were elected president.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
Here's what he had to say.

Speaker 5 (02:33):
Under my leadership, the Republican Party will always support the
creation of strong, thriving, and healthy American families. We want
to make it easier for mothers and families to have babies,
not harder. That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments
like IVF in every state in America. Like the overwhelming

(02:56):
majority of Americans, including the vast majority of Republicans, Conservatives, Christians,
and pro life Americans, I strongly support the availability of
IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby.
What could be more beautiful or better than that? Many
people have asked me what my position is on abortion

(03:16):
and abortion rights, especially since I was proudly the person
responsible for the ending of something that all legal scholars
both sides wanted and in fact demanded be ended Roe v.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Wade.

Speaker 5 (03:31):
My view is now that we have abortion where everybody
wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine
by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they
decide must be the law of the land, in this case,
the law of the state.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
The law of the state. So a couple of very
noteworthy things there. Politically.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Number one, I'm very pro IVF we want babies buke
of the Alabama law. Number two is there has been
significant pressure from Lindsey Graham and other lawmakers, which we're
about to get to, for Trump to embrace some sort
of national ban. Previously, he privately had told some advisors
that he may embrace a sixteen week band. But Crystal,

(04:12):
as you always talk about here on the show, the
polling has actually moved significantly away from that towards the
rogue consensus. And yet, hilariously enough, this statement, which I mean,
I would say, is the national pro life discourse and
has been for decades now.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Just leave it to the states.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
That's why I want to get rid of Row versus
Wade was enough to then invite an attack from the
largest pro life organization here in the United States, as
Susan B. Anthony List. So let's go and put this
up there on the screen. The pro life president of
Marjorie Dan Filster. She says this quote, we are deeply
disappointed in President Trump's position. Unborn children and their mother

(04:50):
deserve national protections and national advocacy from the brutality of
the abortion industry. Dobbs clearly allows both states and Congress
to act, saying the decision is back to the state
seeds national debate to the Democrats who are working relentlessly
to enact legislation mandating abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
If successful, they will wipe out states. Right.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
So a bit tortured and confused logic here we went
from again, I just want to reiterate, leave it to
the states is the pro life mainstream position articulated by
basically every Republican nominee since nineteen seventy two. And then
Trump comes out and says it despite having ended Row

(05:31):
versus Wade, and now the pro life groups say, oh,
actually that's not enough, and really what do they want.
They want to straight up national ben on abortion, which
is stunning crystal because a they're obviously lying to us
the entire time that this was actually in the discourse
pre Row versus Wade.

Speaker 3 (05:47):
But they're not giving up.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
I mean, they are pushing this to the hilt, regardless
of how unpopular it is.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah, So just to reflect a little bit on the
Trump statement, a clear attempt to try to please everyone.
You know, there was a little bit of red meat
thrown in there for the pro life crowd, painting Democrats
as extremists on the issue, you know, making up things
about eight even after the baby's born.

Speaker 4 (06:13):
Kill the baby.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
So there was that, there was you know, clearly he
can read a poll on IVF, so he wants to
put on there upfront.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
Though.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
We got to protect IVF, which presumably would come from
the national level. But you know, Republicans in Congress have
blocked any attempts to actually protect IVF at the national level,
and he doesn't go so far as to say he
would do that. Somewhat contradictory to that is the idea
we should leave it all to the states. But then again,
he doesn't actually close the door on any sort of

(06:44):
a national abortion ban. What he says is more descriptive,
like you know, Roe versus Wade was overturned and now
it goes to the States. It was more descriptive of
what had actually happened, versus really affirming what his position
on the issue is. To me, it's just really clear
this has always been he's been all over the place

(07:04):
on abortion since he entered into the public eye. You know,
before he was running for president, he was and we'll
show you the timeline of his evolution on the issue.
I guess he was described himself as a very pro choice.
It was clear when he was running back in twenty
sixteen that he was really unfamiliar with the contours of
the debate with where he was should position himself if

(07:25):
he was now going to stake out this new pro
life position. We've had tons of reporting about how he
instantly knew once Dobbs came down, even though he was
the reason that Dobbs did come down, he instantly knew
this was going to be a big problem for Republicans,
and so he's really kind of trying to search for
a message that's going to work for him and work

(07:46):
for Republicans, and frankly, I've said this before, I just
don't think there is one. I don't think that it's
a box you can message your way out of, because
the reality is so jarring and so stark to people.
So it's not like you can you have this theoretical
philosophical debate that was the land the issue was in
before Roe versus Wade was overturned. And so now it's

(08:09):
my sense that the best thing that Donald Trump could
do on abortion is just to try to sideline it,
to try to talk about it as little as possible,
because the more you're talking about this issue, this is
the one issue where Democrats have a very clear advantage
over Donald Trump and over Republicans in general. So the
more that you are talking about this, the more that

(08:30):
the landscape is and the political landscape is defined by abortion,
the worse off you're going to be politically.

Speaker 4 (08:36):
Kind of, no matter what you say. At this point, I.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
Think this is the best he could do, and it's
still not a particularly strong position, and because it also
highlights a lot of the intracoalitional fighting. For example, let's
put this up there on the screen here, you got
Lindsey Graham I mean, who is no social conservative traditionally,
but even he says I respectfully disagree with President Trump's
statement that abortion is States rights issue. Dobbs does not
require that conclusion legally, and the pro life movement has

(09:01):
always been about the wellbeing of the unborn child, not geography.
I mean, these people are just saying it out in
the open. They want a straight up national policy on
the issue. I would remind everyone Lindsay Graham pulled this
exact stick in twenty twenty two, introducing the fifteen week ban,
which I believe was very influential in keeping the policy

(09:22):
alive and well the debate ahead of the midterm elections,
and of course that is what ended up being the
single most potent issue when it came to the poll. So,
I mean this also demonstrates too the problems that the
Republican Party has the Susan B.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
Anthony List.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Look, it's not powerful nationally, very powerful within the GOP
and specifically within the primary electorate. Only Trump really is
the person who can go out there and actually retaliated
and attacked her and Lindsay Graham immediately after this statement
and get away with it. There's not a single other
National Republican Mike Pence also said that Trump's statement was

(09:59):
quote a slap in the face.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Again despite the fact.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
It's very easy go and look what all these people
were saying in the nineteen nineties.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
Leave it to the states. Leave it to the states,
that's all we want.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
But I saw a very insightful piece of analysis Crystal
which said that if Republicans realized that leaving into the
states meant that in red states, even Kentucky, that they
would lose abortion by twenty points, they never would have
said that in the first place, because they assumed that
they were going to win. They never understood deeply the
inherent unpopularity of their position. But one person who does
is the Biden campaign, and the Biden campaign releasing a

(10:30):
absolutely new, devastating ad against Trump. This has thirty million
dollars behind it and it will be playing in every
single battleground state.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
Let's take a listen.

Speaker 6 (10:40):
This is one of our willow boxes.

Speaker 4 (10:43):
This is just filled with some of the things that
we had started gathering for her while I was pertinent.

Speaker 7 (10:49):
Yep, here's for a little baby book.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
Let's just the outfit that she was gonna maybe wear
home from the hospital.

Speaker 6 (11:02):
All of these.

Speaker 7 (11:04):
This is.

Speaker 6 (11:12):
The blanket, the chewing, then her little footprints.

Speaker 7 (11:30):
It's okay.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
I'm Joe Biden and I approved this message.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Brutal ad for those just listening. It depicts a Texas woman,
Amanda Zurawski. She was she was developed an infection when
she was eighteen weeks pregnant. The doctors were denied her
a medical abortion. She ended up going into sepsis, being
admitted to the ICU, almost dying twice, and is unlikely
to be able to bear children in the future. This

(12:01):
is exactly the type of case previously that we had
previewed with another Texas woman who again these are people
who wanted to have these babies to keep the baby,
were denied medical a procedure that was outlawed by Texas
law and is being highlighted now very reminiscent of that
Kentucky ad which was very, very influential in a Democratic

(12:22):
victory in twenty twenty two Crystal. And it just highlights
again and again that with this issue, you know, you
can try and states rights your way out of this,
but even when people in Ohio or people in Georgia
are looking at Texas, Georgia is a state where something
like this actually could become the law or could continue
to be so, and is one where it could very

(12:43):
much be influential, even if it doesn't mean that Texas
itself is going.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
To go blue.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
Yeah. So, and even if you support the states rights
argument that Trump is making here, that means he supports
what Texas is doing. It means he supports the six
week ban in flo Florida. And what the ad highlights
is something very real, which is even when you put
in these exemptions for let's say the life of the mother, well,

(13:11):
how do you draw that line? How desperate do the
circumstances have to be before you will actually, you know,
perform the procedure to save the mother's life and health.
So there have been stories of women who are basically
told to, you know, go wait in the parking lot
and bleed out further so that the medical team can

(13:32):
feel confident that they're in accordance with law and they're
not going to be you know, taken to court overtreating her.
So this is a very real issue, and you know,
let's be honest, most political ads at this point were
so honora to them, like they don't make you feel
anything this ad makes people feel something because everyone can
relate to, you know, the heartbreak of wanting to have

(13:53):
a family and having that door closed because of some legislative,
bureaucratic decision.

Speaker 4 (13:58):
It's outrageous.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
And so that's why I feel like, you know, this
is the one issue where learly Democrats they really have
a huge upper hand. And it's very emotional and it's
very motivating because people feel this sense of loss that
they had rights that have now been taken away from them,
that things are going backwards for them, for their loved ones,

(14:22):
for their daughters, their sisters, their wives, et cetera. So
it's extremely potent, and you know, I just think it's
I don't think there's anywhere the Republican Party can be
on this issue at this point that's going to work
out for them, because even if people feel like a Trump,
he's more of a moderate on this issue. You know,
he's not like one of these hardliners. Look at who

(14:43):
the Speaker of the House is, you know, Mike Johnson
is a hardliner. Look at some of the people who
were in his administration last time and who will be
in his administration this time. Look at some of the
powerful voices inside of this coalition, and it's not crazy
for people to think, like, I don't trust you on
this issue, and you are the reason why we're here
in the first place. You know, the Biden team already

(15:05):
has their SoundBite of him bragging about overturning Roe versus Wade.

Speaker 4 (15:09):
That's really all they need.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
So no attempts to spin it at this point or
you know, try to make it seem like he's more
of a moderate on the issue. I just don't think
that that is really going to register for voters if
they are voting on this issue. Just to underscore Soccer
what you were saying about the Kentucky ad which really
many observers in that state attributed that ad to Andy Basheer,

(15:35):
the Democratic governor, being able to get re elected in Kentucky. Now, listen,
Kentucky's an unusual state. It is very read at the
federal level, at the state level, it can go back
and forth. But still in this era, for a Democrat
to get re elected in the state of Kentucky is
quite extraordinary. And it was another heartbreaking abortion story about

(15:56):
a young girl who was raped and she says, you know,
Daniel Cameron and forced me to would have forced me
to have that baby. So these emotional stories seem to
really land with the electorate, even in a state like Kentucky.
And the last point I'll make saga, as you mentioned,
I think that's is very astutis idea of Like, well,

(16:16):
Republicans probably wouldn't have even said they wanted to just
send it back to the states if they realized, even
in a state like Kentucky or Alabama, that would be
a disaster for them in terms of the population and how.

Speaker 4 (16:27):
They feel about the issue.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
But I honestly think that the direction post Row has
affirmed some of the most alarmist voices coming from you know, liberals,
leftist Democratic Party, et cetera, anyone left of center who
said no, no, the real end goal is to completely
ban abortion for everyone. It turns out they were right,
you know, for the most hardline elements of the movement,

(16:51):
who are quite influential. They're the ones who organize around this,
vote on this, to donate money on this.

Speaker 4 (16:55):
Et cetera. That actually is the goal. And it's even
further than that.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
It's things like banning IVF, which is an issue that
you know, a few years ago, no one would have
even imagined was really on the table. Is taking us
back to like the stem cell debates of the early
two thousands, et cetera. So it turns out the most
alarmist voices on this issue were actually correct about what
the real goals, what the real end goals of the
movement are.

Speaker 3 (17:18):
Yeah, no, it's true.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
And it's one of those two where the pro life
people said for years it's not true, it's not true,
don't worry about it, etc. This is you know, this
is actually a popular issue. Well, you know, I got
news for you. People didn't want to hear it. Back
in twenty twenty two. I heard a lot of people
in my mentioned saying otherwise. But I guess it's okay.
We all find out who's right in the end. Let's
put this up there on the screen. This is particularly hilarious.

(17:40):
A full timeline of Trump's positions on abortion. I really
enjoyed going down memory lane so October in NBC News,
Meet the Press. I am very pro choice. I hate
the concept of abortion. I just believe in choice. Again,
it may be a little bit of a New York background,
because there's some different attitude. I was raised in New York,
I grew up, in work, everything else in New York City.

(18:01):
I am strongly pro choice. Asked whether he would ban
any abortion, even including partial birth abortion, Trump says no,
I am pro choice in every aspect as it goes,
but I hate it. February twenty eleven, he now says
returns to sapack. When he's considering a twenty twelve run,
he says, I am pro life, and that was basically it.
August twenty fifteen, he is now divided over defunding Planned Parenthood.

(18:24):
He says, I would look at the good aspects of it.
I would look because I'm sure they do things properly
and good for women.

Speaker 3 (18:30):
I would take a look at it.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
February twenty sixteen, He then says he will defund Planned Parenthood,
but now says he will still praise the group. March
of twenty sixteen was the infamous Maybe there needs to
be some form of punishment for the woman who are
seeking abortion. He says yes that immediately he reverses that
and says that's not his position. October twenty sixteen, he

(18:51):
vows to overturn a Row versus way. This is probably
the single most impactful thing along the journey because that
leads to the publishing the list of the Supreme Court Justices.
January twenty seventeen, nominates Neil Gorsich to the US Supreme
Court and says specifically about that that he would be
nominating him for the end of trying to overturn Rowe

(19:14):
versus Wade. Then we continue more and more down memory lane,
where we see Amy Cony, Barrett, we see Brett Kavanaugh
and others. Twenty twenty two, he celebrates in a statement
the overturning of Roe versus Wade and says, quote, I
think in the end that is something that will work
out for everybody, and this is the bridge to the future.

(19:34):
This brings everything back to the States where it has
always belonged. Now, since then he has had very different tunes.
He attacked Ron de Santis for the six week abortion ban.
He said, what did he say?

Speaker 3 (19:45):
Said? It was cruel that he's had there. He says he's.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
Strongly in favor of quote the exceptions whenever it comes
to test and life of the not funny topics.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
It's funny the.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
Way that says, so now we're at now we're here,
we're back to the States.

Speaker 3 (20:02):
So they're my favorite.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
My favorite was actually when he said he would defund
Planned Parenthood but also praise the group. He said, millions
of millions of women cervical cancer, breast cancer are helped
by Planned parenthood. I would defund it because I'm pro life,
but millions of women are helped by Planned parent.

Speaker 4 (20:18):
It's like, dude.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
The most revealing though, was that moment when Okay, he's
decided I got to be fully pro life in order
to win the Republican nomination.

Speaker 4 (20:28):
I got to be fully in with pro life.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
But he clearly doesn't know the contours of the political debate.
So when he gets asked this question about Okay, well,
should there be punishment for the women, he's thinking, honestly,
a very logical train of thought, which is, all right,
these people think this is murder ergo if you murder
your baby, Yeah, there.

Speaker 4 (20:48):
Should be some kind of punishment.

Speaker 1 (20:50):
Not knowing that there's a whole, you know, philosophical way
to sort of wiggle out of that very obvious implication
of what the rest of the philosophy would you know,
would dictate, and so he kind of stumbles into that
and listen, like I said, it's clear he's not a
true believer on the issue, but it almost doesn't matter

(21:11):
because at the end of the day, he has done
more for the pro life community. And you know he
said this during his nomination process, he has done more
for the pro life position than any other Republican candidate president. Ever,
you can't wiggle your way out of that. That just
is the reality. The Biden team is gonna hang that

(21:33):
around your neck as much as they possibly can. And
it is potent. There's just no denying it. I mean,
we just saw what was it in Alabama. Democrats massively
flipped a state house seat running just on IVF in Alabama. Okay,
as I was just mentioned, Kentucky, they hold onto the
governor's mansion because of abortion. This is playing out in

(21:55):
place after place after place. So there's no doubt that
it is potent, that it is motivating, that is very evocative,
that is very emotional, and I think the more Trump
is talking about it, the worst it is for him
no matter what he says, because the record is what
it is. He's the guy that got Roe versus Way

(22:16):
to overturned and created this reality that now a very
clear majority of Americans finds to be frankly horrible.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
It's the irony because the pro life is almost certainly
what handed him his election in twenty sixteen, because all
the Republican coalition was united behind him against Hillary Clinton,
and it might be what sinks him in twenty and
twenty four. Let's go and put this final pulling up
on the screen just to underscore a lot of what
we're talking about here, and it shows you the shift
from April of twenty twenty two when Dobbs happen. These

(22:48):
are views on abortion, and then keep in mind this is
from Fox News. They say, which of the best describes
your view on abortion? Always legal? Twenty seven percent legal
most of the time, seventeen percent illegal except for rape, incestins,
saving the life of the mother forty three percent, eleven
percent always illegal. A year later, April twenty twenty three,
now it's thirty two percent say always legal, twenty four
percent say illegal most of the time. March of twenty

(23:10):
twenty four. Most recently we shift even more. Thirty five
percent are now saying always legal. That's actually the Republican nightmare.
The nine months of abortion combined with twenty four percent,
you got a clear majority. Almost sixty percent of the
public either saying always legal or illegal most of the time,
and a slim forty percent saying illegal except for a

(23:32):
rape incest case of the life of the mother, and
always illegal. Keep in mind, too, even that's just raw
population figures. If you if you consider where that is
disproportionately going to be concentrated and where they are, and
you can transpose that on top of the electoral college
and swing voters, it becomes even more devastating because you
have independent voters in each of these states which are

(23:54):
far more aligned in the always legal or illegal most
of the time case than anybody who's going to be
on the other side of the issue. So I've seen
Republican gymnastics on this now for many months, Democratic extreamists
and all that. It doesn't it simply doesn't land because
the ads and the stories that we continue to play
here that the Democrats continue to bring up are just

(24:15):
emotionally more resonant than the yeah, but partial birth, abortion
or any of that. Those are either conceptual or frankly,
people just don't care as much as the idea of
people like we played in that ad, a woman who
wanted to have wanted to have a baby denied a
medical procedure and now has a life changing infection and
is weeping on your screen.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
You're just not going to beat it. It's impossible.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
Well, not only that, but that's the landscape that's being fought.

Speaker 3 (24:41):
Yeah, over now right, you.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
Know those are the that's the legislation that's moving forward.
The bands are going to affect IVF under assault in Alabama.
Questions about whether that's going to be the case in
other states. Is there going to be a nationwide band
like That's where all of the actually relevant political questions
lie at this point. So to try to say, oh, well,

(25:04):
Democrats are the real extremists on the issue, Well, voters
aren't seeing that because it's not Democrats who are aggressively
pushing forward legislation that is so fringe and so outlier
in terms of you know, what.

Speaker 4 (25:17):
People actually think on the issue.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
And you know, it is remarkable, and I honestly I
didn't predict how important this would be. I certainly didn't
think in twenty twenty four that this would be such
a potent and central issue that so many elections, special
elections around the country, which would you know, would swing
on this, that there would be every single ballot initiative

(25:39):
that is pro choice, the pro choice side would win,
and frankly that it would really break down what has
been a long standing basically fifty to fifty gridlock on
the issue of choice. I mean, the pro choice side
now has basically, according to Fox News, a super majority,
a super majority. And it's not just the absolute numbers,

(26:02):
it's also who's motivated to vote on the issue. Prior
to Dobbs, it was always the pro life side that
was more motivated, more organized on the issue. They were
the ones who a, this is my single issue, this
is you know what I'm making my political choices on.
That dynamic too has flipped where you now have I

(26:23):
think more people on the side where you know that
are pro choice, where this is their top or potentially
even single issue that they're voting on. So it truly
has been an extraordinary landscape shift. Now let's we're going
to move on to some problems that Joe Biden is
having as well. Let's not pretend like this is the
only thing that's going on, the only thing that the
election is going to turn on. But I also don't

(26:45):
want to under sell the record that we see at
this point of how clearly voters have demonstrated in every
single opportunity that they have that this is important to
them and they're going to vote accordingly.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
There is some ground being lost here amongst the coveted
bro demographic. The Rock Dwayne the Rock Johnson giving an
interesting interview on Fox News. Now we have to listen
carefully to what he has to say. He doesn't necessarily
say he regrets endorsing Joe Biden. He does say he
regrets endorsing a politician and entering the fray of politics,

(27:21):
but it is very clear that he sees that as
a mistake, his entrance into the political fray back in
twenty twenty when he famously endorsed Joe Biden. Here's what
he had to say.

Speaker 8 (27:31):
You made that endorsement twenty twenty. Are you happy with
the state of America?

Speaker 9 (27:35):
Am I happy with the state of America right now? Well,
that answer is no. Do I believe we're going to
get better. I believe in that. I'm an optimistic guy,
and I believe we can't get better. The endorsement that
I made years ago with Biden was one I thought
was the best decision for me at that time. And
I thought back then when we talk about, Hey, you know,

(27:57):
I'm in this position where I have some influence and
it's my job. Then I felt like that, then it's
my job now to exercise my influence and share with
this This is who I'm going to endorse. Am I
going to do that again this year? That answers No,
I feel like and I mean, we could go down
the well here, but there's in today's easy cancel culture

(28:22):
world and cancel culture, woke culture, this culture, that culture,
the vision, et cetera that really bugs me. And in
the spirit of that, you either in the spirit of that,
you either succumb and be what you think other people
want you to be, or you go, no, that's not

(28:43):
who I am. I'm going to be myself and I'm
going to be real. Maybe ask me something, A real
answer is important, all right.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
So that's where I had to say. People know, I've
had a long and difficult journey with the Rock. I
always like the Rock. I want him to run for president.
But then he publicly embraced the so called will cancel
culture that he is openly trashing. There he engaged in
the Pylon on Joe Rogan. I guess Joe Rogan forgave him.
He actually ended up having him on the show. So listen,

(29:11):
it's up to Joe to litigate that. I will personally
not forget it that he entered that. I understand that
he's in the Hollywood sphere that he started posing for
pictures with Jeff Bezos. But now he says he won't.
Now he says he won't endorse Joe Biden. So I
don't really know what to take of it. I guess
what we could say is this, this man is he
cares monst about his image, about selling his Teremana tequila

(29:32):
and all that other stuff that he was promoting there
on the table, and his energy drink. And clearly the
Biden brand is bad for business, according to the Rock,
who I think ultimately just wants to sell as many
products as possible and keep his very very high Q
score approval rating with people, and so for that reason
appears to regret endorsing Joe Biden.

Speaker 4 (29:52):
Crystal.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
I think that is very accurate and suit analysis. I
also think perhaps this is yet another lesson and don't
base your vote on celebrity endorsers, and I don't think
that most people do, because if they did, Hillary Clinton
would have been president of the United States. So I'm
not sure that this is a warning that the American
people really need. But you know, I mean, listen, he's

(30:15):
not paid to be a political analyst. Uses a lot
of words there to say basically nothing like I don't
even know what his real point. I don't know why
he endorsed Biden in the first place, and I don't
know why he's not endorsing him this time.

Speaker 4 (30:28):
I don't know what the relevant.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
Issues are outside of like you said, he now has
assessed that whereas previously he thought that was good for
his brand, now he no longer feels it is positive
for The Rock's personal brand. So I don't know that
you could read too much into it other than that,
Other than I guess it's not quite as safe in
Hollywood to be affirmatively pro Joe Biden as it was

(30:53):
the last time around. I guess that's all you could
really read into it.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
There was also an interesting moment when Rogan interviewed him
and he was talking about Biden, and I forget exactly
what Rogan said, but it was something about, like the
people behind Biden and The Rock seem to like laugh
and giggle at that like, very clearly he doesn't think
that Biden is a strong leader. That was basically all
that he had to say. It's not exactly true that
he hasn't entered politics before. I mean, I've even said this,

(31:18):
he spoke at the two thousand Republican National Convention. I mean,
this is somebody anyway I could go down the rabbit hole.
I think the only thing we can truly assess is
that for probably one of America's most popular celebrities not
wanting to endorse Biden again.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
You can frame it however you want.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
Oh, I'm not endorsing anybody, Okay, but you endorse somebody
last time, you're not doing it this time around. Well,
that is an indicator of where he thinks his brand
is going to be importantly positioned, whereas last time around
he didn't think that he would suffer as a result
of it, and I've seen some organic pushback against him.
So I don't think we could take away from it
more than that, only that people who are very astute

(31:57):
at seeing where the popular wind is blowing consumer sentiment,
People who have hundreds of millions of dollars on the line,
they don't think quote unquote supporting Biden is good for
business this time around, at least from a popularity perspective,
and I would pay attention to that. I think that
is probably an important takeaway for what the overall trends
is now. I would also say this, right, which is
important in something we tied back to yesterday, is that

(32:19):
Biden appears to be consolidating a lot of support crystal
amongst older voters. So it could be that you and
I are having a conversation here about national trends, about
young voters, about how the overall actual American population feels,
but that doesn't translate to the American electorate.

Speaker 3 (32:35):
Not everybody votes. In fact, most people don't vote.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
A huge proportion of the voting of the voting eligible
public simply stays home. So it could be that there's
two kind of separate conversations.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
That are happening right now.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yeah, I mean, well, you know, Hollywood famously has their
finger on the pulls, so we should really pay attention
to which way the breath is blowing there. I think
Republicans are so funny when it comes to Hollywood also,
because the minute that the Rock or any other Hollywood
celebrity is behind affirmatively behind a Democrat. You know, all
these Hollywood liberals who cares about they're out at touch,

(33:07):
blah blah blah. The minute one of them even shows
like a sliver of interest in their party or their positions.
They're falling all over themselves in Oh the Rock.

Speaker 4 (33:18):
He really knows what he's talking about here.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
He's got his finger on the pul It is kind
of funny to me, but ultimately, I think the whole
situation is relatively inconsequential outside of the vibes of It's
just not cool in any respect to be a Biden supporter.
But you know, it's not like Biden really based his
presidential campaign last time around on any sort of cool factory.

(33:40):
Didn't have that like Obama rock star vibe. It was
just like, all right, well, I guess you know, Trump sucks,
so this is the guy we got. What are we
going to do? That's what he's betting on again. He's
got more baggage this time around. People unhappy about the economy,
people you know, young people obviously tortured and horrified by
his Israel power policy. Progressives as well. He's got a

(34:01):
lot of issues here. I don't think the Rock is
probably chief among them.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
Yep, fair enough, All right, let's go on to RFK.
There was a lot of consternation yesterday. RFK Junior, a
New York state staffer for the RFK Junior campaign, was
caught on video appearing to say that the RFK Junior
campaign really was a front to trying to hurt Joe
Biden and to help Donald Trump get elected. And ensuing

(34:26):
drama happened with Democrats saying see, we told you so
about RFK Junior, and then RFK Junior's own campaign then
disavowing her.

Speaker 3 (34:34):
But here's what she initially had to say.

Speaker 10 (34:36):
So there's no Biden voters in the house, right No, okay?
Good things I guess will change over time because you
do have to only pick one candidate at the end
of the day. But the Kennedy voter and the Trump
voter the enemy mutual enemy is Biden. Since Biden is
counting on us with Bobby in the mix, my thought

(34:58):
is for the Republicans, see Bobby right now. Now, he's
pulling from both sides. Right now, he's actually pulling a
little bit more from Biden, which explains why the DNC
is kind of ganging up on him. Most of the
Northeast is going to go blue. Why wouldn't we put
our vote to Bobby and at least get rid of
Biden and get those twenty eight electoral votes in New York.

(35:18):
The card's a little wrong. It says twenty six electoral votes.
Give those twenty eight electoral votes to Bobby rather than
to Biden. Who are they going to pick? If it's
a Republican Congress, they'll pitch Trump. So we're we're rid
of Biden either way. Does everybody follow that?

Speaker 7 (35:34):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Okay, So this got a lot of attention because it
was immediately picked up and it was clipped and it
was put out there by Democrats. They're like, this is evidence,
you know, one hundred percent that the entire RFK Junior
campaign is a plant to try and to elect Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 (35:51):
He's a spoiler. That's what everybody had to say.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
But you and I were discussing this afterwards, before we
even get to the polling, and I was like, you know,
it just seems like RFK Junior has a lot of
hanger honors onto his campaign. I mean, it's not exactly
the most well oiled machine. At least what we've been
able to see so far, and it is clear. I
mean it's true too from some of his donors. Some
people who support him are trying to do it as
a supporter, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that is

(36:14):
what he is trying to do, and in fact, there's
not actually a lot of evidence to support that.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
So what do you think, Crystal, So, first of all,
the comments are very unfortunate for they fuel be good good.
She's so clear, you know, when you listen to it,
she's like, all right, none of us are Biden supporters.
Can She even suggests that if you want to help Trump,
go volunteer and canvas in Pennsylvania. But if you're in
New York, you know Trump can't win in New York.

(36:41):
So the way to help Trump is to vote for
RFK Junior. This lady had a PowerPoint made up, she
had literature she was distributing. She's been posting the same
stuff on our social media too, by the way, And
it's not like this is an inconsequential person. She's the
director for the RFK Junior campaign in the state of
New York. She's apparently been brought on in particular to

(37:02):
try to obtain ballot access in the state of New York.
So she's busy trying to collect signatures to get him
on the ballot. So that's what she's you know. In
addition to this little spiel that she was giving, she
even sent out a hashtag that was like hashtag block Biden.
I mean, it's just as overt as you could possibly be.
So it's a problem for the RFK Junior people because
of course the Democrats are going to seize on this.

(37:24):
They've been trying to make the case that RFK Junior
is just a spoiler trying to get Trump elected. That's
really what he's in the game, that's what it's all about.
And so you know, I can't blame them for seizing
on this and saying, see, look, I told you so
here she is out, you know, saying the quiet part
out loud in the open, and then they can point
to whatever previous Trump donors who are now giving to

(37:44):
RFK Junior and say case closed, this guy really is
just a trojan horse to try to get Trump reelected. Now,
the reason why I don't actually think that that is
the case. I think she's you know, as I said
last time we discussed this issue, I don't doubt that
there are people affiliated with RFK Junior donors potentially backing
RFK Junior who have that logic in mind. But I

(38:08):
don't actually think that that's what he personally is up to,
because if you were running to try to take votes
away from Joe Biden, you would position yourself a lot
differently than how he is. Most of the issues he's
led with code as right wing. That's why he has
a much higher approval rating with Republicans than he does
for Democrats. When I look through his Twitter timeline, more

(38:30):
of his criticism was lobbed against Joe Biden. Now you
might think, oh, see, that proves that he really is
against Joe Biden. But actually, if you're trying to win
over Joe Biden voters, he'd be a little more friendly
towards Joe Biden. You would position yourself more in the
anti Trump lane. That would be the way to get
more anti Trump people who are disaffected with Joe Biden

(38:51):
into your camp. So, if the goal is to be
a spoiler to try to get Trump elected, I think
he's doing a very poor job of that. Frankly, I
still think it's very likely at the end of the day,
and there are multiple poles by the way that you
know that, even at this early stage, bear this out.
In spite of his name being Kennedy, the fact that
his approval rating is so much higher for Republicans leads

(39:13):
me to believe that at best it's a jump ball.
And it is also possible that he at the end
of the day does take more votes away from Donald Trump.
So that's why, even though these comments are very clear
and very hard to dispute, I actually do think that
this is kind of a one off, you know person.
I think she's hired as a consultant, freelancing saying her
own thing. Maybe she got approval from the RFK Junior

(39:35):
campaign to say, to advocate for him, however she feels fit.
I don't doubt that there was that level of like
coordination and connectivity here. But I'm not convinced that this
is the central goal and mission of the RFK Junior
camp because if it was, I believe they would be
positioning themselves in a much different way than they actually are.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
That's exactly right.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
Yeah, he would be attacking Trump and to try and
be friendly to buy I mean, and let's put this
up there on the screen too, just to highlight this,
if you take a look at what it looks like
for polling whenever you include RFK Junior, it is Trump
and Biden who are tied at thirty eight percent with
third parties that are mentioned. But I should also note

(40:16):
that while Yes, Kennedy may be pulling away some votes
from Joe Biden, we are still seeing that Biden has
a major problem with people like Jill Stein, other not
Sure Cornell West. The third party challengers go far, far
beyond just the RFK junior question. And we have seen
also some polling where we've seen a reduction from RFKJ

(40:40):
or voters that pull away from Trump and can actually
limit Trump's cap of vote and make it easier for
Joe Biden. Let's say, if other more left wing challengers
are not there on the ballot, so does it inject
some chaos in there, absolutely, but that does not necessarily
prove what a lot of what she is saying. Let's
put this up there too on the screen though, As

(41:00):
we said, Democrats, and this is a former Pete buddhaj
Edge campaign manager, Liz Smith, Democratic Operative. Her job these
days is appeared to go after RFK Junior. She's saying
RFK Junior is a spoiler for Trump. He was urged
by to run by Trump balies like Steve Biden. He's
being propped up by Trump's largest donor. His campaign now
caught on tape saying that their top goal is to

(41:21):
stop Joe Biden. RFK Junior's campaign had a response to
this that we can go and put there up on
the screen.

Speaker 3 (41:27):
Let's go ahead and read Amaryllis Fox. She says.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
As an independent movement, our supporters, volunteers, and field organizers
come from all sides of the political spectrum. Rita Palma
was hired a couple of weeks ago as a ballot
access consultant responsible for scheduling volunteer shifts during our upcoming
signature drive in the Empire State. She has no involvement
in or access to electoral strategy nationally or in New York.

(41:50):
The video circulating was not taken at a campaign event.
She was speaking as a private citizens, and her statements
in no way reflect the campaign strategy, the sole aim
of which is to win the White House with votes
from former Trump and Biden's supporters alike. We're looking into
whether any misrepresentations were made and our campaign champion's freedom
of speech for all of our supporters. So it really
does kind of hit home exactly what you were saying.

(42:12):
This is somebody who was hired for ballid Access. Maybe
she has a you know, a private, you know, reason
for signing on to the ballid access. Good drive for
RFK Junior. But you know, at the end of the day,
so what like, you got to get people to actually
come and vote for you. And that's something that these
Democratic operatives and even the Trump people who attack RFK Junior,
they never quite seem to get there.

Speaker 3 (42:33):
At the end of the day. You should just convince
people to vote for you. It's that simple.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
Yeah, well that is really the most important point is
you know, instead of having this oh who's thet spoiler
for et cetera, et cetera, it's like, all right, well,
just you know, if you're a candidate for president, do
better win offer an agenda for the American people that
actually resonates with them, and you won't have to worry
about Bobby Kennedy or Cornell West or Jill Stein or
you know whoever the libertarian candidate ends up, which might

(42:56):
also be RFK Junior.

Speaker 4 (42:58):
I don't know, and you'll be fine.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
Just go out and like actually win voters over and
you'll be good to go. But yeah, Liz Smiths, actually
they've they've realized at the White House they've got a
problem with the third party vote. And I think they
have an even bigger problem with the third party vote
now that Joe Biden is enabling a genocide in the
Gaza strip because young voters are typically more open to

(43:22):
voting third party to begin with, and now he's got
a massive issue with young voters, voters who are just
absolutely disgusted with him. Now RFK Junior is just as
aggressive on Israel, if not more than Joe Biden. But
you know, Cornell West Jill Stein is very likely to
have ballot access in many states as Green Party nominee.

(43:43):
You know, they've got their act together in that regard.
In fact, out of the three candidates, she's the one
with the clearest path to being on the most ballots
in the most states. So they've affirmatively hired Liz Smith
to run their operation of trying to undercut anyone who
is running third party and try to shame and cajole
any voter who's considering voting third party because they realize

(44:05):
they do have this issue and that pole that we
put up earlier.

Speaker 4 (44:08):
It actually was kind of a good poll for Joe Biden.

Speaker 1 (44:11):
The top line without the third party candidates had him
leading Trump by three. I believe that's either inside the
margin of error or just outside of it. But it
was actually the best result for Joe Biden in that
poll in quite a while. So it was a good
poll for him. But then when you add in all
of the third party candidates, then you know Trump then
is basically tied with him or has the narrow edge.

(44:31):
So it is a big problem for Joe Biden. I'm
not sure that RFK Junior himself is going to be
a negative factor for Biden, but there there's a lot
of jockeying with the Biden campaign and with the Trump
campaign to try to persuade voters like, no, he's really
a liberal, No, he's really a right wing and I
think some of the supporters of RFK Junior ranging the

(44:54):
political spectrum reflects the confusion around what his true political identity.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
Let's move on now to the sclerotic US economy, and
there is a major flashing red sign as to how
and what people are doing to make a lot of money.
It's actually a pretty good indicator of what our society rewards.
Let's go and put this up there on the screen,
and it turns out that none of the Forbes billionaires
who are under the age of thirty are self made

(45:24):
for the very first time in fifteen years. So since
two thousand and nine, there has always been a member
of the under thirty Forbes billionaires who actually generated their
massive wealth on their own by starting their own company.
The statistic is due to many of the past self
made billionaires aging into their thirties, but they are not

(45:44):
being replaced by others in a similar financial situation, and
in fact, hefty inheritances are now starting what is the
Outlet is calling the long anticipated generational wealth transfer. The
world's youngest billionaire is in nineteen year old in Brazil
college student with a net worth of one point one billion,
who has a minority steak in her late grandfather's electrical

(46:07):
equipment company, accompanied by her older sister who also holds
a minority steak, accompanied by a pair of twenty somethings
from Ireland who have a networth of about five billion
each same thing family money. You've got the sons of
former Tata Group founders as well, same thing, inheriting their

(46:28):
I think their grandfather maybe great grandfathers minority steak in
their company.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
I think the list can go on and on.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
In every single case, every billionaire who is under the
age of thirty has inherited wealth. On top of that,
if you actually take a look at the overall list,
it is striking to me that the world's richest man
is no longer a Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, who
say what you want, they actually started their own companies.
It is LVMH, the head of LVMH, the guy who

(46:59):
sells luxury goods like Louis Vuitton and others, basically selling
it to middle class folks in order to flash wealth around.
That is now the most valuable and richest person on earth.
So the reason we wanted to spend some time on this,
I think crystal is this is the sign of a
sclerotic economy. Many of the previous self made billionaires in
their twenties and others in the twenty tens, where people

(47:21):
like Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey or the other tech founders.
You may criticize those companies and the creation now, but
at that time it was genuinely entrepreneurial and it was
adding a lot, at least in GDP wise to the
US economy. But we don't even have that anymore for
the very first time now. And it's not just here,
it's all across the globe because America is the leader now.

(47:43):
It's even if you look at the new entrance to
the Forbes list, it's all private equity guys, financialization and
hedge fund traders. Those people would disappear tomorrow and not
a single one of us would know in terms of
the economy. Not the same with Amazon, not the same
with Tesla. But that's what's actually being rewarded right now.

Speaker 4 (48:02):
Yeah, that's so true.

Speaker 1 (48:04):
And I do think it's noteworthy that most of these
young billionaires they're not even inheriting the money from their parents,
they're inheriting from their grandparents. Like so it shows you
that this trend has been we've been headed in this
direction for quite a while.

Speaker 4 (48:21):
And you know, it ties in.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
With also some of the corporate failures that we see,
like it Boeing, where even within a large established corporation,
it's not innovation that's rewarded by the market. It is financialization,
it's cutting costs, it's union busting, it's you know, pretending
like you're a Wall Street stock trader instead of a
company making planes. It's putting Nikki Haley on your corporate

(48:47):
board and all of the you know, the direction that
that entails. That's the reality of our economy now. And
so many of the quote unquote best and bright is
you know, the people who have abnormal skills in terms
of science and math, et cetera. So many of them
decided that the way that they could make it big
was go to Wall Street and become you know, glorified gamblers.

(49:09):
And even at the corporate level, it's not like corporations
have really been competing to.

Speaker 4 (49:16):
Offer the best product.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
They've been competing to gain the system and generate anti
competitive advantages. You know, that is one thing the Bide
administration is doing that I support, is trying to roll
some of that back and force a more actually competitive
marketplace versus what CEOs now are rewarded for is how
can I rig the market? How can it create a

(49:39):
monopoly so that workers and consumers have no choice? You know,
that's reflected in the fact that you have very little
innovation across the economy.

Speaker 4 (49:48):
That's just not the thing that's rewarded.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
And then the other thing that is very reflective here,
especially in American context, But as you said, Sager, and
you know, for better or worse, America really sets the
stage for the rules of the game economically around the world.
You've had now years of very low taxation rates and
especially these gigantic loopholes where you can pass these large

(50:10):
fortunes from generation to generation with very little in the
way of taxes being paid back into the societies that
you come from, especially in an American context, and so
you build these massive pots of generational wealth that get
hoarded and you know, very little shared with the rest

(50:32):
of society. So we've got this massive, almost unparalleled, historically
historically inequality, levels of inequality, and you know, this is
some of the sclerotic, ossified results that you end up
getting at the end of the day.

Speaker 3 (50:47):
Yeah, it's very it's very bad.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
And it's one of those where if we are having
i mean, look it's a lead again, it's who is
getting rewarded. Like if you're a very ambitious person and
you're going to college and you're looking out there. Uh
pre A lot of people were inspired in the twenty tens.
They're like, I'm going to go start my own company. Well,
if you're looking at this and nobody's even getting rich
starting their own companies.

Speaker 3 (51:08):
You're like, well, should I do that?

Speaker 2 (51:09):
Or should just go work at a safe job where
I can work from home make a relatively upper middle
class salary.

Speaker 3 (51:15):
That's not really something that you want to reward.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
Or worse, you're like, well, if the only way to
become a billionaire is to go work on Wall Street,
so be it. That's just the way things are right now,
let's put this up there on the screen. This is
similar to the conversation here. Business Insider writing quote millennials
in gen Z's trendy new splurge is groceries. They say
that younger generations are now spending more on groceries than
other categories, according to a McKinsey report, and according I mean, look,

(51:41):
I would take what McKenzie says with a grain of salt,
but here, at the very least, what they are saying
is that the increase in grocery prices that are we've
seen with inflation are being disproportionately felt then by people
who are in the lower end of the income spectrum
and not at the height of their earning potential, and

(52:01):
that they are having to spend more on groceries simply
in order to maintain like a medium.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
Quality of life.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
You can take it the other way I've seen previously.
People will be like, oh, well, this is like the
new avocado toast. Criticism of the millennials are like, oh,
there's spending fourteen dollars. It's like, oh, they're spending too
much money on groceries. But if you think about it,
you know this is something. Spending more on groceries actually
indicates that you're eating out much less, which is already

(52:31):
a significant behavioral change from where things were previously. So
it's like, if you spend money on going to brunch
here to being criticized. Now, if you spend money buying food,
maybe even marginally better food than you previously would have done,
to still try and save money from eating out and
to have some enjoyment in your life, you're also being
criticized here.

Speaker 4 (52:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:50):
I love the way that they are framing this as
some sort of like decadence that you're eating how dare
you spend money on groceries? It's to your point. Yeah,
that's the advice anytime there's like a financial call, how
do I save money?

Speaker 4 (53:06):
Et cetera.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
So one of the first things they say is stop
eating out, eat at home, and then they do that,
and then they're.

Speaker 4 (53:12):
Criticized for that as well.

Speaker 1 (53:13):
Not to mention, you know, the bottom line here is
that millennials and Gen Z have been able to build
much less wealth than the boomers, so they've been hit
much harder by inflation. You know, it's still the case
that your groceries, the same basket of groceries cost four
hundred and forty five dollars more a month to purchase

(53:35):
versus a year ago. So even as we have this conversation, oh,
inflation is coming down, it's not as bad as usual. Well,
the prices are still really high, and none of these
corporations are going to bring them down on their own,
because why would they. They're making record break and profits.
So yeah, I just think it's it's amazing the ways
that news organizations find to smear people or you know,

(53:56):
even indulging in like the most basic of luxuries, oh,
an extra snack item at Trader Joe's is one of
the things that they mentioned in this article, and now
you're being basically smared for that. And at the same time,
you can trast that with these billionaire millennials and zoomers
who inherited it all from mommy and daddy, and you

(54:16):
see the massive gulf that has emerged between you know,
people who did absolutely nothing to quote unquote earn their
station in life, will never have to worry about money,
will pass their billions down to their kids and their grandkids.
And the zoomers and millennials who didn't have mommy and
Daddy's bank account backing them, and the way that they

(54:38):
have really struggled to be able to get a foothold
and just to be able to make it on a
basic level.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
Yeah, and we can also see how the grocery thing
is actually fitting into an overall trend of reduction in lifestyle.
Let's go and put this up there on the screen.
This is from a new report from redfin showing what
renters and homeowners are skipping essentials like meals in medicata
care to try and keep a roof over their head.
So they say, the top sacrifices that people have made

(55:05):
recently in order to afford housing. Keep in mind this
is not just people who are homeowners, but this also
includes renters where we've seen a major spike in rental prices.
They say took no or fewer vacations. You've got thirty
four percent of people who are saying that skipped meals
is twenty two percent worked, additional hours, shifts at my
job is twenty percent, sold, My belongings is twenty Borrowed

(55:27):
money from friends or family that I will pay back
eighteen percent, dipped into retirement savings eighteen percent, delayed or
skipped healthcare and medical treatments fifteen percent worked. An extra
job is fifteen worked a side hustle like food delivery
fourteen percent, and receive money from friends or family that
is not expected to be paid back is fourteen percent.
So overall, across the board, you're seeing a reduction in lifestyle,

(55:49):
skipping meals, having to work additional hours. Now, I have
no problem with some of these things if it is
to save up for something which is a luxury, or
to upgrade your lifestyle. But them here is that this
is just retention of lifestyle. It's to live exactly the
same life, So you have to live the exact same
life that you were living four or five years ago,

(56:09):
but you actually have to give up a lot of
things to just maintain that. That's not the way that
things were supposed to go on an upward trajectory. You're
working a side hustle so that you can move into
a bigger house. Cool, I think that's awesome. But having
to work a side hustle or something like that so
you continue to make rent in the same place that
you've been living for five to ten years with no
hope of being able to buy a house. That's a
very very different story. And that's actually what comes across

(56:31):
to me in some of this data.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
Yeah, housing is so key is such a central part
of this story too, because really the top line from
this piece is that they found that half of renters
and homeowners are struggling to afford their monthly housing payments.

Speaker 4 (56:46):
I mean, it's just it's.

Speaker 1 (56:48):
Insane just to have a roof over your head, and
not like any sort of luxurious fashion, but just a
roof over your head. People are having to skip meals.
People who are working full time on all the things right,
and by the way, you know, if they went to
college and did that thing that they were told to do.
They've also got these giant debt payments hanging over them
from the jump when they start their careers. And then,

(57:11):
to add insult to injury, they got to be smeared
when they quote unquote splurge on the trendy new thing
buying groceries. So, you know, we've said this a lot
of time. We've got another story here about housing that
is really important. But this is such a central determinant
over whether or not people have sort of a basic, stable,

(57:32):
not even luxury, but just stable lifestyle, able to eat
meals on a regular basis, able to, oh my god,
actually maybe go on a vacation once a year.

Speaker 4 (57:42):
Imagine that.

Speaker 1 (57:43):
And the fact that housing is so extraordinarily high in
so many places with no signs of abating, has really
stolen those sorts of you know, simple splourage is simple luxuries,
basic living standards from entire generations.

Speaker 4 (57:58):
At this point, there.

Speaker 2 (58:02):
Has been some significant change in the investors moving into
the real estate market. We'll go ahead and skip ahead,
guys to the second part here. We'll put the Bloomberg
tear sheet up, please, which is C five. We are
seeing Blackstone. This is a deal just announced yesterday, which
is part of the reason I really wanted to make
sure that we got this is at Blackstone, the major
investment group is now signing a ten billion dollars deal.

(58:25):
Quote is the latest bet that property is near lows.
The firm will acquire the real estate owner apartment income rate.
They're planning now to invest four hundred million dollars into
the portfolio. So the reason that it matters is that
we're seeing continually gobbling up more and more shares by
institutional capital into apartment into real estate and basically into

(58:49):
the housing market. This is increasing now to a point
where what we are seeing is that this bet that
single family landlords and others can be rolled up to
create consistent rental income that is coming to you. They
can try and reduce the services. It's a basic economy
of scale argument. But the reason it matters is that

(59:10):
this is one of the largest real estate managers in
the entire US that wants to continue to invest in
property and to roll up said income. And it actually
comes at the exact same time that we have seen
the apartment landlord air that they now acquired, that there's
been more investors than ever that are moving into the market.

(59:31):
So we actually have some interesting Redfin data that came
out just last month. It shows that investors bought some
twenty six percent of the country's most affordable homes in
the fourth quarter. That is the highest share on record.
They say that elevated home prices and mortgage rates, which
sluggish rents have made low price is increasingly attractive now

(59:51):
to investors. Investors bought eighteen percent of all homes that's
sold in the fourth quarter, slightly up from a year before.
Overall investor home purchase had dropped a bit from the
year earlier, but still maintain the highest share than ever
before on record. And especially it is in Florida in
California that investors are hungry from homes and are still

(01:00:13):
just not able to find properties to purchase from an
increase housing shortage. So you've got the shortage, you've got
the highest number of shares on record. Some of these
may be small time investors. I don't necessarily think is
a problem with that, but whenever you reach the ten
billion dollar level, then I think we're looking at a
very significant problem. And now we're looking at a point
where if you're renting in this country in the future,

(01:00:33):
especially in a big city, there's a good chance that
your landlord is a large.

Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
Private equity organization and you may not even know it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
That's right, and they're making it more difficult for people
to get their first foot on that ladder of home ownership,
which is really a central dividing line in American society
between haves and have nots. Are you a homeowner, are
you able to build that basic wealth for yourself and
for your family moving forward or not? And so buying

(01:01:00):
somewhat fewer homes because there are less homes to buy,
but as you pointed out, as a share of all
of the homes that are being purchased, their share continues
to go up, and it makes sense from a capitalist perspective.
Part of the reason why people are struggling to be
able to afford a home right now, in addition to

(01:01:22):
the astronomical prices themselves, is, of course mortgage rates are
up from where they were previously. That doesn't impact these
large institutional investors as much because they're buying large not
getting mortgages. They're coming in with all cash now. The
interest rates still affect them.

Speaker 4 (01:01:38):
In other ways.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
They take out loans for other things, potentially the costs
of flip in the house, et cetera. So it impacts
them some, but they're at a massive advantage because they
can pay all cash and not have to worry about
the cost of those high mortgage interest rates. So it's
a huge disadvantage for just regular people who are trying
to buy a house, and really will will be one

(01:02:01):
of the most consequential developments you can imagine in terms of,
you know, the how the economy shapes up moving forward.
We've also covered here the way that these companies increasingly
use algorithms to basically rig the market and the facto
and this is, you know, the legal allegation actually is
that they're de facto colluding with each other to artificially

(01:02:23):
lift rent prices in a lot of markets across the country.
And there's also a lot of documentation about how these
large landlords, I mean, they're impersonal, they're anonymous, they never
have to look you in the face. They have to
look you in the eye when they're kicking you and
your kids out your apartment, or when they're jacking up
the rent to make it so that you're having to
skip meals and you know, can never even imagine going
out to eat or going on a vacation. They don't

(01:02:45):
have to look you in the eye when they're doing that,
so they're perfectly happy to squeeze you for absolutely everything
you're worth, to delay maintenance to basically you know, in
some instances, as documented, actually have your living conditions be
unsafe if they can possibly get away with it. So
it really is a nightmare scenario in a lot of ways.
One of the things that we were talking about yesterday

(01:03:07):
is how this divide between the housing halves, the how
ownership in terms of ownership the haves versus the have nots,
may also be driving some of the political voting behavior
that we're seeing that's otherwise head scratching. So why is
it that older voters, at least according to some polls,
and let's take it all with a grain of salt,

(01:03:28):
but some older voters seem to be more favorable towards
Joe Biden, whereas younger voters, who have been moving left
and voting more and more democratic in the modern era,
have been moving away from him. You'd be hard pressed
to find a story that doesn't fit better than this
story of housing haves and have nots. Younger voters by
and large haven't been able to purchase homes. They're struggling,

(01:03:49):
and the economy has made it very difficult for them.
If you're a boomer and you have your home or
your silent gen and you have your home and you're
building all this wealth, and you've seen your housing price,
do nothing, go up and up and up and increase
your wealth. You don't care that market interest rates are high.
You're doing just fine. This economy is actually working pretty
well for you. So that could actually be a really

(01:04:11):
key political dynamic that's largely ignored that's playing out right
now in this election before our eyes.

Speaker 3 (01:04:17):
I definitely think you're right. And it's interesting too.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
I was just noting from one of my notes I
forgot to mention, is that this Blackstone deal is just
a continued acceleration. They had just done a three point
five billion dollar deal to take a company called Tricon private,
which has some thirty one thousand single family residents across
the US and Canada. Now this adds thousands of more apartments.
So when we consider the have nots and others, the

(01:04:42):
entrance of all of this in we've got to find
some sort of regulatory solution we've highlighted here previously. There
are some state local efforts actually to try and to
keep large institutional capital outside of the real estate market
and not allow them either to own large segments of
single family house or to not allow them to at
least be the first bidder. But we haven't seen anything

(01:05:04):
be taken up like that on the national level. I
think whoever is willing to do it, if you can
get housing prices in this country or at very least
rental income and all that down in this country, or
even stable, I think some people would be happy with that.
That person would have a political winner on their hands.
But it's just not in our lexicon right now. Luckily,
some states are doing it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
Yeah, there is a little bit of a conversation happening
in Congress, but it doesn't seem to have nearly the
national momentum that it does because, let's be honest, there
are a lot of powerful, wealthy interests that are rayed
against it, and that's always going to make it difficult
to be able to get something through the Congress. Let's
go on move to another business story that is kind
of funny, to be honest with you pit this up

(01:05:46):
on the screen.

Speaker 4 (01:05:47):
So you may.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
Recall that Amazon rolled down with great fanfare these quote
unquote just walk out grocery stores where you go in
you just put the stuff in your car. They allegedly
had this high tech that was scanning things as you're
replacing them in your car. You walk out, it charges
your card, you get your receipt, you're done.

Speaker 4 (01:06:08):
You don't even have to go through a checkout line.

Speaker 1 (01:06:10):
Well, they just announced that they're killing this just walkout tech,
and the reason is because it never actually really worked
in reality, This you know, sophisticated AI et cetera, et cetera,
was really powered by somewhere around one thousand human beings
who were watching and checking what you were putting in

(01:06:33):
your basket and making sure that you were getting charged
for the right things, who were based in India. So
shoppers were reporting, you can come back up on me.
At this point, shoppers were reporting that they weren't getting
their receipts for hours and hours, and like, what is
going on here? Now? Listen, it's always in any sort
of AI model you have to use human beings at

(01:06:54):
the beginning to help the system learn. But apparently the
tech was so clunky. It really wasn't learning. They were
continuing to have to rely on human beings surveilling you
as you shop and having all sorts of problems with
the design of the store and having to make sure
everything is precisely in place or else it didn't really
work out. I bet there was a high mistake rate

(01:07:14):
as well, if you're having to rely on these sort
of like you know, tech cluges and human being reviewers
in order to make this work. So ultimately, the idea
of this just walkout technology was basically a fantasy and
a fairy tale. And I think it kind of tied
in with what we were talking about earlier how all
of these companies have moved more towards you know, financialization

(01:07:37):
than actual innovation because apparently they didn't have the chops
to get this thing to work.

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
Yeah, this is actually hilarious because there was one here
in d C. And I actually went to one, and
the entire experience it was exactly as you said. I
didn't get the receipt for a long time, and I
just wanted to try it and I'll just see how
it was. The whole thing actually felt very creepy, and
I'm very glad that the technology was not nearly as
dystopian as they made it out to be.

Speaker 3 (01:08:02):
It wasn't AI.

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
It was just a bunch of guys in India and
Bangladesh reviewing footage then ringing it up, and like you said,
there's a huge amount of human error that can then
result in it. The funny thing is, too, now that
they are closing, they have blockbuster deals if you have,
by the way, been able to take advantage of this.

Speaker 3 (01:08:19):
For example, they're selling.

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
Like olive oil, like a leader of olive oil right
now in DC for like two dollars, So people are
just going through and stocking up taking advantage.

Speaker 3 (01:08:27):
So if you have one in your area, I highly
recommend they take it.

Speaker 4 (01:08:30):
Knowledge of that, guys, this is the place.

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
It's an expensive place. It's expensive.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
I think people were getting roused sauce as well, but
this does highlight I'm.

Speaker 4 (01:08:40):
Not really a fan of that.

Speaker 3 (01:08:40):
But anyway, godhead, I've never even had it. Apparently it's expensive. Okay,
that's apparently what I've been told. This is when our
producer found which is amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
Let's put this up there on the screen where you
have a cashier at a I think it's a coffee
shop there that is zooming into New York City to
help you with your transaction from the Philippines.

Speaker 3 (01:09:02):
And apparently though, this is not.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
The first time that this type of technology has been debuted,
and there's a lot of various self service type places
where if you do need a little bit of a
human help, you can have somebody zoom on the screen
there that actually can help you ring them up. They
have some security features and others where they can help
open the door for you and all that. But you

(01:09:27):
can pay them only five to six dollars per hour
to operate like that. So why wouldn't you try and
take advantage of your you know, in one of these
types of businesses as opposed to paying a actual human
being that is there. Now, look, I still think it's
creepy and it won't necessarily take off, but if enough
people do it, and if they could refine the tech
into some sort of I don't know, like a hologram

(01:09:49):
or a bigger screen or something. Maybe they need a
screen as big as hours that's over here, they could
make it work.

Speaker 3 (01:09:55):
It is just clear though.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
That things you know, we're promised AI and all this
awesome future of the Jetsons.

Speaker 3 (01:10:01):
It's just a lot more dystopian than that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
Yeah, it's being used to make life shittier, not better,
by and large, you know, with exceptions. Soccer likes his
Apple Vision pro thing, right, that's tease for future. We
got a little update on that for you guys. But
the company, according to the gentleman who tweeted this ount,
who has a substack by the way, is called Happy Cashier.
It's apparently operating in five different Asian fast food places

(01:10:27):
in New York City. And so, yeah, when you're doing
yourself checkout situation, which of course now has become totally
commonplace in all sorts of different restaurants, CVS, gircure.

Speaker 4 (01:10:35):
Store, whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
If you're doing that you have trouble, I guess that's
when you get the call in, the zoom call in
from the Philippines to assist you with your transaction. It's
not only any different than we've all become very accustomed
to the fact that call centers are so many of
them are outsourced that when you're talking to someone trying
to solve whatever problem you have on the phone, these
people are likely dialing in from another location. But it

(01:10:58):
does show you that, you know, the idea that service
sector work would be immune from certainly from technology, we
already know that is not the case, but from offshoring
is obviously not true as well, because hey, why not
why pay an American worker, you know, higher minimum wage
and have to deal with labor standards when you can

(01:11:19):
get someone who's less expensive overseas and you know, who
really cares about labor standards From the company's perspective, who
really cares about customer experience? If all of my competitors
are going to do the same thing, you're not really
going to have any choice anyway.

Speaker 4 (01:11:32):
So there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
Absolutely, this ties in with something that is unfolding in California,
which we covered previously. You guys might recall they have
established a fast food industry Council in California that uses
something called sectoral bargaining to basically set standards throughout that

(01:11:54):
industry or workers in terms of safety, in terms of wages,
in terms of hours, kind of every aspect of the
working environment. This is similar to a model that's used
more commonly in other countries, where it's almost in lieu
of it's in lieu of shop by shop unions. You
set one single standard for the entire industry. Then everybody's

(01:12:14):
competing on the same level. You have representatives of business
and workers who are on the council, and so they
come to some support of agreement. Okay, so that's the backstory.
So California, as part of this Workers Council, they establish
a twenty dollars per hour minimum wage for fast food workers.
And this is not your little mom and pop small businesses.

(01:12:35):
These are large chains that have been doing quite well,
that have record breaking profits in many instances where you
know they can theoretically afford this level of labor cost.
So this came up as a conversation on the PbD
podcast with guest Jesse Waters making some interesting comments about
what he thinks McDonald workers should earn.

Speaker 4 (01:12:57):
Let's take a listen to that.

Speaker 11 (01:12:58):
See if you can do this in your head, you
probably can. If you're making twenty dollars an hour to
work at a fast food restaurant, right, is that is
that six figures?

Speaker 3 (01:13:08):
Are you making? Fifty is just to exit a few zeros? Okay?
So forty k years?

Speaker 11 (01:13:15):
Okay, well forty k years so and then if your
husband or wife is also there, you're making one hundred
thousand dollars as a family. Sure, both working at McDonald's
eighty g That is okay, that's crazy. That is crazy
because that job really doesn't require much. So it's inflating
the entire you know, uh, labor sector and the happy

(01:13:35):
meal and the happy meal unhappy, which I'm very unhappy about.
But I believe Gavin Newsom will be president one day.
The man is smooth. He's already currying up to the
Republican side. You saw him go on Hannity. He dive
bombed a couple of Fox News events.

Speaker 4 (01:13:52):
He's savvy, so a lot there soccer.

Speaker 1 (01:13:55):
But first of all, the attempted math where he thinks,
first of all, that twenty dollars hour is gonna night
you six figures. That's his first initial reaction was like, dude, what?
And then then you try living on forty thousand dollars
in La Jesse waters and tell me how that goes?
Even eight thousand dollars. You got kids, a whole family,

(01:14:16):
You tell me how easy that is to do. And
then for someone whose whole job is like us to
sit on their asses in front of a microphone to
be saying that McDonald's workers it doesn't require much for
them to do this job. It's just complete nonsense. They're
adding way more tangible value and doing a lot more

(01:14:37):
difficult work in this economy than you are. So for
him to sell, it's crazy for them to earn forty
K a year for working full time and still at
forty K a year, I guarantee you're gonna be rent burden.
I guarantee you're gonna struggling to make ends meet. It's
just what a bubble, What a bubble you are living in.

Speaker 3 (01:14:56):
So I've got some math here in front of me. Jesse,
do this one.

Speaker 2 (01:15:00):
In my head, it was a little bit easier, So
twenty dollars per hour. I'm going to assume this is
a single filer in the state of California, forty one thousand,
six hundred dollars working forty hours per week. After tax,
you are netting thirty four thousand, three hundred and fifty dollars,
which means that your monthly take home pay is two thousand,
eight hundred and thirty three bucks. The average rent fair

(01:15:24):
market rent for a residential rental property in California today
as of twenty twenty four, is two thousand, three hundred and.

Speaker 3 (01:15:31):
Forty five dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:15:32):
So if we take twenty eight hundred and we minus
it by twenty three forty five, you have approximately three
to four hundred bucks that is left over to pay
for health insurance presumably that's not included here, to pay
for gas because you're living in the state of California,
we're talking about five six dollars a gallon depending on that,

(01:15:53):
and you're driving a lot, you have to pay for internet,
phone bill.

Speaker 3 (01:15:57):
Do you have a single dollar left over at the
end of the month.

Speaker 2 (01:16:00):
If you're living on thirty four k a year take home,
you're a single guy who is and you're working here
at McDonald's, you are barely able to survive, and most
likely statistically you're going to be significantly in debt, credit
card debt specifically. So what do we learn from that
that's actually not a quote unquote livable wage. I completely
understand here by the way, people who have concerns around

(01:16:21):
minimum wage inflation and all of that, But what they
ignore in the state of California is that we're talking
here one about the sectoral bargaining that was put in
place by the workers to achieve this, But two is
that we already have an incredibly high rental market standard
of living in others at a baseline level, which makes
it where the past minimum wage was not even close

(01:16:42):
to being able to get you there.

Speaker 3 (01:16:44):
So, if you put it in the context that I just.

Speaker 2 (01:16:46):
Gave you, you can't help but take away that if you
were working in one of these jobs that it's almost,
i would say, basically impossible to quote unquote survive thirty
four thousand dollars a year. You'd have to work a
shitload of overtime, or you're going to have to do
uber uber eats or something like that in order to
supplement your income, and you are still not making a
lot of money. To keep this in mind, people are

(01:17:07):
doing uber eats and all this other stuff, are taking
a ton of depreciation on their cars. I think they
have to pay extra fees. Could they have higher car
insurance rates. There's a lot of phantom costs that come
into any of these quote unquote side hustles too, So
I would just again illustrate that it's not even close
to six figures. Even as he is talking about if
you have two people who work at McDonald's forty dollars

(01:17:28):
an hour, that's going to be eighty three thousand dollars
a year take home pay after tax. That is roughly
the national average for a household here in the US,
but national average in California.

Speaker 3 (01:17:41):
That's not going to cut it.

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
You need to be making one hundred and twenty thousand
dollars to be living a seventy thousand dollars life on
a national average in the state of California. So you're
mostly below actually where you need to be.

Speaker 1 (01:17:51):
Yeah, and God forbid, you have kids, right, and are
trying to, you know, afford that. I imagine on a
single salary, trying to be a single mom and on
twenty bucks an hour in California. Forget about it. I
just can't take the classism of this. You know, Oh,
they don't they don't work hard. There's not much involved here.
Have you ever worked a fast food job. This was

(01:18:12):
not an easy job. It's actually a very demanding job.
And so this condescending notion that you know, Jesse Waters
is working so much hard, contributing so.

Speaker 4 (01:18:23):
Much more than I'm a McDonald's worker.

Speaker 1 (01:18:25):
I just find that whole worldview to be so grotesque.
I you know, maybe I'm old fashioned. I think if
you are an adult, work in full time. You should
be able to afford to live, to have an apartment
and eat three meals a day. That's just me. I
think that's where we should be. So the reality is

(01:18:47):
twenty dollars an hour and many places in California still
doesn't get you there.

Speaker 4 (01:18:51):
But at least it's an improvement. We can put this
up on the screen.

Speaker 1 (01:18:54):
Some more details from the LA Times about what was
passed in California. I sort of already went through this,
but it says you're to California is new twenty dollars
now a minimum wage for fast food workers. The pay
increase was established by Assembly Bill twelve twenty eight. It
applies to California and fast food workers employed by any
chain with more than sixty locations nationwide.

Speaker 4 (01:19:12):
Covers corporate owned and franchise location.

Speaker 1 (01:19:15):
The state has more than four five hundred and forty
thousand fast food workers, about one hundred and ninety five
thousand of them in LA and Orange County, according to
twenty twenty two figures. By the way, the previous minimum
wage was sixteen dollars an hour, so they're getting a
four dollars increase, which you know, I'm sure is significant
for a lot of people, but is probably not going

(01:19:37):
to be life changing. Like I said, they probably need
a significantly higher wage increase to actually be able to
live in LA and in San Francisco and other parts
of the state of California. And then the last thing
that I pulled Sager is I looked up McDonald's annual
grost profit to see, you know, whether or not they
could weather this storm of the increased wage costs, which,

(01:19:57):
again I want to remind you this wasn't set by
the workers themselves. This was set through a council and
through a negotiated process that included these businesses. By the way,
but McDonald's annual gross profit for twenty twenty three was
fourteen point five to six billion.

Speaker 4 (01:20:14):
That was a ten percent increase over the year before.

Speaker 1 (01:20:16):
Twenty twenty two's profit was a five percent increase from
the year before. Twenty twenty one's profit was a twenty
nine percent increase from the year before. So if you
look at the trend, McDonald's is doing okay. They're workers
not so much so, God bless them. I hope that
this helps make life a little bit easier for them
as they're working hard in there.

Speaker 2 (01:20:36):
Well, and let's not forget about the Panera bread bread
exception that we are previously, which.

Speaker 4 (01:20:40):
Is that's a real outrage.

Speaker 1 (01:20:42):
Yeah, so to remind you, there was a specific carve ount.
Turns out Newsom as buddies with the big Panera franchise
holder in the state of California, and so they made
this specific car ount in the legislation where if you
have a bakery involved in your fast enterprise for some reason,
undefined reason, this doesn't count for you. So Panera gets this,

(01:21:06):
you know, just total corporate carve ound. That's the real
outrage here, not that any of those workers aren't making
more money. It's that the Panera workers are getting screwed.

Speaker 2 (01:21:14):
Well, actually, Crystal Pair, I just checked just to make
sure it was. After the outrage, they then were like, okay,
we will comply with the minimum wage law, but legally
they still had no but only because that that story
went viral, including on our channel and I think across
the state of California, and people said this is complete
bullshit that they said, okay, okay, we will raise.

Speaker 3 (01:21:33):
Our minimum wage two twenty dollars an hour.

Speaker 2 (01:21:35):
So in some ways it's a hopeful story where they
can try and be corrupt, but if they get caught
doing it, then guess what they're actually going to have
to They're actually going to have to come into compliance.

Speaker 3 (01:21:44):
So I'm actually somewhat pleasantly surprised by that.

Speaker 1 (01:21:50):
So in spite of the fact that the IDF has
actually withdrawn from southern Gaza at this point, BB making
a clear yesterday the planned invasion will go forward. We
could put this up on the screen. He was speaking
in Hebrew here, which isn't all that useful for me
at least, So I'll read you part of what he said.

(01:22:10):
He said, today I received a detailed report on the
talks in Cairo. We are working all the time to
achieve our goals, primarily the release of all our hostages
and achieving a complete victory over Hamas, whatever that means.
This victory requires entry into Rafa and the elimination of
the terrorist battalions there. He goes on to say, it
will happen. There is a date. This noteworthy for a

(01:22:35):
lot of reasons. Obviously, as we've covered before, you have
over a million Palestinians who have been pushed into Rafa
in dire humanitarian conditions, who have been displaced there Rafa
up along the border with Egypt. Egypt has been very
strongly asserting that they have a major problem with the
idea that the IDF would directly invade Rafa. The US

(01:22:59):
government also so pushing back on the possibility of a
Rafa invasion, originally saying hey, this is a red line,
then sort of shifting and saying, well, you got to
figure out the humanitarian situation first, but still raising a
lot of concerns about Rafa. There were further questions after
the IDF, as I mentioned before, withdrew from southern Gaza
about what this meant.

Speaker 4 (01:23:20):
But BB here.

Speaker 1 (01:23:21):
Sager making it clear there's a date he set on
this Rafa invasion, and in a sense I mean for
his own political posturing. That always seemed obvious to me
that he wasn't going to back off of this because
the moment the war ends, the moment there will be
a reckoning with him in his political future, and so
he can't allow that to happen. Also, the most psycho

(01:23:44):
parts of its coalition are very determined to have this
full on onslaught into Rafa.

Speaker 4 (01:23:49):
So that's where we are.

Speaker 2 (01:23:50):
Yeah, we have evidence of that, we can put that
up there on the screen. You could see it clear
as day. Here we have Ben Gavier. He says, if
the Prime Minister decides to end the war without an
extensive attack on Rafa, he will not have a mandate
to continue serving as Prime Minister, making it as clear
as it gets for what is at least what is
going on inside of his coalition. But at the same time, Crystal,

(01:24:11):
we have some developments with the ceasefire. We're getting conflicting
news reports, so I'm not exactly sure where we stand.

Speaker 1 (01:24:17):
Yeah, so let's put this up on the screen from CNN.
There was a report yesterday. This is actually from Jerusalem
Post based on a CNN report, but they said that
Hamas rejected the latest hostage deal proposal. You know, they
always frame this is like Hamas is the problem, but
in reality, there are negotiations going on.

Speaker 4 (01:24:35):
There's a give and take here.

Speaker 1 (01:24:37):
Some of the issues that I've seen reported are you know,
there's always this problem of Hamas wants a permanent ceasefire
and BB obviously saying, listen, even if we get to
some sort of a deal here, it's going to be
temporary because we're still going into Rafa. So that's a
sticking point. The number of hostages that would be released
in the early phases of this potential ceasefire also so

(01:25:00):
appears to be an issue. Israel has been asking for
forty hostages. This is all based on reports in the
humanitarian category, meaning not IDF soldiers, and effectively, some of
the reports indicate that there aren't forty hostages in that
category who remain alive, which is horrifying, you know, and

(01:25:24):
we don't know the circumstances under which they may specifically
have perished. But we're six months into a war that
has been characterized by absolute annihilation, destruction, starvation, dehydration, cut
off of medical facilities, etc. It's entirely predictable that alongside
the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed,

(01:25:47):
that some of the hostages would perish as well. So
this really confirms what a lot of people who were,
you know, including the hostage families who've been pushing from
the beginning, and some of the hostages themselves after they
were released in the early seasefire, saying listen, the way
you're conducting this war, you have no idea where these
hostages are. You're not keeping them safe. Every day this

(01:26:09):
goes on is imperiling their lives. And so I think
we have, through the number of hostages who have been
killed at this point, sad confirmation that at least some
of that was really true.

Speaker 2 (01:26:21):
Yeah, it's really unfortunate that they're not being able to
even account for a lot of them. As you said,
it is predictable considering that many were killed outright, either
on the ground or many of them said that they
were being bombed. It's possible to and we don't know
whether Hamas PIJ any of these other organizations what that
level of treatment was like for these existing hostages. It's

(01:26:42):
obviously a very chaotic situation. These are many of these
people could have been malnourished and all this other anyway,
it's very devastating. We did, however, see an interesting clip
that came out of the US State Department where again
the great journalist Matt Lee just presses the State departments
person over and over again, where he's like, hey, so
if you were able to get aid in this time,

(01:27:04):
why weren't you ever able to do it before? What
is the line? And he's completely exposed here. Let's take
a listen.

Speaker 8 (01:27:10):
I will tell you that the step that they are
taking now is important, but it's overdue. It should have
should have happened months ago. A lot of these steps
should have been happened months ago. We're happy that they're
happening now, but they need to be increased and they
need to be sustained.

Speaker 7 (01:27:23):
So I'll stop after this.

Speaker 9 (01:27:24):
But in recognizing that, often hindsight is twenty twenty.

Speaker 7 (01:27:30):
Shouldn't you have done put the ultimatum?

Speaker 1 (01:27:34):
Or shouldn't the president have done that months ago?

Speaker 8 (01:27:37):
So we have made clear to them for months what
we expect them to do, and we have seen and
we have seen them take steps at our urging, and
some of those steps have been important, but they haven't
been sufficient. And all I can say is that we
welcome the initials that the initial steps they have taken
over the past few days, they represent a dematic improvement,

(01:27:59):
if fully limited. But we're going to judge them ultimately
by the results.

Speaker 3 (01:28:02):
So you could see it there right there, Chrysal, We're
going to judge by the results. We'll see. But he's
unable to answer the very basic question.

Speaker 1 (01:28:08):
Yeah, Democrats have caught themselves in a complete trap here
with their nut and Yahoo bear hug strategy. As led
by the Biden White House, because their position has been oh, no,
Israel's not blocking humanitarian aid, which they had to say
because if they acknowledged that Israel was in fact instituting
a siege, blocking humanitarian aid using starvation as a weapon

(01:28:32):
of war, then under our laws we would not be
able to continue transferring weapons to them. So they've had
to deny that reality. Okay, well, now you've actually not
even changed your policy, but just threatened up potentially, possibly
in some undefined way, change your policy in the future.

(01:28:52):
And lo and behold you get some still inadequate, but
notable changes from Israel where it's very apparent, Oh all
that they're not blocking humanitarian aid was a complete and
total lie. It was a life from the Israelis. It
was a lie from the Americans. So you're caught in
this bind of what do we say about this now?
How do we position ourselves? How do we acknowledge? Also

(01:29:14):
the reality that we could have done this long before
but just chose not to wasn't a problem for us,
a sufficient problem for us when we were watching a
dozen Palestinian babies die a day from starvation, But when
our buddies aid workers whose lives deserve to be honored
and cherished as well.

Speaker 4 (01:29:32):
But that that was the line for us.

Speaker 1 (01:29:33):
I mean, it speaks, it speaks volumes, and there's really
no way you can get out of the implications of
what we've all seen unfold. And I think actually to
transition to some notable comments that Elizabeth Warren apparently made
last week, and she's in a similar bind here because
it's become so undeniable the amount of atrocities that have

(01:29:55):
been committed in front of us, that, especially for democ
it's anyone who wants to preserve an image as any
sort of humanitarian they have to acknowledge that. And yet
they still haven't shifted from all out both arded policy
support of Israel. So let me play these comments from her.
She was answering a constituent question I believe this was

(01:30:17):
in Boston about whether or not Israel is committing genocide,
and she says, actually, yes, they are, that there is
sufficient evidence, ample evidence, I think is the word that
she used, that they will be found to be committing
genocide by the International Court of Justice. Let's listen to
her specific comments and responses.

Speaker 4 (01:30:35):
Constituent, do you think that Israel is committing a genocide.

Speaker 12 (01:30:39):
So I think that what's happening now is there's going
to be alarmed and involved debate over what constitutes genocide.
When you ask a legal question, for me, it is
far more important to say what Israel.

Speaker 7 (01:30:55):
Is doing is wrong and it isra It is.

Speaker 12 (01:31:00):
Wrong to starve children with a civilian population in order
to try them them to your will. It is wrong
to drop two thousand pound bombs in densely populated civilian areas.

Speaker 7 (01:31:18):
I think I can.

Speaker 12 (01:31:19):
Make a more effective argument by describing the behavior that
is happening and whether I believe it is right or wrong,
and look people in the eye and say, do you
want to tell me if you think it is right
and that it should be the policy of the United
States of Americas support those actions. So that's how I

(01:31:40):
analyze this.

Speaker 10 (01:31:42):
Now. I did analyto question, said it was the answer,
another facult question was the answer, no question to clarify.

Speaker 12 (01:31:50):
So if you want, if you want to do it
as an application of law, I believe they would find
that it is genocide, and they have ample evidence to do. So.
What I'm also trying to tell you is I'm trying

(01:32:10):
to get people past a label's argument which seems to
throw out the screen and to get them to look
at the behavior on the ground, to get them to
look at the children, to get them to look at
the mons, the old people and the people have been displaced,
at the people who are living outside of the people
who are drinking during the water and talk about what

(01:32:32):
the role of the United States is in connection with supporting.

Speaker 7 (01:32:37):
The meeting the governments. But the people of.

Speaker 1 (01:32:41):
Goes in that physician, so you can hear very clearly
there she says, as a matter effectively of international law,
I believe they will be found guilty of genocide and
believe there is quote ample evidence to support that conclusion.
But this raises a lot of uncomfortable questions for Elizabeth
Warren because she has supported the Biden policy in terms

(01:33:02):
of how she's voted.

Speaker 4 (01:33:04):
She voted to.

Speaker 1 (01:33:05):
Defund the number one aid organization on the ground in
Gaza Unra, which has been essential in terms of, you know,
at this present moment and previously as well, getting aid
to Gaza's who are now starving to death. So if
it's a genocide, you have aided in that genocidal policy.
And she has continued to vote in terms of military

(01:33:29):
aid to Israel. So you can see the discomfort in
the way that we can put this next piece up
on the screen. Her spokesperson is trying to walk this
back a bit, these comments, and I guess sort of
nuanced troll on them, she says. In a Q and
A Center, Warren commented on the ongoing legal process at
the International Court of Justice, not sharing her views on

(01:33:52):
whether genocide is occurring in Gaza. In January, the ICJ
found that it is plausible Israel's committed acts that violate.

Speaker 4 (01:33:58):
The Genocide Convention.

Speaker 1 (01:33:59):
As the senator said the mosque, what is far more
important than any label that comes out of this legal
process is the question of whether it should be the
policy of the US to support Israel's actions in Gaza.
Center Warren believes from Minister nat Nan and his right
wing war cabinet have created a massive humanitarian disaster in Gaza,
have not taken reasonable steps to protect civilians. As she
said at the mosque, it is wrong to starve children
within a civilian population in order to try to bend

(01:34:21):
to your will. It is wrong to drop two thousand
pound bombs in densely populated civilian areas. The Center has
worked with her colleagues in Congress to push for a
sea spot, the return of hostages, for conditioning aid to Israel,
for free flow of humanitarian aid in Gaza, and for movement.

Speaker 4 (01:34:34):
Toward a two state solution.

Speaker 1 (01:34:36):
So you know, even in the interaction, you could tell
that she was uncomfortable with having to actually say the
word genocide, but also couldn't really get out of it.
So now they're trying to walk it back a bit
by saying, oh, this isn't really.

Speaker 4 (01:34:51):
Her personal view.

Speaker 1 (01:34:52):
She's just sort of evaluating this process that is unfolding
at the International Court of Justice. But I mean they're
the one that, from a legal perspective, make the determination.
So if you think they have ample evidence that this
is the genocide, why are you still supporting a Biden
administration policy of aiding and abetting this genocide.

Speaker 2 (01:35:12):
The whole thing is very silly in the way that
she handles the question. It's like, lady, either say it
or don't. Just put your opinion on the table. Stop
trying to tap dance around this. Either you know you
voted for it, defend the vote, say you change your
mind that you don't believe it, or that you do
this is I'll be honest again, I don't use this
type of language specifically for this reason. I think international
law is fake. I don't think anything it can be

(01:35:33):
proved or disproven. She's actually returning to her almost like
did you notice that her law school route of like, well,
if you want to look at the legal question, I'm like, well,
this isn't all a question. I mean, I guess it
is technically, but it's one of those with no enforcement.

Speaker 3 (01:35:48):
You either support the policy or you don't.

Speaker 2 (01:35:50):
And it's clear too that she is one where she's
trying to square it with I think trying to keep
progressive credentials or any of that and all that together,
and she's just not giving her straight up opinion, which
is actually my biggest takeaway, especially two in terms of
clear up. If you believe it, then say it, you know,
but have the courage to say it.

Speaker 3 (01:36:09):
That's my all I would say.

Speaker 1 (01:36:11):
I actually think that the fact that an Elizabeth Warren
feels pressure to acknowledge that there is ample evidence this
is a genocide is proof that the ICJ process has
actually mattered, because you know, that sort of language, you know,
was considered totally outside of the Overton window of mainstream

(01:36:35):
acceptability early on in this conflict. And I do think
that South Africa's case, the fact that the ICJ, overwhelmingly
including the American judge by the way, which was kind
of shocking, found that there was sufficient evidence here to say, Okay,
it's plausible, this case can move forward.

Speaker 4 (01:36:53):
And of course we've.

Speaker 1 (01:36:53):
Continued to see the evidence of not only what was
done in terms of the annihilation, but the way that
starvation continues to be used as a weapon of war
here has made it very difficult for people like AOC,
people like Elizabeth Warren, anyone who sees themselves as being
a progressive, as being on the left, as being a humanitarian,
to avoid the implications of that. So I actually see

(01:37:16):
it as consequential. The fact that you have a mainstream
United States senator who's you know, actually now gotten to
the left of Bernie Sanders in terms of what he's
been willing to say it is pretty extraordinary. Now, again
it's a little empty given her voting record, but this
is toothpaste that Israel can't really put back in the tube.

(01:37:39):
You've now had a United States senator say that you
are committing a genocide, I mean a state that was
founded out of the horrors of the Holocaust, obviously a
horrifying genocide, and now you're being accused by a senator
from your top ally and benefactor of committing a genocide.

Speaker 4 (01:37:57):
It is extraordinary.

Speaker 1 (01:37:58):
It is It's something I could have just like Nancy
Pelosi's signing on to the letter saying, hey, maybe we
should condition aid to These are things that would have
been unthinkable.

Speaker 4 (01:38:08):
A year ago.

Speaker 1 (01:38:10):
And you know, I don't know how to put a
how to conclude this because on the one hand, you think, Okay, well,
in the future this is really going to matter in
terms of how things have shifted in US public opinion,
et cetera. In the short term, I can't say that
it's really going to make a difference viz a vi
Joe Biden and how he conducts himself, because I think

(01:38:30):
he's such a locked in ideologue. But you know, the
language that we've heard throughout this conflict about the way
that Israel is becoming increasingly isolated on the world stage,
about how they're becoming increasingly estranged from one of the
two major parties in the United States, not necessarily the politicians,
but the base.

Speaker 4 (01:38:47):
This is all true and you can.

Speaker 1 (01:38:49):
Ask South Africa, the white apartheid regime of South Africa,
how it went for them once they faced a high
level of global estrangement for their apartheid regime and crimes.
All Right, guys, we've been tracking closely how Iran might
respond to that Israeli strike on their consular building in Damascus.

(01:39:12):
Let's put this element up on the screen. There's been
a very interesting report that Iran may have actually offered
the US a sort of an ultimatum, or I guess
issued an ultimatum saying basically, listen, we won't directly attack
Israel in response if you're able to secure a ceasefire deal.
Doctor Treeta Parsi, who's standing by for further analysis, put

(01:39:34):
out this tweet taking a look at this report and
what it could mean. He said in part First, it's
clear that Iran wants to avoid a direct confrontation with Israel,
but it cannot evade it unless it secures a big
win in the region. Tehran may suspect a ceasefire is
already in the making, and as a result use that
as a pretext to both take credit for it and
to avoid getting into a shooting fight with Israel. He continues, second,

(01:39:56):
this is very risky, but also rather c If the
threat compels Biden to finally put material pressure on Israel
in order to avoid a regional war, Iran can take
some credit for having saved the people of Gaza. He
goes on to indicate that this may suggest Iran might
have figured out how to target Israel in a way
that is proportionate. It does not provide Israel with grounds

(01:40:18):
for further escalation. Striking Israeli consulates or embassies in the
region Harry's tremendous political risks, and he continues to outline
how it actually is more difficult than you may think
to identify an Israeli embassy to target without causing other
regional habit, contrary to what the Iranians perceived to be
their interest. And as I mentioned before, Executive vice President

(01:40:39):
at the Quincy Institute, doctor Trita Parsi joins us.

Speaker 4 (01:40:42):
Now, always great to see you, doctor.

Speaker 7 (01:40:43):
Good sessir, thank you so much for having me so.

Speaker 1 (01:40:46):
First, tell us a little bit about this report of
this ultimatum and how credible you find it to be.

Speaker 13 (01:40:52):
So the report has been in the Arab media and
it essentially says that in this secret talks that are
not that secret any law between the United States and Iran,
and some of it has been taking place in Oman,
and the Iranian four ministers on his way to New
York now and have apparently gotten a visa from the
United States. That's been a tricky part in the past,

(01:41:14):
oftentimes getting it at the last minute, if at all.
But the report essentially says that as part of the
communications between the United States and Iran, and we do
know that the Iranians sent a message to the US
immediately after the Israeli attack on the Yronian consult in Damascus,
that they have essentially offered an off round for both sides,
which is that if the United States secures a cease fire,

(01:41:37):
then Iran will refrain from retaliating, and that retaliation could
be against embassies of Israel and the region, or it
could potentially be against Israel proper, and on top of
that a vague formulation that it could also lead to
a path towards greater understanding between the United States and Iran. Now,

(01:41:58):
the White House has denied that this report is true.
I don't know how much stock I take in that,
given what John Kirby says on a daily basis at
the White House Press of these days, and the Ranians
have given mixed messages on this, so it's not clear
whether it is true or not. But what it does signify, however,
is that there is a very interesting diplomacy taking place

(01:42:21):
between the US yon in the background, and they're both
in a situation in which they don't want a further escalation,
and they're trying to calibrate to what extent can they
continue to have some lower level confrontation, and to what
extent can they afford to put pressure on their partners
or allies or proxies, whatever you want to call it,

(01:42:42):
without causing too much strain between themselves and those partners.
So we see from the Bider administration there's almost zero
pressure that he's willing to put on Israel, fearing that
any real pressure would actually cast him therely politically at home,
a calculation that I personally think is a miscalculation.

Speaker 7 (01:42:59):
A similar condition exists on the Ivanian side.

Speaker 13 (01:43:01):
They have ringed in the Iraqi and civil and malicious,
but it has also cost them because of tensions that
that tends to create between them on this ground. So
again It's not entirely clear whether it's true or not,
but it does indicate some very interesting developments behind the scene.
And if it is true, then the question is how
we'll buy it and react to it. And one of

(01:43:21):
the things I've porned out is that I find it
very difficult for him politically to agree to this if
the perception is that he is acting on their duress
because of pressure from Iran. But he may still go
in that direction while denying that the Yvanian ultimatum either
as true or had anything to do with his decision.

Speaker 2 (01:43:41):
Just in contact, could you frame it for how extraordinary
it was to strike an embassy And is it even
within Iran's option matrix to do nothing in the way
that they have not yet responded to the US retalitatory
strike in response to the killing of three US service members.
Whenever it comes to Israel, is that even an option

(01:44:02):
that's on the table?

Speaker 3 (01:44:03):
What's your analysis there?

Speaker 7 (01:44:05):
Excellent question, So let me start off with the first one.

Speaker 13 (01:44:07):
This is an extremely unusual attack by the Israelis and
a very very flavorant violation of international law. Striking embassies,
according to the Vienna Convention, is completely off limits. It
is as bad as when the Iranian students took the
Ivanian the US embassy in Iran back in nineteen seventy nine.

(01:44:31):
It ended up taking fifty two American diplomats hostage for
four hundred and forty four days. Now, what is so
sad about all of this is that we've seen now
a pattern in which just the last couple of months
in which the Israelis have violated almost every international law
and almost seemed to be doing so deliberately to just
a further weekend these international lawms. And it is quite

(01:44:51):
noteworthy that it is only a couple of days after
the Israeli attack, which was not condemned by the United States,
that we also saw the Ecuadorian government take over the
Mexican embassy in Ecuador to take a person who had
fought as political asylum there. So we're seeing an erosion
of these international norms. But we should not forget that

(01:45:15):
these are norms that have been very strong and extremely
uncommon or countries to engage in attacks of this kind,
and even in the many attacks that the Vanyas have
been involved in against Israel, it has not led to
those type of attacks. Now, these Raelis knew very well
what they were doing, because they knew that the Iranian
red line was an attack on their territory and their

(01:45:35):
embassy and Concert is technically their territory.

Speaker 7 (01:45:38):
And it goes to what you mentioned earlier on. The
Iranians have taken.

Speaker 13 (01:45:42):
A lot of hits from these Raelis in the last
couple of years, particularly in Syria, without retaliating, and part
of what they've said is that those attacks were on
attacks against Syria, attacks against living On, they were not
attacks against Yvan.

Speaker 7 (01:45:56):
Even though Ivanyas died this.

Speaker 13 (01:45:58):
Time around, they can't really say that because this is
an attack on their soul. Now, whether they will respond
or not is a very complicated calculation. But what is
fascinating in all of this is that fifteen years ago
the Yvani has had a very explicit policy in which
they actually simulated ivrationiz it was called simulated irrationale.

Speaker 7 (01:46:18):
They wanted to.

Speaker 13 (01:46:19):
Behave in an extremely unpredictable and uncalculable way because they
believe that that gave them a margin of security. If
the other side doesn't know how you're going to react
to one of your actions, you're going to be more
careful because you cannot calculate what their next step is.

Speaker 7 (01:46:35):
This is very similar to Nixon's mad Man theory. Today.

Speaker 13 (01:46:39):
If you listen to what the Yvanian officials are saying,
it's quite the opposite. They're saying that they're going to
take their time, the response is going to be irrational
and proportionate. It's a complete shift, and it is a
lot of people inside the Vanian regime hardliners that are
very unhappy about this because they believe that this has
weakened Van's deterrence visa the United States and ITEL and

(01:47:02):
then pointing to this growing level of attacks by it
as evidence that yvon is losing as the turns, and
if that argument wins out, we may end up seeing
an unpredictable reaction by the Irani is something that has
not been considered by most analysts on the Western side,
and it can.

Speaker 7 (01:47:20):
Lead to a very very dangerous estination in the region.

Speaker 1 (01:47:23):
So I think it's important to remind people that both
the Israelis and the Americans have assessed that Iran was
not directly involved in planning the October seventh attacks. I
think that's important to keep in mind that there are
many voices here in the US that are constantly pushing
for a direct war with Iran. But you have assessed here,

(01:47:43):
doctor Parci, that neither the Iranians nor the Americans want
this direct, larger confrontation. So what do you believe is
Netanyahu's goal here?

Speaker 4 (01:47:55):
What would he like to see play out?

Speaker 1 (01:47:58):
Why did he choose this moment to launch such a
provocative and escalatory attack.

Speaker 13 (01:48:04):
Nathania who is the odd man out in this equation
because he does have an interest in expanding the war,
prolonging the war. The minute this war ends, he will
likely go to jail. He's an extremely unpopular Israeli Prime minister,
there will be re elections, and there's already criminal charges
filed against him for corruption. So he has an interest

(01:48:26):
in prolonging and enlarging the war, which completely contradicts what
Biden says is his interest. And this is part of
the problem with Biden essentially deferring US foreign policy to Nithaniah.
It is these Raelings that call the shots and the
parameters of the negotiations that are currently taking place about
the release of the hostages and increasing voices in Israel.

Speaker 7 (01:48:48):
Point Nathaniah, who does not want to win.

Speaker 13 (01:48:50):
The release of the hostages because if all the hostages
are released, it will be more difficult for him to
continue the war, and he does not want to end
the war. And the United States and Biden has the
same actually linked its policy to Nataniahu's preferences, and those
preferences are in complete contrast to what Biden himself says
that he wants. Another mistake I think the Bide administration

(01:49:13):
is doing in its approach to these negotiations is that
there has been a linkage created between the hostage release
and a ceasefire.

Speaker 7 (01:49:21):
Now, on a surface level, that seems to make sense.

Speaker 13 (01:49:23):
Of course, Hamas has to give up these hostages and
in return get a complete ceasefire, but in reality that
means that as long and the hostages are not released
and NATANIAO is not trying to win their release, there's
then a justification for Israel to continue. It's indiscriminate slaughter

(01:49:46):
in God. This is part of the reason why the
American UN draft was rejected. It linked the two things,
essentially saying there would be a hostage release when there
is a seasfier, would be a seatspire when there's a
hostage release. The UN resolution that was passed delay it
and essentially said it is an independent and imperative to

(01:50:06):
solve the slaughter in Gaza. Holding the hostages is not
a justification for Israel to kill thousands of children and
other innocence in Gaza. And there's also an imperative for
these hostages to be released, but they are not linked.
Both of them have to happen, but they shouldn't be
dependent upon each other.

Speaker 7 (01:50:23):
Otherwise, as long as one hundred and thirty or.

Speaker 13 (01:50:26):
So hostages are held in Gaza, there is a justification
that for the killing of thousands of thousands of civilians
and know what the country about the United States has
signed on to that forma.

Speaker 1 (01:50:35):
Well, doctor Parsi, thank you so much as always for
your analysis today. It's been invaluable and I really recommend
to everyone that they read what you're writing of our
responsible state craft, and also make sure to follow you
on Twitter because your reaction to these events has been
essential in understanding some of the things that are unfolding.

Speaker 4 (01:50:54):
Thank you so much for your time today.

Speaker 7 (01:50:55):
Great to say, thank you so much for having me appreciation.

Speaker 4 (01:50:57):
It's our pleasure, Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:50:59):
Last week we could not let the show end without
revealing Sager's activities yesterday during the solar eclipses.

Speaker 4 (01:51:06):
With someone on the screen.

Speaker 3 (01:51:08):
I didn't ask for this.

Speaker 1 (01:51:09):
This smar cringe posting no better way to see the eclipse.
He's got his Apple Vision pro on there, so I
guess I'll ask the series score, what does it actually
look like through the Apple Vision Pro.

Speaker 2 (01:51:21):
Well, it was great, Crystal, because I could. Here's the thing,
It's a digital representation of the real world, so my
eyes were completely shielded. Some people said that my cameras
would get blinded and all that. I had no issues.
I was able to actually put a nice dark filter
using the environment's feature. Here's the thing. I'm being roasted
into covering this. I didn't ask to cover this. If

(01:51:42):
I knew that we would, I would have filmed it.
I would have filmed it for everybody. And this is
just simply I was enjoying in the privacy of my home.

Speaker 3 (01:51:49):
I decided to tweet it out as a joke.

Speaker 2 (01:51:51):
I tweeted out as a joke because I actually shared
the picture with friends. It was Marshall who said, DUJEI
got to tweet that out and I said, okay, fine,
So I did, and now here I am. But I
will say the vision pro is completely fine, the cameras
are fine, my eyes are fine. I am not one
of the Yeah, I mean, I I believe so, I
mean my eyesight is still very bad, I guess, but.

Speaker 1 (01:52:10):
It continues to be bad, continues to improvement.

Speaker 4 (01:52:15):
Not one of the You're not one of the people
could put this up on the screen.

Speaker 1 (01:52:18):
Apparently there was this massive surge in people googling why
do my eyes hurt? And my eyes hurt?

Speaker 3 (01:52:26):
My eyes hurt? Yeah, staring at the sun will do
that to you. Absolutely a shocker.

Speaker 1 (01:52:31):
So Donald Trump, I guess there's a throwback comment. That
picture of him and Milania is still iconic, where she's
got her glasses on and he's like looking up at
the thing with no glasses on, doing the exact opposite
of what literally everyone says you should do.

Speaker 4 (01:52:44):
Classic Trump.

Speaker 3 (01:52:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:52:46):
I mean, uh, maybe they're lying though about how dangerous
it actually is.

Speaker 3 (01:52:50):
I'd be curious.

Speaker 2 (01:52:50):
I want to know what the actual stats are because
they always say that, they're like, don't look at the eclipse.
Don't look at the eclipse. Is it because you're just
not supposed to look at the sun?

Speaker 3 (01:52:57):
Period? Like what?

Speaker 2 (01:52:58):
Like something about the harm radiation, and so every time
that it comes around, everyone says that, But I've never
seen a case somebody go blind from looking at the clips.

Speaker 1 (01:53:06):
I think the thing is, I'm just like kind of
making this up at this point, but everyone knows you
can tell right away when you're actually looking at the sun,
like it hurts your eyes in real time you're like, oh,
I should I'm going to stop because this is not pleasant.
But if you're in a totality or new totality, you
could be looking at it and it wouldn't actually be
having that same impact on you, Like I got to

(01:53:28):
look away, but it's still having.

Speaker 4 (01:53:30):
A negative impact.

Speaker 8 (01:53:31):
I think.

Speaker 1 (01:53:32):
I think that's the deal I we here in the
DC area. I think we got with like eighty seven percent.
You could kind of I mean you could definitely if
you have the glasses on, you could see the sun.
You could see it happening. But if you didn't, you
could tell it was a weird. There was like a
weird dimness. It's like a strange Kyle said the lightest
having an identity crisis. That was like kind of what

(01:53:52):
it felt like. I went in twenty seventeen to that one.
I went to Tennessee to see the totality, and I
would like to do it again because it is a
cool experience. I mean, it's crazy when it almost looks
like a sunset and then things get so dark in
the middle of the day. It is a weird, eerie,
surreal experience that, you know. I guess I'll have to

(01:54:15):
wait till twenty forty five, till the next one comes
around in the US. But yeah, to me, it was
worth it making the trip. We went with the whole family.
We actually like, we'reround on a lake and it was
it was neat.

Speaker 4 (01:54:25):
I enjoyed it.

Speaker 13 (01:54:26):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:54:27):
The next map twenty forty four is actually going to
be in Montana and you can go to Yeah, you
can go to the National Park Glacier Now, I believe.
I think it's great. Glacier National I think falls within
the totality. I mean, I'm telling you that place is
beautiful enough as is, so the idea of doing that
with the eclipse that sounds pretty cool. Twenty years from now,

(01:54:47):
I guess I'm going to be there. I'm convinced because
of the videos that came out of Austin that people
were sending me of the actual totality the blackness, and.

Speaker 3 (01:54:56):
I was like, oh damn, that actually sounds pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (01:54:58):
So there's no comparison between being in actual totality and
getting even a hybrid, you know, a ninety percent or
whatever we got here eighty seven percent. It really is
a completely different experience. So I don't you know, I
don't think it's cringy that people who made the trek
to Cleveland or Buffalo or Austin or wherever they were
able to see it, weren't they But in Austin didn't

(01:55:18):
they have cloud cover?

Speaker 2 (01:55:19):
They did, but it didn't stop the darkness. So I
mean they weren't able to see the actual like event.
I think they were able to sum it depends on
where you were. But the darkness itself, I mean you
couldn't stop that. Apparently even night animals were howling or whatever,
like coyotes and things like that because they thought it
was So that's pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (01:55:36):
I think that's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:55:37):
So I see why people in the old times thought
it was dark magic.

Speaker 4 (01:55:40):
I get it now, Yeah, totally, maybe they were right.

Speaker 2 (01:55:44):
All right, we're headed out, guys, Thank you very very much.
This week Counterpoints, we'll be doing the AMA so please
send in your special counterpoints, AMA questions for Ryan and Emily,
and they will send that to you on Sunday.

Speaker 3 (01:55:57):
Otherwise we will see you all later.

Speaker 11 (01:56:00):
The keep

Speaker 6 (01:56:02):
And keep it

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