March 6, 2025 • 37 mins
In this episode, Lisa welcomes O.H. Skinner, the executive director of the Alliance for Consumers, to discuss the evolution of corporate America's diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Skinner explains how the Obama administration's push for DEI influenced corporate policies and how these initiatives have faced challenges under the Trump administration. He highlights the pressures companies face from both political spectrums and the impact of consumer activism on corporate behavior. The Truth with Lisa Boothe is part of the CLay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Tuesday & Thursday.
#diversity #equity #inclusion #DEI #corporate #America #Obama #Trump #progressive #agenda #backlash #activist #businessinterests #workplaceculture
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I was at a conference recently and I heard my
next guest speak and I thought to myself, let's get
him on the show. He was discussing Corporate America's embrace
of diversity, equity and inclusion. But he was saying things
I hadn't heard before, and it was just different angles
that I'm used to hearing. And that's what I try
to do on this podcast, is just to get different angles,
to get different guests, to keep things interesting, but also
(00:22):
just so that we can all continue learning together. But
what he was talking about is Obama's role former Price
in Obama's role in pushing these companies to the left,
how his people infiltrated Corporate America and turned them woke.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
So we'll discuss that.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
We'll discuss what happened, and we'll also discuss the latest
course correction now that President Trump and his administration all
these DEI executive orders and you know, pushing America's companies
back to the right. So we'll discuss that course correction.
How long will it last? What do we need to know?
So stay tuned for oh Skinner. He's the executive director
of Alliance for Consumers. He also previously worked for the
(01:00):
Arizona attorney General. He was the state's lead council in
the United States Supreme Court. So stay tuned for O
which Skinner well, O aged, it's great to have you
on the show. I recently met you, and you know,
we're having discussions about some of this DEI stuff, and
so I was like, I got to get them on
my podcast. So I appreciate you making the time, and
(01:21):
I look forward to this conversation.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
This is gonna be fun.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
It will be fun.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Okay, So let's start with because you you said something
which I hadn't really given much thought about prior to
you saying it.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
But explain walk us through the role that.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
The Obama administration and Obama world played in pushing these
companies to woke and pushing these companies towards DEI.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah. I mean, I think what's really important to understand
about corporate America at a basic level is that they
just respond to incentives and pressures, especially pressures, and you know,
you have to go back in time to what feels
like forever ago. But you know, Obama wins, he's the president.
He starts putting all this pressure on corporate America to
do diversity, to do all these things that we now
(02:07):
know as is DEI. And then he gets re elected
and so especially in his second term, you have all
of this exodus of Obama era officials and lawyers and
agency heads, and they're all going into corporate America. Right.
Like one of the things that's easy to forget is
that the Obama people all got jobs at places like
(02:28):
Google or you know, Tony West is like a great example.
He ended up going to Uber and being the head
of government affairs, and it's like you can literally follow
the trajectory of like DEEI in America. One of my
friends says, by following this guy Tony West. And so
they all leave to go to corporate America. And they're
busy telling corporate America that the way to be safe
from the Obama administration is to just get ahead of them.
(02:50):
Do a little bit more diversity, do a little bit
more esg, do a little bit more, a little bit more,
you stay one step ahead of the government, and then
the government doesn't smack you, doesn't find you, doesn't sue you,
and then we all forget that. Like all of those
smart people thought that Hillary Clinton was going to be president,
and so as the second term of Obama is ending.
(03:11):
They're not pulling back into neutral, They're not getting worried
about maybe having a direction shift in Washington. They're like
doubling and tripling down. They're hiring as many officials as
they possibly can from the Obama team and people they
think are going to be favorable from the Clinton world.
They're just like really digging in and then Trump wins. Right.
So the easy thing to understands you look at the
(03:33):
world now is that all of the seeds for what
we see in corporate America were driven by this belief
from corporate America that the way to make the pressure
stop from Washington was to hire the Obama people, who then,
of course, as you know, they just import all of
what they were going to do in the government. But
now they have control over the companies, right, so they're
(03:55):
just pushing the companies to do everything that they would
have done had they still been in government. Right. So
that's I think really to understand where it came from,
you have to understand this like arc of what they
thought was going to be twelve years of you know,
strong push from Washington with democratic presidents to do all
(04:15):
of what we now know of Asda.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Well, and what's interesting is, you know, we know that
Obama made race a you know, obviously being the first
black president, but really just a lot of race initiatives
and really pushing sort of that racial division in the country.
I mean, the irony is when he left, I think
it was even CNN said that, you know, fifty four
percent of Americans believed that race relations had gotten worse
(04:40):
under his time, so obviously didn't you know, I guess
he did to do an effective job driving people apart.
Was that just for political reasons or what do you
think the strategy for Obama was with all of that?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
You know, that's hard. I always people ask me sometimes
whether the government officials are doing something for political reasons
or for you know, for their own ultras degreesment. I
think it's always a mix of things. You know, It's
hard when you are pushing this narrative for such a
long time on the left about where so many of
(05:13):
their policies are are hinged on like social justice, racial justice,
all these things, right, like, they hang so many of
their policies on those things, which you know, it's the
easy answer is to say, once you start selling something
for certain reasons, you can't just sell half the package.
(05:36):
If you're telling people that environmental justice is so important
because minority communities are hardest hit. If you're telling people
that you need to have different tax policies, different spending policies,
all in the name of racial or environmental or all
these other things, right, it's also really hard to then
try and be like, but we shouldn't be promoting people
in corporate America, and we should like, once you've sold
part of the package, the rest of the ideas follow
(05:58):
if that makes sense, even if they weren't like the
reason that you were selling the idea, they all follow through, right,
It all like it continues. People don't. People don't suspend
their disbelief and think that we should be very race
conscious in some settings but then not in other settings.
And so when the left start selling racial you know,
(06:19):
justice as a reason to do countless things, it follows through.
And I think, if you're being honest, a lot of
the like uh, George Floyd's stuff ended up being like
the logical conclusion of something that you can see. Right.
Obama would talk all the time about this. You've seen
this when he's given speeches and like lectured the left
about like identity politics and being crazy leftists, right. I
(06:44):
think a lot of that is he knew that he
was pushing this DEI stuff. And then the logical end
point is these marches in the street being like defund
the police, that they're racist, and it's like the people
who set off like they like release the virus are
sitting there thinking, whoa we liked like racial justice to
like explain our tax policy or our giveaway policy or
(07:07):
a spending policy, like we didn't mean like get rid
of the police. And people are like, well, you told
us that like racial disparities mean racism, and so like
the police are doing things that are racially disparate, so
therefore they're racist, so we should get rid of them.
You could just see the people be like, oh my god,
it escaped containment. We didn't mean that. I think that's
probably the right way to think about it.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
And also in thinking about it, I mean it's kind
of a straight smart strategy because if you're sort of
pressuring these companies to build out their DEI department, I
mean most of the people who are going to be
in those roles, I mean that's the left, the left wing,
you know, way of thinking, so they're going to.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Be filled with progressives and leftists. So it's it's it's
actually a.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Smart way to get a foothold with some of these companies, right.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
So yeah, yeah, I mean it's like it's like it's
like what you see with some of the gender stuff now,
where people will say, well, we need to have like
a gender equity. I mean, we need to have a
transgender department at this university. Well, all you're doing is
when you start a whole new apartment and staff it
with all your people, you give yourself like more boots
on the ground, right, And so you're exactly right. The
DEI department starts small, and then they grow, and then
(08:08):
they grow, and then they grow, and then one of
those people becomes the CEO of the company and now
all of a sudden, like you've gotten control of a place.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
How significant was the death of George Floyd, because I
mean that really set a lot of things off in
the country after his death, from soft on crime policies
to you know, the rest of it. So how significant
do you think that was in pushing these companies to
the left and also, you know, forcing these companies to
(08:35):
embrace DEI.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
You know, it's funny. I actually don't know that it
had a lot, if anything. I think it probably it
was like didn't help them on the DEI front. Like
you got to understand that my core belief about companies
and why you see like products being taken off store shelves,
(09:00):
The thing I care about the most is that they're
constantly just negotiating with the pressures that they're under. And
so I think, you know, the this goes back to
something we were talking about earlier. I do think that
that I'll get back to the George Floyd point I promised.
But what you saw during the Obama years was also
this like negotiation of corporate America between like the burnie
(09:22):
crowd that wants to confiscate all of Corporate America and
like turn it into like, you know, a government run
institution and the social justice crowd that just wants to
take thirty percent of the budget of corporate America and
turn it into crazy social promotion and stuff, right. And
you could see that with the George Floyd protests, where
like there's radicals in the streets that are basically like
(09:44):
hair down city government, defund the police, and any company
that is like not towing the line we're gonna like
blast them if you're not taking down your ads, if
you're not posting black squares on the internet. Right. And
I think in a way that crowd like scale corporate
America because they thought they'd cut a deal where if I, like,
if I give a huge DEI department, then like the
(10:06):
burning crowd won't come for me. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (10:09):
And I think that the here's this gets back to
our modern day. If corporate America is just responding to pressure,
then back then they were importing all the Obama people
because they were looking for the pressure to only come
from the left under Obama and Clinton. And they're negotiating
only between the Obama Tony West. I'm going to work
(10:29):
at a company, but talk about diversity and the burning
crowd that's like, I'm gonna talk about diversity and take
your company from you, right, Like, that's who they were
negotiating between. And the right was silent. Right. And so
are we surprised that corporate America just starts to like
only make products for the left and only higher leftists. Right.
What you've seen in the most recent set of years
is started with state ags, some private groups and now
(10:53):
the Trump administration. Why is corporate America snapping back to
the middle. Is now there's like an aggressive pressure from
the right to drop your DEI programs, stop doing weird
esg stuff, stop banning products, stop trying to ban gas stoves,
stop trying to be weirdos, just like be the middle
(11:14):
of America, right and bam, all of a sudden, Corporate
America sure is talking like they're now in the middle.
Why because now there's pressure on the right and there's
pressure on the left, and so where does corporate America
start to go somewhere in the middle right? Like it's
just suddenly, it's like conservatives have finally learned that the
only thing corporate America can listen to, if we're being honest,
(11:35):
is pressure. Whether it's a boycott or whether it's a lawsuit.
They only respond to pressure. And now that there's consistent
pressure from the right on these issues, you're seeing corporate
America start to at least try to hue back to
the middle. And that's a tremendous thing.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Well, you know, we saw some of these sort of
you know, I guess you would call them, I guess
they're boycotts, but you know pressure campaigns, you know, getting
a lot of bad press, and you know a lot
of social media activity with things like bud Light and
Target and Disney. Why do you think those specific pressure
campaigns worked? And then kind of what message do you
(12:15):
think that's sent to the rest of corporate America.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
I think they worked because it was the first time
that corporate America was viewing a lot of the DEI
in particular stuff as not free. But you got to
understand that like the sales paid. Like I can't explain
enough to you that. Like Eric Holder, you know, he
was the head of he was Attorney General under Obama.
(12:41):
He has this business where he goes to companies in
the last few years and he charges them like fifteen
hundred dollars an hour. It's probably more like two thousand
dollars an hour now because of you know, how the
world works, telling him about how there's all these benefits
to building out diversity and all these programs, and it
was working. Biden, He's making all this money. He goes
(13:01):
to a company tells him to be more woke than
he cashes a huge check. Well, nowadays we call it
getting holdered because then they get sued by a state
or now they're going to get sued by by the
Department of Justice, and then he's going to come back
in and be like, hey, I can defend you. I
can make more money. Right, there's this whole industry of
people telling them do the woke thing. It's an unalloyed good.
(13:24):
You'll get all this positive praise from the Washington Post
and the New York Times. You'll be lauded, you'll get
to be go to the high five people at your
country club, and it won't cost you anything. So just
keep doing it right and then bam, bud light happens.
You get Target, you get some of these other things.
And so the first time these official these people in
(13:45):
these companies who aren't radicals are like, wait, I did
that thing. You said it was going to be all upside,
no downside, but now I'm like getting this massive hit
to my bottom line. I should have never done it
in the first place. Didn't get me anything. This is dumb.
And so I think they worked because they showed actual,
(14:10):
like belief from most people that they just want people
to make products for them and not just like lecture
at them. So I mean, I mean the various ones
that worked were where the core demographic of the company
just didn't match the slot that was being thrown at
them by the heads of the offices right like you know,
(14:33):
and so you saw people get really really mad because
something totally out of whack was happening. And Corporate America
responded because it was the first time they had ever
felt pain as a result of something that they were
told was like a freebie.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
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Speaker 1 (14:50):
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Speaker 2 (15:56):
What percentage of.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
These companies do you think where like see CEO actually
believes these things versus feeling like they were sort of
being held hostage by sort of employees and like the
movement so to speak.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Yeah, Yeah. The line I keep being told by lots
of different people, especially when I complained to them about
like why they're removing products from store shelves, is that
about seventy percent of companies just want to go along
and get along, and so they'll they'll they'll do what
the left wants when they are left in charge to
a certain degree, and they'll do it the right ones,
but they're not like committed right. And then I've heard
(16:32):
that like thirty percent of companies are like either wholly
taken over by the DEI clan or the CEO believes
it right, Like, I don't know if you guys saw this.
Like Robbie Starbuck has done just a huge amount. Yeah,
and when he talks about how like Harley Davidson was
one that he that was really important to him because
the customer base was conservative, and the CEO is like this,
(16:54):
like euro you know, like you' a weirdo who was
like trying to convince everybody that like climate change was
going to end the world and that the only way
Harley Davidson could survive is by stopping selling the product
that everybody bought, and instead they would just make like
electric bikes. That's that's an example of like the CEO
is a believer, he's in the thirty percent. Right. There's
(17:15):
other companies that have flipped under pressure from states to
Robbie Starbuck, where like they kind of like you could
just tell that they were just happy that somebody finally
gave them an excuse to tell their DEI department to
shove off, right, that somebody gave them the right to
go down to their HR department and say like they reed, yeah, yeah, yeah,
So the comment that so one of the state ags
(17:36):
who was pushing back in this. He'll often refer to
it as like, I'm not anti business. I think that
the pressure I bring is, you know, let the pressure
set them free. Right, Like when I bring pressure on
a company, it allows them to just make the choices
that they know are write for their customers, freed from
the belief that they might be called out for being
a bigot or a racist or all of the things
(17:58):
that you and I have seen people get called. He's like,
I just want them to be free to just make
business choices, right, and surprise, like, business choices means that
they're just like going to keep guestos, that they're going
to still sell gas grills, that they're going to like
stop doing weird stuff and start just like meeting their customers, right,
And so he always refers to as like the pressure
like I'm gonna the pressure will set them free. Right.
(18:19):
It's not me being negative on corporate America. It's me
wanting corporate America to be better. So take us.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Through, as the executive director of Alliance for Consumers, take
us through.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
I guess some of the.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Craziest examples you've seen of companies just pushing like ridiculous,
woke things that even you've been like whoa, Okay, that's
you know that's out there.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Well, you know it's funny. Is a lot of the
A lot of it just I mean you've seen I
would say the craziest ones are the things that you've seen,
whether it's you know, bud Light deciding that notwithstanding in
their core demographic, they're going to become like the LGBTQ
hotbed of America, right, or it's places like you know
(19:02):
or like what Target did where you're just like, you know,
they should know the demographic their shops at their stores
and that they're not interested in seeing you know, trans
kids swimsuits. But what I think is actually like more
interesting is the craziness of the government because the government
stuff is like what you're now seeing is governments trying
(19:23):
to push companies pass where the companies even want to go.
And so you've seen this, like I don't know if
you've seen this in California now, like you can't buy
gas lawnmowers anymore. Have you seen this?
Speaker 3 (19:33):
I don't think I actually have.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Oh see, this is beautiful, like when you live in
like real America, there is Florida. We're free there, you know, yeah,
exactly right, right, So you know I live in Arizona
and that's close to California. So like we catch the
you know, we catch the blowback that comes out of there.
You know, they're busy doing things like banning gas powered
lawnmowers and leaf flowers in the name of climate change, right,
(19:57):
And so now you see these videos on the Internet
of people walking through like a home depot and the
cheapest thing they can buy as like a like a
normal like riding lawnmar that used to cost like let's
just say a thousand dollars is now like a four
thousand dollars thing that depending upon where you live, you
might have to charge it in the middle of mowing
your lawn, right, all in the name of like ESG
(20:20):
and you're just sitting there being like you're literally making
everybody's lives worse. It costs more and does a worse job. Right.
It's like the theme that you see all the time,
whether it's messing with your dishwasher, messing with your refrigerator.
What's the outcome? The government officials are making it cost
more and do a worst job, cost more and do
a worse job. And what I think is the part
(20:41):
that is like it won't mean as much to your listeners,
but it means a lot to me. Is twenty years
ago when the government officials would do this junk companies
and people would fight it. Where I see the DEI
and the ESG stuff really doing this like dirty dangerous
thing is it's making companies roll over and agree to
(21:03):
remove products and agree to do stuff in the name
of the climate or anti racism or any of these
other silly things. And so that leaves like a group
like mine to actually yell about how this makes people's
lives worse. You used to be able to rely on
somebody at a company to say, well, I still want
to be able to sell something to a person, but
now they've been so scared by the Left that they
(21:26):
just agree. I mean. Another one that I'll say is
just bonkers and will make everybody's life terrible is California
has now passed this rule that says, if you want
to operate trucks in California, you have to make your
entire fleet zero mission trucks. What is a zero mission
like freight truck. It means that you're supposed to have,
like a truck, like an eighteen wheeler that hauls stuff
(21:47):
all across America, be battery powered, right, I don't know
if you. I mean, I grew up in the middle
of America. These trucks are limited by how much they weigh,
and the battery is weigh a ton, which now means
that the truck's in can like half as much and
have to charge it all the time. But California is
busy trying to make it so that you can only
have those trucks if you drive anywhere in California. Your
(22:08):
truck's in Nebraska and Iowa also have to be zero
mission long haul trucks, and the trucking companies agreed to it.
They like wrote this special agreement. You're lacking that they
wrote this special agreement with the Biden administration saying, even
if your rule is struck down in court, we agree
to implement it anyway in the name of like climate justice. Right.
And so what you've got is like everyone like the
(22:30):
stuff at your store comes on these trucks, Like now
it's going to get more expensive, it's going to take
longer to get there. It's more expensive and does a
less good job, and the companies were like, sounds good. Right.
So that's the stuff that just like blows my mind
is when these officials look like they're just trying to
make your life worse. You know, I don't know. Did
you see did you see all the articles they're like
(22:51):
right at the tail end of the Biden administration about
how good life could be with that air conditioning? Did
you see this?
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Yes, which I fundamentally just I of course, yeah. I'm
you know, I'm the type of.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Person who like lives in Florida and my permit's freezing
so I can sleep with a comforter, Like yeah, great, great, right,
I'm like a bad I'm one of the worst offenders.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
We love in America finds. I know. But when you're
in the media, you know this When when you see
the first article that says how great it is to
live with that air conditioning, you're like, that's weird. When
you see the second one, you're like, wait a second.
When you see the third, fourth, fifth, and they talk
about how like the fight for climate change includes getting
rid of things like air conditioners, all of a sudden,
(23:34):
you have this moment where you're like, oh my god,
the reason you officials are raising the price of air
conditioners or banning. They banned the HFCs that go into
a lot of these air conditioners, and I don't know,
you probably haven't experienced this. Nowadays, a lot of air
conditioning companies won't repair your air conditioner. That just make
you buy a whole new system because they can't get
the replacement chemicals. And so when something leaks, you now
(23:56):
have to buy like a new thirty thousand dollars air
conditioning system, depending upon where you live. And all of
a sudden, you have this moment you're like, oh my god,
that's not like a negative side effect from these officials perspective.
You kind of want air conditioning to be unreachable? Why
do they want us.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
To live like that?
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Though?
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Because you know, I remember, like even I can't remember
the exact headlines, but they were also basically like you know,
breadlines are great.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
It's like yeah, yeah, no exactly, but like why do.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
They want us to What's what's behind that? Like, why
do they want us to live like this is?
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Okay? Well, now we's explain the y y, the why
I'm home. So you may you may have heard this
phrase net zero. I mean, I'm sure you've heard that,
right people zero? Okay, net zero means net zero by
twenty thirty or twenty fifty, depending on who you're talking to. Okay,
it actually means that you have to hit at zero
as defined by the UN like EIA, like Energy Group, right,
(24:52):
they have charts in order to hit net zero that
means net zero new carbon emissions. They literally will say, Okay, well,
in order to hit at zero, that means you're allowed
to have x percent of your emissions come from this,
and this and this. It literally means that you have
to get rid of all of the natural gas powered
fired power plants in America. All the gas stations have
(25:14):
to go away, Your ships in your harbors, and the cranes,
they all have to become electric. The semitrucks electric in
order to hit and at zero, like, they have math
that they have to solve for. And so when you
buy this idea that the world will end unless we
go net zero by twenty thirty, once you accept that,
(25:34):
you have to get people to give up air conditioning,
you have to get people to give up the gas
powered cars. You have to get people to make all
of these changes and probably get rid of things like dishwashers, right,
get rid of things like a like a refrigerator that
is too big, right from the last perspective, because otherwise
your math doesn't math. As one of my friends says, like,
(25:57):
you just can't get there.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
And so when they know we're never going to get
there though, see, this.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Is where this is where you and I can have
that discussion of maybe some chunk of them are just
burnie people who think that like government needs to control
all of this stuff. And so if you can, like
you know, there's that crowd and this is in my mind, right, Okay,
so you and I kind of share that mind, but
there's like a whole nother crowd that like they've been
told they grow up in California, they've been told in
(26:23):
school that the climate change. Like I had somebody at
my house the other day who said that they were
terrified of climate change. Number one issue climate change? Right?
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Did you get them out?
Speaker 2 (26:33):
And look, my immediate reaction was, what are using number?
What are you doing about climate change? And the number
one thing they're doing about climate change is composting, So
like we clearly have an issue where like the thing
they're doing doesn't have anything to do with the thing
that like, the life's got some problems, okay, But at
the end of the day, there is a cohort of
people who like they've been told that the world's ending,
that they have to do X to make the world
(26:54):
not end, and so they're going to buy damn it,
do X, right. But I do think that a lot
of this does stem from like government control. And you know,
if you tell people that they can't use too much.
I mean, look, we made a video called twenty thirty
and it's all about what it will be like in
California and net zero world. And you see that the
government like meters how much electricity you can use, you
(27:17):
have to use only so much hot water because you
basically are allowed an allotment of like carbon emissions on
a given day. And so if your kid takes a
hot shower, you can't take a hot shower. Your lights
turn off at the end of your day, your electric
car you can't have a fan at the office, so
the company can hit their net zero targets, right, like
it just it is to your mind and my mind,
(27:37):
nothing gives the government more ability to control every aspect
of your life than telling you exactly how much electricity
and power you're allowed to use. You ask somebody who
comes from Venezuela and you tell them what the ESG
people are pushing, and their immediate reaction is that's how
they control your life, because that's what they did in Venezuela. Right.
There's another component of people that I think is just like, well,
(27:59):
this is how I'm gonna sell a climb change and
you and I are like, you're not going to actually
do that, and they're like, no, no, but we need
to try. So I don't know, it's a mix.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah, I'm with you because remember even AOC's former chief
of staff, I can't remember his name, but he basically
said that the Green New Deal was a how do
you control the entire economy type of thing, right, I mean.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Okay, So, like you know, it's like we're talking just
the two of us, nobody else is listening, you know.
I think that explains a lot of this, right, Like,
but I do think you have these people who aren't
thinking about the logical endpoint, and I just want to
give some credit that there are chunks of them out there.
I mean I have heard. Okay, so you asked about
the craziest thing in corporate America. I finally remember my
craziest thing in corporate America. I have heard from friends
(28:47):
that they were sitting in meetings at giant, mega death
corps that sell lots of stuff. Okay. So like, imagine
a big box store that like you or I have
been inside, okay, and somebody was legitimately advocating that to
meet their net zero target should stop selling beef products
in the grocery at their store. And somebody else is like,
(29:07):
people like buying hamburger at our store, We're just going
to remove it because then it's good for the climate,
because you know. The little reveal is that the left
thinks that all the cows should go away because they
can't make their math math with the cows, just to
be clear. But there's literally sitting there and a person
who works for a company is advocating removing all of
(29:28):
the beef products from their entire store all across America
in the name of climate justice basically, and this person
is like slack John looking at them, being like, why
on earth would we stop selling something to customers that
they like and that we have, you know, But that
was a discussion in corporate America in twenty twenty four
(29:51):
because of these there's people who think of this ESG stuff,
And that's not the AOC staffer. That's somebody who's been
infected by the bug that the AOC staff are sent
over the world, right, and like advocating for like a
very anti consumer move at a very consumer facing company,
and it was like not laughed out of the room.
I mean, it was eventually laughed out of the room,
but it took a while.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
How much do you think this past election.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Was just Americans being like, I want to return to normalcy,
you know, because the past four years have been totally abnormal,
as you talked about, Oh, you don't need air conditioning,
you know, redlines are great, or you know, men can
be women, women can be men, you know what I mean,
Like just we've lived in a totally bizarre world for
like four years, and so how much of this past
(30:37):
election do you think was just like, get off my lawn,
I want to be normal again, you know, I.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Think it's I think it describes everything. Look, the vast
majority of Americans don't think of themselves as political animals.
They just want they just want life to be good
and normal. Right, And if you buy what they were
saying before, you know, if you buy the narrative is
about the last election. They are two elections ago. People
(31:04):
were voting for Joe Biden because they thought he was
like a return to like a bygone era and normalcy.
And what they got to your point was bands on
gas stoves and like making your dishwasher worse, and you know,
boys and girls' locker rooms and the I think a
logical conclusion is whatever I voted for, it's not this.
(31:25):
I just want like life to be normal. I want
to be able to go to the store and buy
Hamburger and drive my car that is powered by gasoline
and then go and actually have and like cook it
at home without the government telling me what I can
and can't use. Right. I think that really sums up
a lot of people's views, and I think it's a
(31:47):
good thing. And I think that the pressure that you're
seeing under the Trump administration against DEI and a lot
of these things at the federal level is going to
be so comforting to people because it'll manifest itself in
just like like life will just look normal at stores again,
which would be really nice.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
We've got a quick commercial break more with Oah Skinner
on the other side, and we've seen them kind of
come out the gate already and with a lot of
these DEI executive orders and really sending the message that
you know, this nonsense is over. We're going back to
a meritocracy. We're going back to normalcy and common sense.
(32:27):
You know, what sort of long lasting changes do you
think the Trump administration can make and are they are
they going about it the right way right now? And
what else would you like to see from them to
make those longer lasting changes.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
I mean, they have the ability to make huge changes
to the extent that it will be the first time
with the like host Students for Fair Admissions versus Harvard,
which is a huge Supreme Court case that we haven't
talked about, is really important. Now. The entire Department of
Justice and the entire White House has US Supreme Court
(33:02):
case law saying that, like, you cannot discriminate in America
based on race, even if you're Harvard, and even if
you're trying to do it in a like altruistic way
in your own words. Right, No, you're not allowed to
discriminate based on race, full stop. America gets to go
back to being like a colorblind society. Now with that
in their hand, they finally have the ability. It'll be
(33:24):
the first Republican administration with the will and the law
on their side to basically create pressure on corporate America.
And the number one thing they can do is just
follow through on the eos and investigate companies. You know,
you asked question earlier that I didn't answer, which is
when one company gets a boycott, what message does that
(33:45):
send to the other market participants? They all immediately change
their behavior. So if one or two companies in an
industry get taken out into the school yard and just
like you know, metaphorically, you know, get smacked around by
the law of anti discrimination law in America using the
Apartment of Justice and the Department Civil Rights and made
an example of for the crazy stuff that they've been doing.
(34:08):
The rest of them are going to stop it. They're
going to just shut it down, right. Their lawyers going
to walk around and be like, we're done, We're not
doing any of that anymore. And the more of that
that happens, the more corporate America gets locked into the middle,
not being liberal, not being conservative, which frankly, that's a
good place for it to be because it's supposed to
sell things to both types of people in America, and
(34:29):
so the you know what I just want to see
is this the cadence just keeps going right because it's
been a focus at the beginning, and now just get
it implemented. And the more pressure it more, the more
it sets corporate America free. And I think if there's
four years of pressure, I don't think you're ever going
to see corporate America writ large go crazy to the
(34:50):
left anymore because we will have trained them that there's
pressure on the right and there's pressure on the left.
And when there's two types of pressure, you just chart
a course through the middle. Well from your lips to
God's ears. So let's let's keep the pressure. Yeah, I mean,
I'm looking forward to it, you know, And I just
I just want people to like be able to buy
things from companies that aren't trying to tell them how
(35:11):
to live their lives. That's a good thing if we
can get there.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
And that's kind of what you guys are doing at
the Alliance for Consumers.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Yeah, we fight really hard to just look there, there's
a long time where companies stopped fighting back against crazy stuff,
and they started being the implementers. And at the end
of the day, consumers just want, you know, they want
simple things. They want to be able to go to
the store without getting mugged. They want there to be
things on the store shelves when they get there that
haven't been robbed. And they would like to not be
(35:38):
socially lectured while they're at the store. And they would
like the government to let them buy this kind of
grill or that, this kind of sink or that without
it being entirely dictated by AOC's chief of staff. And
if you can just let them do that, they'll vote
with their feet and they'll buy the things they want,
and they'll live the lives they want. If you live
in a coastal enclave of California, you'll buy a tiny
(35:59):
electric car and the super expensive dishwasher, and you know,
maybe you'll go without air conditioning. And if you live
in Plano, Texas, you'll buy a suburban for your four kids,
and you'll buy a normal house with normal cars and
normal dishwashers, because that's the life you're choosing to live.
And that's fine. I'm fine with a crazy person in
coastal California live in a crazy life. They're allowed to
(36:19):
be weird. But I think most people who live in Eden, Prairie,
Minnesota or Plano, Texas should also be allowed to, like
buy a car and have three kids. I just think
that's like a normal thing to do.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
Yeah, like I don't want to be weird.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Yes, most Americans, just like most Americans are busy with
their kids and their lives, and they're not thinking about
how they could squeeze an extra two percent efficiency out
of their dishwasher and exchange for an extra three thousand dollars.
That's a Nancy Pelosi problem. That's not a family in Plano,
Texas problem. And along the way, the government got confused
and they started making it. You know, we call it
(36:54):
mandated progressive lifestyle choices. They're just trying to like mandate
the Nancy Pelosi Marine California crazy lifestyle onto the rest
of the country rather than just letting those people be
them and the rest of the country be normal America.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Waite Skinner was great to meet you recently and great
to have you on the podcast. I really appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
This has been fun.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
That was Waged Skinner. Appreciate him for taking the time
to come on the show. Appreciate you guys at home
for listening every Tuesday and Thursday, but you can listen
throughout the week until next time.
I was at a conference recently and I heard my
next guest speak and I thought to myself, let's get
him on the show. He was discussing Corporate America's embrace
of diversity, equity and inclusion. But he was saying things
I hadn't heard before, and it was just different angles
that I'm used to hearing. And that's what I try
to do on this podcast, is just to get different angles,
to get different guests, to keep things interesting, but also
(00:22):
just so that we can all continue learning together. But
what he was talking about is Obama's role former Price
in Obama's role in pushing these companies to the left,
how his people infiltrated Corporate America and turned them woke.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
So we'll discuss that.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
We'll discuss what happened, and we'll also discuss the latest
course correction now that President Trump and his administration all
these DEI executive orders and you know, pushing America's companies
back to the right. So we'll discuss that course correction.
How long will it last? What do we need to know?
So stay tuned for oh Skinner. He's the executive director
of Alliance for Consumers. He also previously worked for the
(01:00):
Arizona attorney General. He was the state's lead council in
the United States Supreme Court. So stay tuned for O
which Skinner well, O aged, it's great to have you
on the show. I recently met you, and you know,
we're having discussions about some of this DEI stuff, and
so I was like, I got to get them on
my podcast. So I appreciate you making the time, and
(01:21):
I look forward to this conversation.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
This is gonna be fun.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
It will be fun.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Okay, So let's start with because you you said something
which I hadn't really given much thought about prior to
you saying it.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
But explain walk us through the role that.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
The Obama administration and Obama world played in pushing these
companies to woke and pushing these companies towards DEI.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah. I mean, I think what's really important to understand
about corporate America at a basic level is that they
just respond to incentives and pressures, especially pressures, and you know,
you have to go back in time to what feels
like forever ago. But you know, Obama wins, he's the president.
He starts putting all this pressure on corporate America to
do diversity, to do all these things that we now
(02:07):
know as is DEI. And then he gets re elected
and so especially in his second term, you have all
of this exodus of Obama era officials and lawyers and
agency heads, and they're all going into corporate America. Right.
Like one of the things that's easy to forget is
that the Obama people all got jobs at places like
(02:28):
Google or you know, Tony West is like a great example.
He ended up going to Uber and being the head
of government affairs, and it's like you can literally follow
the trajectory of like DEEI in America. One of my
friends says, by following this guy Tony West. And so
they all leave to go to corporate America. And they're
busy telling corporate America that the way to be safe
from the Obama administration is to just get ahead of them.
(02:50):
Do a little bit more diversity, do a little bit
more esg, do a little bit more, a little bit more,
you stay one step ahead of the government, and then
the government doesn't smack you, doesn't find you, doesn't sue you,
and then we all forget that. Like all of those
smart people thought that Hillary Clinton was going to be president,
and so as the second term of Obama is ending.
(03:11):
They're not pulling back into neutral, They're not getting worried
about maybe having a direction shift in Washington. They're like
doubling and tripling down. They're hiring as many officials as
they possibly can from the Obama team and people they
think are going to be favorable from the Clinton world.
They're just like really digging in and then Trump wins. Right.
So the easy thing to understands you look at the
(03:33):
world now is that all of the seeds for what
we see in corporate America were driven by this belief
from corporate America that the way to make the pressure
stop from Washington was to hire the Obama people, who then,
of course, as you know, they just import all of
what they were going to do in the government. But
now they have control over the companies, right, so they're
(03:55):
just pushing the companies to do everything that they would
have done had they still been in government. Right. So
that's I think really to understand where it came from,
you have to understand this like arc of what they
thought was going to be twelve years of you know,
strong push from Washington with democratic presidents to do all
(04:15):
of what we now know of Asda.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Well, and what's interesting is, you know, we know that
Obama made race a you know, obviously being the first
black president, but really just a lot of race initiatives
and really pushing sort of that racial division in the country.
I mean, the irony is when he left, I think
it was even CNN said that, you know, fifty four
percent of Americans believed that race relations had gotten worse
(04:40):
under his time, so obviously didn't you know, I guess
he did to do an effective job driving people apart.
Was that just for political reasons or what do you
think the strategy for Obama was with all of that?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
You know, that's hard. I always people ask me sometimes
whether the government officials are doing something for political reasons
or for you know, for their own ultras degreesment. I
think it's always a mix of things. You know, It's
hard when you are pushing this narrative for such a
long time on the left about where so many of
(05:13):
their policies are are hinged on like social justice, racial justice,
all these things, right, like, they hang so many of
their policies on those things, which you know, it's the
easy answer is to say, once you start selling something
for certain reasons, you can't just sell half the package.
(05:36):
If you're telling people that environmental justice is so important
because minority communities are hardest hit. If you're telling people
that you need to have different tax policies, different spending policies,
all in the name of racial or environmental or all
these other things, right, it's also really hard to then
try and be like, but we shouldn't be promoting people
in corporate America, and we should like, once you've sold
part of the package, the rest of the ideas follow
(05:58):
if that makes sense, even if they weren't like the
reason that you were selling the idea, they all follow through, right,
It all like it continues. People don't. People don't suspend
their disbelief and think that we should be very race
conscious in some settings but then not in other settings.
And so when the left start selling racial you know,
(06:19):
justice as a reason to do countless things, it follows through.
And I think, if you're being honest, a lot of
the like uh, George Floyd's stuff ended up being like
the logical conclusion of something that you can see. Right.
Obama would talk all the time about this. You've seen
this when he's given speeches and like lectured the left
about like identity politics and being crazy leftists, right. I
(06:44):
think a lot of that is he knew that he
was pushing this DEI stuff. And then the logical end
point is these marches in the street being like defund
the police, that they're racist, and it's like the people
who set off like they like release the virus are
sitting there thinking, whoa we liked like racial justice to
like explain our tax policy or our giveaway policy or
(07:07):
a spending policy, like we didn't mean like get rid
of the police. And people are like, well, you told
us that like racial disparities mean racism, and so like
the police are doing things that are racially disparate, so
therefore they're racist, so we should get rid of them.
You could just see the people be like, oh my god,
it escaped containment. We didn't mean that. I think that's
probably the right way to think about it.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
And also in thinking about it, I mean it's kind
of a straight smart strategy because if you're sort of
pressuring these companies to build out their DEI department, I
mean most of the people who are going to be
in those roles, I mean that's the left, the left wing,
you know, way of thinking, so they're going to.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Be filled with progressives and leftists. So it's it's it's
actually a.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Smart way to get a foothold with some of these companies, right.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
So yeah, yeah, I mean it's like it's like it's
like what you see with some of the gender stuff now,
where people will say, well, we need to have like
a gender equity. I mean, we need to have a
transgender department at this university. Well, all you're doing is
when you start a whole new apartment and staff it
with all your people, you give yourself like more boots
on the ground, right, And so you're exactly right. The
DEI department starts small, and then they grow, and then
(08:08):
they grow, and then they grow, and then one of
those people becomes the CEO of the company and now
all of a sudden, like you've gotten control of a place.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
How significant was the death of George Floyd, because I
mean that really set a lot of things off in
the country after his death, from soft on crime policies
to you know, the rest of it. So how significant
do you think that was in pushing these companies to
the left and also, you know, forcing these companies to
(08:35):
embrace DEI.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
You know, it's funny. I actually don't know that it
had a lot, if anything. I think it probably it
was like didn't help them on the DEI front. Like
you got to understand that my core belief about companies
and why you see like products being taken off store shelves,
(09:00):
The thing I care about the most is that they're
constantly just negotiating with the pressures that they're under. And
so I think, you know, the this goes back to
something we were talking about earlier. I do think that
that I'll get back to the George Floyd point I promised.
But what you saw during the Obama years was also
this like negotiation of corporate America between like the burnie
(09:22):
crowd that wants to confiscate all of Corporate America and
like turn it into like, you know, a government run
institution and the social justice crowd that just wants to
take thirty percent of the budget of corporate America and
turn it into crazy social promotion and stuff, right. And
you could see that with the George Floyd protests, where
like there's radicals in the streets that are basically like
(09:44):
hair down city government, defund the police, and any company
that is like not towing the line we're gonna like
blast them if you're not taking down your ads, if
you're not posting black squares on the internet. Right. And
I think in a way that crowd like scale corporate
America because they thought they'd cut a deal where if I, like,
if I give a huge DEI department, then like the
(10:06):
burning crowd won't come for me. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (10:09):
And I think that the here's this gets back to
our modern day. If corporate America is just responding to pressure,
then back then they were importing all the Obama people
because they were looking for the pressure to only come
from the left under Obama and Clinton. And they're negotiating
only between the Obama Tony West. I'm going to work
(10:29):
at a company, but talk about diversity and the burning
crowd that's like, I'm gonna talk about diversity and take
your company from you, right, Like, that's who they were
negotiating between. And the right was silent. Right. And so
are we surprised that corporate America just starts to like
only make products for the left and only higher leftists. Right.
What you've seen in the most recent set of years
is started with state ags, some private groups and now
(10:53):
the Trump administration. Why is corporate America snapping back to
the middle. Is now there's like an aggressive pressure from
the right to drop your DEI programs, stop doing weird
esg stuff, stop banning products, stop trying to ban gas stoves,
stop trying to be weirdos, just like be the middle
(11:14):
of America, right and bam, all of a sudden, Corporate
America sure is talking like they're now in the middle.
Why because now there's pressure on the right and there's
pressure on the left, and so where does corporate America
start to go somewhere in the middle right? Like it's
just suddenly, it's like conservatives have finally learned that the
only thing corporate America can listen to, if we're being honest,
(11:35):
is pressure. Whether it's a boycott or whether it's a lawsuit.
They only respond to pressure. And now that there's consistent
pressure from the right on these issues, you're seeing corporate
America start to at least try to hue back to
the middle. And that's a tremendous thing.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Well, you know, we saw some of these sort of
you know, I guess you would call them, I guess
they're boycotts, but you know pressure campaigns, you know, getting
a lot of bad press, and you know a lot
of social media activity with things like bud Light and
Target and Disney. Why do you think those specific pressure
campaigns worked? And then kind of what message do you
(12:15):
think that's sent to the rest of corporate America.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
I think they worked because it was the first time
that corporate America was viewing a lot of the DEI
in particular stuff as not free. But you got to
understand that like the sales paid. Like I can't explain
enough to you that. Like Eric Holder, you know, he
was the head of he was Attorney General under Obama.
(12:41):
He has this business where he goes to companies in
the last few years and he charges them like fifteen
hundred dollars an hour. It's probably more like two thousand
dollars an hour now because of you know, how the
world works, telling him about how there's all these benefits
to building out diversity and all these programs, and it
was working. Biden, He's making all this money. He goes
(13:01):
to a company tells him to be more woke than
he cashes a huge check. Well, nowadays we call it
getting holdered because then they get sued by a state
or now they're going to get sued by by the
Department of Justice, and then he's going to come back
in and be like, hey, I can defend you. I
can make more money. Right, there's this whole industry of
people telling them do the woke thing. It's an unalloyed good.
(13:24):
You'll get all this positive praise from the Washington Post
and the New York Times. You'll be lauded, you'll get
to be go to the high five people at your
country club, and it won't cost you anything. So just
keep doing it right and then bam, bud light happens.
You get Target, you get some of these other things.
And so the first time these official these people in
(13:45):
these companies who aren't radicals are like, wait, I did
that thing. You said it was going to be all upside,
no downside, but now I'm like getting this massive hit
to my bottom line. I should have never done it
in the first place. Didn't get me anything. This is dumb.
And so I think they worked because they showed actual,
(14:10):
like belief from most people that they just want people
to make products for them and not just like lecture
at them. So I mean, I mean the various ones
that worked were where the core demographic of the company
just didn't match the slot that was being thrown at
them by the heads of the offices right like you know,
(14:33):
and so you saw people get really really mad because
something totally out of whack was happening. And Corporate America
responded because it was the first time they had ever
felt pain as a result of something that they were
told was like a freebie.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
We've got more with Oage Skinner.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
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Speaker 2 (15:56):
What percentage of.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
These companies do you think where like see CEO actually
believes these things versus feeling like they were sort of
being held hostage by sort of employees and like the
movement so to speak.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Yeah, Yeah. The line I keep being told by lots
of different people, especially when I complained to them about
like why they're removing products from store shelves, is that
about seventy percent of companies just want to go along
and get along, and so they'll they'll they'll do what
the left wants when they are left in charge to
a certain degree, and they'll do it the right ones,
but they're not like committed right. And then I've heard
(16:32):
that like thirty percent of companies are like either wholly
taken over by the DEI clan or the CEO believes
it right, Like, I don't know if you guys saw this.
Like Robbie Starbuck has done just a huge amount. Yeah,
and when he talks about how like Harley Davidson was
one that he that was really important to him because
the customer base was conservative, and the CEO is like this,
(16:54):
like euro you know, like you' a weirdo who was
like trying to convince everybody that like climate change was
going to end the world and that the only way
Harley Davidson could survive is by stopping selling the product
that everybody bought, and instead they would just make like
electric bikes. That's that's an example of like the CEO
is a believer, he's in the thirty percent. Right. There's
(17:15):
other companies that have flipped under pressure from states to
Robbie Starbuck, where like they kind of like you could
just tell that they were just happy that somebody finally
gave them an excuse to tell their DEI department to
shove off, right, that somebody gave them the right to
go down to their HR department and say like they reed, yeah, yeah, yeah,
So the comment that so one of the state ags
(17:36):
who was pushing back in this. He'll often refer to
it as like, I'm not anti business. I think that
the pressure I bring is, you know, let the pressure
set them free. Right, Like when I bring pressure on
a company, it allows them to just make the choices
that they know are write for their customers, freed from
the belief that they might be called out for being
a bigot or a racist or all of the things
(17:58):
that you and I have seen people get called. He's like,
I just want them to be free to just make
business choices, right, and surprise, like, business choices means that
they're just like going to keep guestos, that they're going
to still sell gas grills, that they're going to like
stop doing weird stuff and start just like meeting their customers, right,
And so he always refers to as like the pressure
like I'm gonna the pressure will set them free. Right.
(18:19):
It's not me being negative on corporate America. It's me
wanting corporate America to be better. So take us.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Through, as the executive director of Alliance for Consumers, take
us through.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
I guess some of the.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Craziest examples you've seen of companies just pushing like ridiculous,
woke things that even you've been like whoa, Okay, that's
you know that's out there.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Well, you know it's funny. Is a lot of the
A lot of it just I mean you've seen I
would say the craziest ones are the things that you've seen,
whether it's you know, bud Light deciding that notwithstanding in
their core demographic, they're going to become like the LGBTQ
hotbed of America, right, or it's places like you know
(19:02):
or like what Target did where you're just like, you know,
they should know the demographic their shops at their stores
and that they're not interested in seeing you know, trans
kids swimsuits. But what I think is actually like more
interesting is the craziness of the government because the government
stuff is like what you're now seeing is governments trying
(19:23):
to push companies pass where the companies even want to go.
And so you've seen this, like I don't know if
you've seen this in California now, like you can't buy
gas lawnmowers anymore. Have you seen this?
Speaker 3 (19:33):
I don't think I actually have.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Oh see, this is beautiful, like when you live in
like real America, there is Florida. We're free there, you know, yeah,
exactly right, right, So you know I live in Arizona
and that's close to California. So like we catch the
you know, we catch the blowback that comes out of there.
You know, they're busy doing things like banning gas powered
lawnmowers and leaf flowers in the name of climate change, right,
(19:57):
And so now you see these videos on the Internet
of people walking through like a home depot and the
cheapest thing they can buy as like a like a
normal like riding lawnmar that used to cost like let's
just say a thousand dollars is now like a four
thousand dollars thing that depending upon where you live, you
might have to charge it in the middle of mowing
your lawn, right, all in the name of like ESG
(20:20):
and you're just sitting there being like you're literally making
everybody's lives worse. It costs more and does a worse job. Right.
It's like the theme that you see all the time,
whether it's messing with your dishwasher, messing with your refrigerator.
What's the outcome? The government officials are making it cost
more and do a worst job, cost more and do
a worse job. And what I think is the part
(20:41):
that is like it won't mean as much to your listeners,
but it means a lot to me. Is twenty years
ago when the government officials would do this junk companies
and people would fight it. Where I see the DEI
and the ESG stuff really doing this like dirty dangerous
thing is it's making companies roll over and agree to
(21:03):
remove products and agree to do stuff in the name
of the climate or anti racism or any of these
other silly things. And so that leaves like a group
like mine to actually yell about how this makes people's
lives worse. You used to be able to rely on
somebody at a company to say, well, I still want
to be able to sell something to a person, but
now they've been so scared by the Left that they
(21:26):
just agree. I mean. Another one that I'll say is
just bonkers and will make everybody's life terrible is California
has now passed this rule that says, if you want
to operate trucks in California, you have to make your
entire fleet zero mission trucks. What is a zero mission
like freight truck. It means that you're supposed to have,
like a truck, like an eighteen wheeler that hauls stuff
(21:47):
all across America, be battery powered, right, I don't know
if you. I mean, I grew up in the middle
of America. These trucks are limited by how much they weigh,
and the battery is weigh a ton, which now means
that the truck's in can like half as much and
have to charge it all the time. But California is
busy trying to make it so that you can only
have those trucks if you drive anywhere in California. Your
(22:08):
truck's in Nebraska and Iowa also have to be zero
mission long haul trucks, and the trucking companies agreed to it.
They like wrote this special agreement. You're lacking that they
wrote this special agreement with the Biden administration saying, even
if your rule is struck down in court, we agree
to implement it anyway in the name of like climate justice. Right.
And so what you've got is like everyone like the
(22:30):
stuff at your store comes on these trucks, Like now
it's going to get more expensive, it's going to take
longer to get there. It's more expensive and does a
less good job, and the companies were like, sounds good. Right.
So that's the stuff that just like blows my mind
is when these officials look like they're just trying to
make your life worse. You know, I don't know. Did
you see did you see all the articles they're like
(22:51):
right at the tail end of the Biden administration about
how good life could be with that air conditioning? Did
you see this?
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Yes, which I fundamentally just I of course, yeah. I'm
you know, I'm the type of.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Person who like lives in Florida and my permit's freezing
so I can sleep with a comforter, Like yeah, great, great, right,
I'm like a bad I'm one of the worst offenders.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
We love in America finds. I know. But when you're
in the media, you know this When when you see
the first article that says how great it is to
live with that air conditioning, you're like, that's weird. When
you see the second one, you're like, wait a second.
When you see the third, fourth, fifth, and they talk
about how like the fight for climate change includes getting
rid of things like air conditioners, all of a sudden,
(23:34):
you have this moment where you're like, oh my god,
the reason you officials are raising the price of air
conditioners or banning. They banned the HFCs that go into
a lot of these air conditioners, and I don't know,
you probably haven't experienced this. Nowadays, a lot of air
conditioning companies won't repair your air conditioner. That just make
you buy a whole new system because they can't get
the replacement chemicals. And so when something leaks, you now
(23:56):
have to buy like a new thirty thousand dollars air
conditioning system, depending upon where you live. And all of
a sudden, you have this moment you're like, oh my god,
that's not like a negative side effect from these officials perspective.
You kind of want air conditioning to be unreachable? Why
do they want us.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
To live like that?
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Though?
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Because you know, I remember, like even I can't remember
the exact headlines, but they were also basically like you know,
breadlines are great.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
It's like yeah, yeah, no exactly, but like why do.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
They want us to What's what's behind that? Like, why
do they want us to live like this is?
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Okay? Well, now we's explain the y y, the why
I'm home. So you may you may have heard this
phrase net zero. I mean, I'm sure you've heard that,
right people zero? Okay, net zero means net zero by
twenty thirty or twenty fifty, depending on who you're talking to. Okay,
it actually means that you have to hit at zero
as defined by the UN like EIA, like Energy Group, right,
(24:52):
they have charts in order to hit net zero that
means net zero new carbon emissions. They literally will say, Okay, well,
in order to hit at zero, that means you're allowed
to have x percent of your emissions come from this,
and this and this. It literally means that you have
to get rid of all of the natural gas powered
fired power plants in America. All the gas stations have
(25:14):
to go away, Your ships in your harbors, and the cranes,
they all have to become electric. The semitrucks electric in
order to hit and at zero, like, they have math
that they have to solve for. And so when you
buy this idea that the world will end unless we
go net zero by twenty thirty, once you accept that,
(25:34):
you have to get people to give up air conditioning,
you have to get people to give up the gas
powered cars. You have to get people to make all
of these changes and probably get rid of things like dishwashers, right,
get rid of things like a like a refrigerator that
is too big, right from the last perspective, because otherwise
your math doesn't math. As one of my friends says, like,
(25:57):
you just can't get there.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
And so when they know we're never going to get
there though, see, this.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Is where this is where you and I can have
that discussion of maybe some chunk of them are just
burnie people who think that like government needs to control
all of this stuff. And so if you can, like
you know, there's that crowd and this is in my mind, right, Okay,
so you and I kind of share that mind, but
there's like a whole nother crowd that like they've been
told they grow up in California, they've been told in
(26:23):
school that the climate change. Like I had somebody at
my house the other day who said that they were
terrified of climate change. Number one issue climate change? Right?
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Did you get them out?
Speaker 2 (26:33):
And look, my immediate reaction was, what are using number?
What are you doing about climate change? And the number
one thing they're doing about climate change is composting, So
like we clearly have an issue where like the thing
they're doing doesn't have anything to do with the thing
that like, the life's got some problems, okay, But at
the end of the day, there is a cohort of
people who like they've been told that the world's ending,
that they have to do X to make the world
(26:54):
not end, and so they're going to buy damn it,
do X, right. But I do think that a lot
of this does stem from like government control. And you know,
if you tell people that they can't use too much.
I mean, look, we made a video called twenty thirty
and it's all about what it will be like in
California and net zero world. And you see that the
government like meters how much electricity you can use, you
(27:17):
have to use only so much hot water because you
basically are allowed an allotment of like carbon emissions on
a given day. And so if your kid takes a
hot shower, you can't take a hot shower. Your lights
turn off at the end of your day, your electric
car you can't have a fan at the office, so
the company can hit their net zero targets, right, like
it just it is to your mind and my mind,
(27:37):
nothing gives the government more ability to control every aspect
of your life than telling you exactly how much electricity
and power you're allowed to use. You ask somebody who
comes from Venezuela and you tell them what the ESG
people are pushing, and their immediate reaction is that's how
they control your life, because that's what they did in Venezuela. Right.
There's another component of people that I think is just like, well,
(27:59):
this is how I'm gonna sell a climb change and
you and I are like, you're not going to actually
do that, and they're like, no, no, but we need
to try. So I don't know, it's a mix.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah, I'm with you because remember even AOC's former chief
of staff, I can't remember his name, but he basically
said that the Green New Deal was a how do
you control the entire economy type of thing, right, I mean.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Okay, So, like you know, it's like we're talking just
the two of us, nobody else is listening, you know.
I think that explains a lot of this, right, Like,
but I do think you have these people who aren't
thinking about the logical endpoint, and I just want to
give some credit that there are chunks of them out there.
I mean I have heard. Okay, so you asked about
the craziest thing in corporate America. I finally remember my
craziest thing in corporate America. I have heard from friends
(28:47):
that they were sitting in meetings at giant, mega death
corps that sell lots of stuff. Okay. So like, imagine
a big box store that like you or I have
been inside, okay, and somebody was legitimately advocating that to
meet their net zero target should stop selling beef products
in the grocery at their store. And somebody else is like,
(29:07):
people like buying hamburger at our store, We're just going
to remove it because then it's good for the climate,
because you know. The little reveal is that the left
thinks that all the cows should go away because they
can't make their math math with the cows, just to
be clear. But there's literally sitting there and a person
who works for a company is advocating removing all of
(29:28):
the beef products from their entire store all across America
in the name of climate justice basically, and this person
is like slack John looking at them, being like, why
on earth would we stop selling something to customers that
they like and that we have, you know, But that
was a discussion in corporate America in twenty twenty four
(29:51):
because of these there's people who think of this ESG stuff,
And that's not the AOC staffer. That's somebody who's been
infected by the bug that the AOC staff are sent
over the world, right, and like advocating for like a
very anti consumer move at a very consumer facing company,
and it was like not laughed out of the room.
I mean, it was eventually laughed out of the room,
but it took a while.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
How much do you think this past election.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Was just Americans being like, I want to return to normalcy,
you know, because the past four years have been totally abnormal,
as you talked about, Oh, you don't need air conditioning,
you know, redlines are great, or you know, men can
be women, women can be men, you know what I mean,
Like just we've lived in a totally bizarre world for
like four years, and so how much of this past
(30:37):
election do you think was just like, get off my lawn,
I want to be normal again, you know, I.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Think it's I think it describes everything. Look, the vast
majority of Americans don't think of themselves as political animals.
They just want they just want life to be good
and normal. Right, And if you buy what they were
saying before, you know, if you buy the narrative is
about the last election. They are two elections ago. People
(31:04):
were voting for Joe Biden because they thought he was
like a return to like a bygone era and normalcy.
And what they got to your point was bands on
gas stoves and like making your dishwasher worse, and you know,
boys and girls' locker rooms and the I think a
logical conclusion is whatever I voted for, it's not this.
(31:25):
I just want like life to be normal. I want
to be able to go to the store and buy
Hamburger and drive my car that is powered by gasoline
and then go and actually have and like cook it
at home without the government telling me what I can
and can't use. Right. I think that really sums up
a lot of people's views, and I think it's a
(31:47):
good thing. And I think that the pressure that you're
seeing under the Trump administration against DEI and a lot
of these things at the federal level is going to
be so comforting to people because it'll manifest itself in
just like like life will just look normal at stores again,
which would be really nice.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
We've got a quick commercial break more with Oah Skinner
on the other side, and we've seen them kind of
come out the gate already and with a lot of
these DEI executive orders and really sending the message that
you know, this nonsense is over. We're going back to
a meritocracy. We're going back to normalcy and common sense.
(32:27):
You know, what sort of long lasting changes do you
think the Trump administration can make and are they are
they going about it the right way right now? And
what else would you like to see from them to
make those longer lasting changes.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
I mean, they have the ability to make huge changes
to the extent that it will be the first time
with the like host Students for Fair Admissions versus Harvard,
which is a huge Supreme Court case that we haven't
talked about, is really important. Now. The entire Department of
Justice and the entire White House has US Supreme Court
(33:02):
case law saying that, like, you cannot discriminate in America
based on race, even if you're Harvard, and even if
you're trying to do it in a like altruistic way
in your own words. Right, No, you're not allowed to
discriminate based on race, full stop. America gets to go
back to being like a colorblind society. Now with that
in their hand, they finally have the ability. It'll be
(33:24):
the first Republican administration with the will and the law
on their side to basically create pressure on corporate America.
And the number one thing they can do is just
follow through on the eos and investigate companies. You know,
you asked question earlier that I didn't answer, which is
when one company gets a boycott, what message does that
(33:45):
send to the other market participants? They all immediately change
their behavior. So if one or two companies in an
industry get taken out into the school yard and just
like you know, metaphorically, you know, get smacked around by
the law of anti discrimination law in America using the
Apartment of Justice and the Department Civil Rights and made
an example of for the crazy stuff that they've been doing.
(34:08):
The rest of them are going to stop it. They're
going to just shut it down, right. Their lawyers going
to walk around and be like, we're done, We're not
doing any of that anymore. And the more of that
that happens, the more corporate America gets locked into the middle,
not being liberal, not being conservative, which frankly, that's a
good place for it to be because it's supposed to
sell things to both types of people in America, and
(34:29):
so the you know what I just want to see
is this the cadence just keeps going right because it's
been a focus at the beginning, and now just get
it implemented. And the more pressure it more, the more
it sets corporate America free. And I think if there's
four years of pressure, I don't think you're ever going
to see corporate America writ large go crazy to the
(34:50):
left anymore because we will have trained them that there's
pressure on the right and there's pressure on the left.
And when there's two types of pressure, you just chart
a course through the middle. Well from your lips to
God's ears. So let's let's keep the pressure. Yeah, I mean,
I'm looking forward to it, you know, And I just
I just want people to like be able to buy
things from companies that aren't trying to tell them how
(35:11):
to live their lives. That's a good thing if we
can get there.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
And that's kind of what you guys are doing at
the Alliance for Consumers.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Yeah, we fight really hard to just look there, there's
a long time where companies stopped fighting back against crazy stuff,
and they started being the implementers. And at the end
of the day, consumers just want, you know, they want
simple things. They want to be able to go to
the store without getting mugged. They want there to be
things on the store shelves when they get there that
haven't been robbed. And they would like to not be
(35:38):
socially lectured while they're at the store. And they would
like the government to let them buy this kind of
grill or that, this kind of sink or that without
it being entirely dictated by AOC's chief of staff. And
if you can just let them do that, they'll vote
with their feet and they'll buy the things they want,
and they'll live the lives they want. If you live
in a coastal enclave of California, you'll buy a tiny
(35:59):
electric car and the super expensive dishwasher, and you know,
maybe you'll go without air conditioning. And if you live
in Plano, Texas, you'll buy a suburban for your four kids,
and you'll buy a normal house with normal cars and
normal dishwashers, because that's the life you're choosing to live.
And that's fine. I'm fine with a crazy person in
coastal California live in a crazy life. They're allowed to
(36:19):
be weird. But I think most people who live in Eden, Prairie,
Minnesota or Plano, Texas should also be allowed to, like
buy a car and have three kids. I just think
that's like a normal thing to do.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
Yeah, like I don't want to be weird.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Yes, most Americans, just like most Americans are busy with
their kids and their lives, and they're not thinking about
how they could squeeze an extra two percent efficiency out
of their dishwasher and exchange for an extra three thousand dollars.
That's a Nancy Pelosi problem. That's not a family in Plano,
Texas problem. And along the way, the government got confused
and they started making it. You know, we call it
(36:54):
mandated progressive lifestyle choices. They're just trying to like mandate
the Nancy Pelosi Marine California crazy lifestyle onto the rest
of the country rather than just letting those people be
them and the rest of the country be normal America.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Waite Skinner was great to meet you recently and great
to have you on the podcast. I really appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
This has been fun.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
That was Waged Skinner. Appreciate him for taking the time
to come on the show. Appreciate you guys at home
for listening every Tuesday and Thursday, but you can listen
throughout the week until next time.
Host
Lisa Boothe
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