Krystal and Saagar discuss Dave Smith sounds off on Murray debate and Trump crackdown, Trump tariff class war, Saagar's HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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We need your help to build the future of independent
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Speaker 1 (00:33):
Joining us now is Dave Smith.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
He's hot off of a major debate Royal the Internet,
host of the Part of the Problem podcast, and more importantly,
good friend.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
It's good to see you, Dave. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
Man, good to see you too, Man. You thank you
both for having me back.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
On absolutely there.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I mean, Dave, look, we're preaching to each other, but
it's still satisfying, and we need to sit here and
revel a little bit and some of the fallout from
your Douglas Murray debate. I mean, I think there are
many parts of it, the unquote expert concern trolling from Douglas.
There was the general pomposity, But I mean what really
struck a nerve and what the pro Israel folks really
(01:09):
hung onto in how you allegedly were destroyed was you've
never been to Israel.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
A very lived experience argument.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
And so Will wanted you to respond to a clip
that I know you've surfaced and have seen of Douglas
Murray talking about lived experience to you, but then previously
shouting down the idea of lived experience as legitimate.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Let's take a listen. We're going to get a reaction.
Speaker 5 (01:31):
Have you been to the crossing Points? I really resent
that form of argumentation. When were you last there at all?
Speaker 6 (01:37):
Sure?
Speaker 5 (01:37):
I really resent it. You should at least do the
courtesy of visiting it. This is not an attractive invitation.
I think it's a good idea to see stuff, particularly
if you spend a career talking about something. I have
the right to talk about whatever the hell I want
and no one's going to stop me or try to
intimidate me. And I think that if I said to
somebody else the other way around, it would be equally reprehensible.
(01:57):
I have a journalistic rule of trying never to talk
about a country, even in passing un as I've.
Speaker 6 (02:01):
At least been there.
Speaker 5 (02:02):
If I said, shut up, you have no right to
criticize anything that Douglas Murray says, because hang on, you're
talking about crossing points and not only have you never
been to a crossing point in either Egypt or in Israel,
but you never even been to the region. Okay, it's
not an exact comparison, but seriously, is that a reasonable
form of argument. No, in that case, nobody can talk
(02:23):
about anything. We might as well pack up, go home
and isolate ourselves. If you're insisting that you're an expert
of some kind, or not claiming you're an expert but
still talking about it, if you've never seen any of
this going on. I mean, there are some people who've
written about them. I mean, there are people whove written
about the Holocausts who didn't experience the Holocaust and have
(02:44):
written about it better than people who did. But that
is a different matter from spending an awfully long amount
of time talking about an issue in a region you
haven't even had the courtesy to visit. Whilst developing all
of these views about it. This idea that the lived
(03:06):
experience has to triumph over everything else is not always correct.
Should at least know what it is, what the territory is,
what the situation.
Speaker 6 (03:14):
Is in the regions.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
There's an irony to this, but let's skate over the irony.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Dave.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
I'm sorry to subject to you to that again, but
you got to I mean, what's it like, you know,
on the other side of nearly three hours of this
and now seeing some of this past lived experience argumentation
from him.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Well, I wish that guy was there at the debate.
He did a better job than I did. It's funny.
So once I saw this, you know, it's because I
brought up my first thing was like, you've never been
in Nazi Germany, but you can still have an opinion
about that. And then I was like, oh, he made
the same point. He made it better than me. Yeah,
you know, like, yeah, exactly a lot of people have
written about it and explained it better than people who
(03:51):
actually lived through it. I mean, look, it's the the
expert thing and the have you ever been to the region,
Like as I said on the show, I go these
are just non arguments like Objectively speaking, you don't win
points in a debate for saying this, Like if you
if you were to take the most generous interpretation of
(04:11):
his point there and which you know, and it's not
just the obvious logical fallacy that it is like an
appeal to authority, but if you were to take the
most generous interpretation would be like, Okay, it's important to
know what you're talking about, and you can gain insights
into something by traveling there and seeing it firsthand. Now
I wouldn't disagree with either of those claims, but the
(04:34):
point is that then you got to demonstrate that, like, Okay,
if you have a level of expertise that I don't have,
and you have insights because you've been there that I
don't have, then okay, let's have the debate and that
should show you know I said the other day it
was kind of like it was almost like if you're
like a fighter, like you're a UFC fighter or something,
and so you agree to fight someone else and you're
like at Madison Square Garden the fight. You know, you
(04:55):
get introduced, you're about to fight, and like I put
up my hands like okay, let's fight, and then the
other guy puts his hands down and goes, I'm such
a better fighter than you. I'm just so much better
at fighting, you know, yeah, fight, so come show me,
you know, and then the rate, it's just all these
(05:17):
like Look, it became clear when I was there that
Douglas Murray came to do anything but debate me, you know,
Like in my mind I was like, Oh, we're going
to debate Ukraine and Israel. And then it was like, oh,
that's the opposite. And you know, I did resent, you know,
because on the whole topic of like being an expert,
I do think it's important, and I think it's lost
(05:39):
on someone like the casual viewers, because people will think
they'll be like, yeah, Dave's an expert on this, and
I'm not. And I was quite comfortable saying that there,
like I'm not. I'm a commentator. I'm a stand up comedian,
you know. But again, Douglas, as you could see in
that clip, he doesn't really believe any of the things
he's saying. That's right, He's Look, if you really had
a pro like commentators who aren't experts permeate the media
(06:03):
and not just like the new media, like the old
legacy media, but do you think Chris Matthews is an
expert on Israel Palestine?
Speaker 6 (06:10):
You know?
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Does does Does Douglas Murray have a problem with Bill
Maher having a show? Does he have a problem with
Dave Rubin having a show. By the way, I'll put
my expertise up against those guys any day. And so
it's like, you don't really mean this, you don't really
have an issue. He didn't have an issue with Coleman
Hughes going on Rogan Show and talking about Israel.
Speaker 6 (06:29):
He's not an expert and he got everything wrong when
he was on there.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
His issue is that there's people who disagree with Israel
coming on. His issue isn't with the level of experts
any of these people.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And I think it's actually quite revealing in my opinion.
Speaker 7 (06:43):
Two things I want to say.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Number One, what I find so troubling about that line
of argumentation is I'm a US taxpayer, We're all US taxpayers.
Our money is going to fund this would consider genocidal
onslaught in Gaza. I don't get to have an opinion
(07:05):
because I haven't been to the crossings.
Speaker 7 (07:07):
Like get out of.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Here with that, Like be for real about what you're
actually suggesting here, and it's actually very common tactic. You
hear it from a lot of like you people who
are describing themselves as like liberal Zionists. Well, it's complicated.
You just don't understand, and it's a way to completely
shut people down from engaging with this debate at all
because they feel like, oh, if I don't have a
PhD in all every in and out of this history,
(07:29):
which you don't know much more about, and you have
the mind to hold all those facts in your heads
much more so than I do. But you feel like,
if I don't know every single fact that has ever
happened in what bb Netna who said in nineteen ninety three,
in this speech or whatever, then I don't get to
have an opinion wrong, wrong, This is a democracy. I
get to have an opinion about my money going to
(07:50):
drop these bombs on children and women and aid workers
and hospitals and mosques and level this whole place and
set up a situation where now Trump is like, we're
going to take get over.
Speaker 7 (08:00):
So that's number one. Number two.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
I think it's actually very revealing that in your language,
he came here wanting to avoid a debate with you,
because there is no debate at this point.
Speaker 7 (08:12):
There is no debate.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Look at the way that I mean, the public who
is consuming this through a very biased media media outlets
with you know, very slanted coverage, how much they have
turned on Israel, how much their sympathies have changed.
Speaker 7 (08:26):
The only group that still has a.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Majority support of more sympathy for Israel or Palestine is
like basically older Republicans. Every other demographic group has shifted.
So I think to me, the hollowness and the resorting
to effectively rhetorical tricks to try to come out on top,
to me, it's just emblematic of the fact that if
(08:49):
you're out there arguing like, oh, Israel isn't blocking eight
at this point, I mean, you're just that's a ridiculous
that's a ridiculous stance to try to claim. So instead
you have to go to like, oh, well, you haven't
even been to the crossings and personally inspected all the
goods that are coming in get out of here.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
Yeah, well that was yeah, I completely agree, And that
was one of the things that was infuriating about it,
because he makes this this accusation to me that I
claim to be an expert, but then I have kind
of like this like get out of jail free card
while I go, oh, I'm just a comedian or whatever,
And that's just both of those are not true. Like
(09:25):
I never do either of those. I never claimed to
be an expert. And you guys, I mean, you guys
have seen all my stuff, but you guys have seen
enough of my content. Has there ever been a time
once where like I made a point and then someone
countered the point and I went, well, I'm just a comedian,
so I do that.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
I actually know the debate that you did for over
two hours, you didn't do that once.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
I can literally attest to that personally.
Speaker 6 (09:46):
And I smoked Dennis Prager in that.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Debate at least, but you definitely did.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
I mean, at least he came to debate though, you know,
like at least we actually debated the issues. So the
thing that was so infuriing is like Douglas Murray is
accused me of using this get at like this escape patch.
You know, oh, I'm just a comedian. But then he
was the only one who did that through every single point,
like every time it came to, oh, we're actually talking
(10:12):
about the issue. If like the most pedantic semantic if
I went, we've been at war for twenty There was
one point where he literally goes, I said, we've been
at war, you know, for the last twenty five years,
and he goes, you have not been at war and
I went, I went, oh, because it's not a war here.
I go, yeah, we're picking on third world country. But
and then he goes into he said, well, in Afghanistan,
you were there to take out al Qaeda, and I
(10:34):
was like, yeah, maybe that sums up the war through
the end of two thousand and one, but after that
it was a twenty year regime changed war against the Taliban.
And then his next line is that's because you got
sucked into war. And it's like, wait, so I we
just did this whole thing just to come back to
you saying the same thing that you had. And I
mean it would be like I'd say, okay. So when
(10:56):
we were talking about Ukraine, at one point, I go,
I go, well, look, Joe Biden's CIA director wrote the
net means net memo. He was the CIA director for
all four years of Joe Biden's administration, and he's the
one who told you that this is what caused the war.
Like he and then I said, the head of NATO
said the same thing that he sent a draft treaty.
(11:17):
And then his response to that is the warf wasn't
about Ukrainian entry to NATO. And you're like, I'm just
objectively speaking, like I look, maybe there's a counter to
my point there, but he didn't offer it.
Speaker 6 (11:31):
He just asserted it wasn't.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
And then when I make the point about you know,
when we were talking about the warren Libya, he goes, well,
that was a humanitarian intervention. They thought he was going
to go genocidal, And I was like, well, that's kind
of interesting because didn't. For Star General Wesley Clark claimed
that he had already seen the plans ten years earlier,
when no one was claiming it was about to go genocidal.
Now maybe there's a counter to that, maybe there's an
(11:53):
answer to like you know, well, yes he did say that,
but those plans were scrapped and then it really was
a humanitarian Like maybe there's a count, but he just goes,
you can't say the name Wolfowitz or people might hate
out with Jews, Like what what is it so to
accuse me of like hiding behind being a comedian When
you're unwilling to debate any of the topics. And and
(12:15):
by the way, for the record, which I probably should
have said at the time, but you know, I would
argue that, you know, if he's gonna say that, like
me pointing out that Paul Wolfwood's had these war plans,
is going to lead to anti Semitism, I would say
that saying you're not allowed to say that is going
to lead to a lot more anti semitism, like to
say that, like you're not allowed to criticize Jewish people,
(12:37):
like I don't know if you've ever listened to any
other people who don't like Jews very much, but that's
a huge part of their beef.
Speaker 6 (12:42):
Yeah, and like they.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Kind of have a point on that front. I don't
think they're correct to like hate Jews, but they got
a good point on that, Like it shouldn't be nobody
who has that type of power should ever be absolved
from criticism.
Speaker 6 (12:54):
It's just it's absurd.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
You're exactly right, Yeah, his idea is it was something
I've never even heard this level of argumentation, which was
that Wolfowitz was like some low level bureaucrat. It's like, dude,
read a fucking book, like September twelfth, two thousand and one,
he's at the table with George W.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Bush. He's the first guy to mention Iraq this is
this is a fact. But whatever. I don't even need
to get more into that.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
You know, it is important though for us to see
where Douglas still has a lot of friends in power.
Let's go and put this one up there on the screen,
Donald Trump, literally the day after your debate truth doubt.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Let's can we put that up there please?
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Yeah, my friend Douglas Murray just released a new book,
My Friend, on Democracies and death cults. It's quickly becoming
a best seller based on his first hand reporting quote reporting.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Yeah, we could call it that.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Documents the barbarity of Hamas's brutal attack on Israel in
October seventh and Israel's heroic response. So I mean, Dave,
I mean, this is something you know, you've delved on
a little bit in the past. But you know, some
of your past discussion just with the Trump administration and
their current posture on Israel. And we'll get to the
deportations in a little bit, But what was it like
to see Trump, you know, just put this book out
(14:02):
like that with. Obviously, you know, it's not his own behest.
It's either the donor class or somebody around him. But
if they never drafted that for Hi, Yeah, somebody drafted
it for him, but it was still enough, somebody powerful
enough to put that out there, kind of as a
counter signal to the moments after your debate.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Yeah, I mean, look, I don't have any more insight
than what you guys have. I'd be speculating about what
it is. I just it was amusing to me. I
don't know, it's like I feel, you know, a lot
of people were telling me, but you know, for for
quite a while, but I hear, like, you know, the
zionis on Twitter being like like Douglas Murray is the
guy you got a debate because he'll smoke you, and
(14:40):
like after the debate, I'm like, this is the best
guy you guys got, Like who can't even argue the topic? Okay,
but I did think it was I don't know, I
just thought it was kind of amusing. But look, it's
the it's the worst thing about Donald Trump, you know,
it's just the worst quality about him.
Speaker 6 (14:57):
It was true in his first four years and it's
true this term too.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
The absolute worst thing about him is that he is
just terrible on the issue of Israel and Palestine. And
then that of course undercuts everything else that could be
good about the Trump administration, and that you just can't
be America first while being more loyal to a foreign
(15:20):
country than to your own. And it's never, I mean,
it's never been so blatant as it is right now.
You know, coming off the last twenty five years of
terror wars on behalf of Israel, every last one of
them being a disaster, every last one of them. We
were sold based off lives, every one of them. You know,
none of them can even defend them at this point.
(15:40):
I remember when my good friend you guys have had
on the show, Scott Horton, debated Bill Kristall, and he goes,
when was the last war or someone in the crowd asked,
what was the last war you could justify? And I
think I can't remember. I think you started talking about
the Balkans or something like that. Like even Bill Crystal
can't pretend to justify one of these interventions over the
last twenty five years. And now right now we're flirting,
(16:02):
we're killing people in the poorest country in the Middle East.
In Yemen, we're flirting with a war with Iran. And
it is so obvious that this is that neither of
these countries are any threat to US. No one's even
pretending there isn't even like the al Qaeda argument. They
don't even have like the Saddam Hussein was in on
nine to eleven and he's got nukes and he's going
(16:24):
to pass them.
Speaker 6 (16:25):
Off to alca.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
No one's even presenting an argument that this could be
a risk to the United States of America.
Speaker 6 (16:32):
It's just simply like, oh.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Well, people are upset about what Israel's doing, so we're
going to go bomb them.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
That's obviously all horrendous. You also have now a mass
crackdown on dissent at home. Trump obviously positioned himself as
some free speech champion in the campaign, and you know
the way that the tools of the state have been
used against student protesters, have been used against universities to
(17:00):
force the expulsion of certain professors, certain students who engage
in wrong think. We can put the latest images up
on the screen here of a Columbia student who has
gone out or this is d one, guys that we
can put up on the screen. This is a Columbia
student who they arrested during a visit to the immigration
office in Vermont. He's a Palestinian. His name is Mosa Madowi.
(17:25):
There's a picture of him, and you know, they throw
around these words like, oh, they're supporting terrorists, or they're
terrorist allnes, etc. I just want people to take a
listen to this individual and the way that he personally
spoke when he was interviewed by sixty minutes about October seventh.
Speaker 7 (17:43):
Is about Jewish people.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Just take a listen to the way that he spoke
and the way that they are demonizing student protesters such
as himself.
Speaker 7 (17:52):
Listen to this.
Speaker 8 (17:53):
What was your initial reaction when you heard about the
Hamas attack on October seventh.
Speaker 9 (18:00):
I could not believe what my eyes were seeing, where
I see Hamas members getting into settlements and so on.
But also the first moment I saw that, I put
my hand on my heart and I started praying, knowing
(18:21):
that there will be a huge level of revenge from
the Israelis, and I was praying that this will not
be the result because it would be disastrous.
Speaker 8 (18:33):
The night of the rally, I believe someone in the
crowd said something very anti Jewish, not just say anti Israeli,
but anti Jewish.
Speaker 9 (18:44):
Yes, this was as I walk out on November ninth
and a person who is not affiliated with Columbia, we've
never seen him, we don't know who is. This guy
comes down down the stairs yelling death to Jews. I
(19:08):
was shocked. And they walked directly to the person and
they told him, you don't represent us because this is
not something that we agree with. And directly what I've done,
I tooked the megaphone and they gave a speech and
they said, we here are conscious, educated students, and we
(19:30):
know how to separate right from wrong, and what this
guy has said is wrong. What this guy has said
is clearly anti sematic against Jews. To be anti Semitic
is unjust. Is unjust, and the fight for the freedom
(19:54):
of Palestine and the fight against anti Semetism go hand
in hand because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
So this is someone who they're saying is undermining their
foreign policy because of his raging anti Semitism. We also
know the State Department had actually internally put out a
memo about one of the other the young woman who
was disappeared with also the video of these masked officers,
five or six of them, coming and taking her because
she wrote a student newspaper up ed. I mean, what
(20:26):
do you make of this direction and what it means
not just for these students, but day for.
Speaker 7 (20:30):
All of us.
Speaker 10 (20:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
No, that guy sounds like a terrorist to me, right,
just so ridiculous. And I am not seen that before
and that was like exactly what you'd want someone to say.
I don't know, sounded perfect to me. I think it's
you know, okay, I'm not like trying to like, you know,
go down a conspiracy rabbit hole or something like this,
(20:55):
Like I don't know, I'm just speculating, but I do
know as we all know. I mean, there were so
many attempts made in Donald Trump's first term to undermine him,
like by his own government framing him as a as
a Russian spy for God's sakes, And it does just
seem to me that if you wanted to undermine mass deportations,
(21:17):
like if you want, you couldn't go about it in
a better way than what the Trump administration is doing.
By the way, mass deportations are not happening, yes, but
if you you know, like if you're let's say you're
an immigration restrictionist, which I am, and you you think
that Biden's you know, uh, immigration policy was like suicidal
and insane, and you were like, you finally won the day.
(21:42):
You know, the it is unbelievable how far to the
right the American population has has been moved under the
Joe Biden administration. I mean, mass super majorities of the
American people support mass deportations. Donald Trump, it is his
signature issue. He won every swing state, at won the
popular vote. You've won the day. And so then you're like, Okay, well,
(22:04):
how do we go about doing it, because obviously this
is a very tricky thing that you want to get right.
So let's wade into the most controversial issue and start
deporting legal residents for having the wrong opinion on an
issue where the majority of Americans are with I mean this,
it's it's insane. And so that's just from from the
(22:26):
perspective of even being pro mass deportation, but just then
from the perspective of just being a human being. I mean,
it's like, okay, yeah, if people entered your country illegally,
they don't have a right to be here.
Speaker 6 (22:37):
There probably should be some type of order of.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
You know, operationism, hierarchy of who should go first, and
you know, we probably all agree with like violent criminals
and gang members and things like that, but you know,
to do it because someone is like an eloquent defender
of one side of a conflict is just I don't know,
it's it's horrific.
Speaker 6 (23:01):
It's also it, you know, an.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
Incredibly scary president to set you know, this idea that
we can label you a terrorist. You know it's one
because this is the game that they always play. It's like, oh, well,
it's only if you're a pro a terrorist group or
if you hate Jewish people or something like that. And
just like with all speech regulations, it's like, fine, but
who gets to decide that, because I don't know. I mean,
(23:24):
there certainly are a lot of people out there who
hate Jewish people, and there certainly are a lot of
people out there who maybe less people. But there are
some people out there who defend Hamas. But I get
accused of that every single day and I've never done either.
So like, I who gets to determine this? And it
does seem to me just like more of a continuation
of kind of the worst of the post nine to
(23:44):
eleven tradition in America where we just get to label
something terrorism and then that shuts off the Bill of
Rights or that shuts off critical thinking.
Speaker 6 (23:54):
It's just, man, it's terrible. It's just so terrible.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
I mean, just to address what you're floating that like,
it feels like almost directly undermining you know, the other
things that he ran on that, you know, a more
sort of rigorous and law abiding, constitutionally compliant deportation process.
I mean, but he did run on he said multiple
times he was using Palestinian as a slur. He said
(24:20):
multiple times he wanted to deport pro Palestine protesters, that
he wanted to kick them out of the country. You know,
we covered Bikelly being here and the Alien Enemies Act
and how they've shipped ninety percent of the people that
they sent to this you know, notorious prison and El
Salvador had no criminal records whatsoever. He ran on the
(24:41):
Alien Enemies Act. So you know, what would you say
to people such as myself as others to say, like
he did say he was going to do this stuff,
and he is very proud about doing it too. There's
no like, oh, this person screwed up now he's out
there owning it, saying, Hey, the US citizens, they're going
to Bokelly next.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
I mean i'd say, you're right. I don't know what,
you know, I don't really have a counter to that.
I Mean, the thing about Donald Trump is that he's
always on every side of every issue, and so you
just never really know what he's gott right. It's always
like end the wars and America first, and bomb the
crap out of them and go after their families. And
I mean, he's always just so you never you kind
of never know with Donald Trump, like what is he
(25:22):
really thinking or what is he just floating out? No, listen,
it was obviously he's terrible on Israel, and that was
clear throughout the campaign. I think that for many people,
like myself, the calculation was essentially that, unfortunately, we were
caught in a binary and it was going to be
Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, and she was going to
(25:44):
be just as awful on Israel. Now, she may not
have gone as far as some of this stuff that
we're talking about, but in the big picture, there wasn't
like a true anti war choice. There wasn't a real
non interventionist and you know, I'd say there from my perspective,
at least there were a lot of cultural benefits. I
believe that came from Donald Trump winning. I also just
(26:08):
thought the Democrats had to lose this one. It's just
too crazy. I mean, I don't know, it's just the
policy in Ukraine I view as the most reckless foreign
policy in the history of the United States of America.
I really think nothing is a close second to this,
the idea of like flirting with a proxy war of
choice on the border of the most nuclear armed country
(26:29):
in the world. I mean, it's just absolutely Throughout the
entire height of the Cold War, there was never a
policy as crazy like we always, you know, we fight
a war in Vietnam or something, but there's a whole
China in between, you know, Russia and Vietnam that to
fight on their borders just insane. They funded this, this
catastrophe in Israel throughout the you know, the whole last
(26:52):
year of their term, and they had a brain dead,
senile president and lied to the American people.
Speaker 6 (26:58):
So it was just like I felt like they needed
to oose.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
But yeah, I can't defend any of this stuff, And
you're right, and Trump did did talk about it during
the campaign, and it is.
Speaker 11 (27:07):
Uh.
Speaker 6 (27:09):
Let's hope it doesn't get much worse.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
I'll tell you this, Dave, You're an honest guy and
you can't say that for most people.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
And so I appreciate you. I always look at you,
man and thank you for coming on the show.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
Well, thank you so much. I really do appreciate that.
And as I've told you guys publicly and privately, I
love Breaking Points. I watch it every day and I
think you guys are doing an amazing thing with the show.
Speaker 6 (27:28):
So thank you very much.
Speaker 7 (27:29):
Appreciates Steve, good to see you.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
We'll see you later YouTube. Chrystal, what are you taking
a look at?
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Without a doubt, the biggest Liberation Day breakout media star
has been free press calmness and self described maga lefty
Bachia Ungar Sargan. Whether tariffs are on or off, or
reciprocal or with exemptions or no exemptions, Bachia has dutifully
defended Trump's trade war tactics too Pure's Morgan Bill Maher CNN,
and is of course a regular for the North Korea
(27:56):
level propagandists over at Fox News. No matter the current
state of the tariff roller Coaster and Batcha's telling they
are all part of Trump's glorious revolution against the elites
in favor of the working class.
Speaker 7 (28:07):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 11 (28:08):
When somebody has the courage to show up and stay
to Wall Street, screw you. I am waging war. I'm
waging class warfare on behalf of the American working class.
And you elites and Wall Street, you do what you
need to do because I'm not going to stop fighting
for the American working class. Suddenly everybody is sitting around going,
oh no, the stock market, Yeah, the stock market looks
(28:31):
like that because the rich are punishing Trump for siding
with the neglected and humiliated American working class over them.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
So she is correct that Trump's cares are class warfare,
she just gets the direction completely wrong. In fact, Liberation
Day is direct class warfare against the working class in
favor of Trump aligned oligarchs.
Speaker 7 (28:54):
This should be no surprise. Of course. Trump is himself
a billionaire.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
His administration is stocked with over a dozen billionaires. The
nation's billionaire class has made a great show of aligning
and pledging fealty to him and his entire economic project,
of which tariffs are a key part, has revolved around
catering to the rich. Trump has all but ended white
collar enforcement. He's gutting the irs so they cannot audit
(29:18):
the rich sufficiently. He's engaged in a massive regulatory rollback
so that big.
Speaker 7 (29:23):
Business can act with impunity.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
He is cutting the social safety net while handing out
a giant tax cut to the rich, and is destroying
the last remaining remnants of labor power. As just one
but very telling example, how do you square Trump's supposed
war on Wall Street with the fact that on the
day he rolled back some of the global tariffs, he
hosted billionaire Charles Schwab at the White House and then
(29:47):
bragged about how Schwab had been able to make two
point five billion dollars in the markets that day alone.
Speaker 10 (29:55):
It's not just s.
Speaker 7 (30:01):
Today now.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
That is about as close to an admission of insider
trading as you could possibly get. While what main streets four, A,
one k's were puking and retail investors were getting clobbered,
a group of billionaires at the White House just happened
to be positioned to cash in on the massive Trump
triggered rebound. That should be enough to convince you that
Trump's primary ideological motivation is to accrue wealth and power
(30:26):
for himself and for his ring of aligned oligarchs.
Speaker 7 (30:30):
But there is so much more.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Here is the definitive proof that Trump's tariffs are class
war against the ninety nine percent, the likes of which
we have perhaps never seen before. All right, number one,
massive corporations are being liberated from Trump's tariffs while the
little guys are getting screwed. Stocks were up yesterday after
the Trump administration announced significant exemptions to their one hundred
(30:53):
and forty five percent China tariffs that would be particularly
beneficial to so called Magnificent Seven companies like Apple and Nvidia.
This is, of course no accident. In Vidia's CEO recently
paid at least a million dollars in order to attend
a Trump super Pac dinner, where he was presumably able
to have an audience directly with the president. Apple CEO
(31:13):
Tim Cook gave a million dollars to the Trump inauguration
and has been quietly courting Trump for years with his
shitcoin development properties around the world, blatant political favor sellings.
Through these super Pac dinners, Trump has created an industrial
scale bribery factory where anyone with the cash can lobby
the King for a favor. The fear of this exact dynamic,
(31:35):
by the way, is precisely why the power to raise
revenue was left to Congress in the Constitution. But while
the big guys get the world, the small and medium
sized business owners they are getting the shaft. Meet Beth
and a Rock War veteran and the founder and CEO
of Busy Baby.
Speaker 12 (31:51):
A problem solver by nature, I decided to create something
to keep our kids entertained and to save our backs
and sanity parents keeping your babies busy just got a
whole lot easier because.
Speaker 7 (32:05):
Of the Busy Baby Matt.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
So Beth was living this small business dream story after
that Shark tank appearance or sales skyrocketed. She was expanding
Walmart and Target came knocking. She was even honored by
Trump's Small Business administration as Minnesota's Small Business Person of
the Year. But now, thanks to the one hundred and
forty five percent China tariffs, all of it, the business,
the dream, even her house, which she had leveraged to
(32:29):
finance her expansion into Walmart, all of it is on
the line. She recently spoke to The Daily about how
for her business, the tariffs mean certain death.
Speaker 10 (32:38):
I cannot bring this product into the US now. I
don't have that kind of money. And what that means
then is if I can't bring in that product and
I run out of what's in my warehouse now, then
I no longer have revenue coming into my business. And
what that means is I can no longer pay my employees,
I can no longer pay my loans to which my
(32:59):
house is ridged against, and in about six months I
could very very possibly lose my home.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Now, I want you to understand best actually plan for
some level of tariff. She was ready for that, but
right now she's got a shipment in China, roughly one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of product. It would
now cost two hundred and twenty nine thousand to bring
that product to the US. She doesn't have that cash.
She's sure as hell doesn't have the cash to spend
a million dollars to plead her case directly to Trump.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Here's the thing.
Speaker 10 (33:32):
I'm not in a face off with the administration because
I'm not a player in the game. I'm a pawn.
There's literally nothing I can do. And I was coming
up with strategies. But then any strategy I came up with,
I'm afraid to execute it because the policy changes every
twenty four to thirty six hours.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Now, this is no small bump in the road for Beth.
At one point the interview actually turned extremely dark.
Speaker 6 (33:52):
I'm not okay.
Speaker 10 (33:55):
I'm scared for my friends. I'm scared for myself.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
They don't understand.
Speaker 10 (33:59):
This is certain death for us. It is certain death
for so many of my friends and myself. Not in
the literal sense of Actually, no, I'm not gonna say
not in the literal sense, because the very first thought
that came to me when he announced one hundred and
four percent tarif was at least I have at least
I have life insurance so that there's a way my
(34:22):
family can still.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Have a home.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Now, Beth says she's got a big support network and
she's going to make it through, but she worries how
many small business owners out there like her are facing
similarly dire circumstances and are not going to be okay.
So big business they get Marralago Dinners, they get special
car balance, they get their rebounding stock prices. Mom and
pop companies get effectively a business death penalty.
Speaker 7 (34:45):
But that is only one aspect of this class war.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Number two, let's talk about those armies of millions screwing
in little little screws.
Speaker 8 (34:53):
Great American workers.
Speaker 7 (34:54):
You know, we are going on other networkies.
Speaker 6 (34:57):
Millions of people.
Speaker 8 (34:59):
Well remember the army of millions and millions of human
beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones. That kind
of thing is going to come to America.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
It's going to be automated, and great Americans, the trade
craft of America is going to fix them.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
So one of the many justifications of Trump's tariff policy,
and the one that has I think the most popular
emotional resonance, is that it's going to restore American manufacturing.
Might there are some aspects of that stated goal that
I am personally sympathetic to. The First thing that you
should know about this alleged goal, though, is that it's
not happening. You'd have to be insane to willingly invest
in US manufacturing given the wild daily shifts in policy.
(35:36):
In fact, Trump's policy incentivizes offshoring and avoiding US markets altogether.
But let's assume Trump is able to strong arm some
companies into building some new factories. What is that actually
going to look like. There is nothing inherently good about
factory jobs. In fact, the early days of US industrialization
were a horror show of child labor, low wages, miserable
(35:59):
living conditions, company towns, and deadly accidents. Go read The
Jungle by Upton Sinclair or the History of the Triangle
Shirtwaist Fire for a refresher on how workers were treated
at that time. It is instructive to reflect on the
fact that Trump is not calling for a return to
nineteen fifty style industrialization when progressive row reforms, high union
density and an expanding social safety and that meant that
(36:20):
Dad could work in the factory and support a family instead.
Trump is inspired by the Gilded Age President William McKinley
he models his administration.
Speaker 7 (36:29):
He said this repeatedly after a.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Time when American workers, many newly arrived immigrants, crowded into
ghettos and worked in sweatshops as Robert Barns commanded ever
greater portions of the economy. Instead restoring nineteen fifty's working
class stability, he wants American workers to be pushed into
the global race to the bottom that goes hand and
glove with the doge efforts to destroy government's ability to
(36:52):
regulate business and Trump's onslaught against unions. In fact, the
US already does produce more than every country on Earth
except China, but due to automation, that production no longer
requires nearly as many workers, and thanks to attacks on unions,
those jobs are not nearly as good as they once were.
As Matt Burning points out McDonald's workers in Denmark, they
(37:13):
actually make more than Honda workers in Alabama. Bottom line,
Trump wants you bring back these sweatshops of the early
Industrial Revolution, not the union backed middle class jobs of
your grandparents' era.
Speaker 7 (37:24):
The work would be.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Low, pain, difficult, and lacking in labor protections. Not to
mention that we're talking about far fewer jobs anyway, since
robots would be the ones enlisted to screw in those
little little screws now. A third element of Trump's terra
fueled class war is his desire to shift funding the
government away from the income tax and towards the tariff.
Speaker 13 (37:44):
To me, the most beautiful word, and I've said this
for the last couple of weeks in the dictionary today,
is the word tariff. It's more beautiful than love. It
more beautiful than any It's the most beautiful word. This
country can be come rich with the use, the proper
use of tariffs.
Speaker 7 (38:04):
It'll Can you just float out the idea of getting
rid of income taxes and replacing it with tariffs, Well.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Okay, we're serious about that?
Speaker 6 (38:12):
Hower, Yeah, but why not?
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Trump of course likes to pretend that those tariffs will
be paid by foreign countries. That's just not true. Just
remember again our small business owner Beth. She had to
abandon her shipment of goods in China because she can't
afford to pay herself the tariff. Now, if she could
afford to front the tariff, she would then instead have
to pass a significant amount, if not all, the costs
of the tariff onto consumers, pushing her thirty dollars, busy
(38:35):
baby Matt up to let's say fifty dollars. So, in practice,
tariffs are a consumption tax, and since working class people
spend a far greater percent of their income on goods
than the rich do, the tax is directly regressive, hurting
the poorest people the most and leaving the rich largely unscathed.
A YO budget Lab analysis found the average American would
face thirty eight hundred dollars in increased costs from the
(38:57):
April second tariffs, with the impact falling hardest on the
lowest end of the income scale. And at the same time,
Trump is of course planning a massive multi trillion dollar
tax cut for the rich.
Speaker 7 (39:07):
Large custom of medicaid.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Social security is being destroyed, and rich tax cheats are
going to be able to more easily avoid income taxes
thanks to a gutted IRS. In practice, this means that
the working class is going to increasingly be forced to
shoulder the burden of funding the government and frankly, their
own oppression, as the budget tilts away from social spending
and towards the police date. After all, Trump the Republican's
(39:30):
new budget calls for a mass expansion of military, a
record breaking one trillion dollar Pentagon budget also calls for
a dramatic increase in funding for ice into dole out
for private prison contractors to create mass detention centers. As
we covered earlier yesterday, or sorry, as we covered earlier yesterday,
Trump told El Salvador's president Bkelly that next he wanted
(39:51):
to send quote homegrowns to rot in the Seacot torture dungeon.
It has never been more clear that what begins with
immigrants will rapidly expand to American citizens in an effort
to silence and intimidate dissenters. I doubt, however, that that
effort to quash all dissent is going to succeed, because
already the American people are not buying what Trump and
Batia are selling. People can see what is being done
(40:13):
to them to enrich Trump and as ooligarchs, which is
why Trump's economic approval and overall approval are plummeting. CBS
has a new pull out which asks Americans who will
benefit from Trump's trade and teariff policies. Seventy four percent
say the wealthy, seventy one percent say large corporations, only
forty two percent say the working class, and only thirty
nine percent say small business. What's more, only twenty one
(40:35):
percent of Americans, overwhelmingly Republican partisans, say that Trump's policies
are making them personally better off. As the economy worsens,
Trump's popularity it's going to continue to fall, and he's
going to reach for war and more tools of repression
in order to maintain his power. You simply cannot do
this to people without expecting a backlash, and if you
are an authoritarian, the response to a backlash is not
(40:56):
to back off, it is to crack down. And on
that I'm going to end this particular monologue, but I'm
going to have more on that note later this week.
And Sager, this is a crazy making.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. I
don't usually do personal segments here on Breaking Points, but
I guess this one qualifies. My wife and I are
having a baby. Do date is basically anytime in the
next few weeks. So first, I hope you can all
forgive me. I've been unexpectedly absent or less engaged than
(41:27):
I may have been in the last several months, navigating
doctor's appointments, illness, and the general chaos of an irrevocable
change to your entire life. If you see me disappear
unexpectedly sometime in the next few weeks, you'll know why.
And while I'll be off for a little while, rest
assured i'll be back and the team here is well prepared.
So what I thought I would do is reflect on
a few lessons that I have learned throughout the process
(41:47):
so far and point people in the direction of some
great books that I've read in the last nine months
that you may also enjoy if you find yourself in
a similar position.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
There is an absolute ocean of bullshit.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
I've discovered out there whenever it comes to pregnancy and
what foods that women are not supposed to eat, and
whether you're supposed to drink coffee or not, an exercise
and everything else. If you just absorb knowledge through pop
culture like I did, you're forgiven. But in my opinion,
it is much more useful to actually investigate claims behind
these societal expectations and see which ones actually hold up
under scrutiny. For this, there is a rightfully famous book
(42:19):
I cannot recommend enough. It's called Expecting Better, Why the
conventional Pregnancy wisdom is wrong and What you really need
to Know, by Professor Emily Oster. Emily Oster is an
economist who actually used hard data sets to investigate the
claims of societal myths and doctors recommendations behind everything like
whether you can eat sushi while pregnant, what type of
exercise you're allowed to do, how much if any alcohol
(42:41):
or caffeine is actually safe and much much more.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
The book is.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Unbelievably useful because it opened my eyes both to the
absolute relative risk or lack thereof, of certain behaviors the
society or the medical system says that there is risk of,
but also showed me really how public health guidelines and
societal norms are set broadly, and I am painting, obviously
with a big brush. Public health guidance is written for
the lowest common denominator in the United States.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
For example, sushi.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Sushi has a relatively higher risk of making people sick. Therefore,
because there is a portion higher risk of getting sick
from sushi. Absolutely, because of the existence of things like
gas station sushi, they have a recommendation don't need it
at all, or you could just say, wait, don't get
it from a gas station. Exercise the same level of
judgment a normal person would when they go to a
steakhouse and order a rare steak or beef tartar.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Absolutely, of course your risk of getting sick is hire.
But we can recognize restaurant reputation, sourcing and other things
obviously matter. You can do a simple Google search and
see whether pregnant women in Japan still eat sushi, and
what their birth outcomes are, it will shock you to
learn that they are perfectly healthy. The same example and
the same safetiest philosophy behind a guidance from a medical
establishment pervades basically everything pregnancy and birth related.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
You again will be forgiven.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
For not knowing any of this, and that is why
I am urging any expected pairs read these books and
her follow up cripsheet. Furthermore, if you are able, one
of these flagship statistics from Oster's book is this recommendation
to hire a doula for better birth outcomes and for
fewer sea sections. My wife and I have found having
a doula to be incredibly helpful in helping understand exactly
(44:17):
what we face and to have actual informed consent when
and if the time comes to participate in any medical intervention.
I want to underscore if you do not do your
own research or speak with people deeply familiar with the process,
you will be at their mercy of the medical system.
And I do not think that the doctors themselves are
(44:39):
actively trying to harm anyone, but it is obvious from
the USC section rate and the US maternal outcomes. The
system that we are forced to participate in does not
line up with the ideal broadly. This brings me to philosophy.
In the United States, everything is about individualism. What type
of health insurance you have, whether you can afford something
or not, how much leave can you take, what childcare
to pursue. It's all a to you, and there's no
(45:01):
true authority on what is best or not. This is
not bad per se. It has a lot of strengths.
But this process and reading different books has really made
me appreciate.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
Other countries' attitudes and customs.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
For example, in the United States today, only about sixty
percent of women are covered by the Family and Medical
Leave Act for an average amount of leave of eleven weeks.
That is, of course, if you are lucky, and to
most people it sounds reasonable. That is honestly, until I
saw what an actual physical eleven week old baby looks like.
It's a barely functional, tiny human being, handing it off
(45:32):
to a daycare center or stranger. It seems so difficult
for me, and I'm not even there yet. This does
not even contend with the run of the mill medical
trauma that any mother will go through.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
While giving birth.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
In the United States, postpartum women are expected to attend
doctor's appointments in the days after birth, and paternity leave
is a luxury roughly available to twenty percent of US males.
By reading books such as The First Forty Days, I
learned this is not normal in the rest of the world,
a major departure from more civilized societies and how they
care for women. In China and in Japan, there is
(46:03):
a societal custom known as a confinement period, where women
basically don't even leave the house for forty days. Traditionally,
they are surrounded by other women who can cook and
clean and take care of every basic need that they have.
The regimen is incredibly strict and important for recovery. It
is more modern versions that include government sponsored programs that
include home help recovery sites for these women, where the
(46:24):
notion that someone would be able to be responsible for
feeding an infant and doing household tasks in their culture
that's insane. In the US, this is basically the norm
unless you have a family member or you can help
are well off enough to have hired help. Even then,
the expectation is vastly different. Millions are expected literally back
at work after mere weeks of giving birth, very little
(46:47):
societal understanding or support. Broadly, this reflects my more Asian
collectivist mindset to how I think people should be treated
after giving birth. But a book that showed me how
this can still work in a more Western context is
a very popular one from a few years back.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
It's called Bringing Up Bebe.
Speaker 3 (47:02):
One American mother discovers the wisdom of French parenting, and
as low as I will be to praise Europeans, it
is undeniable after reading this that a Western society that
can encourage women to be able to pursue careers without
Asian collectivist values can absolutely work. The caveat is you
need decades long cultural buy in as to the standards
of what such state sponsored childcare institutions should look like,
(47:23):
and you need to surrender to standards that are about
ten times higher than the United States. It's unbelievable reading
this the level of care and attention that the French
government puts not only onto discipline and childcare centers, but
ensuring proper nutrition from a very early age. Their system
works because of decades of proven state capacity and its
availability to anyone rich or poor. Costs are variable for
(47:47):
the same service based upon your income. I can easily
see how it would not work here with so much
societal division, but it is something to aspire to, especially
compared to the ad hoc and individual fend for yourself
system that we have here in America. So broadly, these
are the reflections that have been on my mind. It
is a weird sensation. I'm patriotic, I'm an American. Baseline
(48:07):
assumption was, yeah, we're the best country in the world,
but honestly, you have to wonder if that's truly true
when you're starting a family. It is certainly is a
good place to make money, to pursue individual interests or
liberty by consumer goods. But I can't help but looking
around at skyrocketing costs, distrust in the most basic levels
of systems, and see how these women are just left
to fend for themselves, and think that we really need
(48:28):
to change things up if we want more people in
this country to have kids. Finally, for fun and letting
my mind wander, I read a bunch of different books
that won't apply for many years. You may find them
useful if you're at this age. How to raise kids
who aren't assholes, the anxious Generation, the self driven child,
and even throwbacks like Battle Him of the Tiger Mother.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
All of those books.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
Have parts that I do not agree with necessarily, but
they all plant interesting seeds of things that I may
or may not do as a parent. So anyways, I
hope everyone can wish me luck. Luckily, I'm not doing
any of the hard work.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
My wife is. I'm sitting. I'm here to support her.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
And the meanwhile, the true horror that I cannot stop
thinking about is I will not get a good night's
sleep again for a long time, and my cherished days
of the eight pm bedtime are finally over.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue,
become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it.
We're about to take the AMA. Now, let's get to it.
Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election,
and we are so excited about what that means for
the future of the show.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
This is the only place where you can find honest
perspectives from the left and the right that simply does
not exist anywhere else.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
So if that is something that's important to you, please
go to Breakingpoints dot com. Become a member today and
you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free,
and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
We need your help to build the future of independent
news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
dot com.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Joining us now is Dave Smith.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
He's hot off of a major debate Royal the Internet,
host of the Part of the Problem podcast, and more importantly,
good friend.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
It's good to see you, Dave. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
Man, good to see you too, Man. You thank you
both for having me back.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
On absolutely there.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I mean, Dave, look, we're preaching to each other, but
it's still satisfying, and we need to sit here and
revel a little bit and some of the fallout from
your Douglas Murray debate. I mean, I think there are
many parts of it, the unquote expert concern trolling from Douglas.
There was the general pomposity, But I mean what really
struck a nerve and what the pro Israel folks really
(01:09):
hung onto in how you allegedly were destroyed was you've
never been to Israel.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
A very lived experience argument.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
And so Will wanted you to respond to a clip
that I know you've surfaced and have seen of Douglas
Murray talking about lived experience to you, but then previously
shouting down the idea of lived experience as legitimate.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Let's take a listen. We're going to get a reaction.
Speaker 5 (01:31):
Have you been to the crossing Points? I really resent
that form of argumentation. When were you last there at all?
Speaker 6 (01:37):
Sure?
Speaker 5 (01:37):
I really resent it. You should at least do the
courtesy of visiting it. This is not an attractive invitation.
I think it's a good idea to see stuff, particularly
if you spend a career talking about something. I have
the right to talk about whatever the hell I want
and no one's going to stop me or try to
intimidate me. And I think that if I said to
somebody else the other way around, it would be equally reprehensible.
(01:57):
I have a journalistic rule of trying never to talk
about a country, even in passing un as I've.
Speaker 6 (02:01):
At least been there.
Speaker 5 (02:02):
If I said, shut up, you have no right to
criticize anything that Douglas Murray says, because hang on, you're
talking about crossing points and not only have you never
been to a crossing point in either Egypt or in Israel,
but you never even been to the region. Okay, it's
not an exact comparison, but seriously, is that a reasonable
form of argument. No, in that case, nobody can talk
(02:23):
about anything. We might as well pack up, go home
and isolate ourselves. If you're insisting that you're an expert
of some kind, or not claiming you're an expert but
still talking about it, if you've never seen any of
this going on. I mean, there are some people who've
written about them. I mean, there are people whove written
about the Holocausts who didn't experience the Holocaust and have
(02:44):
written about it better than people who did. But that
is a different matter from spending an awfully long amount
of time talking about an issue in a region you
haven't even had the courtesy to visit. Whilst developing all
of these views about it. This idea that the lived
(03:06):
experience has to triumph over everything else is not always correct.
Should at least know what it is, what the territory is,
what the situation.
Speaker 6 (03:14):
Is in the regions.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
There's an irony to this, but let's skate over the irony.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Dave.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
I'm sorry to subject to you to that again, but
you got to I mean, what's it like, you know,
on the other side of nearly three hours of this
and now seeing some of this past lived experience argumentation
from him.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Well, I wish that guy was there at the debate.
He did a better job than I did. It's funny.
So once I saw this, you know, it's because I
brought up my first thing was like, you've never been
in Nazi Germany, but you can still have an opinion
about that. And then I was like, oh, he made
the same point. He made it better than me. Yeah,
you know, like, yeah, exactly a lot of people have
written about it and explained it better than people who
(03:51):
actually lived through it. I mean, look, it's the the
expert thing and the have you ever been to the region,
Like as I said on the show, I go these
are just non arguments like Objectively speaking, you don't win
points in a debate for saying this, Like if you
if you were to take the most generous interpretation of
(04:11):
his point there and which you know, and it's not
just the obvious logical fallacy that it is like an
appeal to authority, but if you were to take the
most generous interpretation would be like, Okay, it's important to
know what you're talking about, and you can gain insights
into something by traveling there and seeing it firsthand. Now
I wouldn't disagree with either of those claims, but the
(04:34):
point is that then you got to demonstrate that, like, Okay,
if you have a level of expertise that I don't have,
and you have insights because you've been there that I
don't have, then okay, let's have the debate and that
should show you know I said the other day it
was kind of like it was almost like if you're
like a fighter, like you're a UFC fighter or something,
and so you agree to fight someone else and you're
like at Madison Square Garden the fight. You know, you
(04:55):
get introduced, you're about to fight, and like I put
up my hands like okay, let's fight, and then the
other guy puts his hands down and goes, I'm such
a better fighter than you. I'm just so much better
at fighting, you know, yeah, fight, so come show me,
you know, and then the rate, it's just all these
(05:17):
like Look, it became clear when I was there that
Douglas Murray came to do anything but debate me, you know,
Like in my mind I was like, Oh, we're going
to debate Ukraine and Israel. And then it was like, oh,
that's the opposite. And you know, I did resent, you know,
because on the whole topic of like being an expert,
I do think it's important, and I think it's lost
(05:39):
on someone like the casual viewers, because people will think
they'll be like, yeah, Dave's an expert on this, and
I'm not. And I was quite comfortable saying that there,
like I'm not. I'm a commentator. I'm a stand up comedian,
you know. But again, Douglas, as you could see in
that clip, he doesn't really believe any of the things
he's saying. That's right, He's Look, if you really had
a pro like commentators who aren't experts permeate the media
(06:03):
and not just like the new media, like the old
legacy media, but do you think Chris Matthews is an
expert on Israel Palestine?
Speaker 6 (06:10):
You know?
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Does does Does Douglas Murray have a problem with Bill
Maher having a show? Does he have a problem with
Dave Rubin having a show. By the way, I'll put
my expertise up against those guys any day. And so
it's like, you don't really mean this, you don't really
have an issue. He didn't have an issue with Coleman
Hughes going on Rogan Show and talking about Israel.
Speaker 6 (06:29):
He's not an expert and he got everything wrong when
he was on there.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
His issue is that there's people who disagree with Israel
coming on. His issue isn't with the level of experts
any of these people.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And I think it's actually quite revealing in my opinion.
Speaker 7 (06:43):
Two things I want to say.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Number One, what I find so troubling about that line
of argumentation is I'm a US taxpayer, We're all US taxpayers.
Our money is going to fund this would consider genocidal
onslaught in Gaza. I don't get to have an opinion
(07:05):
because I haven't been to the crossings.
Speaker 7 (07:07):
Like get out of.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Here with that, Like be for real about what you're
actually suggesting here, and it's actually very common tactic. You
hear it from a lot of like you people who
are describing themselves as like liberal Zionists. Well, it's complicated.
You just don't understand, and it's a way to completely
shut people down from engaging with this debate at all
because they feel like, oh, if I don't have a
PhD in all every in and out of this history,
(07:29):
which you don't know much more about, and you have
the mind to hold all those facts in your heads
much more so than I do. But you feel like,
if I don't know every single fact that has ever
happened in what bb Netna who said in nineteen ninety three,
in this speech or whatever, then I don't get to
have an opinion wrong, wrong, This is a democracy. I
get to have an opinion about my money going to
(07:50):
drop these bombs on children and women and aid workers
and hospitals and mosques and level this whole place and
set up a situation where now Trump is like, we're
going to take get over.
Speaker 7 (08:00):
So that's number one. Number two.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
I think it's actually very revealing that in your language,
he came here wanting to avoid a debate with you,
because there is no debate at this point.
Speaker 7 (08:12):
There is no debate.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Look at the way that I mean, the public who
is consuming this through a very biased media media outlets
with you know, very slanted coverage, how much they have
turned on Israel, how much their sympathies have changed.
Speaker 7 (08:26):
The only group that still has a.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Majority support of more sympathy for Israel or Palestine is
like basically older Republicans. Every other demographic group has shifted.
So I think to me, the hollowness and the resorting
to effectively rhetorical tricks to try to come out on top,
to me, it's just emblematic of the fact that if
(08:49):
you're out there arguing like, oh, Israel isn't blocking eight
at this point, I mean, you're just that's a ridiculous
that's a ridiculous stance to try to claim. So instead
you have to go to like, oh, well, you haven't
even been to the crossings and personally inspected all the
goods that are coming in get out of here.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
Yeah, well that was yeah, I completely agree, And that
was one of the things that was infuriating about it,
because he makes this this accusation to me that I
claim to be an expert, but then I have kind
of like this like get out of jail free card
while I go, oh, I'm just a comedian or whatever,
And that's just both of those are not true. Like
(09:25):
I never do either of those. I never claimed to
be an expert. And you guys, I mean, you guys
have seen all my stuff, but you guys have seen
enough of my content. Has there ever been a time
once where like I made a point and then someone
countered the point and I went, well, I'm just a comedian,
so I do that.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
I actually know the debate that you did for over
two hours, you didn't do that once.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
I can literally attest to that personally.
Speaker 6 (09:46):
And I smoked Dennis Prager in that.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Debate at least, but you definitely did.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
I mean, at least he came to debate though, you know,
like at least we actually debated the issues. So the
thing that was so infuriing is like Douglas Murray is
accused me of using this get at like this escape patch.
You know, oh, I'm just a comedian. But then he
was the only one who did that through every single point,
like every time it came to, oh, we're actually talking
(10:12):
about the issue. If like the most pedantic semantic if
I went, we've been at war for twenty There was
one point where he literally goes, I said, we've been
at war, you know, for the last twenty five years,
and he goes, you have not been at war and
I went, I went, oh, because it's not a war here.
I go, yeah, we're picking on third world country. But
and then he goes into he said, well, in Afghanistan,
you were there to take out al Qaeda, and I
(10:34):
was like, yeah, maybe that sums up the war through
the end of two thousand and one, but after that
it was a twenty year regime changed war against the Taliban.
And then his next line is that's because you got
sucked into war. And it's like, wait, so I we
just did this whole thing just to come back to
you saying the same thing that you had. And I
mean it would be like I'd say, okay. So when
(10:56):
we were talking about Ukraine, at one point, I go,
I go, well, look, Joe Biden's CIA director wrote the
net means net memo. He was the CIA director for
all four years of Joe Biden's administration, and he's the
one who told you that this is what caused the war.
Like he and then I said, the head of NATO
said the same thing that he sent a draft treaty.
(11:17):
And then his response to that is the warf wasn't
about Ukrainian entry to NATO. And you're like, I'm just
objectively speaking, like I look, maybe there's a counter to
my point there, but he didn't offer it.
Speaker 6 (11:31):
He just asserted it wasn't.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
And then when I make the point about you know,
when we were talking about the warren Libya, he goes, well,
that was a humanitarian intervention. They thought he was going
to go genocidal, And I was like, well, that's kind
of interesting because didn't. For Star General Wesley Clark claimed
that he had already seen the plans ten years earlier,
when no one was claiming it was about to go genocidal.
Now maybe there's a counter to that, maybe there's an
(11:53):
answer to like you know, well, yes he did say that,
but those plans were scrapped and then it really was
a humanitarian Like maybe there's a count, but he just goes,
you can't say the name Wolfowitz or people might hate
out with Jews, Like what what is it so to
accuse me of like hiding behind being a comedian When
you're unwilling to debate any of the topics. And and
(12:15):
by the way, for the record, which I probably should
have said at the time, but you know, I would
argue that, you know, if he's gonna say that, like
me pointing out that Paul Wolfwood's had these war plans,
is going to lead to anti Semitism, I would say
that saying you're not allowed to say that is going
to lead to a lot more anti semitism, like to
say that, like you're not allowed to criticize Jewish people,
(12:37):
like I don't know if you've ever listened to any
other people who don't like Jews very much, but that's
a huge part of their beef.
Speaker 6 (12:42):
Yeah, and like they.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Kind of have a point on that front. I don't
think they're correct to like hate Jews, but they got
a good point on that, Like it shouldn't be nobody
who has that type of power should ever be absolved
from criticism.
Speaker 6 (12:54):
It's just it's absurd.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
You're exactly right, Yeah, his idea is it was something
I've never even heard this level of argumentation, which was
that Wolfowitz was like some low level bureaucrat. It's like, dude,
read a fucking book, like September twelfth, two thousand and one,
he's at the table with George W.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Bush. He's the first guy to mention Iraq this is
this is a fact. But whatever. I don't even need
to get more into that.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
You know, it is important though for us to see
where Douglas still has a lot of friends in power.
Let's go and put this one up there on the screen,
Donald Trump, literally the day after your debate truth doubt.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Let's can we put that up there please?
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Yeah, my friend Douglas Murray just released a new book,
My Friend, on Democracies and death cults. It's quickly becoming
a best seller based on his first hand reporting quote reporting.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Yeah, we could call it that.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Documents the barbarity of Hamas's brutal attack on Israel in
October seventh and Israel's heroic response. So I mean, Dave,
I mean, this is something you know, you've delved on
a little bit in the past. But you know, some
of your past discussion just with the Trump administration and
their current posture on Israel. And we'll get to the
deportations in a little bit, But what was it like
to see Trump, you know, just put this book out
(14:02):
like that with. Obviously, you know, it's not his own behest.
It's either the donor class or somebody around him. But
if they never drafted that for Hi, Yeah, somebody drafted
it for him, but it was still enough, somebody powerful
enough to put that out there, kind of as a
counter signal to the moments after your debate.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Yeah, I mean, look, I don't have any more insight
than what you guys have. I'd be speculating about what
it is. I just it was amusing to me. I
don't know, it's like I feel, you know, a lot
of people were telling me, but you know, for for
quite a while, but I hear, like, you know, the
zionis on Twitter being like like Douglas Murray is the
guy you got a debate because he'll smoke you, and
(14:40):
like after the debate, I'm like, this is the best
guy you guys got, Like who can't even argue the topic? Okay,
but I did think it was I don't know, I
just thought it was kind of amusing. But look, it's
the it's the worst thing about Donald Trump, you know,
it's just the worst quality about him.
Speaker 6 (14:57):
It was true in his first four years and it's
true this term too.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
The absolute worst thing about him is that he is
just terrible on the issue of Israel and Palestine. And
then that of course undercuts everything else that could be
good about the Trump administration, and that you just can't
be America first while being more loyal to a foreign
(15:20):
country than to your own. And it's never, I mean,
it's never been so blatant as it is right now.
You know, coming off the last twenty five years of
terror wars on behalf of Israel, every last one of
them being a disaster, every last one of them. We
were sold based off lives, every one of them. You know,
none of them can even defend them at this point.
(15:40):
I remember when my good friend you guys have had
on the show, Scott Horton, debated Bill Kristall, and he goes,
when was the last war or someone in the crowd asked,
what was the last war you could justify? And I
think I can't remember. I think you started talking about
the Balkans or something like that. Like even Bill Crystal
can't pretend to justify one of these interventions over the
last twenty five years. And now right now we're flirting,
(16:02):
we're killing people in the poorest country in the Middle East.
In Yemen, we're flirting with a war with Iran. And
it is so obvious that this is that neither of
these countries are any threat to US. No one's even
pretending there isn't even like the al Qaeda argument. They
don't even have like the Saddam Hussein was in on
nine to eleven and he's got nukes and he's going
(16:24):
to pass them.
Speaker 6 (16:25):
Off to alca.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
No one's even presenting an argument that this could be
a risk to the United States of America.
Speaker 6 (16:32):
It's just simply like, oh.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Well, people are upset about what Israel's doing, so we're
going to go bomb them.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
That's obviously all horrendous. You also have now a mass
crackdown on dissent at home. Trump obviously positioned himself as
some free speech champion in the campaign, and you know
the way that the tools of the state have been
used against student protesters, have been used against universities to
(17:00):
force the expulsion of certain professors, certain students who engage
in wrong think. We can put the latest images up
on the screen here of a Columbia student who has
gone out or this is d one, guys that we
can put up on the screen. This is a Columbia
student who they arrested during a visit to the immigration
office in Vermont. He's a Palestinian. His name is Mosa Madowi.
(17:25):
There's a picture of him, and you know, they throw
around these words like, oh, they're supporting terrorists, or they're
terrorist allnes, etc. I just want people to take a
listen to this individual and the way that he personally
spoke when he was interviewed by sixty minutes about October seventh.
Speaker 7 (17:43):
Is about Jewish people.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Just take a listen to the way that he spoke
and the way that they are demonizing student protesters such
as himself.
Speaker 7 (17:52):
Listen to this.
Speaker 8 (17:53):
What was your initial reaction when you heard about the
Hamas attack on October seventh.
Speaker 9 (18:00):
I could not believe what my eyes were seeing, where
I see Hamas members getting into settlements and so on.
But also the first moment I saw that, I put
my hand on my heart and I started praying, knowing
(18:21):
that there will be a huge level of revenge from
the Israelis, and I was praying that this will not
be the result because it would be disastrous.
Speaker 8 (18:33):
The night of the rally, I believe someone in the
crowd said something very anti Jewish, not just say anti Israeli,
but anti Jewish.
Speaker 9 (18:44):
Yes, this was as I walk out on November ninth
and a person who is not affiliated with Columbia, we've
never seen him, we don't know who is. This guy
comes down down the stairs yelling death to Jews. I
(19:08):
was shocked. And they walked directly to the person and
they told him, you don't represent us because this is
not something that we agree with. And directly what I've done,
I tooked the megaphone and they gave a speech and
they said, we here are conscious, educated students, and we
(19:30):
know how to separate right from wrong, and what this
guy has said is wrong. What this guy has said
is clearly anti sematic against Jews. To be anti Semitic
is unjust. Is unjust, and the fight for the freedom
(19:54):
of Palestine and the fight against anti Semetism go hand
in hand because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
So this is someone who they're saying is undermining their
foreign policy because of his raging anti Semitism. We also
know the State Department had actually internally put out a
memo about one of the other the young woman who
was disappeared with also the video of these masked officers,
five or six of them, coming and taking her because
she wrote a student newspaper up ed. I mean, what
(20:26):
do you make of this direction and what it means
not just for these students, but day for.
Speaker 7 (20:30):
All of us.
Speaker 10 (20:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
No, that guy sounds like a terrorist to me, right,
just so ridiculous. And I am not seen that before
and that was like exactly what you'd want someone to say.
I don't know, sounded perfect to me. I think it's
you know, okay, I'm not like trying to like, you know,
go down a conspiracy rabbit hole or something like this,
(20:55):
Like I don't know, I'm just speculating, but I do
know as we all know. I mean, there were so
many attempts made in Donald Trump's first term to undermine him,
like by his own government framing him as a as
a Russian spy for God's sakes, And it does just
seem to me that if you wanted to undermine mass deportations,
(21:17):
like if you want, you couldn't go about it in
a better way than what the Trump administration is doing.
By the way, mass deportations are not happening, yes, but
if you you know, like if you're let's say you're
an immigration restrictionist, which I am, and you you think
that Biden's you know, uh, immigration policy was like suicidal
and insane, and you were like, you finally won the day.
(21:42):
You know, the it is unbelievable how far to the
right the American population has has been moved under the
Joe Biden administration. I mean, mass super majorities of the
American people support mass deportations. Donald Trump, it is his
signature issue. He won every swing state, at won the
popular vote. You've won the day. And so then you're like, Okay, well,
(22:04):
how do we go about doing it, because obviously this
is a very tricky thing that you want to get right.
So let's wade into the most controversial issue and start
deporting legal residents for having the wrong opinion on an
issue where the majority of Americans are with I mean this,
it's it's insane. And so that's just from from the
(22:26):
perspective of even being pro mass deportation, but just then
from the perspective of just being a human being. I mean,
it's like, okay, yeah, if people entered your country illegally,
they don't have a right to be here.
Speaker 6 (22:37):
There probably should be some type of order of.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
You know, operationism, hierarchy of who should go first, and
you know, we probably all agree with like violent criminals
and gang members and things like that, but you know,
to do it because someone is like an eloquent defender
of one side of a conflict is just I don't know,
it's it's horrific.
Speaker 6 (23:01):
It's also it, you know, an.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
Incredibly scary president to set you know, this idea that
we can label you a terrorist. You know it's one
because this is the game that they always play. It's like, oh, well,
it's only if you're a pro a terrorist group or
if you hate Jewish people or something like that. And
just like with all speech regulations, it's like, fine, but
who gets to decide that, because I don't know. I mean,
(23:24):
there certainly are a lot of people out there who
hate Jewish people, and there certainly are a lot of
people out there who maybe less people. But there are
some people out there who defend Hamas. But I get
accused of that every single day and I've never done either.
So like, I who gets to determine this? And it
does seem to me just like more of a continuation
of kind of the worst of the post nine to
(23:44):
eleven tradition in America where we just get to label
something terrorism and then that shuts off the Bill of
Rights or that shuts off critical thinking.
Speaker 6 (23:54):
It's just, man, it's terrible. It's just so terrible.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
I mean, just to address what you're floating that like,
it feels like almost directly undermining you know, the other
things that he ran on that, you know, a more
sort of rigorous and law abiding, constitutionally compliant deportation process.
I mean, but he did run on he said multiple
times he was using Palestinian as a slur. He said
(24:20):
multiple times he wanted to deport pro Palestine protesters, that
he wanted to kick them out of the country. You know,
we covered Bikelly being here and the Alien Enemies Act
and how they've shipped ninety percent of the people that
they sent to this you know, notorious prison and El
Salvador had no criminal records whatsoever. He ran on the
(24:41):
Alien Enemies Act. So you know, what would you say
to people such as myself as others to say, like
he did say he was going to do this stuff,
and he is very proud about doing it too. There's
no like, oh, this person screwed up now he's out
there owning it, saying, Hey, the US citizens, they're going
to Bokelly next.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
I mean i'd say, you're right. I don't know what,
you know, I don't really have a counter to that.
I Mean, the thing about Donald Trump is that he's
always on every side of every issue, and so you
just never really know what he's gott right. It's always
like end the wars and America first, and bomb the
crap out of them and go after their families. And
I mean, he's always just so you never you kind
of never know with Donald Trump, like what is he
(25:22):
really thinking or what is he just floating out? No, listen,
it was obviously he's terrible on Israel, and that was
clear throughout the campaign. I think that for many people,
like myself, the calculation was essentially that, unfortunately, we were
caught in a binary and it was going to be
Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, and she was going to
(25:44):
be just as awful on Israel. Now, she may not
have gone as far as some of this stuff that
we're talking about, but in the big picture, there wasn't
like a true anti war choice. There wasn't a real
non interventionist and you know, I'd say there from my perspective,
at least there were a lot of cultural benefits. I
believe that came from Donald Trump winning. I also just
(26:08):
thought the Democrats had to lose this one. It's just
too crazy. I mean, I don't know, it's just the
policy in Ukraine I view as the most reckless foreign
policy in the history of the United States of America.
I really think nothing is a close second to this,
the idea of like flirting with a proxy war of
choice on the border of the most nuclear armed country
(26:29):
in the world. I mean, it's just absolutely Throughout the
entire height of the Cold War, there was never a
policy as crazy like we always, you know, we fight
a war in Vietnam or something, but there's a whole
China in between, you know, Russia and Vietnam that to
fight on their borders just insane. They funded this, this
catastrophe in Israel throughout the you know, the whole last
(26:52):
year of their term, and they had a brain dead,
senile president and lied to the American people.
Speaker 6 (26:58):
So it was just like I felt like they needed
to oose.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
But yeah, I can't defend any of this stuff, And
you're right, and Trump did did talk about it during
the campaign, and it is.
Speaker 11 (27:07):
Uh.
Speaker 6 (27:09):
Let's hope it doesn't get much worse.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
I'll tell you this, Dave, You're an honest guy and
you can't say that for most people.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
And so I appreciate you. I always look at you,
man and thank you for coming on the show.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
Well, thank you so much. I really do appreciate that.
And as I've told you guys publicly and privately, I
love Breaking Points. I watch it every day and I
think you guys are doing an amazing thing with the show.
Speaker 6 (27:28):
So thank you very much.
Speaker 7 (27:29):
Appreciates Steve, good to see you.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
We'll see you later YouTube. Chrystal, what are you taking
a look at?
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Without a doubt, the biggest Liberation Day breakout media star
has been free press calmness and self described maga lefty
Bachia Ungar Sargan. Whether tariffs are on or off, or
reciprocal or with exemptions or no exemptions, Bachia has dutifully
defended Trump's trade war tactics too Pure's Morgan Bill Maher CNN,
and is of course a regular for the North Korea
(27:56):
level propagandists over at Fox News. No matter the current
state of the tariff roller Coaster and Batcha's telling they
are all part of Trump's glorious revolution against the elites
in favor of the working class.
Speaker 7 (28:07):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 11 (28:08):
When somebody has the courage to show up and stay
to Wall Street, screw you. I am waging war. I'm
waging class warfare on behalf of the American working class.
And you elites and Wall Street, you do what you
need to do because I'm not going to stop fighting
for the American working class. Suddenly everybody is sitting around going,
oh no, the stock market, Yeah, the stock market looks
(28:31):
like that because the rich are punishing Trump for siding
with the neglected and humiliated American working class over them.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
So she is correct that Trump's cares are class warfare,
she just gets the direction completely wrong. In fact, Liberation
Day is direct class warfare against the working class in
favor of Trump aligned oligarchs.
Speaker 7 (28:54):
This should be no surprise. Of course. Trump is himself
a billionaire.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
His administration is stocked with over a dozen billionaires. The
nation's billionaire class has made a great show of aligning
and pledging fealty to him and his entire economic project,
of which tariffs are a key part, has revolved around
catering to the rich. Trump has all but ended white
collar enforcement. He's gutting the irs so they cannot audit
(29:18):
the rich sufficiently. He's engaged in a massive regulatory rollback
so that big.
Speaker 7 (29:23):
Business can act with impunity.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
He is cutting the social safety net while handing out
a giant tax cut to the rich, and is destroying
the last remaining remnants of labor power. As just one
but very telling example, how do you square Trump's supposed
war on Wall Street with the fact that on the
day he rolled back some of the global tariffs, he
hosted billionaire Charles Schwab at the White House and then
(29:47):
bragged about how Schwab had been able to make two
point five billion dollars in the markets that day alone.
Speaker 10 (29:55):
It's not just s.
Speaker 7 (30:01):
Today now.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
That is about as close to an admission of insider
trading as you could possibly get. While what main streets four, A,
one k's were puking and retail investors were getting clobbered,
a group of billionaires at the White House just happened
to be positioned to cash in on the massive Trump
triggered rebound. That should be enough to convince you that
Trump's primary ideological motivation is to accrue wealth and power
(30:26):
for himself and for his ring of aligned oligarchs.
Speaker 7 (30:30):
But there is so much more.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Here is the definitive proof that Trump's tariffs are class
war against the ninety nine percent, the likes of which
we have perhaps never seen before. All right, number one,
massive corporations are being liberated from Trump's tariffs while the
little guys are getting screwed. Stocks were up yesterday after
the Trump administration announced significant exemptions to their one hundred
(30:53):
and forty five percent China tariffs that would be particularly
beneficial to so called Magnificent Seven companies like Apple and Nvidia.
This is, of course no accident. In Vidia's CEO recently
paid at least a million dollars in order to attend
a Trump super Pac dinner, where he was presumably able
to have an audience directly with the president. Apple CEO
(31:13):
Tim Cook gave a million dollars to the Trump inauguration
and has been quietly courting Trump for years with his
shitcoin development properties around the world, blatant political favor sellings.
Through these super Pac dinners, Trump has created an industrial
scale bribery factory where anyone with the cash can lobby
the King for a favor. The fear of this exact dynamic,
(31:35):
by the way, is precisely why the power to raise
revenue was left to Congress in the Constitution. But while
the big guys get the world, the small and medium
sized business owners they are getting the shaft. Meet Beth
and a Rock War veteran and the founder and CEO
of Busy Baby.
Speaker 12 (31:51):
A problem solver by nature, I decided to create something
to keep our kids entertained and to save our backs
and sanity parents keeping your babies busy just got a
whole lot easier because.
Speaker 7 (32:05):
Of the Busy Baby Matt.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
So Beth was living this small business dream story after
that Shark tank appearance or sales skyrocketed. She was expanding
Walmart and Target came knocking. She was even honored by
Trump's Small Business administration as Minnesota's Small Business Person of
the Year. But now, thanks to the one hundred and
forty five percent China tariffs, all of it, the business,
the dream, even her house, which she had leveraged to
(32:29):
finance her expansion into Walmart, all of it is on
the line. She recently spoke to The Daily about how
for her business, the tariffs mean certain death.
Speaker 10 (32:38):
I cannot bring this product into the US now. I
don't have that kind of money. And what that means
then is if I can't bring in that product and
I run out of what's in my warehouse now, then
I no longer have revenue coming into my business. And
what that means is I can no longer pay my employees,
I can no longer pay my loans to which my
(32:59):
house is ridged against, and in about six months I
could very very possibly lose my home.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Now, I want you to understand best actually plan for
some level of tariff. She was ready for that, but
right now she's got a shipment in China, roughly one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of product. It would
now cost two hundred and twenty nine thousand to bring
that product to the US. She doesn't have that cash.
She's sure as hell doesn't have the cash to spend
a million dollars to plead her case directly to Trump.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Here's the thing.
Speaker 10 (33:32):
I'm not in a face off with the administration because
I'm not a player in the game. I'm a pawn.
There's literally nothing I can do. And I was coming
up with strategies. But then any strategy I came up with,
I'm afraid to execute it because the policy changes every
twenty four to thirty six hours.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Now, this is no small bump in the road for Beth.
At one point the interview actually turned extremely dark.
Speaker 6 (33:52):
I'm not okay.
Speaker 10 (33:55):
I'm scared for my friends. I'm scared for myself.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
They don't understand.
Speaker 10 (33:59):
This is certain death for us. It is certain death
for so many of my friends and myself. Not in
the literal sense of Actually, no, I'm not gonna say
not in the literal sense, because the very first thought
that came to me when he announced one hundred and
four percent tarif was at least I have at least
I have life insurance so that there's a way my
(34:22):
family can still.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Have a home.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Now, Beth says she's got a big support network and
she's going to make it through, but she worries how
many small business owners out there like her are facing
similarly dire circumstances and are not going to be okay.
So big business they get Marralago Dinners, they get special
car balance, they get their rebounding stock prices. Mom and
pop companies get effectively a business death penalty.
Speaker 7 (34:45):
But that is only one aspect of this class war.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Number two, let's talk about those armies of millions screwing
in little little screws.
Speaker 8 (34:53):
Great American workers.
Speaker 7 (34:54):
You know, we are going on other networkies.
Speaker 6 (34:57):
Millions of people.
Speaker 8 (34:59):
Well remember the army of millions and millions of human
beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones. That kind
of thing is going to come to America.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
It's going to be automated, and great Americans, the trade
craft of America is going to fix them.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
So one of the many justifications of Trump's tariff policy,
and the one that has I think the most popular
emotional resonance, is that it's going to restore American manufacturing.
Might there are some aspects of that stated goal that
I am personally sympathetic to. The First thing that you
should know about this alleged goal, though, is that it's
not happening. You'd have to be insane to willingly invest
in US manufacturing given the wild daily shifts in policy.
(35:36):
In fact, Trump's policy incentivizes offshoring and avoiding US markets altogether.
But let's assume Trump is able to strong arm some
companies into building some new factories. What is that actually
going to look like. There is nothing inherently good about
factory jobs. In fact, the early days of US industrialization
were a horror show of child labor, low wages, miserable
(35:59):
living conditions, company towns, and deadly accidents. Go read The
Jungle by Upton Sinclair or the History of the Triangle
Shirtwaist Fire for a refresher on how workers were treated
at that time. It is instructive to reflect on the
fact that Trump is not calling for a return to
nineteen fifty style industrialization when progressive row reforms, high union
density and an expanding social safety and that meant that
(36:20):
Dad could work in the factory and support a family instead.
Trump is inspired by the Gilded Age President William McKinley
he models his administration.
Speaker 7 (36:29):
He said this repeatedly after a.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Time when American workers, many newly arrived immigrants, crowded into
ghettos and worked in sweatshops as Robert Barns commanded ever
greater portions of the economy. Instead restoring nineteen fifty's working
class stability, he wants American workers to be pushed into
the global race to the bottom that goes hand and
glove with the doge efforts to destroy government's ability to
(36:52):
regulate business and Trump's onslaught against unions. In fact, the
US already does produce more than every country on Earth
except China, but due to automation, that production no longer
requires nearly as many workers, and thanks to attacks on unions,
those jobs are not nearly as good as they once were.
As Matt Burning points out McDonald's workers in Denmark, they
(37:13):
actually make more than Honda workers in Alabama. Bottom line,
Trump wants you bring back these sweatshops of the early
Industrial Revolution, not the union backed middle class jobs of
your grandparents' era.
Speaker 7 (37:24):
The work would be.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Low, pain, difficult, and lacking in labor protections. Not to
mention that we're talking about far fewer jobs anyway, since
robots would be the ones enlisted to screw in those
little little screws now. A third element of Trump's terra
fueled class war is his desire to shift funding the
government away from the income tax and towards the tariff.
Speaker 13 (37:44):
To me, the most beautiful word, and I've said this
for the last couple of weeks in the dictionary today,
is the word tariff. It's more beautiful than love. It
more beautiful than any It's the most beautiful word. This
country can be come rich with the use, the proper
use of tariffs.
Speaker 7 (38:04):
It'll Can you just float out the idea of getting
rid of income taxes and replacing it with tariffs, Well.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Okay, we're serious about that?
Speaker 6 (38:12):
Hower, Yeah, but why not?
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Trump of course likes to pretend that those tariffs will
be paid by foreign countries. That's just not true. Just
remember again our small business owner Beth. She had to
abandon her shipment of goods in China because she can't
afford to pay herself the tariff. Now, if she could
afford to front the tariff, she would then instead have
to pass a significant amount, if not all, the costs
of the tariff onto consumers, pushing her thirty dollars, busy
(38:35):
baby Matt up to let's say fifty dollars. So, in practice,
tariffs are a consumption tax, and since working class people
spend a far greater percent of their income on goods
than the rich do, the tax is directly regressive, hurting
the poorest people the most and leaving the rich largely unscathed.
A YO budget Lab analysis found the average American would
face thirty eight hundred dollars in increased costs from the
(38:57):
April second tariffs, with the impact falling hardest on the
lowest end of the income scale. And at the same time,
Trump is of course planning a massive multi trillion dollar
tax cut for the rich.
Speaker 7 (39:07):
Large custom of medicaid.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Social security is being destroyed, and rich tax cheats are
going to be able to more easily avoid income taxes
thanks to a gutted IRS. In practice, this means that
the working class is going to increasingly be forced to
shoulder the burden of funding the government and frankly, their
own oppression, as the budget tilts away from social spending
and towards the police date. After all, Trump the Republican's
(39:30):
new budget calls for a mass expansion of military, a
record breaking one trillion dollar Pentagon budget also calls for
a dramatic increase in funding for ice into dole out
for private prison contractors to create mass detention centers. As
we covered earlier yesterday, or sorry, as we covered earlier yesterday,
Trump told El Salvador's president Bkelly that next he wanted
(39:51):
to send quote homegrowns to rot in the Seacot torture dungeon.
It has never been more clear that what begins with
immigrants will rapidly expand to American citizens in an effort
to silence and intimidate dissenters. I doubt, however, that that
effort to quash all dissent is going to succeed, because
already the American people are not buying what Trump and
Batia are selling. People can see what is being done
(40:13):
to them to enrich Trump and as ooligarchs, which is
why Trump's economic approval and overall approval are plummeting. CBS
has a new pull out which asks Americans who will
benefit from Trump's trade and teariff policies. Seventy four percent
say the wealthy, seventy one percent say large corporations, only
forty two percent say the working class, and only thirty
nine percent say small business. What's more, only twenty one
(40:35):
percent of Americans, overwhelmingly Republican partisans, say that Trump's policies
are making them personally better off. As the economy worsens,
Trump's popularity it's going to continue to fall, and he's
going to reach for war and more tools of repression
in order to maintain his power. You simply cannot do
this to people without expecting a backlash, and if you
are an authoritarian, the response to a backlash is not
(40:56):
to back off, it is to crack down. And on
that I'm going to end this particular monologue, but I'm
going to have more on that note later this week.
And Sager, this is a crazy making.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. I
don't usually do personal segments here on Breaking Points, but
I guess this one qualifies. My wife and I are
having a baby. Do date is basically anytime in the
next few weeks. So first, I hope you can all
forgive me. I've been unexpectedly absent or less engaged than
(41:27):
I may have been in the last several months, navigating
doctor's appointments, illness, and the general chaos of an irrevocable
change to your entire life. If you see me disappear
unexpectedly sometime in the next few weeks, you'll know why.
And while I'll be off for a little while, rest
assured i'll be back and the team here is well prepared.
So what I thought I would do is reflect on
a few lessons that I have learned throughout the process
(41:47):
so far and point people in the direction of some
great books that I've read in the last nine months
that you may also enjoy if you find yourself in
a similar position.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
There is an absolute ocean of bullshit.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
I've discovered out there whenever it comes to pregnancy and
what foods that women are not supposed to eat, and
whether you're supposed to drink coffee or not, an exercise
and everything else. If you just absorb knowledge through pop
culture like I did, you're forgiven. But in my opinion,
it is much more useful to actually investigate claims behind
these societal expectations and see which ones actually hold up
under scrutiny. For this, there is a rightfully famous book
(42:19):
I cannot recommend enough. It's called Expecting Better, Why the
conventional Pregnancy wisdom is wrong and What you really need
to Know, by Professor Emily Oster. Emily Oster is an
economist who actually used hard data sets to investigate the
claims of societal myths and doctors recommendations behind everything like
whether you can eat sushi while pregnant, what type of
exercise you're allowed to do, how much if any alcohol
(42:41):
or caffeine is actually safe and much much more.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
The book is.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Unbelievably useful because it opened my eyes both to the
absolute relative risk or lack thereof, of certain behaviors the
society or the medical system says that there is risk of,
but also showed me really how public health guidelines and
societal norms are set broadly, and I am painting, obviously
with a big brush. Public health guidance is written for
the lowest common denominator in the United States.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
For example, sushi.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Sushi has a relatively higher risk of making people sick. Therefore,
because there is a portion higher risk of getting sick
from sushi. Absolutely, because of the existence of things like
gas station sushi, they have a recommendation don't need it
at all, or you could just say, wait, don't get
it from a gas station. Exercise the same level of
judgment a normal person would when they go to a
steakhouse and order a rare steak or beef tartar.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Absolutely, of course your risk of getting sick is hire.
But we can recognize restaurant reputation, sourcing and other things
obviously matter. You can do a simple Google search and
see whether pregnant women in Japan still eat sushi, and
what their birth outcomes are, it will shock you to
learn that they are perfectly healthy. The same example and
the same safetiest philosophy behind a guidance from a medical
establishment pervades basically everything pregnancy and birth related.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
You again will be forgiven.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
For not knowing any of this, and that is why
I am urging any expected pairs read these books and
her follow up cripsheet. Furthermore, if you are able, one
of these flagship statistics from Oster's book is this recommendation
to hire a doula for better birth outcomes and for
fewer sea sections. My wife and I have found having
a doula to be incredibly helpful in helping understand exactly
(44:17):
what we face and to have actual informed consent when
and if the time comes to participate in any medical intervention.
I want to underscore if you do not do your
own research or speak with people deeply familiar with the process,
you will be at their mercy of the medical system.
And I do not think that the doctors themselves are
(44:39):
actively trying to harm anyone, but it is obvious from
the USC section rate and the US maternal outcomes. The
system that we are forced to participate in does not
line up with the ideal broadly. This brings me to philosophy.
In the United States, everything is about individualism. What type
of health insurance you have, whether you can afford something
or not, how much leave can you take, what childcare
to pursue. It's all a to you, and there's no
(45:01):
true authority on what is best or not. This is
not bad per se. It has a lot of strengths.
But this process and reading different books has really made
me appreciate.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
Other countries' attitudes and customs.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
For example, in the United States today, only about sixty
percent of women are covered by the Family and Medical
Leave Act for an average amount of leave of eleven weeks.
That is, of course, if you are lucky, and to
most people it sounds reasonable. That is honestly, until I
saw what an actual physical eleven week old baby looks like.
It's a barely functional, tiny human being, handing it off
(45:32):
to a daycare center or stranger. It seems so difficult
for me, and I'm not even there yet. This does
not even contend with the run of the mill medical
trauma that any mother will go through.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
While giving birth.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
In the United States, postpartum women are expected to attend
doctor's appointments in the days after birth, and paternity leave
is a luxury roughly available to twenty percent of US males.
By reading books such as The First Forty Days, I
learned this is not normal in the rest of the world,
a major departure from more civilized societies and how they
care for women. In China and in Japan, there is
(46:03):
a societal custom known as a confinement period, where women
basically don't even leave the house for forty days. Traditionally,
they are surrounded by other women who can cook and
clean and take care of every basic need that they have.
The regimen is incredibly strict and important for recovery. It
is more modern versions that include government sponsored programs that
include home help recovery sites for these women, where the
(46:24):
notion that someone would be able to be responsible for
feeding an infant and doing household tasks in their culture
that's insane. In the US, this is basically the norm
unless you have a family member or you can help
are well off enough to have hired help. Even then,
the expectation is vastly different. Millions are expected literally back
at work after mere weeks of giving birth, very little
(46:47):
societal understanding or support. Broadly, this reflects my more Asian
collectivist mindset to how I think people should be treated
after giving birth. But a book that showed me how
this can still work in a more Western context is
a very popular one from a few years back.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
It's called Bringing Up Bebe.
Speaker 3 (47:02):
One American mother discovers the wisdom of French parenting, and
as low as I will be to praise Europeans, it
is undeniable after reading this that a Western society that
can encourage women to be able to pursue careers without
Asian collectivist values can absolutely work. The caveat is you
need decades long cultural buy in as to the standards
of what such state sponsored childcare institutions should look like,
(47:23):
and you need to surrender to standards that are about
ten times higher than the United States. It's unbelievable reading
this the level of care and attention that the French
government puts not only onto discipline and childcare centers, but
ensuring proper nutrition from a very early age. Their system
works because of decades of proven state capacity and its
availability to anyone rich or poor. Costs are variable for
(47:47):
the same service based upon your income. I can easily
see how it would not work here with so much
societal division, but it is something to aspire to, especially
compared to the ad hoc and individual fend for yourself
system that we have here in America. So broadly, these
are the reflections that have been on my mind. It
is a weird sensation. I'm patriotic, I'm an American. Baseline
(48:07):
assumption was, yeah, we're the best country in the world,
but honestly, you have to wonder if that's truly true
when you're starting a family. It is certainly is a
good place to make money, to pursue individual interests or
liberty by consumer goods. But I can't help but looking
around at skyrocketing costs, distrust in the most basic levels
of systems, and see how these women are just left
to fend for themselves, and think that we really need
(48:28):
to change things up if we want more people in
this country to have kids. Finally, for fun and letting
my mind wander, I read a bunch of different books
that won't apply for many years. You may find them
useful if you're at this age. How to raise kids
who aren't assholes, the anxious Generation, the self driven child,
and even throwbacks like Battle Him of the Tiger Mother.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
All of those books.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
Have parts that I do not agree with necessarily, but
they all plant interesting seeds of things that I may
or may not do as a parent. So anyways, I
hope everyone can wish me luck. Luckily, I'm not doing
any of the hard work.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
My wife is. I'm sitting. I'm here to support her.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
And the meanwhile, the true horror that I cannot stop
thinking about is I will not get a good night's
sleep again for a long time, and my cherished days
of the eight pm bedtime are finally over.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue,
become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it.
We're about to take the AMA. Now, let's get to it.
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