12/19/24: United Whistleblower Reveals Denial Quotas, Affirmative Action For The Rich, Theo Von And Chalamet Gush Over Bernie

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Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. 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. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.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.

We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. All right, let's go ahead and move on to this whistleblower who spoke to George Sheridan over at status coup, who used to work at UnitedHealthcare for the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed in New York City, sparking a whole national conversation about the health insurance industry in health care and this vigilante killing, et cetera.

So, I want to be careful about characterizing her claims and you can listen here. She worked there. She did not work directly in the process of denying claims. But she claims that she knew multiple, she worked closely with multiple employees who did, and that they felt like they had come under pressure to deny a certain number of claims. So, denying people care that, you know, their doctors are saying that they need in order to meet some sort of effectively like monthly quota system. So, let's take a listen to what she had to say.

I would hear people, you know, on break time or whatever, when we would all kind of come together in this kitchen clutch, and people will be talking about what they were told to do their job. It wasn't my job, so I can't say 100%. Yes, we have to deny so many claims per month to meet our shareholders' expectations, but I do know that people were complaining because, you know, they had to meet a certain amount of claim denial.

So people were telling you that there was a quota for how many denials, which is kind of like less deadly, but you know, cops towards the end of the month. You have a quota. How many tickets you have to give out. Right. So, you know, this a claim that needs more reporting, more verification, but I think worth putting on there. Cause this is someone who used to work at the company has no reason we know of, at least to lie about what she heard that was going on there.

There was also, let's put this up on the screen. There was someone online who said, listen, I've heard the same thing. My mom used to work for a different insurance company. I remember her coming home crying because she got in trouble for not denying enough claims. She got fired for not meeting quota after a couple of months. I would also say Wendell Potter, who was a former health insurance executive who left the industry, has become a whistleblower, has also spoken to these type of behavior and just

You know, the pressure that exists throughout these companies, where if you're going to make as much profit as possible, you are inherently incentivized to deny as many claims as possible. So you're having to pay out less, but of course, still taking in the same amount in terms of premiums. We also know, Sagar, based on the data that's been reported out that United health care was particularly bad about the number of claims that they would deny. They had the highest rate.

among the major insurers. We also know they were being sued for implementing this AI algorithm to deny claims that had, according to the claims in the lawsuit, a 90% error rate. So like I said, this is a claim that needs more reporting and more verification, but it would not be shocking to learn that there was some either official or unofficial quarter-type system within this insurance industry. No, yeah, definitely not. And look, I don't know. I mean, in terms of

the insurance industry, things are very much up in the air right now. Just because of the Trump administration that's coming in in which direction that they decide to take things. And you could foresee a situation where they try to mess with pre-existing conditions or the healthcare marketplace. The individual mandate is already gone, so that's not the big change that they might want to do. But there's a lot of things on the edges.

that they could change in terms of how the insurance marketplace themselves would work. Literally going through this right now, shout out to Open Enrollment. It's a pain in the ass. You know, it's like every American. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. I remember I had a deductible of like $8,000. I think it was like eight years ago. And everyone thought it was crazy. And I was like, yeah, I'm a young guy. So now when you go and you shop for insurance, you see deductibles that are 15 grand.

$15,000. And you're still paying hundreds of dollars per month, you know? And add kids onto that. Good luck, man. And you can just see how nightmarish it is. And this is what I was talking about with the healthcare system. Most people like their healthcare in terms of employer-based. They don't like the health insurance companies, but they like their healthcare, like employee-provided healthcare.

But there are 30 to 40 million people, including the self-employed, like yours truly and you, where we have to go out there and shop in the marketplace. And that is where the nightmare situation really starts to happen. Because you don't get the benefit of employer subsidies or you usually get a lower deductible plan in those situations like that too. And that's when people really get screwed.

Yeah, absolutely. It's also been, you know, the political response here has also been really interesting. We mentioned with Jeff Stein, I just want to repeat this again, that in the CR, there actually is one good provision that it's not going to solve our healthcare woes, but it would modestly improve them, which is to rein in these pharmacy benefit managers, which they are these totally, as far as I can tell, totally unnecessary middlemen that control what prescription drugs are covered by health insurance agencies

And so they strike these deals in between the pharmacies and the health insurers, and they take a cut of these rebates for themselves. Again, it's just a sort of unnecessary middleman that helps to drive up the cost of your prescription drugs. And so there is a provision in the CR that would rein them in. This is something that has bipartisan support, something Josh Hawley and Elizabeth Warren have worked together on in the context of the Senate.

So, there are some small reforms that have the potential to move forward. The other thing, Sagar, that's in here, that is funny in telling, is that the previously members of Congress, they are right now, required by law, to shop for their health insurance on the same health insurance exchanges, though Obamacare exchanges, that you and I have to shop for health insurance on.

and have no other options, by the way. They stuck a little provision into the CR to get them out of having to do that and be able to participate in whatever the federal government employee system is, et cetera. So they are well aware of some of the problems in the current system in spite of the fact that they apparently don't want to fix that for everyone, just for themselves. They want to better their own situation here, but not necessarily yours or ours. You don't need Congress enough.

And there's been a lot of discourse right now because they tried to put a pay raise in there, the cost of living pay raise, and I'm like, well, we got to pay our members of Congress enough. And theoretically, maybe I could get there. But in the current interim, no, not in a time when you guys are most of the vast majority of you, what, 90%.

I mean, they're making those money on the insider trading. That's what I mean. Over 90% of these people are net worth over 1 million. You know, a lot of them are extraordinarily wealthy in their own right. It's like, no, we shouldn't pay you more. Well, here's my thing. You're trying to exhibit yourself from Obamacare and all this other stuff. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's not happening.

Here's, here's my thing is I am totally willing to strike a deal with Congress. You ban stock training, trading, and we will give you a giant, a big race. Not just this was going to be like a few thousand dollars or whatever. We'll give you a big race if you just ban insider, your insider stock trade, your stock trading at all. But I, I'm not going to hold my breath on that one. The other political response, you put this up on the screen, Ken Clippenstein, who continues to do great work on reporting out the story. Kathy Hochl.

Governor of New York, and incredibly like, she's like the definition of, you know, middling this woman. She wants to create a crisis hotline for CEOs. So her response isn't, hey, you know, clearly there's a problem with the health insurance industry based on the way that people are reacting to this cold-blooded murder in the streets of New York City.

No, no, no. Let me make sure that CEOs have a special hotline exclusively for them to report perceived threats. This is the same woman that Ken reported on, and we brought you this information here as well, who convened 175 CEOs and other corporate representatives as well as Homeland Security and Counter Terror officials to discuss how to share intelligence with corporate security. So you see whose priority

who she prioritizes in terms of making sure their lives are smooth and that they feel total comfort and are fully protected by the state. And then the other thing that Ken notes here and Ryan and Emily covered the fact that they

They charge Luigi Mangione with terrorism, which was not unexpected. And listen, I mean, I think he did intend to cause terror. So from that perspective, I understand the charge. But I'm also concerned because between that, between the arrest of the woman in Florida for just like saying something mean to a health insurance representative,

And Seb Gorka, who's the incoming terrorist, is out and out comparing people who have been expressing their upset at the health insurance industry and some going so far as to sort of lie nicely with Luigi Mangio, some sort of folk hero.

characterizing them as a sort of domestic terrorist akin to the weather underground in comments that he made to Newsmax. So, you know, the concern is that this is one more justification for the US government to use to surveil and violate civil liberties and, you know, have a whole new group of quote-unquote anti-corporate extremists that they are using to quash free speech and censor and surveil, et cetera. So that's something to keep an eye on.

Terrorism laws are mostly unnecessary. They're like hate crime statues. It's they're just like socially acceptable ways to smack even more years onto people when we have a good laws on the books already. Like murder. They're completely political and arbitrary. No, that's what I mean. And then also you get to enforcement. It's like, well, if it kills somebody because they're white and not because they're black, it's like, do you still hit them with the hate crime statue? That's literally happened before, by the way.

And of course, there's always a big debate. It's prosecutorial discretion, et cetera. That's why I just think it's stupid because it becomes political. And we just use them as an as enhancements instead of we have perfectly good laws on the books in every state against murder. Yeah, that's.

That's all you need to lock somebody up. If you want to consider all that other stuff, you can take it in for sentencing or probation or whatever. But yeah, I just think it's crazy because they do this to circumvent going around a normal murder charge and somebody with even more mandatory time. I don't know the exact in and outs, but this was all passed usually in the post 9-11 hysteria era. And we have enough now to know that this stuff is just grossly unconstitutional.

deprives people of civil liberties, and it's just a socially acceptable way of just hitting people with political charges, none of which you even need. I mean, this is not a defense of Louisiana Manji, only prosecute him for murder, okay? First degree murder. You can easily do that, but yeah, exactly. And he'll probably still spend life in prison. So what's the point? Because here's the thing, you could make the case that basically any murder is terrorism.

And, you know, they have really stretched these definitions in the past. So you're absolutely correct. It's unnecessary to have these laws on the books whatsoever. And, you know, we have seen the way that these panics over, quote, unquote, domestic extremism have been used against the American public and to gravely violate people's civil liberties. We certainly saw it during the war on terror. We've covered some of those cases here where

You know, basically, if you didn't have the FBI, the deep state in there actively radicalizing people, leading them up to that, hey, let's do this plot together. Here's the money to be able to affect you. Why don't you buy a ticket to, you know, go fight the jihad in Syria? And then, so they radicalize these people, they set them up, and then they swear.

swoop in. Oh, look, we've disrupted this grand plot. So you saw that during the War on Terror. And then we saw some really crazy stuff like with that Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping quote-unquote kidnapping plot, which also similarly the feds were deeply involved in trying to facilitate and radicalize and set up these individuals. Oh, you know, the Jan Six people got hit with terrorism, right?

Remember that? No, that's actually one of the things people have been pointing out is none of them have been hit with terrorism. Whereas these, you know, whereas Luigi Mangioni is. So again, it just shows you it's very, you can just sort of pick and choose who and what you consider to be quote unquote terrorism.

versus, you know, the January 6 people were charged with other things that were laws on the whole. It was illegal entry. That's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was. No, that's what it was.

that were very clear in their goals of what they were doing that day. So in any case, that's a little bit of what's going on there. The last thing that people were taking note of, and I don't want to overstate this, but I think it's interesting. So the Economist has a running tracker of what Americans say their top issues are. And in the wake of this debate after Luigi Mangione allegedly shot and killed Brian Thompson, although, you know, Mack and Ryan say actually he was here in the studio during those hours.

So, and Mack actually said that while he was back in the control room, he told him that he's allergic to McDonald's. So there's a lot of pieces here that don't matter. But in any case, in the wake of that murder, healthcare has shot up to be the number two issue. Surpassing immigration in the Economist's ongoing tracker, inflation's still number one.

I don't want to overstate the case because it actually already was a pretty significant issue. So it only spiked up a little bit. We could put the chart up on the screen. You can see for yourself. This is the three month tracking and this is a little bit difficult to see. The top line is inflation. Okay, inflation in price is 23.5% say.

this is my most important issue. And this is the type of poll where you can only pick one, some polls are like you can pick multiple. Okay, so 23.5% of people say that is my number one issue. You now have healthcare jumping up, it's that purple line to be just above immigration and jobs in the economy as the second most important issue. So clearly the conversation around this has sparked a lot of

interest in the American people in some reform. And this is a ball that the Democratic Party has completely dropped. There was almost no talk of significant health care reform in this last presidential election, really from either side. But, you know, historically, it's been Democrats who have been trying to push this issue forward. Far, far, far from back when Bernie Sanders put Medicare for All on the table and made it a national debate and where this was an ongoing

conversation Kamala Harris backed Medicare for all allegedly back in the 2020 primary group before donors got mad at her and she ran away from that position full steam never to be you know embraced again. So in any case that's where the political debate is. There it is.

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All right, so at the same time, this was an interesting story. Yeah, both of us were interested in this one. So obviously, Supreme Court struck down affirmative action. We've got new numbers. I'll show you that in a minute of minority enrollment, especially into elite law schools like Harvard Law. But

Some of these elite universities have been embroiled in a lawsuit alleging that they have basically ripped off their students the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and that they have violated an agreement that they had with the federal government.

that allowed them to like legally violate antitrust law. And without getting too deep in the weeds of this, effectively, they had to agree that their admissions would be 100% need blind, meaning that they would not factor in a student's wealth income, family wealth income at all.

in their admissions and in exchange for that agreement, they would then not be subject to federal antitrust regulations. So this has been an ongoing lawsuit. As part of this discovery process and in one of the new filings, we are learning some very interesting details about how not need blind these universities were and how much

they privileged the admissions of high net worth families, the students, you know, coming from high net worth families who were well connected to, let's say, the president of the university or other influential people or given massive gifts to the school. And let me just go ahead and put this article up on the screen. And I want to read you some of this because the details here, listen,

This is not a shock to any of us, but seeing the details of it really is something else. So the headline is,

For years, Georgetown University's longtime president flagged 80 students to be added to a special admissions list, but not, apparently for their academic or athletic prowess, documents in a new lawsuit claim, those on the president's list were virtually assured of admissions simply because of their family's wealth and donation potential, according to a motion filed on Monday in this long-running lawsuit.

At MIT, two children recommended by a wealthy banker with ties to a university board member got special treatment, according to the documents, in a deposition the school's director of admissions said the two children who appeared on a, quote, cases of interest list were among those who, quote, we would really have not otherwise admitted.

at the University of Pennsylvania. Some students designated BSI, or Bonafide Special Interest, have a dramatically higher rate of admission than other applicants, according to expert testimony. Penn's former Associate Dean of Admissions, Sarah Harberson, testified last year in a deposition that a BSI tag meant the student's family was a big donor or had connections to the board. Those students, quote, were untouchable.

and they would get in almost 100% of the time according to this former associate dean of admissions. She also said the admissions office was powerless to deny the student even if the student was incredibly weak, even if the student had a major issue in the application.

So this is the affirmative action that has undoubtedly continued, even in the wake of race-based affirmative action being overturned at the Supreme Court, where if you come from money, if your parents are well connected to the board, well connected to the president, if they've made big donations to the school, or the school even thinks.

that they can make big donations in the future, you are put on one of these special lists in some instances and you are on a glide path to get into these elite institutions that helped you set you up for life regardless of whether or not you actually merit being there. And seeing it put plain like this is really quite a story. Oh, it's amazing. I love it. It's just like the original affirmative action lawsuit. I'm so happy to actually

And by the way, I met plenty of these folks in school. I remember them well. Some of them, the daughters of kings and queens, we won't mention any exact countries, shall we? But let's just say their academic prowess was never particularly... Impressive. Or impressive, when they did show up to class. What's funny is that when you pair it, you can see a complete freak out now of modern academia because these people, they don't bring in a million, two million. We're talking hundreds of millions.

It's like one of the things that you learn from the Varsity Blues case is that being worth a cool 20, 30, 50 million, they're like, that's a joke. That's nothing. You can't buy your way into Harvard with that. That's why they needed the Varsity coach to get them. And the way you buy your way in and the kids that they're talking about here, we're talking about 10, 50, 20, 50, you know, $100 million.

donations to some of these universities. That's why they do it. Now it's an existential threat to the universities, which why they've been protecting this stuff for all time because we're talking about millions per year in annum that many, you know, alumni will donate just to increase their chance of admission by for their kids by what? 5%, 6%, something like that. So you see that together combined with now,

The affirmative action hit that these places are taking already of which the DEI freak out on this is huge. So let's put this up there on the screen. This is the new admissions data from Harvard Law, but it includes MIT, Pennsylvania, and a few others and says black student enrollment at Harvard Law drops by more than half

to the number not seen since the 1960s, not just so happens when affirmative action was invented, by the way, just 3.4% of the class. But what's astonishing is, lo and behold, the Asian number skyrockets, which is exactly what the people for the students for fair admission lawsuits were able to prove at the time, which is this was a systematic

racial discrimination campaign in the face of all of this talk about DEI and others. So, and of course, the Ferris critique was, well, what about, you know, or was it legacy admission? Just like, well, great, let's get rid of them both. So, now, if we have a five-year timespan.

to get rid of racial-based affirmative action and legacy admissions. We will have one of the most meritocratic higher education systems that we've, that probably in the history of the United States, because even in the early 60s, you had all that crazy stuff with anti-Semitism and racism, et cetera. So this is a very, very positive outcome.

Another reason why it matters is because as this starts to trickle down, already we have race-based admissions that's been nuked on the admissions level for universities. As we have this filter down to state colleges that are publicly funded, it becomes even more important.

and you have it so that the actual public funded universities, the best single way to go from middle class to upper middle class or from lower class to middle class, and you remove some of these admissions practices, then we actually can really set things straight. Next, we have to do tuition, but we'll get there.

I mean, my feelings about this are a little more complicated than yours, because when I say like, oh, the number of Black students and Harvard dropped to levels of the 60s, I'm not like, yay. But my opposition to affirmative action has been that, it's fundamentally a neoliberal policy that says, we're not gonna change the distribution of wealth. And by the way, if you look within racial groups, you have a very similar level of mass

inequality within those groups and primarily affirmative action that has benefited like upper middle class or wealthier individuals within those minority groups. So we're not going to change the distribution of wealth. We're just going to diversify this rarefied few.

and not deal with these larger structural issues and make it so that even if you don't go to Harvard and you don't go to the top school, even if you don't go to college at all, you're going to be able to have a stable middle class or working class life. You're going to be able to have a home, you're going to be able to have a car, you're going to be able to afford a family.

you're going to have health insurance or health care and not have to have health insurance, but actually just get the care that you need. And so, rather than dealing with this, this is sort of like, you know, a band-aid on white liberals' concerns about the racial inequity that

genuinely exist that they see in the world. So that's why I haven't been a supporter of affirmative action, but I think it does underscore our education system starting at pre-K is wildly unequal, very much dependent in spite of it being a public school system.

very much dependent on what zip code you happen to be born into. What is the wealth of that zip code determines how much funding goes into that education system. We have some really great public schools. In fact, there's one, you know, just a few miles down the road here in Alexandria. That's one of the top high schools in the entire country where you're sure to get a fantastic education. And you have some that are completely and utterly failing, not to mention, you know, the more that we have this mass class inequality.

And I think we truly are in a second Gilded Age now, even if you look at Elon Musk and him basically taking over the government and the way that the rewards are just constantly rigged to float at the top. You have to deal with that structure in order to, you can't Jerry rig it at the end and say, all right, well, we screwed you all the way up here, but we're going to give you a few token goodies here once you get to the top of the food chain and make us all feel better.

about the fact that you have more black first year law students at Harvard. The one other thing I wanted to note is, you know, this didn't just look at Harvard law. It did look at other law schools. It was not a universal trend across the board. There were a few schools where black first year law students actually did increase, I think Stanford maybe was one of those. But most of them saw somewhat of a decline. Harvard and UNC were two that saw the most severe decline because they were specifically named in the lawsuit.

So I think they felt particularly like they needed to really aggressively go in the opposite direction. So the differences in the data here are also worth noting. Right. So I mean, look, I'm not saying yay. I'm saying yay to the idea that you have more merit-based admission. That's what I would say is good. And so if things drop dramatically, that tells you something about how things used to operate there.

And it gives, look, there was also lack of trust. Well, I think it was unfair to discriminate against Asian students for a particular, you know, is another piece of this. They're literally penalized for having higher test scores and for having higher GPAs. That's insane in the profession of law, especially in medicine or at MIT, any of these other places, which there was also significant problems.

that are there. You know, the other thing that you see here is actually Black Student and Hispanic enrollment went up at the state college level, which tells you what, which is actually, that's a very good thing, isn't it? Because you can see that having access and having a merit-based admission system to more accessible, quote-unquote, colleges and others means that everybody can have a fair shot, which is allegedly, you know, what the country was founded on.

and what we want. So it's very important for what you just said to understand about the wealth gap and return. We talked a lot about this a lot, but everyone talks about, oh, if you look at the white black wealth gap, those statistics are bullshit and completely fake. The vast majority of the quote unquote wealth gap between whites and blacks is in the top 10% of whites and the top 10% of blacks because there are way more hundred billionaires, people like Elon.

and others as opposed to, you know, I don't even, Oprah and a few others. If you take the median, the wealth gap is not nearly as pronounced as what it is. People use the aggregate data. This is something, what Matt Brunig has talked quite a bit about this. He has some decent charts from a few years ago that I remember cribbing a lot of these stats from.

The point on this is that if you focus on median and middle class equality, then you actually come much better or much closer to restoring the quote unquote wealth gap that actually matters. And that's the one of between rich and between poor. But of course, that's very inconvenient. And it's much easier, as you said, is to diversify the top echelons. I mean, my favorite example is the NASDAQ.

where you're not allowed to go public unless you have a person of color on your board. Nothing to do with your business practices or any of these others. You literally have to have a woman and a person of color. It's like that's what we've decided to change at the highest restaurants.

So the white families on average hold around eight times more wealth than black families. So if you are comparing on a racial basis, there is a significant difference. My point is that what we really need to do is

There needs to be a better sharing of the pie. You should not have it be so concentrated at the top where the only goal is to just diversify the highest heights and keep everybody scrapping amongst themselves for who can make it into the upper middle class, the wealthy and the top.

That is my point, because I don't want to deny that there continues to be discrimination, that historic discrimination, especially in housing, which is such a key building block of wealth, continues to haunt this country and continues to drive a significant wealth gap between black and white. So it's not my goal to deny that. What I was pointing out is if you look within any particular racial group, you see a similar distribution of wealth in terms of the gap between the haves and the haves. Yes, that's true.

That's what I want to close. That's what I'm committed to. And there is no indication that affirmative action was a part of helping to close that wealth gap between the top 1%, the top 0.1% and everyone else. And those are the policies that I'm interested in.

Absolutely, I don't disagree with that. I would just say the average, remember that average includes people like Elon. You have to look at income quintile of the median quintile. Okay, but should they just be thrown out? No, well, yes, actually, because it's ridiculous to skew things by including people who are worth hundreds of billions of dollars in the overall thing. Well, but I mean, that's kind of a core.

part of the problem, though. I agree with you. We have people that have hundreds of billions of dollars that are part of the system. But when you separate out the top 10%, it's not even close to eight times. It's complicated in terms of what it actually is. And I'm not going to deny that the gap isn't there, but it's not eight times for what it is. I'm trying to find the Map Runic statistics that I was craving this from from a few years ago, but the point stands that

That's part of the reason why average is actually not a good statistic. The median wealth for a white family was 285,022. The median wealth for a black family was $45,000. So that's what? Five times, right? It's a large gap. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. That's definitely true. A lot of that also comes back to housing, like you just said. But the part of the problem, too, is even in terms of housing is there is that big skew for a working class.

for within whites in terms of generational access to housing. Obviously, that was a big problem with redlining, except that's one thing I will give them. It's true. In terms of denying wealth. There's also, though, there was a big problem after 2008. Matt Stoller has talked a lot about this in terms of where bailout disparity happened.

with a lot of people's access to housing because it was specifically black and Hispanic households who lost access to a lot of those loans are most susceptible to the subprime crisis, lost access to their houses, and then after the real estate explosion of 2010 forward, that increased the widening of the gap as well.

That gets to a lot of Barack Obama discourse, et cetera, which I know that he's been excellent on. So anyway, it's an interesting conversation in terms of how he actually moved forward in the country. And it's one where a lot of the people who were posting about affirmative action always were very conveniently ignoring. I was always one of those who was like, yeah, let's ban it. Get rid of it. I think getting rid of legacy admissions is extraordinarily important to make sure that there is not a continued aristocracy in the country.

Because everybody knows that if you just have somebody write your letter or whatever at one of these universities, you go from a 5% admissions rate to 50, and then you donate some money, you go up to like 75, which is as sweet as it gets. The details here of like, oh, if you're on this list, you just get it. Period. Whether you deserve to be there or not. Must be nice. Let's really focus on ending that type of affirmative action.

What's up, everybody? I'm Nate and Berk here to tell you about a new podcast, my hard podcast in the National Hockey League. It's NHL Unscripted with Berk and Dimmerse. Hey, I'm Jason Dimmerse, former 700-game NHL defenseman, turned NHL network analyst, and boy oh boy does daddy have a lot to say.

I don't love you, by the way, on NHL Network. We're looking forward to getting together each week to chat and chirp about the sport and all the other things surrounding it that we love, right? Yeah, I just met you today, but we're going to have a ton of guests from the colliding world of hockey, entertainment, and pop culture. And you know what? Tons of back and forth on all things NHL. Yeah, you're just going to find out we're not just hockey talk. We had all kinds of random stuff on this podcast, movies, television, food, wrestling, even the stuff that you wear on NHL now.

You wish you could pull off my short charts, Verki. That's sure to cause a ruckus. Listen to NHL Unscripted with Birkin Diverse, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite host, me, WZWTF and me, Mandy B. As we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex,

and love. That's right. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, we share our personal journeys navigating our 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engage in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations.

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actor Timothy Chalamet recently went on the TheoVon podcast and they both were, had fawning praise for Senator Bernie Sanders, which of course I love to see. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. Yeah, we had Bernie Sanders on and he was saying that, um, he said Pete Singer was one of his, uh, favorite. Excuse McNary could play Bernie Sanders in a biopic. Right. Yeah. Totally could. Bernie has an aged. Now I'm burning. So it looks the same. He's the best. He's looking the same in the last. Yeah. He's like a real folk hero.

That's a great point. Yeah, Bernie is. He is a folk hero. Yeah, he's folk music. Mitchell Lama, you know about Mitchell Lama? Oh, yeah, the five, the restaurant stars or whatever. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, Mitchell Lama is like, there's like two, to my understanding, there's two versions of like good arts, housing, or you got section eight that means you're paying like under 800 bucks Mitchell Lama. Yep. Oh, that damn Mitchell Lama, brother. Absolutely. Oh.

That's me, baby, moderate. Mitchell, I'm a program for I just affordable rental and cooperative housing and moderate and middle income families. Also give you a little taste there of them, uh, busting out the housing policy discourse. Yes, Mitchell, llama, which apparently a Chalamet, I think he was raised it. And that's what he talks about there on the, uh, the podcast.

I don't know. I've seen this passed around this whole like, oh, so I saw somebody respond to this and they're like, this shows that Bernie Sanders would have won. And I was like, because Chalamet likes Bernie Sanders. I mean, Kamala had plenty of celebrity endorsements last time I checked. Also, if I remember, there were a bunch of celebs who backed Bernie in 2020 or even in 2016. What's her name?

the supermodel, Ratikowski, Emily Ratikowski. If I recall, there were definitely a few others. I think Cardi B was in there as well. I think it wasn't so much about that. Obviously, it's just simplistic to be like, this proves.

Okay, I'm just saying, I saw a very viral girl. She'll shallow me back. But no, no, I don't think it's about shallow me backing him. I think it's about Bernie was capable of going on the Theo Vaughn podcast and Theo Vaughn being like, I love this guy. Yeah, but he did that. He's a folk hero. He still didn't win the

Yeah, you got screwed. But we're also talking about a general election versus a primary election. Obviously, one of the big learnings out of this election was, oh, that like, bro, podcast, comedy, that whole sphere turned out to be really important. And there's a whole, I think, important conversation about

Number one, Kamala, even, okay, I never bought that she should have gone unbroken because I just don't think she would have done well there. So there's number one, the problem of just like having a candidate that you would want to see in any one of these venues, but it recalls the fact that back in 2016 and in 2020, but I think especially in 2016,

Bernie had huge support among the bros, among the Latinos, among the working class, all the groups that have fled the Democratic Party the fastest were his strongest spaces of support. And he was smeared for that. Yo, he was the whole Bernie bro was meant as a smear and they were derided as being toxic, et cetera, et cetera.

Now, it was always inaccurate to paint his support as being completely male. In fact, there were young women, young men overwhelmingly supported Bernie Sanders both in 2016 and 2020. But I think it was more, the point here was that

He's someone who Joe Rogan did support that this ecosystem did support, even though his politics are obviously very different from Trump. He taps into that similar desire for something different and a challenge to the establishment. And I think Trump's challenge to the establishment was fake, blah, blah, blah. But there's no doubt that that is how he is perceived and has successfully positioned himself as being the sort of anti-system politician.

and Bernie Sanders fits that same model. And, you know, if Democrats are losing the bros here, you got a couple of bros who are like, oh my God, I love that guy, he's a folk hero. Yeah, I'm just, I'm, I still, I'm not so sure I buy that analysis. Just because with Bernie, it was fundamentally irreconcilable to the Democratic coalition. Like you had rich white people who are, was obsessed with race in 2016, who, yes, you know, smeared, look, I agree, the Bernie Sanders bro thing was bullshit, but people ate it up, right?

I was playing the midst of Russiagate and all this other crap. They drove him out of the coalition because they hate them. So if you looked at the polling 2020, we covered this extensively in every primary, including the ones that he lost, got blown out by Joe Biden, like in Mississippi. If you ask people about his policy platform and about their personal feelings about him, he won on the policies, he won on his approval rating.

He, people were convinced he couldn't beat Trump. They're convinced about that in 2016. They're convinced about that in 2020. You know, we saw, have seen how that ultimately worked out, but they bought into the narrative that was fed to them about, by MSNBC and other places that you can't vote. You may like this guy, but you can't vote for him because he's not the right person to go up against Donald Trump.

Now, listen, ultimately, we'll never know what would have happened if he had been the nominee in 2016 or in 2020 and how that ultimately would have gone. But I would submit, based on history, based on the fact that he sort of has a modern version of the New Deal left populist approach to combating what I wouldn't but I would characterize as a fascist appeal,

That is what has been successful in the past, and I think given the groups that he had the most traction with, there's certainly a good case to be made that he would have been a much better candidate to go up directly against Trumpism than this, like, lukewarm dover

milk toast neoliberalism that just promises to protect a system that people hate and is fundamentally unjust. Yeah, the problem with that is that Bernie himself then decides to go along with it. He goes into Russiagate. He goes into the Wokism. He runs on, adopts a lot of the stuff in his campaign in 2020. He shifts a lot of his own positions, moves away from what made him so independent on war on so much stuff, right? He's been a huge disappointment, if anything, to a lot of the people who originally joined his movement.

in 2016. And so I just think that that shows where the power lies in the Democratic Party. It's with these DEI academics. Now, maybe it's broken now. I don't think so, though, because what I think is that now the only people who remain committed Democrats in this country are rich white people.

It's basically it. The good news for, I guess, for you is that you can convince these people of anything as long as they think they'll win. That's all they really care about. But which direction of all of that will come from the pages of The New York Times, the pages of people like John Favreau and others for what they think and continue to be told. You've got to give people some agency.

Sure, it's MSNBC's fault, but they trusted them in the first place, right? Like they're the ones who bought their stuff and decided to vote against them. So at a certain point, like it's not MSNBC's fault. They have a bunch of people who are brainwashed enough or whatever to be able to want to listen to them. But who's doing the brainwashing here? I mean, I think you had a lot of earnest people who were deeply troubled by the threat that Trump posed.

And we're looking for answers, and this was the network that they had been sort of primed to trust and think that was not going to lead them astray. And I do think that there's a moment now of reckoning among that liberal base, which

is fleeing MSNBC in droves, which has lost a lot of trust in the Washington Post's another place that saw a huge subscriber exodus. You see a huge surge in a lot of left-populismy, my husband's in particular, online, where I think there are a lot of liberal refugees who are like, this did not work.

Like this line that we were fed about how we had to abandon caring about any issues in order to defeat Trump, like this was bullshit. This failed. And we were led astray and we were lied to and we were manipulated. So there is an opening there. Now I have been very upfront about I think it's much more likely the Democratic Party just does like a Trump is on light.

that they pull a Bill Clinton, that they, you know, sort of rather than having a direct rebuttal to Trumpism, instead they go in the direction of we'll just like be a kinder, gentler version of that. I think that's the most likely outcome, but there is a possibility here that didn't exist before. And the other thing that I would say is, you know, it would be a mistake to think that these political coalitions, and this is the mistake Democrats made in the past, are immovable and unchangeable and locked into place.

There is a lot of, I think, one thing we've learned is people are continually adjusting, evaluating, shifting loyalties. Even in this election, like, you know, it's not like Trump didn't even get 50% of the vote and plenty of swing state Democrats did win. You saw candidates who outperformed like Sherry Brown, he loses, but he outperformed the top of the ticket by 12 points.

Um, you see candidates who are able to stitch together a somewhat different coalition hold on to more of that historic democratic working class base. So I wouldn't treat people as like, well, they're just, this is how they are now. And that's it. And the coalitions are not going to change again because that obviously over some period of time is not going to be the case.

My theory is that if Democrats win, it will have nothing to do with Democrats in the next two to four years. Because of what's the shit that's happening right now? A government shutdown, you try and cut Social Security. In 2018, do you think that the 2018 Democratic victories were because of Democrats or because of Trump's trying to repeal Obamacare?

I think it's because of Obamacare. I don't think it had a damn thing to do with the Democratic Party. Same thing here. I think 2020, I would say the same thing. I don't think that Joe Biden's victory had anything to do with Joe Biden. People hate Joe Biden. It was because people didn't hate him then. They felt fondly towards him. Even now, I think they feel more fondly towards him than it's really justified. 31% of the whole thing, which is the lowest of all time.

But he, you know, I think he is able to barely e-gonna win because of Trump's faults. I think you're 100% correct about that. But yeah, look, Elon is like running the government now. He's an austerity minded like, you know, I'm Randy and Javier Malay type who wants to slash social services.

So they go in that direction, and there's tons of ambient chaos, and the Middle East is still a disaster, and all of these things going on in the world. And you could imagine Democrats running like a union leader, like a Sean Fane. And if Trump has sort of abandoned his pledges on leaving Social Security in place, leaving Medicare in place,

He has not created the utopia that he promised to people. Yeah, you could see those coalitions shifting again. It's not impossible to imagine again. I think it's an uphill climb. And I think you're right. Probably democratic success is most likely to come just because Trump is a disaster. But nothing is written in stone. You never know. If you have seen some interesting people like David Brooks and others, be like, maybe Bernie Sanders had a point. I just think it's too late at this point. But listen, could be wrong. What do you mean it's too late, though?

It's too late. You can't abandon all of the, like these people are just Republicans in term, not even Republicans, they're anti left. That just is like, that's just to me as full heartiest statement as when Democrats said these people are just, they voted for Barack Obama. They're just Democrats now. Young people are always going to be Democrats. Latinos are just going to continue to fall more and more into the Democratic camp. Black people are always going to vote like close to 100% for Democrats. People change their minds.

So I'm talking about time and Trump is a very unique figure, too Yes, I what I mean by that is a time horizon picture So I think are we talking about 12 years or talking about four years? I would say in the next four years outside of pretty solid Republicans So the so-called Reagan Democrats, right the Reagan Democrats who eventually then were voted for for Bill Clinton 12 years ago Yeah, it takes a while, but you know with the Obama people it took a

It took 12 years actually for some of these people to flip around. I'm not saying they're set in stone, but I don't think they're rapidly going to shift right back aesthetically, especially with where the Democratic Party is today. So do I think that all of them are going to rapidly shift their vote in four years? No, I don't think so.

especially the so-called Bro coalition and all of that. There's too much appeal, there's too much lack of institutional trust that just doesn't mesh with where Democrats are. I mean, they're still the party of institutions, still the party of the New York Times and all these others. Yes, they can turn off MSNBC. I think they'll be back. They always are.

I think that they'll come back to some bullshit, Russiagate or whatever. Immigration will be a great test. We'll right back to AOC crying at the gates and all these other things. So I predict that actually that will make people more hardened, especially when the next media reaction is. But I could be totally wrong. You know, you could have so-called austerity and all these other folks. But you know, Theo Vaughn, look, he may say he likes Bernie.

He loves RFK Jr. You know, he's the first person who has Trump on. Yes. Politicians. I mean, the other thing is Trump is assuming that they don't try to pull some, whatever, is not going to be running again. And I do think he is this sort of very unique figure. And there is no proven ability. And this way, he is like Obama.

There is no proven track record of another Republican really being able to position themselves the way that he has. So, you know, whoever runs next, very likely JD, is gonna be coming off of this sort of, who knows how the next four years is gonna go, but probably people are gonna be dissatisfied because people are really dissatisfied. And you're gonna have to own that. You're gonna be in the position of having to defend

an unpopular four years administration. Now, you are going to be the system, pro-system politician. And so, yeah, if Democrats want to not just be able to coast off of, okay, those guys are unpopular now, if they want to be able to actually win and hold on to power and build durable and sustainable majorities, they're going to have to do something different.

And I particularly hope they're going to do that. No, but there is an opening. There's a possibility. And at least some people in the party are grappling with that. And I think most importantly, large chunks of the Democratic base have been shaken out of this view that they've just got a lineup behind Pete or Kamala or Gavin or whoever the hell they line up and tell them next is like, you must vote for this person because that's the only way to

I don't think the most hopeful thing is that the MSNBCs of the world are never going to have the power over the Democratic base that they did in 2016 and in 2020. And that's the only thing that really creates a different possibility, a different outcome.

I don't know. I still think the Pete Syop is strong. I don't like saying that, but I think that the Pete, the Buttigieg Syop, imagine his Senate run in two years. You could see it, you know? You can see in Michigan, he's already working him in Chastin and move there allegedly for childcare purposes. I think we all know that that's fake. It's a nice swing state. He can get the veneer of a swing state politician. He's got, what was that place where he raised money?

in California. The one cave? The one cave? He never left. Oh, it's very... Don't get me wrong. Very possible. I love like him go on Fox News and whatever, so maybe. And he's making the rounds. I'm not sure if you've seen the Breakfast Club. He's everywhere right now. Yeah. I'm talking about, actually, here's why he was the greatest transportation secretary in history as we all have sky high airfare and all this other bullshit that we have to deal with.

Listen, I think that is the most likely outcome. I don't deny that some Pete Gavin, whoever, is the next Democratic nominee. That is the most likely outcome. But the fact that you don't have that iron grip of the liberal institutions helps create a little bit of possibility. Hopefully, inshallah, as they were saying.

Okay, everybody, thank you so much for watching our last show of the year. We love you guys so much. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. I guess, well, maybe we'll be around if there's something crazy, crazy breaking. I mean, I'm going to keep my eye on whatever the government shutdown in particular. I'll be around more so than you. So I can do some updates. You guys will have to put up with me. Sorry.

I'm on strict orders. I'm on strict orders. We also don't want to give our producers and our team, you know, break. And so we're going to try to, you know, just lay off the concept. But that doesn't mean there's not going to be anything that is posting. I'm actually going to have a conversation with Matt Burning today that's going to go up on the channel about healthcare that should be was name checked in this very show. Yeah, that's not that well thing. Tell me to send me that post because I can't

So we'll have that up, but then also we've put together some of the segments and crazy moments throughout the year that you guys responded most to. And we've done a little, you know, some introductions to those and it's just a crazy, when we were recording, it was just a crazy trip down memory lane, like the Biden drop down and the RFK brain worms and all of these wild things that unfolded. So that will also be going up on the channel so you can do a little trip down memory lane.

That's right. Well, best of segments and a few others. Special thank you to our crew, to Mac, to Griffin, to everybody back there. The control room makes all this stuff work. Steve, our audio man genius who baked these cookies to the graphics team, to all the other people who work.

on the show, but perhaps most importantly to our premium subscribers, who literally we could not do any of this stuff without. We love you guys so much. You guys have helped us build this incredible thing. It's going to be a great year. I'm really excited. Already today, we get to the whole show about CRs and policy. This is really what I think makes this show tick and gives it a lot of strength in the next couple of years, which I think will be really interesting.

We will see you all in the new year, maybe some interim updates or whatever in the future, but excited for this. And please enjoy your time with families and often others. And we'll see you later. Indeed. Happy holidays, everybody. See you in the near.

What's up, everybody? I'm Dan Vercher to tell you about a new podcast. It's NHL Unscripted with Verc and Diverse. Jason and MERS here in after playing 700 NHL games. I got a lot of dirty laundry to air out. Hey, I got a lot to say here, too. OK, each week we'll get together and chat with the sport that we love.

Tons of guests are going to join in too, but we're not just going to be talking hockey folks. We're talking movies, we're talking TV, food, and Ennad's favorite wrestling. It's all on Litabla. Listen to NHL Unscripted with Birkin D'Murs and the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite host, me, WZWTF. And me, Mandy B. As we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. Tune in and join in the conversation.

Listen to decisions decisions on the Black Effect podcast network, iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.