12/30/24: Jimmy Carter, Trump Backs Elon In H1b War, Theo Von On TikTok Ban, IDF Destroys Hospital

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Good morning and welcome to Breaking Points. Crystal, how was your Christmas? It was lovely. Great time with family, all that good stuff. We went up to New York for a little bit and traffic wasn't terribly bad, so I count that as a real blessing. How about you? It was good. It was good. It was a white Christmas in Wisconsin, so that was a little rainy now. Are you a fan of the white Christmas situation? My youngest daughter is obsessed with snow. She says she wants to live in the North Pole.

in the north. Well, I mean, you gotta have snow. Like, it's really, I find it very depressing when there's no snow on Christmas. But this is the world we live in now. Yes, indeed. Indeed. Lots of gets you in the show today also because we've been off. There's like a backlog of stories for us to talk about. But we also have some breaking news, which is that Jimmy Carter has passed at the age of 100. So we'll take a little bit of a look at his

I would say sort of sort of complicated legacy. A lot of people see it a lot of different ways. Trump jumped in and shows sides in this ongoing war between Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswami versus MAGA, types like Laura Loomer, etc. I'm very excited to hear what you have to say about this Emily. So I'm looking forward to sitting back and hearing your thoughts on this whole skirmish that has unfolded.

We'll also get a little bit of Sagar's thoughts because this is one of Sagar's hobby horses, so we'll be all over that too. Well, and Indians were catching a lot of strays in this. Oh boy. Strays is probably the nicest way you could put it. They were, you know, taking a lot of direct fire in this. So, uh, so yeah, we'll, we'll include some of his thoughts in that block as well. The Oman weighing in on the, uh, potential coming TikTok ban as well as Trump weighing in on the potential TikTok ban. That part is probably a little more noteworthy than the Oman.

We'll give both of their thoughts on that. In terrible news, the last hospital in Gaza has now been destroyed. The head of that hospital has been detained. Reports are that he is being tortured. His family is showing a plea for him to be returned safely. So just continuing whore in the Gaza Strip being committed by the IDF. We've got a new poll revealing how the country really feels about the murder of that health care CEO. And Joe Biden apparently thinks he would have beat Trump, Emily.

Levels of delusion that I previously thought were not even possible are coming to the fore. You think that Donald Trump's at least sentience would have defeated we beat Medicare Joe Biden.

It seems like he had a little bit of an edge going into that one, I will say. So any way he's Biden is finally giving a couple interviews talking about some of his regrets. None of them are the thing. I mean, some of them are like, okay, little political things that he should have done differently. But none of them are like, Hey, maybe I shouldn't have run for reelection as this old man who can barely put two sentences together. That party apparently feels no regrets over. So

In any case, let's go ahead and jump into this significant news, which is that Jimmy Carter, former president, of course, has passed away at the age of 100. It's been almost two years since Emily, we received the news that he was entering hospice care and foregoing further attempts to extend his life. And he held on much longer than anyone

expected. His passing leaves Joe Biden as the now oldest living president and Donald Trump as the oldest, you know, living second oldest living American president. So kind of an incredible life, you know, born in rural Georgia.

Obviously in the early 1900s, but it was in such a remote part of the country that it was almost like, you know, the lifestyle was still very much 1800s. So the amount of change and progress and turmoil and all of that that he's seen in his lifetime is hard to truly wrap her head around.

And, you know, in some ways it's sort of fitting that he passed at this moment because his presidency really was a transition between the New Deal era and the neoliberal era. A lot of people think of Ronald Reagan as the first truly neoliberal president, which I think is fair, but

Jimmy Carter did a lot of neoliberal policies himself. He deregulated the airlines. He deregulated the trucking industry, deregulated some of the energy industry. He's the person who installs Paul Volcker at the Fed. There was a lot of neoliberalism that he was starting to usher in. And now here we are kind of at the end of that era now, especially with Trump.

retaking the White House, what exactly that's going to look like. We could talk about more when we get into this fight between Elon, MAGA, et cetera. But certainly here and around the world, that particular era is coming to a close. And so in some ways it's fitting that this is when Jimmy Carter makes his exit.

Well, yes, that's an interesting point because right now preparations are underway, obviously, for the funeral. And so typically that brings together all of the living presidents and first ladies. And we've seen that handled a little bit differently during the Trump era. It always does provide some insights into, for example,

just how well the Bush family gets along with the Obama family and you sort of get to see some displays that I think are often unfortunate and displays that are in some ways you know give people like Whoopi Goldberg hope that the country is just going to keep on keeping on because you know. You get to see also how much Jill Biden apparently likes Donald Trump. Yes, yes. Oh maybe he'll wear his cologne again.

to see. But all that is to say, Jimmy Carter, to your point, was born in the 1920s. He was born before nuclear weapons were invented and became a president in the middle of the Cold War. And to this day,

our foreign policy. For example, think about Israel and Iran is informed by our conduct during the Cold War, and the way that the world was dramatically shrunk because of nuclear weapons, which happened literally in his youth. So it's just an incredible life.

And Joe Biden was apparently the first senator to endorse Jimmy Carter in that Democratic primary all those many years ago. So some things, some of our political figures still definitely hanging in there from that era. One of the things that are typically cited as a signature achievement of his administration, certainly in terms of foreign policies, the Camp David Accords, which brought peace between

Egypt and Israel, as a supporter of the Palestinian cause, I see that somewhat differently. It really was a blow to Palestinians. They were excluded from the negotiations. It broke up this sort of pan-Arab unity. Egypt was, in many ways, their most powerful ally. And there were demands there. There were conditions for Israel to respect Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.

But they were never enforced and were sort of always loose enough to allow Israel to continue the project of settlement expansion, which has continued under every single Israeli Prime Minister, regardless of party or political inclination. And so, on the one hand, it did bring peace between these two neighbors, resolved issues with the Sinai Peninsula.

But on the other hand, it really was a blow ultimately to the strength and the solidarity, the pan-Arab solidarity of the Palestinian movement. A lot of people also make a distinguish between Jimmy Carter in office, and most people see his presidency as sort of a failure. There's a lot of economic turmoil. There's a lot of political turmoil.

Obviously, the Iran hostage situation, which in many ways was engineered by the then incoming Ronald Reagan administration. We can leave that aside for another day. Clearly, it was a blow to American self-esteem. I mean, that's true. It was pretty well documented that they had this back channel.

negotiation of, hey, you hold on to these hostages until I get into the White House, and then you release them into exactly what happens. I mean, you want to talk about foreign election interference. That kind of takes the cake. Most people feel though, has post presidency has been quite remarkable and quite dramatically different from the way that whether certainly Clinton, Obama, whether the way that most presidents have in the modern era,

just use the post presidency as a chance to effectively cash in. And yeah, I think Obama is in some ways the worst example of this because with the Clintons, at least there was some semblance of even though we're not big fans of the Clinton Foundation here, there was some semblance of like, Oh, we're doing this for the international good, et cetera. This is for people of Haiti.

It's been clearly like just their own personal sort of like brand building and, you know, their own legacy protection versus truly being associated with any larger cause of themselves. Jimmy Carter, of course, famously, very involved in global health initiatives was working building himself homes for Habitat for Humanity into his 90s, which is quite extraordinary. And the other thing is he and his wife lived in the same modest Georgia house.

until the very end, until they both ultimately passed. And part of, this is a point that Michael Tracey and others have been making, the fact that he didn't sell out to the corporate world left him free to speak out quite plainly and boldly on any number of issues. One of those issues being Israel and Palestine, a lot of people are sharing this interview that he did a while back with Amy Goodman. Let me go ahead and pull up a little bit of this where he not only

calls out Israel for creating a apartheid state. But he also calls out APAC and the influence of money in politics and explains why Americans are unable to see this conflict as clearly as he is. And let me go ahead and play a little bit of what he had to say. The word apartheid is exactly accurate. This is an area that's occupied by two powers.

They're not completely separated. The Palestinians can even ride on the same roads that the Israelis have created or built in Palestinian territory. The Israelis never see a Palestinian except the Israeli soldiers. The Palestinians never see an Israeli except in a distance except the Israeli soldiers. So within Palestinian territory, they're absolutely and totally separated, much worse than they were in South Africa, by the way.

And the other thing is, the other definition of apartheid is one side dominates the other, and Israel is completely dominate the life of the Palestinian people. Why don't Americans know what you have seen? Americans don't want to know, and the Israelis don't want to know.

what is going on inside Palestine. It's a terrible human rights persecution that far transcends what any outsider would imagine. And there are powerful political forces in America that prevents any objective analysis of the problem in the Holy Land. I think it's accurate to say that not a single member of Congress

with whom I'm familiar would possibly speak out and call for Israel to withdraw to their legal boundaries or to publicize the plight of the Palestinians or even to call publicly and repeatedly for good faith peace talks. They had been a day of peace talks now in more than seven years. So this is a taboo subject and I would say that if any member of Congress did

speak out as I've just described, they would probably not be back in the Congress the next term.

So there you go. And I do think part of why he was able and felt free to speak out such as this, to go visit any world leader that effectively asked him to, even people like Castro, who obviously most living American presidents would not be going and visiting was because he was not bought off by anyone. He truly was his own man until the end. And I think that aspect of his legacy to me is extremely admirable.

Well, I think that's a really good point. There's this sense of, you know, I hate when politicians say, I've served in Congress or I've served the constituents of my district for a decade. It's not service to people anymore. That ethic is completely scrapped from Washington, but Jimmy Carter is sort of old enough.

that in a lot of ways he represented how elites used to see politics. I'm not saying it's like better or worse, but there's like this no bless oblige about the privilege of power and that it would sort of be shameful and embarrassing to be so brazen as the Obamas are or another great example is actually as the Bidens were in Biden's post vice presidency. The brazenness with which they exploited their power

would have been really shameful in other areas of American history. And Jimmy Carter is somebody for whom that is very obvious and we look at him as different now. Because he has handled it differently compared to how our presidents have in the last couple of decades. But the only thing I wanted to mention on that crystal is he's also old enough as a Democrat that he was friends with Billy Graham and the sort of evangelical

wave in the like moral majority people in the 70s and the 80s and to have him talking about the Middle East in the way that he's talked about the Middle East since is incredibly noteworthy. Really rankles conservatives, obviously. Nobody needs me to say that, but it's clear that he really was informed by his faith throughout

his tenure in office and afterwards. And in a way that again is seen as crazy now. It's seen as exceptional and different before Southern Democrat in the 1970s. You know, it really wasn't.

Well, and the contrast with Trump is also quite remarkable because Trump didn't wait till his post-presidency to cash in, you know, famously, if you wanted to get in with him, you would stay at his hotel and make sure you ran up a big bill. Now he has his own crypto coin. He's selling sneakers, selling it, as you referenced before, selling a cologne. Jimmy Carter sold his peanut farm before he entered the White House just to make it clear.

that he had no potential conflict of interest. That's how dramatically different, you know, his view of the responsibilities of the presidency were versus Trump and the Trump family. I mean, Trump caching and with live golf. Jared Kushner getting $2 billion from the Saudis.

The list goes on and on. And you had David Surrow to pointing out that another area where Carter was very clearly outspoken in a way that you just don't see from any of the other living American presidents is on money in politics. And he says he was the one ex-president in the modern era to openly admit and lament the truth about what America has become in the post-citizens United era.

National Press Corps probably won't mention this, but it was really something. Jimmy Carter said, US is an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery and really sounded off against the Citizens United ruling, which was one of a number of Supreme Court rulings that really opened the floodgates of huge money and politics, the likes of which were not possible in the past, and which have reached unbelievable new dystopian heights with Elon Musk in particular.

putting more than a quarter of a billion dollars into this last presidential campaign and basically expecting to run the government and achieve whatever policies that he wants to achieve, not the guy that just got elected, but that he wants to achieve. And so it's been a long time coming and obviously both parties have decided to fully embrace big money in politics, but it's also noteworthy that as Jimmy Carter,

officially exits the scene, you know, we've reached a new, I think, undeniable peak of American oligarchy that is quite disturbing and, you know, has clearly now not just disturbing lefties like me, but plenty of people within the MAGA coalition who are saying, you know what, this is actually really a problem.

Totally. And it's for Jimmy Carter, someone again who was born in the 1920s, we sort of had this voice from the past. And he was a relic of a different era. And I think that's kind of what's disturbing reflecting on his life is that, you know, there were many, many deep, deep imperfections in the United States of America throughout his life, some of which have gotten dramatically better. But the political system, you know,

He's kind of a voice of moral clarity, I think, from the past. And a lot of conservatives would tell me that's crazy. But from that sort of populist perspective about the American political system, he was able to see it a little bit more clearly from his vantage point. And it's a sorry contrast with where things are today. As you mentioned, the Trump Organization Eric Trump right now just brokered a deal in Saudi Arabia for a giant tower. I mean, just like a completely different level at this point.

Yeah, so true. And the Obama's are out making Netflix documentaries and cashing it and don't make any money, but are worth millions to Netflix because, well, it's the Obama's.

Yeah, Carter was also apparently the last Democrat to win a majority of counties in the presidential election. Usually Democrats in the modern era, they sort of run up the score in the cities. But we're all used to seeing the map where many of the rural areas are Republican. Now, all of the rural areas are Republican. And so, you know, it was a very different Democratic coalition at that point.

I would say that some of the neoliberal policies that he helps to usher in, the trucking deregulation, the airline deregulation, ultimately the attacks on unions, all of that shift away from the New Deal era is a big part of the story of why Democrats lose so much of the country, lose so many of these rural areas and rural states. And he really starts the trend in that direction. And the door on that era has been officially, I guess,

slam shut here with Trump retaking the White House. So in any place, in any case, Rest in Peace, Jimmy Carter, and we can go ahead and move on to what's going on with Elon Musk and Donald Trump and Laura Loomer and all these characters.

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Well, Crystal, it's a great day for soccer to be gone because not only do we have a significant moment in presidential history, but we also have this royal ink skirmish and MAGA world over H1B visas. And we know that soccer has so little to say about both of these topics. And Indian Americans and their place in the country, very, very few thoughts on any of these topics.

Yes, and about American culture and Silicon Valley, so nothing to worry about. We will do our best to channel Sagar's energy, if not his ideology. We do have a little bit of Sagar's thoughts to share with everyone because he made some excellent points, which will surprise nobody.

Right now, MAGA World is, as we just alluded to, absolutely ribbon. And this is not a media narrative. This is a significant division. Just to be meta for a moment, we are not in any way making this sound worse than it is. This is a very significant division in sort of Trump World. And we've seen that just on Elon Musk's X-Feed itself over the last couple of days.

We're going to start with kind of the basics here. I'm going to share a little tear sheet so that you can see what some of the coverage has looked like over the last couple of days. Actually, really, this has been going on for a while, but this all started.

Donald Trump announced the appointment of somebody who is supportive of H-1B visas to his new administration shortly before Christmas. And if you've been following this, if you're on Twitter, what you saw was immediately a major divide open up between people who support H-1B visas and people who don't. And this sounds like maybe a minor, wonky set of differences among Donald Trump's circle. But

What it was actually doing was pitting Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and people like David Sachs, another person who has been actually formally appointed to a post in the incoming Trump administration, against the quote-unquote, like America First World, the Stephen Miller camp of people who thought, listen, this was going to be the administration that is serious.

about actually cracking down on the sort of foreign labor competing with domestic labor. And so Donald Trump, a couple of days into this, you can see the date line on this is December 28th comes out and says, I have many H1B visas on my properties, which Crystal is probably the funniest way for Donald Trump to wait into this debate.

To be honest, but people were with baited breath. You had Elon Musk tweeting ceaselessly for a couple of days, again, going into Christmas. Laura Loomer jumped in on this and we're going to basically break this all down. We have Ro Khanna, Congressman Ro Khanna, who's been roped into this as well because this is an issue that he's worked on and was invoked by Laura Loomer at one point going to join the show and break some of this down for us as well. But this opened up a massive

fight in Mago World, essentially, and Elon Musk and Donald Trump are on the same side of it now. So, Crystal, this is a big chunk that's been happening, you know, again, this predates Christmas by a couple of days, but it is still raging.

It seems like it's about to carry into the new year and into the new administration, which is now some serious baggage to deal with. Tell me, as somebody on the left who's watching this play out over the last couple of weeks, what your reaction has been to it.

Well, I mean, it doesn't surprise me that it sparked such a war because it really does get at like a foundational question of how you see the world. And the campaign kind of glossed over some of these differences, but I think you and I and Sagar and Ryan have been talking about some of the very clear ideological differences, especially between

Elon Musk, David Sachs, Vivei Gromiswami, the sort of new tech bro coalition and the Trumpest view of the world as it's been presented to the electorate. Now, I'm careful about how I say that because obviously Donald Trump has decided with the globalists here. So what is Trumpism is always a little bit up for debate. But effectively, you know, the Trump narrative of the world is that you're struggling and you're getting screwed

Because of immigrants and quote unquote cultural leads, basically trans people, gender ideology, like things coming out of Hollywood that you don't like and you don't think are the right values or direction for your family. But immigrants are a big, big part of that story of why Trump

is telling you that you're struggling and you're screwed. That is a break from the traditional Republican message of if you're struggling, it's because you, or in this instance, your culture is failed, failing flawed in some way.

pull yourself out by your bootstraps, get it together. And effectively what you have in this proxy war over the H-1B visas is a clash between these two worldviews. You know, Trump is, like I said, his ideology can be sort of hard to pin down at times because the truth of the matter is when he governed last time, he basically governed as like a Paul Ryan Republican

with some exceptions, you know, tariff policy certainly being an exception there. But his biggest accomplishment is this giant tax cut for the rich, very traditional standard heritage foundation type of Republican policy. A literal Paul Ryan tax put. Yeah, I mean, it was actually literally crafted by Paul Ryan. However, you know, in having this different narrative and story that he's selling, that was a break from the way that Republicans had traditionally talked about economic issues.

And Elon is much more actually ideological. He's a fan of Javier Malay. He has been talking about how he wants to slash $2 trillion from the budget. He believes that there needs to be this level of quote unquote pain among the public. Obviously cutting $2 trillion from the budget is going to necessitate significant cuts to Social Security and Medicare programs that Trump has always pledged that he wouldn't touch.

He also went out and was praising Javier Malay for rolling back tariffs. Trump always obviously is in love with tariffs and has embraced tariffs more than ever before, at least in terms of his rhetoric. So ideologically, there's always been this huge divide between Musk and his pretty clear, like kind of anarcho-capitalist ideology and the way that Trumpism has been sold to the MAGA base.

So that's where this really comes to a head. Because what Musk and Vivek Ramaswami and all of them are saying is effectively like, yeah, we've got a problem with illegal immigrants. But actually, we love legal immigrants. We want more immigrants in the country. And specifically for Elon Musk, he wants more

workers that he can pay lower wages and that who are completely beholden to him. Because that's as a lefty who does want more immigration in this country. I think we should have more legal immigrants. I believe that it's good for everyone, it's certainly good for those immigrants themselves. I have issues with the H-1B program because it is so exploitative of those workers and it is damaging to the American tech workers as well. Because if you look at the numbers,

people who are brought in these quote unquote high skilled workers who are brought in on H1B visas, number one, they're paid less. And number two, if you don't play ball with your employer and they fire you, you get deported. So I agree with the Ann Coulter's and the Steve Bannon's of the world when they say this is effectively a program of indentured servitude. But you know, as the world's richest man and a huge capitalist who also, by the way, gets massive government subsidies and all of those

Well, each one B kind of is a government subsidy. That's 100% true. That is 100% true. He is looking out for his own capitalist interest. And this is a huge issue among the tech, not just the tech right, just among the

tech sector, tech capitalists, period, which is why when Trump went on the All In podcast, which is like the Tech Bro podcast back several months ago during the campaign, your saga took immediate note of the fact that Trump offered up in that interview. Hey, I think if you graduate from any college in this country, you should have a green card as stapled.

to your degree. That was clearly something he knew he needed to give to that community in order to take in the hundreds of millions of dollars and the political support that he ultimately got from them. So he chose his side quite a while ago. So it doesn't surprise me here that in the end, he decides to side with Elon Musk because

Look, that $250 million plus that Elon threw into the campaign like that wasn't for free. This is a key issue for him. He's going to get what he wants because he effectively bought his way into this government. But what's funny is what you said earlier about this also being a key issue for Donald Trump, the rhetoric that Donald Trump used repeatedly in his 2016 campaign and his 2020 campaign throughout his presidency and since about immigration has actually captured a sentiment that is not

It is not false. It's not rooted in some false narrative. It is absolutely true. I mean, you can look at all of the Cato Institute studies, et cetera, et cetera, but you could also listen to people like Oren Cass, who make the play, or Bernie Sanders, Sanders, circa like 1999, who make the point playing this day that

when you are creating so much unfair competition for American workers, meaning people who can be paid less, you're going to naturally depress the wages. Now, whether or not that is made up in different sectors of the economy is a different question, but when you are bringing H-1B visa people into the country to do sort of mid-range coding, whatever it is,

Elon Musk has been tweeting again sort of relentlessly about how this does not work that Americans want to do. It's sort of the work that allows us to attract foreign labor like a magnet. It's great for tech and then these people sort of stay and bring their talents into the United States. And obviously there's room for some of that, but it is also disincentivizing the creation of, or it's disincentivizing Americans from going into the middle of those ladders too. And what really the middle, I'm talking about like the ladder of

career work. Now, let's put this, I'm about to share this Laura Loomer tweet since we mentioned her because she was sort of instrumental in making this a viral debate because, you know, surprisingly, it's got very personal right away. Obviously, we mentioned Sharam Krishnan, who was appointed as the senior policy advisor for artificial intelligence at the White House.

And, well, I think in an AI position, it's natural that you'd have some oversight actually over the administration's policies on things like H1B. So, Loomer tweets, deeply disturbing to see his appointment as senior policy advisor. It's alarming to see the number of career leftists who are now being appointed to serve in Trump's admin when they share views that are in direct opposition to Trump's America first agenda.

So that just absolutely kicks it off because she's quoting Krishna and saying anything to remove country caps for green card slash unlocked skilled immigration would be huge in response to an Elon Musk tweet about doge. So then I'm now going to share the vague Rama Swami who I mean, this is where things really get interesting.

This is the gasoline on the fire. So it's already a significant sort of internecine battle in Maga World. But then Vivek Ramaswami comes in with this very interesting and very long post on X. If you're watching this, you can see that I'm just scrolling through it. I would estimate it off top of my head. It's like 250 words.

This is the day after Christmas. Laura Loomer was like going after Rokana, whatever, like literally on Christmas, which we'll talk about. But the key part of this Vivek Rama Swami tweet is where he says it all goes back to the quote, C-word. Crystal did you see that? He said that it's all a key part of it comes down to the C-word culture.

So that's the word. I don't know what you were thinking of, Crystal, but he says, tough questions demand tough answers. And if we're really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the capital T truth our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long. He then goes on to say a culture that venerates Corey from boy meets world. There's seconds later over screech and saved by the bell.

He will not produce the best engineers. He's also talking about Urkel and Family Matters. He goes on to talk about friends. He says more movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of Friends, which is incredibly offensive to me, but probably other people too, but mostly me.

Then he said, more books, less TV, more creating, less quote unquote, chilling, more extracurriculars, less quote unquote, hanging out at the mall. He sounds like a parent in like a 1995. He sounds like the dad in Clueless, actually. I was going to say, like...

I, it was better. This is one of, I have many things to say about this, but one of the things that really triggered me here is like, I have a teenager, they don't hang out at the mall. It was better when we had the 90s mall culture, because at least kids were like together, IRL and had some sort of something community. I mean, yes, it's based on this like, you know, gross consumerism, but at least there was some sort of community. Actually now the smartphone culture

is, which is, I guess, sort of closer to what Vivek once here, of being constantly on your device and being buried in tech world, is way worse than when they were watching these

sitcoms which had lots of like family and sort of like basic morality community values associated with them when they're watching those sitcoms and hanging out at the mall. That's one of many issues I take with us. Anyway, per se, Emily. Yeah. And then

No, we're going to get in all of that. Again, we have a soccer tweet, but it is. It echoes something that you actually heard from J.D. Vance in hillbillyology that he's since kind of recanted this critique of American culture, this critique of the sort of white working class. It echoes a lot of the rhetoric that Donald Trump again was pretty instrumental in shifting the way Republicans at least talked, if not thought, about those issues.

So let's share this is Elon Musk. He says, the reason I'm in America, this is on December 27th, along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla, and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B. Take a big step back and fuck yourself in the face. I will go to war on this issue, the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend. He's channeling Tom Cruise and Tropic Thunder there, as a lot of people have pointed out, but take a big step back and

He also agreed with a post that called the MAGA people who were disagreeing with him retards and said that these people, I mean, it's very Hillary Clinton deplorables like taken to the umpteenth level. And, you know, to go back to Vivek's tweet, which I think is really important to unpack for a variety of reasons, not only does it echo, so it echoes Mitt Romney, 47%. Yes.

It echoes makers and takers. It echoes Hillary Clinton deplorables. That's the language you're talking about, which has been a shared view among Republican Democratic elites, especially with regards to the white working class in particular. And so to go out and again, this is like, this is to me the core battle to say, no, if you're having a problem, like if you're struggling,

It's your fault. It's because you watch too many sitcoms because you indulged in sleepovers and having friends when you should have been doing math tutoring. And by the way, you're screwing up your kids too because you don't have them in the math Olympics every weekend. And your values, this is the core part, your values are the wrong values.

The only values that you should care about is having your kids in this extremely high stress rat race from birth, where if every moment isn't spent developing their capabilities so that they can deliver shareholder value for the Elon Musk's of the world, then you're failing.

So it's not only an attack on American culture and I think specifically on white working class culture, which is extraordinary given you just had this massive like education, realignment and non-college educated voters overwhelmingly going for Republicans. It's not only an attack on that culture, it's an attack on any value that's not just about delivering market share.

in a aggressive capitalist system. And that, to me, is what was extraordinary. Now, I mean, for me, I have issues with the H-1B program as constructed. I obviously disagree with both of these sides, because I think all of this, whether you're blaming people in their culture, or whether you're blaming immigrants, I think the real problem is point up at the Elon Musk, fake Ramaswami, and Donald Trump's of the world, the billionaire oligarchs who have rigged the system,

to screw you and to benefit themselves. I think that's where the bulk of the blame needs to go. But the reason this was so extraordinary is because it really was a direct attack on especially white non-college educated voters. And frankly, Emily, many people pointed out that it's also the type of cultural critique

that has been consistently leveled from Republicans at black Americans, basically like, oh, you're struggling not because of historic racism, but because you're too lazy and pull up your pants, et cetera. And now it's being trained at white Americans. And that also precipitated quite a backlash and quite a lot of sentiment around this whole conversation.

Yes, and it did elicit I think some genuine racism because you get this sense from some people who are out there defending Donald Trump that like who are you the vague to critique white culture? Like only whites can be mad about friends. Like how dare you as an outsider? But I think on an even more serious note, she just said something so important about how

there's this idea of looking down paternalistically on the white working class, on the white middle class, even people who are going to college and saying, that's what's so insane about this, is critiquing

the American culture while actually asking to import all of this foreign labor to compete with people who are going into that grind as they're demanding. You have to stop watching friends start doing STEM as though you can't do both. But like basically say more, less sleepovers, more, you know, like homework, whatever it is. And think about that.

I mean, how much have you thought about like look at teen like depression and suicide right like if anything teenagers need to be hanging out more with friends and doing like the things that he is deriding here? Yep, and then and then After you do all of that after you forsake all of the sleepovers and the hangouts whatever you're going to be competing with for

It's going to be painless. So you're in an unfair competition. And that has been happening for decades. And you and I have seen it, people who get outside of the beltway have seen it, that has depressed, psychologically depressed the American working class because it feels like it is all for nothing when you are competing with people who came here and claimed asylum. And you and I may disagree on this, but it's a real thing and are being paid cash under the table for this landscaping job.

and you cost more money and it's unfair competition. That's why I think we need more legal immigration because when you do have undocumented workers, then, yeah, employers are going to skirt labor law.

Um, they're going to pay them under the table cash, not have to pay the additional benefits and protections. And yes, that creates unfair competition. That's why, you know, like, for example, with the, just to stick on the H one B example, um, it's not that I'm opposed to bringing in high skilled workers or immigrants. I'm not opposed to that at all.

But you can't set up a program. Guest worker programs are inherently exploitative. Like if you are tied to your employer, and if you get fired, then you're deported. Like, of course, they can abuse you in any myriad of ways and pay you less.

And, you know, screw you over and that, yes, depresses wages across the board. So it's exploitative all the way around in that instance. So, you know, that's why most of the studies show is even in when you had like the burial boatlift and they had this huge influx of Cuban migrants into Florida.

It actually didn't significantly impact the wages of the native-born workforce. The problem is when you have programs that are set up such that they are inherently exploitative and when you have so few legal pathways for people to come into the country that they're coming in in undocumented fashion and then, yeah, getting paid under the table and themselves getting screwed and undercutting the local workforce as well.

Let's roll this clip of Steve Bannon because it just for a sense of where the battle lines have been drawn and I think how significant again this actually is. This is not like this is not the media trying to create problems where there aren't problems and you can take it from Steve Bannon himself who weighed in on all this again like

And it's not surprising. These battle lines are not surprising. By the way, what is surprising to me is how surprised Elon Musk and like the sort of David Sachs people were by this. So let's listen to Bannon. Then Nastir tweets he put up last night about MAGA being racist, which is the last refuge of a scoundrel in modern politics to

quote Andrew Breitbart via Johnson, right? This last night we put it up on the screen, I'd appreciate it. This is Elon Musk. The reason I'm in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla, and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of each one V. Take a big step back in F yourself, all caps, in the face, F yourself in the face,

I will go to war on this issue, the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend. Oh, yeah, tough guy. You're going to go to war on the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend. You're a man child. I hate to make it personal, but what you have done is try to trash individuals punching down. Remember the first rule of gladiator school, bro, don't punch down. Be the punch of peer or punch up, bro.

I responded last night, someone please notify Child Protective Services need to do a wellness check on this toddler. I hate to be snarky, but I think the moment called for it. People are coming, oh, you gotta take the temperature down. No, we're not gonna take the temperature down. We're not gonna take the temperature down. Oh no, oh no, oh no. We do not, there's no backing down, it's doubling down.

It's no retreat, it's fixed bayonets and it's advance. And it's not surrender, it's victory. We're going to win this. Let me repeat, the H1B visa program is a total and complete scam concocted by the Lords of Easy Money on Wall Street and the oligarchs in Silicon Valley to both

initially to just increase profit margins. But there's a darker element to it today, a contempt of America and American citizens and we're not going to tolerate it.

Crystal, again, that's like a sample of what's been happening and imagine what's been happening behind closed doors over the last few days. But it is a hugely, hugely significant divide. He invoked the term oligarchs. It was always going to be tense to have the oligarchs allegedly fixing the problem of oligarchy.

That Steve Bannon has his fixed ban that's on and has sort of rallied the mega coalition to take on an Elon Musk X bio right now. It says, you know, the people voted for significant government reform. Yes, they voted actually for significant government reform so that we no longer function as an oligarchy. But the oligarchs who understand that the public wants significant government reform are much less comfortable

with significantly reforming what functions as an oligarchy when it serves them. Because for some reasons that are sinister and some that are just natural, they don't see themselves necessarily as oligarchs in a pejorative sense. They see themselves away a lot of the leftist oligarchs see themselves as these sort of benevolent overlords who know what's best.

for the people out there watching Friends and eating bonbons or whatever it is. And it makes it really difficult, makes it very difficult to sort of actually go full-naga when you were in oligarch. And again, that has always been clear. We've been very clear about that on this show in our coverage. But again, behind closed doors, these tensions have simmered, but never, I think, bubbled over in the way we've seen.

Yeah, well, I don't really know why people thought they were voting against oligarchy when you have the most, like, this is by far the number of billionaires in Trump's administration. Now it's over a dozen. You knew coming in that Elon Musk was basically bankrolling, you know, a large chunk of the entire campaign in a way that is truly of an order of magnitude different than we've ever seen from either party ever in the in the past. You probably have to go back to like, like,

to really see this level of just oligarch control over the country and over the administration to see anything that is even approaches a parallel with Elon Musk. And it's not like this was hidden. This was clear. His ideology was clear, his influence, his whole of government mandate through Doge, all of this was really spelled out. And so, you know,

Now you've got Trump like, yeah, I'm with Elon. I'm with Elon. I made the deal was made months ago. And he's going to get what he wants. So since that has happened, since Trump has said, yeah, I'm on the side of the oligarchs. These are my guys, and they're going to get their way. Do I see a hue and cry from the, you know, the MAGA base?

No, not really because it's never Trump's fault. It's always, you know, oh, he was manipulated. Oh, this or that. Lots of there's lots of cope in the timeline. Maybe he didn't really mean it the way that the media portrayed it. The other cope from the David Sachs of the world is like, Oh, well,

You know, we're really not that far apart and this is all just like a left-wing scyop to drive a wedge between us. You can do it on the screen. You know, in some ways I think this cake is already baked and I think Elon is going to get his way on anything that Elon really significantly wants because that is the deal that was made here.

Yeah, and since Crystal mentioned David Sachs, you can look at this post he put on acts. Elena said that H1B should be overhauled that it should focus on exceptional talent in high value areas and that the scams and low pay jobs should end. This is not to say there aren't still differences, but less than it first appeared time to move forward as one team. Definitely co-op crystal because basically the ban in position is still, I think mutually exclusive.

with opposition. And the question becomes what a level priority it is. So let's go back to Sagar here, because as promised, we want to bring him in. This is sort of, again, it's a hobby horse of his. He says, I will split the difference with Vivek. The reason that Indians and other successful minorities in the US succeed is by blending the culture of hard work and familial dedication with the American spirit of dynamism born from the founders

And the frontier spirit, pure Asian culture encourages rote memorization, conformity, et cetera, et cetera. He says the culture I want to venerate is the American culture which beat the Axis powers in World War II, peak saga. It had important institutional checks against hedonism, et cetera, et cetera. And he says the best way to recreate that culture is an immigration moratorium, as we did in the early

1900 and 1900s and then he goes on to say, I'll end with a plea to Americans of Indian descent, reject the growing calls for Indian identity politics or DEI slash wokeness by another name. So, Chris, I think there's a lot

We could do two hours segment basically on all of this drama, and Sagar might still force you to at some point, but it is genuinely fascinating because it's this critique of the culture and immigration at the same time is like a lot of it's coming very top down and the sort of down up part.

is being stifled by the down-up candidate president-elect, I should say. Well, I don't want to go too hard on Sagar when he's not here. He and I can fight this out when he gets back, but I think a lot of this cultural talk is like...

mumbo jumbo like invented mumbo jumbo and policy like to me culture is largely downstream of policy and usually when politicians are talking about culture it's a way for them to escape accountability for their own policy decisions and their own corrupt dealings which are the more proximate and certainly more controllable source of so much pain in the public.

So, you know, when you have Hillary Clinton to use someone that everyone watching this show will find to be villainous when she's talking about deplorables, it's like screw you, lady, like your husband's the one who did NAFTA and shift the jobs overseas. You're the ones that supported, you know, PNTR and supports the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership. You were happy to sell out the entire industrial Midwest.

in order to, you know, boost the profits of giant multinational corporations. So how dare you look down your nose and say we're failing because of some like inherent character flaw or cultural flaw screw you. Like you are the ones who crafted these policies.

that screwed the country, vast loss of the country over in favor of American oligarchs. And Elon Musk is, well, he's not even, I mean, he's from South Africa, but he is one of those oligarchs. This is, he has one of, he is one of the largest Pentagon contractors.

There may be no one in history who has gotten richer off the American taxpayer than South African-born Elon Musk, who now has been put in charge of the very government that is the only thing that could check his abuses, exploitation, and ambitions. So, you know, I obviously have been, I've been trying to talk about this for months now. I've been trying to sound the alarm about, listen, even if you like Elon Musk,

Imagine it's Jeff Bezos. Imagine it's Mark Zuckerberg. Imagine it's Bill Gates. As a matter of principle, we have to reject oligarchs having full and complete control of government. That's basically where we are now. I think Trump on this issue, he had already flipped on this issue. He already signaled this during the campaign.

He flipped on carried interest. He flipped on crypto. He flipped on TikTok fan, which we're about to get into, which I actually support the new position. But all of these things were not out of principle. It's because that's where the money was. So that's where he went. He has already thrown his lot in with this direction of American oligarchy for the country. And I think I don't care left, right, center to me. It's not a partisan or ideological issue.

I think that is deeply dystopian and disturbing and pretends really a very dark direction for American democracy. And I'll just finally split the difference with Sagar splitting the difference, which is that I think the public does have agency. And this is where JD Vance sort of flipped himself and that he was sort of pointing the finger at the white working class and saying this is a sort of, it's similar to what the critique Republicans have made for a long time in the inner city, black working classes that you just

aren't pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and you can. And again, I just think people do have agency, but I also think that the problems in our culture have been stirred from the top down. So if you want to start saying that there's a problem with American culture, you should actually look at how the oligarchs would talk about this in terms of a lot of different things like marriage as an example or child rate. We don't have to get into all of it, but let's not pretend that these TV shows aren't bankrolled by the way by people like,

Steve Bannon, who bankrolled Seinfeld. Maybe that's what this was actually all about, Crystal. He's very personally offended that they can vote sitcom culture in America. But I mean, in all seriousness, the culture has gotten a little bit more democratic because of things like TikTok, but it was very much dictated by oligarchs.

On that note, Crystal, we have Congressman Rokana here to help us break some of this down as well because he was evoked, as we mentioned earlier, by Laura Loomer and has been waiting into the debate. Let's get to that.

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All right, guys, so we are very fortunate to be joined this morning by Congressman Rokana, who actually represents Silicon Valley and was also catching quite a number of strays in this whole Elon Musk, Laura Loomer, MAGA versus the TechBro dispute. Great to have you, Congressman. Great to be on. Happy holidays to everyone watching. Yeah, same to you. Let me go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is from your friend, Laura Loomer.

who had some choice words about you and this individual that Trump has named as his, I guess, quote unquote, AI czar. So she says, Democrat Congressman Rokana from the leftist Silicon Valley and migrant dominated hellhole known as California.

Once to gaslight anyone and everyone who poses H-1B visas and tech bros who are infiltrating the Trump admin, Roe, why aren't you disclosing the fact that Syria and Krishna is one of your donors? That's the new incoming AISR. You're a Democrat with big tech donors who love mass migration. You gave your Democrat congressional campaign a donation of $3,300 in 23, $3,300 in 24, less than one month before the presidential election. Of course, you're defending the big tech bros who serve as your sugar daddies

You are corrupt. Here are the receipts. Congressman, your response to this attack. Well, Laura Loomer had attacked Indian Americans when Kamala Harris was running, saying that we can't put an Indian American in the White House. I had suggested that she come to the White House when Kamala Harris would win and have Masala Chai with me. Unfortunately, Harris didn't win or I would have left that have had Masala Chai with Laura Loomer.

But, you know, she attacked me for having a contribution from Shiram and I replied saying, yes, he contributed to my campaign and he has an extraordinary story. I mean, he's an immigrant who came to this country in 2007. He's become a citizen. He's contributed. He started companies. And we should be proud of the fact that people from around the world, the best and brightest want to come to the United States.

And when that comes to the H-1B visas, which obviously were the sort of policy niche that kicked off this huge internecine conflict that's roiled, MAGA rolled over the last couple of weeks, Congressman, the allegation is that they depress American wages because

you're able to pay people on the H-1P visas less than you would pay Americans and it becomes almost a system of indentured servitude. But this is something that a lot of people in your circles feel very strongly about Elon Musk. himself obviously came out swinging and said he will defend these programs to his dying breath because he feels so strongly that they are examples of sort of what you were just talking about, the way this country is a magnet for talent from around the world and people who are then

should become part of the American melting pot, et cetera. So where do you, you've talked about this a lot, but where do you fall on the H1B visas amidst all of those allegations swirling in Trump world? Well, I think that there has been abuse of the H1B visas. There's no doubt that there has been abuse where people are paid.

below market wages and that undercuts Americans. And you basically have no freedom. If you're here on an H1B visa and you leave your employer

then you also are going to lose your status in this country. And there have been several companies, particularly IT outsourcing firms that have abused it significantly, and they're getting a large chunk of the lotteries. The other thing is that while it's capped at 85,000, a lot of exemptions are granted. And so you really have 300, 400,000 being granted.

And so I have said that we need reform. And I'm actually, when I first got to Congress, my first year in Congress, 2017, got on Bill Preskrell, who unfortunately has passed away bipartisan reform bill with Grassley and Durban and Paul Gosar. Let's make sure that you're not underpaying H-1B visa folks.

manipulating things so that entry level positions are being granted H1Bs. It's really supposed to be for exceptional talent. And that's not the case. But that doesn't mean that we're not for immigrants coming to the United States. And really, immigrants who are contributing should be given a green card, a process of expediting green cards so that you don't have this situation of leverage.

What did you make, Congressman, of Vivek Ramaswami's long post about American cultural mediocrity? And now we need to have fewer sleepovers, more math tutoring, less hanging out at the mall, less boy meets world, more math Olympics, less TV, more books, et cetera, et cetera. Do you think that Americans have, and I think this was aimed in particular at the American white working class,

Do you think that they embrace a culture of mediocrity? Absolutely not. I'd love to talk to him about his upbringing. I'll tell you about mine and Council Rock High School.

Pennsylvania, because I was one of those nerds on the math, the math leads. And I happened to be a valedictorian by local school, but I also played little league and I was terrible at the plate. And every people said, watch the bunt when I went up, but people said everyone plays, you know, I mean, that was the spirit. And I had friends who played

uh football uh for council rock and uh friends who went into acting in music and what it would have been such a boring experience if everyone in my school was interested in becoming a math lady that's that's part of the problem with some of the schooling in uh

So good valley now where is like everyone's parents work at google and everyone wants to go and do well at stam and i think what makes america extraordinary is that yes we have people who are doing interested in math but we have people interested in music and the arts and the humanities and writing and.

sports and that creates this vibrant culture and that should be celebrated. And the results speak for themselves. I mean, look at all the Nobel laureates that we have in physics, in medicine, in chemistry. Look at all the innovation. I mean, I guess my question for Vivek would be if there was something so fundamentally flawed with American culture, how is it that we are continuing to produce incredible innovation? So it just seemed a little glib. It's something I disagree with.

And I'm quite fond of my upbringing, and I don't think there was too much emphasis on sports or music. I probably should have paid more attention to some of the music to help me in politics more.

You know, it's funny you say that because when I was reading the vague description of what he thought, like the ideal childhood is, which is this like, you know, from the moment they're born, they got to get in the right preschool and they got to be, you know, trained in math and ready to take on their STEM career and deliver shareholder value for whether it's Elon Musk or someone else.

Actually, the people that I've seen raise their kids most like that was when I lived in Manhattan and like wealthy Manhattanites who would be the type of people who are, you know, engaged in like the varsity blues scandal or so obsessed with first it's they got to be in the right play group and then they got to be in the right preschool and we got to have Latin tutoring and they need to take up fencing because that's the place where you're most likely to get, you know, a scholarship or get an edge into an Ivy League institution. And I've found it frankly kind of terrible. Like,

not because that there's any problem with wanting to create a lot of enrichment for your children, but it just seems like the whole value of, first of all, it sort of erased any sort of just delight of childhood, right? And second of all, it really erased any values outside of what you can achieve as a market participant, right? Friends, family, you know,

like enjoying pop culture, contributing to your community, those pieces were secondary to just like winning this high stakes rat race. And, you know, I think, I think part of what has been appealing about Trump to many people who, you know, obviously I disagree with his

view the world and certainly his attacks on immigrants, I find to totally miss the point of what the real problems are in America. But I think part of some of the language there has been about, you know, there's more to life and there's more to a society than just GDP growth. And Vivek's post to me was sort of a direct attack

on the idea that you could value something other than what your market value was and what you can contribute to overall GDP growth.

That's very well put, Chris. A lot of my political sense, to the extent I have any sense, I think about what were the kids growing up on my street in Amsterdam Avenue, Bucks County think? And there were kids who were kids of an electrician, of a nurse, of a teacher, of an HVAC technician. The guy who had the pool, it was the sort of big vice president at some company, but we all were on the same street.

celebrated different holidays, we engaged in, you played together. And I think that what we're very specific is the sense of community. I mean, the kids of the HVAC take issue that electrician were no less fulfilled or happy or

contributing than the kids today or kids of Google executives. And if anything, there was probably more happiness on the street where I was growing up. But so if his point is that America should

make sure that we have a rigorous education and we should encourage education. Of course, no one is going to deny that. He wants to get rid of the Department of Education. But that's not what he's saying. Look, it's musicians often and artists where the ones are going to question, income inequality or a question.

social accesses. It's often athletes athletics where we have people regardless of class. It's one of the few things regardless of class where, oh, you're a 49ers fan. It doesn't really matter whether you're the kid of a billionaire or the kid of a janitor.

your team is going to win. I mean, there's so few experiences in America that are classless. I guess even sports now, you get whether you're in the suites or whether you go and actually watch a game from the stands. There's class introduced to it, but it's not like, you know, you flying is become totally about class and.

You can live your life where you go to school, where your friends are totally with a certain group of folks in an economic class and sports cuts through that. So I think Vivique's not looking at all of the incredible things that sports and music bring to American society.

I think we can all agree there are good faith defenses of the H-1B program that people make them in perfectly good faith, especially people with personal experience. But what the steep bannons of the world right now are saying is that the people in Silicon Valley, probably people in your district congressman who defend H-1B visas so vigorously,

are coming to this with the perspective that is utterly cynical and self-interested. And it really is about profit. It is about undercutting American labor. It's about sort of their bottom lines. So again, as somebody who is sort of familiar with the people who are defending H-1B so vigorously, is there something to what C. Bannon is saying that this is something that is cynical and is about profit over the country itself?

Steve Bannon had some valid criticisms of the program. Probably maybe the headline of this, but he's right that there are companies who are underpaying people coming from overseas, and that's not good, by the way, for the people they're bringing over because they're often trapped in these jobs being

Underpaid and it's undermining American wages and the other point I saw Steve make which is which is true is some of these universities Prioritize foreign students because they want to get the full pay for their tuition and we're not providing the same free public college to American students and so You know they're getting paid often these students are coming they're either having a

The foreign governments pay a full freight or they may have parents who are scrounging up and paying the full money and then American students are not being denied the opportunity in those universities that's happening in California. So I think that anyone who's being fair about this.

should be calling for a major reform on the H1B program. You could be probably immigrant and against exploitation, right? I mean, there's a issue about do we believe that we should attract immigrants to America? Of course. Do we believe that we should exploit them to hurt American workers and laborers? No. And you can also be for education for all Americans and make understand that when you have wealthy

foreign students coming and paying full freight that that's not fair sometimes for American students. My last question for you Congressman is you've been sort of I don't want to mischaracterize you can you can clarify if this isn't correct but you've been open to certainly working with Elon Musk on doge you've been I would say friendlier towards him than I have been.

One of the things that came out of this conversation too is just the level of influence he's been able to buy with the Trump administration. Trump has now reversed his position on H-1Bs. Obviously, this was an issue that was really important to Elon. Elon's been given this entire whole of government mandate. He is one of the government's largest contractors. He has massive conflicts of interest. What are your thoughts about rising oligarchy in America vis-a-vis Elon Musk? Well, first of all, I don't like it that billionaires can

pay the kind of money they can and spend the kind of money they can to influence elections. But Crystal, we've got to be honest, it was both sides. I mean, we had 150 billionaires on our side. We had more billionaires on our side than their side. So, you know, it's Billy. I agree with that, Ro, but I will say that there is a fundamental like qualitative difference when you're talking about a quarter of a billion dollars, which is something we haven't seen before.

and the whole of government mandate that he's been granted. So there's no doubt that both sides have completely embraced big money in politics. Kamala had plenty of billionaires backing her. That is certainly the case. I do think that the Elon Musk influence the richest man on the planet is of a character that we haven't seen before. That's fair. And I, you know, I mean, we had probably people giving 50 billion or 100 billion and not 250 billion that I

of a post-all of it. I don't have a super PAC. I don't take a dime of a PAC in the obvious body. I have said we need to, as a Democratic Party, say no super PAC body in Democratic primaries, and we should be doing what Maine did, is regulating at the very least the amount a person can contribute to a super PAC, just like they get regulated what they can contribute to an individual. They can only give me $3,300. Why?

Should Elon Musk be able to give 250 million to a super bank? You should be able to give $3,300 to it. Before you overturn Citizens United, let's at least regulate these super packs. Main, it passed by 70%. The DNC chair should be saying we're going to run that initiative in every state in this country. By the way, I'll just float. Jonathan Jackson is being talked about in Congress that we want him to get in the race for DNC chair. So I'm hoping he will do that.

And I'm hoping he'll make some news in the next a couple weeks. But you're also right about the conflicts of interest. And I said that there needs to be regulations on conflicts of interest with

both the vacant and any land. They shouldn't be able to avoid these conflicts of interest. But you know why Trump hangs on to Elon? Because Trump is fundamentally 80s wealth, right? His whole stick is 1980s. Hulk Hogan. I mean, I don't mention him. I hadn't thought of that guy since I was in high school, right? It's all about make America great again. Ronald Reagan and where did Trump make his quote unquote money to the extent he did? It was all the 1980s.

And he knows that Americans are always about the future. And so he's trying to glob onto Elon because Elon's about the future in terms of the technology. And I think what the Democrats have to say is we get the future. We understand what future economic prosperity and stability looks like. It's not just giving tax cuts and deregulation where the wealth is going to pile up in Silicon Valley. We've got to actually make this technology economy

Work for small towns for the industrialized communities for the working class that's been left out. We've got to have a tax on billionaires We've got to tax the the the uber wealthy to provide health care and education and that's how we're going to go into the future, but my my view is that instead of just

reflexively criticizing everything about these tech guys that what we need to say is we're the party of the future and we want technology to work for everyone, not just for these billionaires.

Well, Congressman, thank you so much for taking a little time out of your holiday schedule and letting us in your home there where your adorable kids are. And we're always grateful for your time and your insights, especially on these issues. Thank you so much. Appreciate you. It's our pleasure. Happy New Year. Bye. Happy New Year. Consider this is a daily news podcast. And lately, the news is about a big question.

How much can one guy change? What will change look like for energy? School, take the Department of Education, close it. Health care? Better and less expensive. Follow coverage of a changing country. Promises made. Promises kept. We're going to keep our promise. Unconsider this from NPR. Listen on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

John Stewart is back in the host chair at The Daily Show, which means he's also back in our ears on The Daily Show's edition podcast. The Daily Show podcast has everything you need to stay on top of today's news and pop culture. You get hilarious satirical takes on entertainment, politics, sports, and more from John and the team of correspondents and contributors. The podcast also has content you can't get anywhere else, like extended interviews and a roundup of the weekly headlines.

Listen to the Daily Show, Ears Edition on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everybody? I'm Dan Burke here to tell you about a new podcast from iHeart Podcast in the National Hockey League. It's NHL-inscriptive with Kirk and D'Murs. Hey, I'm Jason D'Murs, former 700-game NHL defenseman turned NHL network analyst, and boy, oh boy, does daddy have a lot to say?

I 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 worlds 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.

Donald Trump has actually asked the Supreme Court to delay the TikTok sale deadline. I'm going to share a tear sheet so that everyone can just see a little bit more about what's going on here. This is very significant. We've covered, obviously, Donald Trump and TikTok a lot on the show because there's a lot going on with it, meaning Donald Trump seems to have been persuaded by one of his biggest donors, Jeffrey Yas, who has a

significant stake in TikTok, I believe he has a majority stake in TikTok, to sort of change the hawkish anti-China position that a lot of Republicans, if not most Republicans, took on TikTok. And now Donald Trump has actually, they're set to hear arguments on January 10th. The ban was set to go in place on January 19th, still is set to go into place on January 19th, but has actually the Trump

Trump's nominee to be Solicitor General essentially filed an amicus brief that asked for a stay that would delay the deadline so that Donald Trump could come in and quote, work out a negotiated resolution, as you can see in the ABC News article.

Again, it's not a huge surprise, Crystal, but another significant obstacle potentially being removed with the help of Donald Trump for TikTok. TikTok is desperate for this not to happen. They badly do not want to sail by dance, obviously the Beijing base.

A parent company of TikTok does not want to sell the company, even though it seems like there would be monetarily a deal that would work out pretty well for ByteDance, given that isn't to say TikTok is a huge property. Obviously, I don't need to explain that to everybody, but in terms of investment and future value, I can understand why ByteDance wouldn't want to sell cultural.

questions of control aside. So this is, again, Donald Trump putting his finger on the scale of it, Crystal, which sets up an interesting realignment question because we share this next tab.

You now also have the TikTok Gaza discourse that has been going on, but this is Theo Vaughn waiting into that. I mean, he's talked about this before, actually, as well. But here's Theo Vaughn talking about Trump. They don't want people sharing the truth about the genocide in Palestine, and that's why they're doing it.

I believe that that's what it is. And TikTok is one of those places where people can still do that. And they want to own it. They want to own it, dude. Suppressing. Yes, suppressing. Thank you so much. Yes. And I think, uh, yeah, I mean, and people say, um, thank you. And, um, and people say like, well, we don't want China having our information.

All these, every, they all have our, what are they, I don't understand something on what, what that means, you know, like, what do you have my information? I have like six pieces of information. There's no way you don't have them. So, uh, Crystal, what he's getting at is, uh, something also that is important to understand about Donald Trump and we'll get to ultimately what may happen at TikTok. Uh, this is a New York Times article, how Donald Trump went from backing a TikTok band to backing off.

Well, one of the reasons a lot of people in Trump circles still want a TikTok ban, in fact, is as the Yvonne, I think, was just getting at, they've seen the surveys of TikTok content and the breakdowns of it being much more pro-Gaza sentiment than pro-Israel sentiment. And there's this sense that control is being lost or that China is manipulating young people

Rather than, hey, there are some organic sentiments in this direction is actually the same thing with the Osama bin Laden letter when that it didn't actually go viral on TikTok. And Shah Ali had a decent breakdown of the Washington Post had a great report on how it didn't actually go viral. But the point remains that there are sort of organic, there is a deeply organic pessimism about American imperialism and American power. And TikTok is a place where people hash that out.

Yeah, no, that's, that's really true. Um, I think the point that Ryan has been making is the cracked one, which is like Israel has gotten away with it. Like we're going to cover that they just destroyed the last hospital in Gaza. Donald Trump has won the election. You know, one of the other oligarchs who backed him massively is Miriam, Miriam Adelson, the widow of Sheldon Adelson, um, to the tune of some hundred million dollars. Plus she's basically bought the foreign policy. Israel's going to get whatever they want, whether

people on TikTok are upset or not. So that risk has sort of faded. Meanwhile, Donald Trump himself personally has gotten very popular on TikTok. And with him, it's all about his ego. And he feels like this platform is nice to him now. So that also changes his view. And then you couple to that, the Jeff Yass, the amount of money that Jeff Yass gave into his campaign. And it's very clear where Donald Trump has decided that his interests lie.

I happen to agree with them. I think it'd be preposterous to ban TikTok. I think it'd be incredibly damaging to many creators who have created entire careers off of the platform, the many young people who love TikTok and get a lot out of it and find it to be a fantastic creative outlet.

To me, the arguments were always kind of silly, because it's like, number one, we're worried about the data. I mean, Theo Vaughn talked about this too. It's like what you think Mark Zuckerberg and all these other tech oligarchs don't already have your data.

everything that China would want to know about you, if they want to find it out, they already can. So that was always a little bit silly to me. And now the self-interest has lined up in a very different direction for Trump. So I doubt that the TikTok pan is going to go into effect. In the brief,

They didn't actually weigh in on the core of the legal challenge which are on the First Amendment. They just said, like, Donald Trump's a fantastic negotiator and he's going to work this out when he gets into office. So just don't you worry about it. Just push this off a little bit. But I think that's also reasonable to say, you know, he was democratically elected and, um,

He's got a view on the issue and he's going to have control of both the House and the Senate. And so it seems reasonable to imagine that he could potentially work out a deal here and not have to go through the, the Supreme Court process. But you know, I'm like curious for your thoughts on this going back to the, the conversation we were having previously about Elon is like,

kind of buried in the whole pre-holiday fuss over the government funding bill that Elon ultimately tanks, and then they strike this new deal, et cetera. One of the things they got pulled from the original deal was some restrictions on tech investment in China, which was a major priority for Elon because he wants to do this AI Tesla investment, Chinese investment thing. And so this was important for him.

Lo and behold, that gets pulled out. And when that gets pulled out of the deal, suddenly he's a okay with it. You also have Trump's previous hawkishness towards China is what led him to be in favor of a TikTok ban. Obviously, he's changed his mind there.

And, you know, for Elon, much of his fortune is tied up in China. I mean, there's investments in China. So the fact that he has so much influence in this administration leads me to believe you probably are going to get a very different orientation vis a vis China in this Trump administration than you did in the last Trump administration. But there's also a possibility with Trump, like he's old.

You know, he's old. He's tired. He wants to play golf, but he's kind of happy to just hand off a lot of the heavy lifting and policy making decisions to his like band of oligarchs that funded his election. He gets to stay on a prison. He gets out of his legal jeopardy. He gets to have the positive circumstance of being in the White House and, you know, do the things that he wants to do. But also he gets to just kind of, you know, whatever pieces he doesn't really care about anymore and not having to run for reelection, he can just hand hand off to his team of oligarchs.

This is another one of those fascinating topics because it brings together so many of the different threads of the Trump era in that you have, again, Trump's own oligarchs like being pitted against one another. So the Miriam Adelson versus the Jeff Yass. You have the China Hawks versus the new right foreign policy, which is actually often very hawkish on China, but in a weird way, this

could be good if it sort of is a counterbalance to some hawks in the incoming Trump administration. Somebody, for example, like Secretary of State, incoming Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio, who's extremely hawkish on China in a weird way. If you have like Elon who wants to be more protective of his own business interests, Tesla is a good example in China.

as a counterbalance to be hawkish enough that we end up in a war because of escalating rhetoric or whatever. Maybe that's a good thing or remains to be seen, but it's very hard to know what Trump policy will look like because we've seen on things like TikTok, for example, him just be so open. The most charitable way to put it is open-minded and open to different arguments, but I think what happened with yes was openly transactional.

Yeah. In an unusually brazen sense to get back to what we were kind of talking about earlier, Crystal, with Jimmy Carter. So let's listen to Donald Trump the way that he's talked about TikTok more recently, which is very different than how he had obviously talked about it before. This is Trump actually before the election talking about how if you want to save TikTok,

You have to vote Donald Trump. For all of those that want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump. TikTok. TikTok. Closing it up. But I'm now a big star on TikTok. We even have TikTok Jack and we're setting records. We're not doing anything with TikTok. The other side's going to close it up. So if you like TikTok, go out and vote for Trump. If you don't care about TikTok and other things like safety,

security and prosperity, then you can vote for a Marxist who's going to destroy our country. There you go. That's the pitch. It's pretty clear. It's pretty clear.

It's so funny on so many different levels there, but you can see, Crystal, that as soon as you realize that he could have some control over the platform, it's not just about Jeff. Yes, it's about people liking Donald Trump on the platform. Donald Trump's campaign itself being able to find success on the platform.

I've actually always disagreed on this. I've always been in favor of a TikTok ban, and I think that's different. I don't support this ban. I think the way that all of the legislation to ban TikTok was written is insane, not surprising, but insane, and not a narrow way, obviously, sort of power grab.

They were all written to be power grabs rather than actually deal with the problem. So that was always suspect. But in a sense, then Donald Trump coming in and saying, hey, I'm doing great on TikTok. Let's save it. I mean, that pitch might have worked. He did well with young people. It might have. I don't know with young people.

I don't know that the brief is going to be successful that they filed because we're talking about a piece of legislation that was democratically that was passed through our system to the extent that it is democratic. It was passed through Congress signed by the president. So I don't know that they'll have much room here with the Supreme Court. But even how the Supreme Court, the sort of Trump era Supreme Court is going to decide on this is an interesting question because you have sort of more libertarian leaners.

like a Neil Gorsuch or an Amy Coney Barrett, and then you have people like Clarence Thomas, and, oh, I would say, potentially, Sam Lito, who will go probably in a different direction, but we don't know. Yeah, I mean, to me, it's reasonable to say, hey, I'm just coming into office, like, just delay.

thinking about this delay, weighing this decision, and let me see if I can work something out. I could see them being amenable to that, ultimately. And I haven't dug deeply, or at least not for a while, into what the legal case is. But I think it's effectively TikTok as saying that the bill is a violation of free speech rights. And that's the case that they're making, which, yeah, I would think that the more libertarian-oriented parts of the court may be amenable

And also the more like pro corporate sides of the court, but I personally, I can't imagine TikTok actually being banned at this point. Like it's hard for me to imagine. So whether, you know, one way or another, I feel like it's kind of likely the Supreme Court is going to say, all right, we'll just delay it and let you work it out and that Trump will figure something out because this is an important priority for one of his donors. So there you go.

And also, Trump-friendly Hologarchs have been lining up to buy TikTok and have been lining up investors, obviously, to make a deal that's sort of too good for ByteDance to turn down if it ends up that they are not successful at the Supreme Court. So whether you still have the sort of Beijing-based algorithmic magic

that they feel they have with TikTok right now. If it is sold, it's a totally open question. I think ByteDance doesn't do itself many favors by saying, on the one hand, we absolutely need to be owned by... TikTok needs to be owned by ByteDance in order to be as good as it is, which means like, okay, I guess I'm curious what you're doing with all of that data over there, but on the other hand,

What does that look like in terms of significant disruptions to the platform that everybody knows? I kind of doubt it would be as significant as the people who want to maintain control of TikTok with by dance say that it will be. Again, because it's a very successful product.

If you buy TikTok, you're going to have a huge interest in keeping it successful, making it more successful, making it more addictive is what it means, basically. Yeah. Well, that's the truth of the matter, to bring it back to Vivek and Elon in that whole fight is what we really need is less TikTok and more sleepovers and more hanging out. Less X! Less social media! I mean, it's just such an insane argument from the people who literally own the social media platforms. Very true.

Consider this is a daily news podcast and lately, the news is about a big question. How much can one guy change? What will change look like for energy? School, take the department education, close it. Healthcare, better and less expensive. Follow coverage of a changing country. Promises made, promises kept, we're going to keep our promises. On Consider This from NPR. Listen on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

John Stewart is back in the host chair at The Daily Show, which means he's also back in our ears on The Daily Show's edition podcast. The Daily Show podcast has everything you need to stay on top of today's news and pop culture. You get hilarious satirical takes on entertainment, politics, sports, and more from John and the team of correspondents and contributors. The podcast also has content you can't get anywhere else, like extended interviews and a roundup of the weekly headlines.

Listen to the Daily Show, Ears Edition on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everybody? I'm Dan Burke here to tell you about a new podcast, my heart podcast, and the National Hockey League. It's NHL-inscriptive with Kirk and D'Amourse. Hey, I'm Jason D'Amourse, former 700-game NHL defenseman, turned NHL network analyst, and boy oh boy does daddy have a lot to say.

I 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 worlds 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.

So we didn't want to lose sight of the latest in terms of the IDF onslaught in Gaza. They have now officially raided and evacuated and detained many patients from the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza. It's called Kamal Adwan.

Reports are some 240 Palestinians, including dozens of medical staff were detained from the hospital. And that's to include the director of the hospital, Dr. Hassan Abu Safiya, who some have said are being held and tortured by the IDF, his family is deeply concerned. And this comes as

They've instituted this plan where they've effectively sealed off Northern Gaza and are just starving and obliterating everything in sight. We have some images we can share with you here just to give you a sense of the level of devastation. This is that hospital director, Dr. Assam Abu Safiya, who exited the hospital and is approaching.

these tanks. And I believe this the last that that he had been seen you can see just the incredible amount of rubble and also incredible amount of courage people are commenting on him walking through this landscape and approaching these tanks outside of the hospital. I can show you a little bit of the imagery of the the patients being expelled from the hospital here. This is doctors and patients. You can see on the screen

Many of the men were ultimately forced to strip down the weather is, you know, quite chilly. Now, in fact, we've had reports of a number of infants who have died at this point because of hypothermia and the freezing temperatures who are already born.

likely malnourished because their mothers are unable to get sufficient caloric intake while they're pregnant and then they're unable to breastfeed sufficiently if at all because of the lack of lack of nutrition and situation is the most dire in northern Gaza. This is an image of that hospital on fire and again this was really the last functioning hospital in

Northern Gaza, I saw that these patients were moved to another hospital, but that hospital has been condemned because it also had been so severely damaged. So no telling where they're going to head to next. And then let me just show you this next one. These are a number of additional photos from the people who were removed and many of them detained. You can see them exiting the hospital. Also, just, I mean, just look at this landscape. Like there is just

just nothing left. You can see them here crowded together and forced. This is the the men forced to strip down to their underwear and their hands bound. And here you see them kneeling and blindfolded on the ground. So, you know, just really horrific images and horrific situation that is coming out there. And, you know,

It's easy to forget, Emily, that just over a year ago, when the attack plans were being made for al-Shifa to raid al-Shifa Hospital, there was a whole propaganda effort to convince the world that this was legitimate, that they said there was this Hamas layer underground, and they created this whole 3D imagery around what they would find there. Of course, they didn't find any of that there.

They claimed to find some tunnels and I think there was some alleged cache of weapons that they found but are claimed to find but nothing close to what they had purported to say existed underneath of this hospital complex. Now here we are more than a year later and

This barely gets a mention in the news. The entire healthcare system has basically been destroyed in northern Gaza. The entire healthcare system has been destroyed. And I feel like there's kind of no going back, not just with regard to Israel, but with regard to the world when you watch all of this unfold and it's just allowed to happen. I think as these atrocities and this, you know, what the worldwide consensus has basically arrived at that this is a genocide.

This is unfolded in front of all of our eyes. No power with the ability to intervene has decided to intervene. It opens up a new era of brutality and might makes right that maybe you say that's always been the law, but there was at least some semblance of we have these international rules and countries are going to be somewhat constrained.

I think all the shackles are off. I think that there's going to be sort of unchecked barbarism in the future based on what Israel has been able to get away with here with very little repercussions.

And I imagine you read the New York Times report, just what was this, it was right before Christmas, wasn't it? Like the day before Christmas, about how this was based on conversations with internal IDF sources, about how the standards were consciously lowered about civilian casualties, like basically the ratio of likely civilian casualties.

to the combatant casualties and how this was a conscious decision that was made internally formally by particular military leaders at different times that changed what we have sort of been told over in Overgan were the very high standards in previous conflicts that the IDF

as their defenders say, held to. And so, Crystal, I think that does raise an interesting question of precedent about the sort of justification. Because I was curious when I was reading that article about how it would

be defended by the people who have said over and over again that the other ratios were the defensible ratios and were the sort of best in the world. Right. And so I mean it's also if Donald Trump comes in and if right now what is happening with Netanyahu and Biden is that you know there's

We don't have a president with the mental faculties to even be negotiating something like a ceasefire, given that we are the backer of this conflict, the primary foreign backer of this conflict, that, as Israel has said, that this conflict couldn't be waged without American military support. So if that is the case, and we're in this interim period between Netanyahu, maybe hoping to have a ceasefire deal with the back of Donald Trump that looks differently than it would under Biden,

It also sheds light on how those delays have enormous human costs, right? It's if you're delaying it for the sake of politics, what happens in the interim is real and people die and it ends people's lives. And that's something that I've been thinking about as I've seen these images come in as well. Yeah, no, there's no doubt about it. And you know, the

It has rendered human life so cheap, too. The number of people killed and just the amount of pain and suffering and destruction of every sort of civilian infrastructure. It has rendered human life really cheap.

And that has implications that go far beyond Gaza and spill over effects that will impact the way the level of barbarism that people tolerate, that people think is normal, that nations think that they can get away with. And at this point, previously, there was some possibility

that because most of the upset over the Israeli genocide in Gaza was coming from the left, which is part of the Democratic coalition, that there could be enough political pressure brought to bear on the Biden-Harris administration to force some sort of change in policy. That was an ongoing question you saw at times. He would sort of bend to pressure, withhold this weapons shipment. Kamala Harris would make some comments that seemed to at least value Palestinian life, et cetera.

It was like an ongoing possibility. And, you know, with with Kamala losing and with Trump being totally like committed to whatever Miriam Edelson and Israel wants him to do based on his first German office and based on also how he's positioned himself this time around.

That's, that's over like Trump doesn't care what lefties on TikTok have to say about any of this Trump doesn't care what students camp down on a college campus have to say about any of this. So, you know, I hate to be hate to be so pessimistic, but when you look at that landscape of just nothing but rubble death and destruction.

It's like, it's over. Like, Israel gets to do what Israel wants to do. No one is going to check them. Their story is coming out that the dogs in Gaza, which at one point we're starving to death, are now fat and bloated from the number of corpses, human corpses that they've been feasting on.

That's where we are. And we all watched as it happened. And our government actively was like, yes, we support this. We're going to ship bombs for it. Both parties effectively agreed with very few dissenters. To your point about the New York Times article, Emily, so that reporting.

that the New York Times now finally has gotten around to doing. 972 magazine, which is Israeli publication, we, I was probably right about a year ago, broke down their report that revealed all of these things.

from the AI targeting system to the fact that they decided, oh, we can target low-level Hamas operatives even when they're at home with their families, which is something that most like no other Western developed society would be willing to do. Like, imagine if

You know, imagine if a foreign power was targeting our like low level soldiers when they're just like at home with their kids and think about how that would be received or think about how we received if Hamas was attacking, you know, not that they would be morally above this, but if they attacked IDF soldiers when they were at home, just with their kids and their wife, how that would be viewed. And they made that official policy. We saw that on October 7th, right?

Yeah, that's true. And in addition to increasing the number of acceptable civilian deaths, and even that number, they would push up to like, well, actually it's okay if 200 civilians are killed in this attack for someone that we particularly want. All of this reporting had been done already. It's just that the mainstream press didn't find it convenient at the moment to admit it.

And actually, and I can show you this, one of the authors, one of the journalists who was on this byline, had previously gotten asked about that 972 reporting. And Ryan shared this. So he says Bergman is on the byline confirming that reporting on the IDF using AI to target entire families. Yet here he is when it mattered, dismissing the reporting as mere

fantasy, the New York Times is an international embarrassment. So this is the journalist who's, you know, is on the byline, um, now confirming this reporting that at one point he mocked and compared it to a Netflix show. Just take a listen to this. You know, uh, sometimes people come to be and offer sources, uh, and stories. And I think about the stories that they are too bad to be true.

They sound more like Netflix episodes. It's something.

more like a Netflix episode than something that happens in reality. That's what he was saying about the 972 reporting that he has now confirmed. And Ryan's point that it doesn't really matter anymore at this point. It's over, it's done, is a really important one. So now New York Times feels comfortable reporting the reality of the situation when there's no possibility of any pressure changing and when so many lives and so much destruction has already been wrought.

I, you know, we're this true of every conflict, but we're going to keep learning more and more about what's transpired over the course of the last year in Gaza for years to come and to your point.

There are TikToks, there's organic evidence of a lot of this that it doesn't quite get picked up. And so that's where there's kind of a disconnect between media and the public.

So I want to be fair here to the Israeli side, you know, of course they can claim this was some sort of a Hamas stronghold. And this is the, you know, cache of quote unquote weapons that they claim they found in Kamal adwan, the hospital that they just attacked. We've got two pistols.

A monocular, a compass, a dagger, some money, and a fanny pack. So that's what they even buy their own by their own statements. That's what they're using to justify this. So there you go. Consider this is a daily news podcast. And lately, the news is about a big question.

How much can one guy change? They want change. What will change look like for energy? Drill baby drills. Schools. Take the department education. Close it. Health care. Better and less expensive. Follow coverage of a changing country. Promises made. Promises kept. We're going to keep our promise. Unconsider this from NPR. Listen on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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reaction and response continues to roll in in the wake of the murder of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. And the latest to offer a take is Tim Dylan, who as part of a Netflix roast actually dressed up as the ghost of Brian Thompson and had quite a quite a bit that he leaned into here. Let me go ahead and show you a little bit of what he had to say.

Is this what you want? Clap it up! Here's the, here's the free medicine. There you go! That's fentanyl. How much much is he wants? It's fentanyl laced with more fentanyl. I'm Brian Thompson. I'm going to hell for this. You might as well laugh. I...

going to hell for this, you might as well laugh. Here were some other of the things that he said, Emily, I don't just pull up the New York Post comedian, Tim Dillon appeared as the ghost of slain United healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Netflix's Torching 2024, a roast of the year on Friday, less than a month after the executive was gunned down. They talk about how he's dressed similar to the way that Thompson was.

Don Ghulish, gray makeup, was met with a mixture of nervous laughter and cheers. He introduced himself and had a sign that read United Healthcare CEO, addressed the elephant in the room saying as Thompson that he's been in hell reading the tweets that a lot of people are happy he's dead. Quote, your reaction to my murder makes me sick and not the type of sick I would immediately deny for not having the proper paperwork, the comedian said.

taking a jab at UnitedHealthcare's track record of denying its policies members. So there you go, Tim Dillon weighing in with his take. Emily, did you see a lot of pearl clutching over this? Are people just sort of like accepted at this point?

No, I actually looked because as we were prepping the show, I assumed that this would have elicited some of the pearl clashing that we saw earlier. And I'm not saying all of that is unreasonable, but it really wasn't any. I don't know if it was because of the holiday break, but or if it's actually because of the poll that we're going to talk about and that it's been sort of increasingly clear that to the Tim Dillon's of the world sort of do have their fingers more firmly on the polls.

That was the thing, is that there was an effort to make it seem like this reaction to Brian Thompson's murder was just some far left, you know, ghoulish reaction. But polls like this tell you it was pretty widespread. 69% of Americans

say that health insurance claim denials had a great deal or a moderate amount of responsibility for the killing of CEO Brian Thompson, according to a new poll. If you go down the list here too, you've got 67% saying that profits made by health insurance companies had a great deal or a moderate amount to do with it.

wealth or income in general, you have a majority view. And then this was kind of crazy to me. If you look at this bottom number, so they say, okay, but how about the dude who actually killed him? And obviously 78% of people are like, yeah, I mean, that probably had something to do with it like this actual man who was a murderer.

But it was astonishing to me that you had 20% of people who said that the literal guy who killed him had only a little or nothing at all to do with the murder. Like that part is actually, that is actually crazy to me.

Great, and you can get 20% of Americans to say just about anything, but only 63%. When we were looking at that said that he is like bearing the full responsibility, which means people have very mixed opinions. Like that 63% number to me is even more significant. Like it's a majority, yes, but it's not like a commanding majority. People are pretty mixed emotions about what happened. And so I think Chris Lincoln might be right that the immediate

freak out over sort of the dirt bag left, right? Like this is just the dirt bag left and they're just such dirt bags and they're such losers and they're just they're trolling and we're going to have this moral panic over how awful it is that they're trolling.

really I think has become clear was missing the boat was not the right argument to be making is like if you want to actually convince people or persuade people to have a different approach to what happened to Brian Thompson if you want to actually say you know this was you can't be like ironically worshiping Luigi with the prayer candles and the memes

probably there's a different line of argument that you want to be making, then you're all disgusting idiots because it's a lot of people. It's a lot of people. No, that's exactly right. And, you know, just to, like, a lot of these polls, it depends a lot on how you ask the question blah, blah, blah. And to say that the claim denial rate had something to do with the murder is different than saying, like, the murder was good and I'm glad that he was murdered. Those are two

wildly different things. And I think there's been an effort to conflate those two things and basically say, if you want to even use this as an opportunity to talk about the cruelty, sickness, death, bankruptcy, the results from our healthcare system, then you're basically celebrating murder.

I think there's been a real effort to conflate those two sentiments of like, yeah, this is a disgusting system. This was a person who was, you know, at the head of one of the most notoriously like evil healthcare companies. And we think that that is wrong in addition to thinking that murdering someone, you know, on the street of New York.

is wrong. Um, that is the piece that has been sort of willfully ignored. And Ken Klippenstein has been doing a really fantastic job reporting speaking of the dirt bag left speaking. I mean, Ken just is he has the biggest balls of anyone I think I've ever seen, like I'm sure the local FBI agent where he is and him are on like a first name basis. But in any case, Ken's done really good reporting too.

on what's going on internally at United Health Group. He's been doing great reporting about the security state's response to this murder. And there's a lot of very troubling indications that they're going to use things like, you know, maybe people posting the St. Luigi candle memes.

to label them as extremists, domestic extremists who should be, you know, tracked and surveilled, et cetera, et cetera. Very similar trajectory to, you know, we saw after 9-11, the use of our deep states like security state agencies against American citizens.