C (1:55)

So your hair looks way too good for a baseball hat. So that's, that's the, the bright side.

A (2:00)

You know. To be honest with you, I am a fan of a baseball hat. I'm also a fan though. I'm a fan of visors which I feel like are more of like maybe early 2000s coded. But my head is very small and usually I have to wear child sized baseball Hats. So the visor kind of solves that for me.

C (2:14)

I saw we were like planning a show in the group a few weeks ago and I saw you wearing a visor and I was like, damn, Krystal's bringing the visor back.

A (2:24)

Oh, yeah. Big fan of the visor.

C (2:26)

Amazing.

A (2:28)

So lots of things going on. We're gonna do a little bit. It's gonna be not a full on show here, I don't think. We're gonna try to keep it a little bit brief. And I was telling.

B (2:37)

Yeah, right.

A (2:38)

I feel. Yeah, we're gonna try. Yeah. I feel sort of like. I feel rusty. You. You know, just taking this little bit of time off has been nice and I think good for me to mentally reset and hopefully for you guys and for the crew as well. But I'm also like, do I still know how to do this?

C (2:53)

You're doing great, Crystal.

B (2:57)

Never better in the comments. You decide, is she still ready to do this?

A (3:01)

That's right. Should I just hang it up?

C (3:02)

Give up.

A (3:03)

That's it. It's over.

B (3:05)

Any big resolutions this year, y', all, before we begin?

A (3:09)

Um, I haven't, you know, I've. I haven't really been a big resolution person. Usually what I do is during this time period, I try to think about, like, what are going to be the big. Not just stories, but consequential events of the year. And, you know, last year I really was thinking a lot about AI And I would say this year I'm still thinking a lot about AI so I'm kind of, I guess, recommitted myself to. I was also just talking to Griffin about this to see if I can have less of just a doomer view of it and more of a aspirational, like, okay, if this is coming, because I think it's very difficult to halt completely. What could we do that would make sure that the benefits are shared and that this isn't the end of democracy, that this isn't, you know, the start of a truly authoritarian, like, power consolidated in the hands of a handful of people and people. People tossed down of jobs and just this utterly dystopian future. Like, what is another envisioning of that? And I think it does make sense, like what Bernie's proposing to sort of slow things down while people wrap their heads around and while that democratic process plays out, while that, you know, inspiration and ideas are percolating. But I'm, I'm trying to, you know, to try on less of a doomer mentality and more of like, okay, well, if this is coming. What could we do that would. If they're. If they want to rewrite the social contract, like, what does that look like? In a way that's actually beneficial?

B (4:38)

And what about you? What's your resolution this year?

C (4:41)

This is, like, very hard to follow Krystal's thoughtful point there. I don't really make resolutions. I try not to think about the new year in terms of, like, opening or, like opening another chapter or anything like that. It's hard not to, but I don't really have anything to say. I do remember Crystal saying this last year, and immediately I feel like your coverage became super, super helpful because you were literally doing the reading and going deep on it and brought that lens to the kind of news of the day stories. So maybe I should take a page out of your book.

A (5:22)

Emeline's resolve to mog on more bitches this new year.

C (5:26)

Yeah.

B (5:27)

Mog.

A (5:27)

J.D.

C (5:27)

Vance, physiognomy. Yep. And like, you know what I lack? I lacked a scientific understanding of Sydney Sweeney's facial symmetry. And that I've realized that's a serious error on my part. And I pledged to do better.

A (5:45)

You know, even as a Sydney Sweeney critic, I really hadn't explored the ways in which she's quote, unquote malformed.

C (5:52)

So you didn't get to the orbital. Yeah. You didn't say any of that, which was neglectful. Um, Griffin, do you have a resolution?

B (6:01)

Um, my resolution was to investigate more fraud. More fraud into podcast like Breaking Points. Uh, so expect a camera crew knocking.

A (6:10)

On your door, showing up at places and demanding to see their children.

B (6:14)

We, we, we tape in the mornings here at Breaking Point. So I'm gonna show up in the afternoons with the camera crew being like, where's Crystal? Where's Sagar? They're not here. No show job. Um, let's, let's look to the future. Let's get to the news, folks. It's a brand new year, and let's turn our eyes to New York City, where Zoran Mamdani has been sworn in as mayor. Let's take a quick listen to a clip that's been getting some action long.

D (6:37)

These communities have existed as distinct from one another. We will draw this city closer together.

C (6:45)

We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.

D (6:51)

If our campaign demonstrated that the people.

C (6:54)

Of New York yearn for solidarity, then.

D (6:56)

Let the this government foster it. Because no matter what you eat, how you pray, or where you come from, the words that most define us are the two we all share. New Yorkers.

B (7:13)

All right. That was a taste from the inauguration. Crystal was so amazed by that, she ran to New York City to take.

A (7:22)

A moment to adjust that and also to let the cat in hop on the Amtrak.

B (7:26)

But big day. Bernie was part of the inaugural ceremony. Zoron was sworn in in the old subway in the underneath New York City with his wife. And what do we make this, guys?

A (7:40)

I mean, to me it's extremely hopeful. Like that line is so funny because I think it was very intentionally put in to spark a whole like, oh my God, collectivism, like what's going on and sharia law and communism and whatever, which is kind of a funny. You know, it's kind of the sort of thing that the right has been pulling lately. Like, let me intentionally touch the hot stove and make people react to it. And he certainly got that. He certainly got that reaction. But you know, there's a few things. There's just the portrait of Bernie there, swearing him in the official ceremony. AOC there as well. So Bernie being in this amazing. With Eric Adams in the background. Bernie just like delighted mouth and cape with Eric Adams looking very stern above him. Great.

B (8:28)

It was an new mittens and blanket photo, but this time a happy one.

A (8:33)

But this time delighted. Yeah. And so to see him kind of in a sense like passing the torch, built to Zoran and AOC, who may be, you know, a contender in 2028 presidential or at least maybe running for the Senate against Chuck Schumer, was to me very poignant. And I think Zoran not only he, he really has a lot of intentionality around the symbols that he chooses. So you mentioned the, the initial swearing in happened in this sort of iconic subway shuttered subway stop under city Hall. That is really beautiful and you know, came from a time period when it was like, we're going to invest in public goods and we're going to make them really beautiful and really nice and we're going to put thought and care into it. So that was a very thoughtful choice. Immediately after his swearing in, he goes to a rent stabilized apartment building where the landlord has completely neglected. It's falling apart, roaches are coming in, pipes are rusted, tiles are falling apart, et cetera. That's where he chooses to not only tour the facility and to champion their cause and put official resources towards it, but also to sign his initial executive orders. I know he was. He arrived at the inauguration in a cab that was driven by a taxicab driver who had previously done a hunger protest alongside Zoran. So he just, he's thought a lot about how to signal this is a different administration and it's being run for a different group of people. He also made sure in his speech to say, like, look, I was advised that now's the time to lower expectations, to do the like, you know, campaign and what's the thing? Campaign and poetry, govern in prose or whatever. But anyway, to set the expectations smooth, smaller, he's like, I'm not going to do that. We are going to get out there and try and we may not always succeed, but we're going to think big and we're going to dream big. So, you know, now the proof is going to be in the pudding. And I think he's well aware that the eyes of not just New York City, but the eyes of nation, of the nation are really on him, whether this is fair or not, because this is the test now. He will be held up of the exam as the example of like, can the left govern? Or are these just sort of like these utopian pie in the sky ideals and what comes for when the rubber meets the road? They can't really deliver on any of these promises and everyone just leaves with further nihilistic and with their hopes dashed.

C (10:59)

I'll add that it feels like an evolution for democratic socialism. And to Crystal's point about Bernie elated on stage sort of watching the torch being passed, or that's too passive, passing the torch. As Crystal said this, I think the, the flavor of Mayor Mamdani's administration that we've seen over the last 24 hours looks like the growth into a more mature political operation of democratic socialism. And I don't mean uppercase DSA necessarily. I mean Bernie style democratic socialism. And I think we all saw with aoc, she would probably say this, and there's a lot of this in Ryan's book, by the way. There was a surprise among DSA types and AOC about the response. I mean, about beating Joe Crawley like that was. That was very surprising when Mamdani beat Cuomo in the primary. Very, very surprising. But then I think with Zoran, the office is so big and he had so many months to campaign after the primary against the guy he beat in the primary and that so many resources poured in. It's not just like a congressional seat. This is the mayor of New York City. And I think there's, there's just been this deluge of concerted strategic thought that's gone into what this looks like. And we've seen that over the last 24 hours. We're getting a, I think a glimpse that this is going to be, I mean, it sounds obvious to say it, but it's another thing to see it. This is, is going to be the future of the lowercase DS Democratic socialist movement. And just a couple of quick kind of newsy points. I liked this Jill Filipovich tweet because I sent this in our DMs, but there were a couple of lines where I was like, ooh, this one, for example, was for too long those fluent in the good grammar of civility have deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty. And Joe Filipovich said, listen, I am as excited for the Zoran era as the next person, but I am begging, begging, begging his speechwriters to allow him to talk like a normal person and not an Oberlin freshman writing a persuasive essay. I thought that was interesting because he doesn't normally talk like an Oberlin freshman writing a persuasive essay. And so it was, you know, there, there, the, the collectivism line, I thought is not my favorite as a conservative. It gives me chills as a conservative. But I see what Crystal's saying that it's like this is he, he wants you to know that he is touching the third rail that he, he whipped out.

B (13:42)

He whipped out like the Ayn Rand villain mode on this speech, like collectivism.

A (13:48)

We're going to so here for Take.

B (13:50)

It from the owner.

C (13:51)

If you're a villain in an Ayn Rand novel, you're probably doing something right, you know.

A (13:56)

True, true. I, you know, I thought about, I thought about that Jill Filipovich tweet as well. And here's what I'll say. If he, it really depends if he delivers on his promises or people feel like he is delivering. They feel like life is getting better, they feel like he's fighting for them, then I think it's fine to lean into this very like, intellectual level, you know, grown up level of campaign rhetoric. And I sort of disagree that this is different than his normal mode. And he certainly has the ability to just like talk to people and come off as a normal person, which is really good and kind of unusual for a Democrat of any, of any flavor. But when he does prepared speeches, he uses this kind of elevated rhetoric. I didn't see this as the first time. Now what I did note is the tone was like, oh, now, now that I've won, like, I'm letting my, like socialist freak flags fly. Like, I'm letting it all out like this, this is how it's going to be, and you guys are going to eat it up and you're going to see what we're going to deliver. That I did see. But in terms of the sort of like, you know, elevated rhetoric and his approach to that, that to me felt consistent with other prepared speeches he gives, and even, you know, when he speaks on, in TV news, interviews, et cetera, he does reach for sort of more, more flowery language. And like I said, I think it just matters. If he can deliver, then people are going to love him and love all the aspects of him. And if he can't, and if, you know, the, the administration is a shambles and he can't deliver on any of the key promises, it doesn't feel like he's fighting for those key promises, then I think it's going to land very hollow and overwrought.

C (15:44)

Yeah, yeah, that sounds. I know. I think that's true. But it's, but that, to me is interesting as the. This is one thing that I think AOC did well and poorly when she first entered the scene was that it was like sometimes it did sound like the Oberlin freshman, and then sometimes she was really good at talking like just the bartender and.

A (16:04)

Well, the part, yeah, I was just gonna say where I distinguish is she used a lot of the academic language around like, intersectionality and that sort of stuff, whereas Zoron's. I, you know, I, I watched his whole speech and I read the transcript again this morning. It's very grounded in class politics. So in that way, just on a substantive level, it's different from, you know, some of the critiques I also had of, of AOC's language at a certain time. Although now I think that she is also a pretty effective communicator. The other thing that people are freaking out about is this is kind of, kind of clever in a way. So Zoran rescinded all of the Eric Adams executive orders from after he was indicted for fraud because he, he said, look, this is when he lost the trust in New York City, so anything after time is being swept out. And a number of those executive orders had to do with like, pro Israel stuff. So one was like a, some sort of a ban on, on bds, and the other one was the codifying of this definition of anti Semitism that conflates anti Zionism with anti Semitism. And so rather than just like targeting those specific pro Israel executive orders, he's like, no, no, no. All this stuff that was done after he was indicted for corruption, all of that is being tossed aside and of course the, like, you know, the, the more like right wing Zionist types are freaking out about these particular executive orders. And so look, see, Zora's already coming for the Jews or whatever. But, but you know, I think anyone who listened to how he campaigned would say he certainly has a mandate to make the government of New York more neutral to Israel than, you know, certainly than Eric Adams and other New York City mayors have positioned the government in the past.

B (17:47)

And we've got some polling here. Mamdani is up 5 in national net favorability in this New York Politics poll was negative 14 in September. We got AOC plus one here as well. Hochul down six, Trump down 20. Adams down 23. And Cuomo at the bottom here, negative 13.

A (18:06)

Adams more popular than Cuomo. That's so funny.

B (18:09)

They should have run him again.

C (18:10)

They should have run Eric Adams.

B (18:12)

Yeah, me and Emily have been saying this for so long.

A (18:15)

Yeah, he was still going to lose though. I mean, he had the lowest favorability rating of any mayor in New York City's history. So I don't think there was any stop in the. The zone.

C (18:25)

No, there was no stopping the zone. But that's, I mean, I think just the point that you made, Crystal, is when you look at how Democratic socialism surged in America's populist moment around 10 years ago now, because it's 2026, so 2016, that's crazy. We're exactly a decade out from Bernie surge. It has clearly gone back to something that looks a lot more like what Bernie would have had it look like had those. I mean, there's this, this moment where Bernie is campaigning in 2016. An activist sees the microphone from him and he sort of seeds the spot. And it's very academic, jargony type language. And so I do think that what we're seeing right now is a smarter, more mature, you know, 10 year in project. And if you're somebody who believes in the democratic socialist project, you should be enormously, enormously hopeful about what you saw in the last 24 hours, which was again, a professional political, concerted operation with a mature strategy as to like bringing in people on a class basis.

A (19:33)

Yeah. And I think, you know, some people on the left already have been upset with the decisions that are kind of, you know, sort of like hard nosed political tactics like deciding not to endorse Chiyo, say against Hakeem Jeffries, pushing him not to run in that race. Some of the administration choices. So, you know, some of those things I think as governing reality sets in, I think are going to be difficult for a lot of people on the left to swallow, myself included. But, you know, I think he is trying to approach it from a eyes on the prize. I need to do what I got to do to deliver, and that's the, you know, the number one, first and foremost priority. And then the last thing I'll say here, which will set us up for our segment on Gavin Newsom and and J.D. vance mogging and clavicular and all of that, is as we look forward to the future of our politics, we are going to get a lot of answers in this year, in 2026, about what the future of the Democratic Party is going to look like because there are so many primary challenges across the country, some of them high profile that we've spoken about, some of them under the radar that we haven't spoken about and that we don't even know about. There are so many contests which are being set up right now just in the Democratic primaries that are really going to set the tone for what the future of this party is. Are they going to hang on to the neoliberal, let's try to preserve the institutions, let's try to cling to the status quo and modestly improve it, or are we going in a more radical direction? I think the base is going to send some very strong messages on that point this year, which is one of the things that I'm very excited for us to be able to track together. So that's gonna be something to watch. And then, of course, in the general election to see, you know, did these. The swing that we saw in 2025 towards Democrats and that we've seen in these special elections where, you know, people are flipping 20 points towards Democrats, does that sustain? And do we have something, you know, really quite consequential in terms of a wave election or, you know, do we get a surprise as we have in the past when we expected wave elections and they didn't arrive?

C (21:35)

Hmm.

B (21:37)

Well, to that point, let's mog on over to clavicular in the 2028 race. Now, do you guys know who Clavicular is like?

A (21:46)

Well, I do now.

B (21:48)

Do now, Emily, are you aware now.

A (21:50)

I recorded a interview for KKF with Taylor Lorenz, who, you know, I mean, it's her job to know about these characters and she said she went deep on him maybe like four months ago, and she just posted something on her channel. So I have been educated now in the clavicular full lore and origin story.

B (22:09)

So for those listeners who aren't on the algorithm, I would describe as evil TikTok. There is a man named Clavicular. He's kind of in some ways like the new young Andrew Tate in that he is sort of a male icon for younger men. But this guy for so well for, for this group, for enough, enough people that we're talking about him now and that he's on shows he is a looks maxer which means he would take rocks or pebbles and hit them on his jaw to bruise his bones, to make them stronger, to I guess he believes give him a stronger jawline to become more of an alpha Chad. He also does a medley of drugs to keep his figure including like low grade amounts of meth. He does obviously all the other gender affirming care trt and he is in a lot of ways trans. So male to male, he's male to male. Yeah, he's male to alpha male.

A (23:16)

Yeah.

B (23:18)

So there's this and we should say.

A (23:20)

And actually this is just to help people understand how extreme the things that he does are. He's been taking some form of like steroids from the time he was 14 and he's actually sterile now because of what he has taken. So yeah, his, yeah, I mean he talks about this publicly. This isn't news. And so his whole, his whole thing is this very nihilistic sort of incel pickup artist adjacent philosophy of the world is screwed. It's very hard to get ahead. The deck is stacked against you and the best thing that you could do to be able to get women and have some sort of success is to look smacks to take these extreme like the, the ethos of the bodybuilding world and apply that not just to your body but also to your face with.

B (24:11)

A heavy American Psycho garnish on top.

C (24:14)

Yeah, yeah. I was gonna say it's very, it's very Nietzsche and that's the like underpinning of American Psycho, this idea that you can be the superman. And Rod Dreher has been talking about how we're in Weimar America, but this is actually. And his has a totally different take on. Well actually maybe not that different but on anti Semitism and all of that. But when he's talking about Weimar America he particularly zeroed in the other day on Clavicular and was like this is so dangerous because you're getting into a place where the fringes are now prouder and prouder about reducing people to their physical worth.

A (24:59)

And it's very eugenicsy.

C (25:01)

It's extraordinarily eugenicsy. And this was like last year the rights viral fight was over H1BS this year it was Michael Knowles having clavicular on and just like dead ass asking him about J.D. vance. And that's where Griffin.

B (25:19)

Which we got a clip, which we got a clip right here. Let's take a look.

D (25:24)

Yeah, but I mean like this next election cycle, who's going to win? It's going to be Gavin Newsom against J.D. vance. Because J.D. vance is subhuman and Gavin Newsom Boggs is subhuman. Yeah. What makes you say that? He's got a very short total facial width to height ratio. He's very recessed side profile. Whereas Newsom is like six three Chad. So you're JD is very tall. JD's gotta be. Well still, I mean six' three Gavin Newsom obviously mogs him to death. So you think you prefer Newsom to the vice president? I'm just telling you who's gonna win. Do you prefer him though? Honestly, it's, it's hard to say. But Newsom being that much more of a mogger and like having a president who's like fat and especially that young, you think he's. I don't think he's fat. I would say he's a bigger guy for sure. It's just like, it's just embarrassing. Like how are you. You fat and you expect to like lead a country? You can't even be, you know, so you like, you got, let's say you got a vote. It's 2028.

B (26:32)

I'm voting now.

D (26:33)

Gavin Newsom. You're voting for Gavin Newsom? You can't be that, you can't be that subhuman. So hold on, you, you got. All right, well this actually is of a thread with the whole conversation because you look at these two candidates. You have Gavin Newsom, worst governor in the country, I think we would all agree, destroyed his state, let its main city burn to the ground because of his incompetence, is a personal complete derelict, liar, degenerate. But he is good looking, I'll grant you that. He's good looking and kind of looks like Patrick Bateman, American Psycho. And then you have this vice president to President Trump, the transformative right wing president in our lifetimes. Who do you support? Trump or no? Yeah, okay, so you got, and you got this vice president handpicked by Trump, who is extremely intelligent, very right wing. I think he's a pretty good looking guy. I don't know, maybe I guess you disagree, but is all these things checks, all these boxes would have all these great policies and regardless you're gonna pick the pro mass migrant, pro trans, pro. Murder the babies, Pro. Burn the cities to the ground, pro BLM Democrat because he's skinnier than the conservative vice president 100 times over.

B (27:43)

I'm so mad at Sager. I tried to get Sager to do this interview, and he was like, no, I don't know if we should do it. That could have been our interview.

A (27:51)

It could have been Sager getting mobbed on Does Sagar.

C (27:56)

Mog mogger.

A (27:59)

There you go. There's. Okay, so there's a lot that's interesting about this. First of all, Michael Knowles doing this interview to start with, Daily Wire's not doing well. You know, they're losing subscribers. And because people are going more to these type of characters. So the choice to do this interview, I think, is in a sense, in a sense like an attempt to maintain relevance, be like, look, I'm. I'm down with these, you know, characters, these new kids streamers. Like, I'm good with this.

B (28:24)

And then Knowles is pretty good at that. In particular on the Daily Wire, like, Shapiro. Shapiro is not really evolving, but Knowles is kind of getting out there.

A (28:33)

But, yeah, so, I mean, but then, you know, it's. This conversation doesn't, like, go that well for him. And it's funny because I watched most of the whole thing, and it's like, Clavicular is sort of taking to the logical extreme some of the arguments that people like Michael Knowles has been making. So there's been this whole thing on the ride about, like, beauty. And beauty is not subjective. It's not an eye of the beholder. It is a, like, established fact. And also, like, playing with these sort of, like, eugenics type ideas. And so, yeah, for Clavicular to go to the logical extreme of, like, yeah, Gavin Newsom looks like AI Slop of the Aryan Chad with the perfect Aryan family. That's my guy. And. And we should also say Clavicular owes in some sense, his rise to Nick Fuentes. Like, they're also very, like, adjacent and friendly creators. Fuentes and the Groipers also hate J.D. vance because he's a race traitor because he married an Indian woman and because he has biracial kids. And those things sort of, like, these things sort of fit together as well. But the other thing I noted just specifically about that clip is when Knowles first asks him, like, so do you prefer Gavin Newsom? He's like, yeah, I guess so. But then by the end of it, when he realizes, like, oh, this is getting a rise on him. Yeah, like, he's, he's like losing his mind over this. By the end, he's like, I'd vote for him 100 times over. You know, just completely like all in on it. And I've seen another interview clip with him since then where he's, he's sort of like, oh, I was trolling. So. Giving himself some wiggle room to kind of like back out of this. But Newsom is leaning into it hard. You know, there's other creators online who are also like, you know, people. I don't even know who they are, but other right wing creators who are like, you know, J.D. vance is chunky and fat. It's a no for me. And posting the Gavin Newsom chad photos. Gavin Newsom is posting those photos, posting, like ugly pics of JD Vance from when he was younger and pudgier and, like, didn't have the beard and whatever. So that's, that's where we are. That's the state of our politics today.

C (30:36)

Maybe Clavicular should go do Marines boot camp and then have words for JD versus Gavin Newsom. I think the, the conversation about, like, beauty is an interesting invocation here because a lot of what I see, including for myself on the right, is this question about nature and how when we're in such a antiseptic, like, high tech world, we do lose natural, some degree of natural beauty. Because everything is artifice, Everything is being constructed in less and less natural ways. Not everything, but, you know, the metaverse was all we were talking about the New year, what, like, five years ago, something. Yeah, five years ago. Something like that. But with that in mind, Clavicular is totally, I think, making the point, and Gavin Newsom as well, about how natural looks. You can't replicate natural. This is so stupid. But you can't replicate natural good looks. By hammering your jaw and injecting your face with fillers, you can do something that looks like X, Y or Z, right? You could create an artifice of the natural, but you can't actually. It's not natural, so it doesn't look natural. And you get into that uncanny valley. I obviously watch a lot of Real Housewives. I'm incredibly familiar with these efforts. But in all seriousness, the looks, maxing efforts. Yeah, with the looks max from women. Right, but it's not natural. And at the same time, the people like Clavicular are trying to frame it as totally natural, as, like, this is. It is the Nietzsche perspective that what we have is power and strength and he will stop at no ends to construct power and Strength, even if it means taking all of these high tech medications hammering his jaw, like, whatever it is, and it's not attractive. And honestly, I think the same thing about Gavin Newsom. Like, he just, he looks like Patrick Bateman.

A (32:47)

Well, that's the thing is none of these either Jim bro trend or this looks maxing trend or even like Gavin Newsom as this, you know, undisputed Chad. None of these things are for the female gaze. They're all for the male gaze. So.

C (33:02)

Well said.

A (33:03)

Yeah, I mean, 100%. And so it's like, it's working. It's interesting. I mean, it feels very sort of like homoerotic because I'm like, you actually, number one, you hate women. Right? I mean, not all looks maxers, but many have this total antipathy towards women. And, you know, talk about women are whores and, you know, ruining our lives and all this stuff, right? This stuff is very adjacent to like, incel ideology, pickup artist ideology, like manosphere stuff. Like, it's. It's all very similar, right? So they hate women. And then the ideal Chad male that they're trying to craft is much more based on what a man's idea of aspirational male beauty would. Would be. So I don't know, they're literally, they're literally sterile. I love that.

B (33:51)

And to this point, Emily, about like.

C (33:52)

Yeah, they hate women so much that they're sterile.

B (33:55)

I watched this clip, Emily, and I was like, Republicans are so screwed. Like, they were relying on like, the spirit of Trump to carry them for like 30 more years. And then the Epstein thing happened, and now people are already looking into what's next. And no one likes any of the, any of the lineup behind that, which is like this J.D. gavin thing. They're okay with Gavin.

C (34:17)

And then this is dark Maha and.

B (34:20)

Not just the Trump stuff and sort of like the future of the leaders, but this core sense of Republican conservatism was always about family, right? Protecting the family. And this new generation seems to be transcending the need for family or like feeling like, well, and if I can't own a house or have a family, why not reject the entire concept? And something I've been seeing with conservatives is, you know, either it's claviclear saying he's sterile and he doesn't. He's actually doing it for men, not women. I'm seeing people like Asmongold, another big conservative YouTuber, say, I will never have a girlfriend again, like, as a positive thing. And I still see Andrew Tate, who's been for years Saying it's gay to have a girlfriend. So it seems like these like, similar stuff too. Yeah. That it's literally gay too. Have sex with women. And so it's like all these influencers are sitting to like, carve and guide out a path that's like post women and like post even having any children or, you know, continuing the human race.

C (35:25)

And that's because I think this is important. Like, Tate particularly frames it as about power and strength. And again, like, these are ideas that are relegated to the fringe. I mean, there's, there's. For now, there's a reason we're laughing at that interview between Knowles and Clavicular, because Clavicular, it's like fuentos. Right. That people mistake the size of their audience for the size of people's endorsements.

B (35:49)

True believers, Right?

C (35:50)

Yeah, right, right.

B (35:51)

Entertainment versus, like, believing every word of their.

C (35:54)

They are extremely entertaining. Right. And the reason that they're extremely entertaining is because there were all of these taboos created and those taboos were getting pinned, I think, rightfully to the left for the last 10 years. And it made a lot of young men totally miserable and vulnerable to this kind of thing and wanting to just reject the. What they felt like was the tightening of the strictures and the status quo and the cultural centers of power that they felt like were emasculating them. And to some extent there's truth to that. But on the other hand, when you're unmoored, you are much more easily, like, blown by the wind in one direction or the other. And it's all about power. That's what, that's what these guys are talking about at the end of the day is like, what you should value is power. And that's really not funny because that can go to a very, very dangerous place very, very quickly.

A (36:51)

Well, and it's all about power because they are powerless. I mean, this is to me less about, you know, backlash, the left or whatever. Although I'm not saying that there's none of that in here, but this is about where we are in late stage capitalism where men have been told by that their entire worth comes from being able to provide, being able to make money and provide for a household and a wife and, you know, kids and all of that. And then they've been robbed of the ability to do that. And so out of that, you know, extreme place that our society has come to with extreme wealth inequality, where there is very little hope that people would be able to, you know, obtain the. Even the life that their parents had, even though Some of that's viewed through rose colored glasses. That's how you end up with this very nihilistic, a series of extremely nihilistic viewpoints. I mean that's, you know, that's Fuentes ism, which is, you know, effectively neo Nazism. It's, it's race nihilism of this is just how the world is. We can't fix it, we can't make it better, we just have to deal with it. It's looks nihilism where it's like, listen, if you look better, you get ahead and that's just the way the world is. And they create an exaggerated version actually of how bad the world is because there are obviously plenty of people. I mean, Donald Trump is not good and fat and he's President United States. But you know, so it's a caricature, ish view of reality. But rather than having an aspiration of like, well, let's tackle that. Let's make it so that you don't just judge the book by its cover. Let's make it so that there's better opportunity for people, regardless of, you know, how they look on the outside. It's no, this is how it is. And so I am going to succeed by the rules of this system, no matter what it takes because there are so few other routes left open to me. And with clavicular in particular, you know, he, he talks about how, first of all, he says he is on the spectrum, he's neurodivergent. He talks about how in high school he had trouble fitting in, you know, had the sense of like, you know, people are getting dates, people are getting invited to parties. I'm being left out, what's going on here? And then he goes to college and he gets kicked out in like three weeks time.

C (38:54)

Yeah, he's 19 by the way.

A (38:55)

Right.

C (38:55)

Like he's literally 19 years old.

A (38:57)

Exactly. And, and he talks too about how he wishes he could just go to college and be a normal college kid. And it's after he gets kicked out of college, he starts being a bouncer at these nightclubs I think in Miami. And that's where he develops this sense of like, oh, the good looking guys get the girls, that must be what life is completely about. And then applies this, you know, in his view, like scientific and again, very eugenicsy, you know, assessment of what is beauty and how can I attain it because this must be the path forward. So he is a perfect, you know, he's a perfect emblem of the hopelessness that I think, you know, really faces, not just men, everybody in the, you know, end stage, capitalistic like society that we face right now. So it's not to deny people agency, but it is to recognize that no one should be surprised that we have these weird, nihilistic fringe viewpoints that are coming to the fore.

C (39:51)

Yeah, the. I wrote a thing for the Washington Post recently about how this is a crazy statistic. More young men say they want to get married than young women. And when young women are looking at young men, it becomes a little bit clearer as to why young women are maybe saying we are going to check out of this marriage thing. And there are.

A (40:15)

I'm good, thanks.

C (40:16)

Myriad reasons for that. Yeah. And Griffin made a point I don't want to gloss over, which is for Republicans. Is there a kind of rhyme to what happened as we were talking about earlier in the show back in 2016 and then beyond, especially 2020 for Democrats where some of these like hyper online meme level like liberalism was being pinned to every Democratic candidate? You know, things that were going on in classrooms, like just think of the Libs of TikTok account. Just think about that and how powerful that was. Especially like around 2020. Does that then, because of our totally fractured media landscape, mean the claviculars of the world start to infect the way average voters perceive Republicans? And the answer to this is not. People are not prepared for this at the rnc, just as they weren't prepared for it at the dnc. Because the answer is absolutely yes. Absolutely yes. He has a big platform and he is speaking as somebody who is pro Donald Trump. He is not like a conservative influen influencer. He's not a conservative radio host. Like a local radio host, sir.

B (41:30)

Kind of not a team player either. Like not a team player.

C (41:33)

Right. You could, you could call up Mike Pence when he was a local radio host in Indiana in the 1990s and be like, hey, come to our retreat. You know, maybe he's getting a little chippy. Come to our retreat, be a speaker, whatever. And you can wine and dine a radio host. So like you have more control. If you're the rnc, you have no control anymore. These are all decentralized.

A (41:57)

But here's the other thing. Like the DHS Twitter account is posting about deporting a hundred million people. That's every non white person, citizen and non in the entire country. That's a third of the population. They post like Nazi stuff on their main account all the time. Just overtly. I mean, Stephen Miller is every bit as extreme as Nick Fuentes or clavicular or whoever.

B (42:21)

So, like, it's not as entertaining.

A (42:22)

Yeah, yeah, Just way less entertaining.

B (42:26)

Here's one that they did over for New Year's. This is referring Homeland Security says the peace of a nation no longer besieged by the third World. And it's a car on the beach with a wave. It's actually a.

A (42:36)

By the way, they stole this artwork from a Japanese artist, by the way.

C (42:42)

Whoops.

A (42:42)

And also, this is not where you'd want to park a car. It says America after 100 million deportations. So again, that's not criminal illegal. That is a third of the population, that is every non white person in the country. So, like, of course people are going to associate these fringe ideologies with this administration because this administration has a fringe ideology that it puts out to the public every single day.

C (43:07)

Well, I think we're just going to see more political mainstream, quote unquote, mainstream. Like nothing is. Is as mainstream now as it was when we had more monoculture. And so I think what I was saying is like, there's more. More fringe is going to be incorporated into the quote mainstream in the future because of the total decentralization that you don't like. It's part of the good and bad of losing gatekeepers is that it's like, on the one hand it's good because we benefit from the gatekeepers being gone, meaning that we can do this. On the other hand, when the gatekeepers are gone, it means you have to contend with the bad actors in that space too. And they do start to really change things. The last I will say on Clavicular is that we laughed earlier at Zoran's collectivism line being I saw this on X. Someone said the joke Griffin made, he sounds like an Ayn Rand villain. And what's interesting to me about that is Ayn Rand was the took Nietzsche ism to its extreme. And this idea that power is what mattered did start to change the way, influence, the way that the right approached capitalism and the right approached culture. And Ayn Rand was virulently anti Christian, was anti religious, which was the case with everyone who was downstream of Nietzsche in the 20th century in that kind of stream of thought. And that's again, extraordinarily dangerous because what you're starting to see physically as a symbol in ridiculous figures like clavicular trickles more and more into policy too. If you think this is just people looking at themselves looks maxing. It's not. It's going to be power maxing. It's going to be poly market maxing, which we're doing in different sectors of the economy right now, too. And so it's basically saying the only thing that matters is strength. The only thing that matters is power. And that's horrifying. Again, there's a real danger that migrates from the fringe.

A (45:20)

It's a very dark view of life. That's probably a good segue. Griffin to the Nick Shirley talking about speaking of influencer culture and bad actors and all of that sort of stuff and how much power they have now.

B (45:32)

Emily, we gotta talk about Detective Shirley, the gumshoe reporter. What's going on here? Emily There was a YouTuber named Nick Shirley who went around Minnesota, walked up to some daycare centers and they didn't let him in. Break it down for us.

C (45:51)

I don't know if we have like an element to put up on this.

B (45:53)

I'll pull something up.

C (45:54)

Yeah, over the last couple of weeks, this really broke right before Christmas, if I'm remembering correctly. It's hard to keep the day straight right now. But Nick Shirley, who's a pretty big kind of right coded influencer, you see the video on the screen of CNN going to talk to Nick Shirley in Minneapolis as he's investigating the massive fraud ring that, you know, it was like 78 people have been charged something like that already. He goes and knocks on the door of daycare centers, places that are purporting to treat autism, those types of things, and posts a video that in just in the last couple of weeks has gone mega viral. I think it has like 3 million views on YouTube as of the time that we're talking about this, and many, many more views on other platforms. It's basically taken what everybody had heard about in the last month, which was the story people have been shouting from the rafters about in Minneapolis for a long time. And not just people on the right, by the way. The article that I've cited the Most is a 2024 piece in the Minnesota Reformer from a Somali former government official who was saying, this is a. This is a real problem. Here's what's going on. X, Y and Z. And so Shirley's tactics made for very compelling viewership because you could see in some of the cases, like he's been reinvestigated by CNN and NPR and different outlets who've called all of the places that he went to. You can see very clearly in some of the cases that it's shady and that they're kind of fronts.

B (47:36)

But.

C (47:37)

But it's gonzo and in a way.

B (47:42)

Most of them he got wrong. Like, so the fraud is real. There is real fraud. Like hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud. But the places that he went to were real. He. Like, there's real fraud. He couldn't even get to the right ones. Right. Like, he fucked it up.

C (47:54)

Not all of them, but yeah, some of them actually do turn out because.

B (47:57)

For one of them, he came early. So, like, one of them was a daycare that opens at 2 and he came there at like 11am it.

C (48:05)

That's what it sounds like.

A (48:06)

And there were others where they were just like this man. And a whole crew are pounding on our door and demanding to see our kids. No, thanks. We're not opening the door for you. You know, in the best circumstances, you.

C (48:19)

Wouldn'T let him in.

A (48:20)

I mean, listen, like, this guy is a propagandist. He had previously gone to Israel and did a whole propaganda piece for them about how moral they are and all the lies that the Palestinian job. Blah, blah, blah, like, this is who he is. This is not journalism, is completely shoddy, intentional propaganda that we didn't.

C (48:37)

You should see his C cop videos. That's.

A (48:39)

Oh, boy.

B (48:39)

Yeah, we also. We gotta hear his voice.

A (48:41)

This is who he is.

B (48:42)

We gotta hear his voice. That's important too. Let's just take a second of him, of CNN confronting him. Crystal, before you finish your point.

A (48:47)

Okay. Yeah, great. Doors and talk to people at various daycares he claims or frauds. Did you come during a normal operating office hours when you came to visit?

D (49:00)

I came at 11am, I believe, and I also came the following day, later in the day. The point of it is not whether or not I came at the right. At the right time of their operation hours. The point is, blacked outdoors, they can't give you any information. You call that number, no one answers. I wasn't trying to go inside. And they. There should be a way for somebody to actually call that number and somebody be able to answer. These aren't real businesses.

A (49:22)

But surely you don't think a daycare should just be unlocked. You shouldn't be able to just walk in reception. No. Every daycare is locked.

D (49:32)

And so, okay, you bring up a fair point. How to enroll a child because you.

B (49:38)

Don'T have a child. And then there's one more moment. Little Joey. Yeah. All right, let's try this moment here.

A (49:45)

Do you think that federal law enforcement hasn't done enough? I mean, they would say, look, these fraud cases have been going on, but. But they've already done like 80 indictments. The cases have been going on that, you know, for years.

D (49:53)

And why did I show up one day in Minnesota and go to all these daycares, no children. They're receiving millions of dollars. We uncovered nearly 100 million, $110 million in fraud in one day.

A (50:03)

How do you know that all the allegations that you're making are true?

D (50:06)

How do I know that they're true? Well, we showed you guys the. We showed you guys what was happening, and then you guys can go ahead and make your own.

A (50:12)

Now we're coming so we can make our own analysis. Are you 100 sure you're true?

D (50:15)

Yeah, I am 100 sure.

C (50:17)

The sweatshirt. Incredible. The sweatshirt is the infamous Quality Leering center, which is the name of one of the daycares. Misspelled learning. Yeah.

A (50:27)

So happens here. What happens here is he films this bullshit propaganda video, which, like, okay, the most you should do from this is then if you're genuinely concerned about fraud, which they're not. Trump is, like spending every day pardoning a bunch of fraudsters. Like, that's his. His whole administration is like a grift and like stealing everything that's not nailed down and pardoning white collar criminals left. They don't actually give a shit. Those are.

B (50:51)

But those are white. Those are white frauds.

C (50:54)

I don't know. Honduran president.

B (50:55)

You're right.

A (50:56)

George Santos. George Santos also. But in any case, so they, you know, if you actually care about this. Okay, well, let's see if he's, you know, really onto something here. Let me call these daycare centers. Let me do some investigation. Let me press the state of government of Minnesota. Does that happen? No. J.D. vance retweets it. I don't know, Don Jr. A bunch of other, like, government officials just pick it up and run with it. It do. And because they don't care whether it is true or not. In fact, I'm sure these are not. JD Vance is not a stupid person. I'm sure he is. Probably suspects that a lot of this is not actually true, but it serves their propaganda. So not only do they take it and run with it with zero checking, but they use it for official government policy. So now, not only are all of the child care payments the state of Minnesota paused based on this absolute garbage propaganda bullshit, but they are now saying they're going to pause all childcare subsidies to every state in the entire country. Like, this is. I mean, this has genuine consequences in this administration. Oh, we're supposed to be like pro family, blah, blah, blah. And also in favor of people being able to, like, go and work hard. How are you going to go out and hold a job if your daycare center is now shut down? A lot of these places are run very, you know, it's, they don't have a lot of extra bandwidth. So if you have your subsidies cut for a month or even a handful of weeks, that center may be closed, your childcare costs have just skyrocketed. So that's, I mean, it's just disgusting to me. But like I said, it serves their propaganda in terms of, you know, they want to, they, they want to make it about we hate immigrants, we hate black Muslim immigrants in particular. It also is like, oh, undercutting the social safety net and undercutting the just, oh, this is all just fraud. You know, they're not really doing anything beneficial. And, and it also is not lost on me and this point that others have made as well, that it comes at a time when Israel has taken a major beating with the right and with the public in general in terms of their perception, their view is the best way to combat that is by stoking Islamophobia. And now here you go with the guy who did, you know, propaganda for Israel coming in to do this, anti Somali, like, fundamentally like anti Islamophobic propaganda as well. So I think those things, you know, are worth noting that those are happening in parallel.

C (53:20)

The. There are though, I think Ryan and I read from this, it was a Minnesota reformer article that I just referenced by a Somali I think worked at the, in the AG office in Minnesota, talking about how there were real cultural components of this. And actually this, this article was also saying some of the biggest victims of this were Somali people who, you know, were being caught up in this, this massive effort and that. Listen, I think our federal subsidy system is so, like, rife with fraud that there are plenty of white people who are out there like, defrauding taxpayers and the government. But there will even, like, there are Somalis who said there was a cultural component to this. So I don't think it's entirely just a question of like, stoking Islamophobia. I think there were, maybe we all agree on this, that there were concerns in Minnesota about.

A (54:14)

Yeah, which is why the Biden administration prosecuted some like, 78 people or whatever. You know, I mean, that's. And that's the thing is, like, it makes me sick to see Elon Musk jumping in on this like a brother. You did. Doge, how many people did you refer for criminal prosecution of fraud? Zero. Zero. Okay. So, yeah, sure, I agree.

C (54:35)

The subsidy, by the way, the biggest subsidy queens are the Elon Musk's of the world.

A (54:41)

Yes, completely. Yes. And so, you know, like, if you're serious about. And I, I think that people on the. I agree with Ryan, I agree with Ro Khanna that people on the left should be concerned about fraud in these programs because it does delegitimize them when it comes forward. And I'm someone who believes in a social safety net and universalist programs. Like, I think a lot of what Minnesota did was really great and really important. So you have to be serious about fraud. This is not the way to do it. Demonizing an entire group of people going off of some bullshit propaganda video honestly undercuts, you know, anyone who's serious about this. Like, undercuts their position in seriously investigating this stuff. Instead you do, like what Ro Khanna is doing in California where he said, look, there was a report that said there is a significant amount of fraud here. We need to have a commission, we need to root this out. We need to figure out where these dollars are going so that taxpayers feel like their money is being well spent. Like, there are real and serious ways to go about it. The idea that these people have any interest in this when at the very same time he's pardoning some, you know, white collar criminal who stole over like a billion dollars and then denying people restitution that they're owed, who were victimized by these crooks who, like, took them for all they were worth in Ponzi schemes, et cetera. Like, let's be serious, they don't care. They just care because it's useful. They're a political project act.

B (56:01)

And Trump literally pumps and dumps the entire economy with his, like, crypto coins and stuff like that.

A (56:06)

Like, he's the biggest fraudster in the world.

B (56:08)

I'm confused. Do we like it or not? Like, is it based or not to do this? I'm confused because. Because I think they're just following the great tradition of our president.

C (56:18)

True. Well, no, I mean, it's a. I, I think maybe the biggest. I don't know, one of the bigger takeaways from this is the, like, it's a media story in that. That the New York Times wading into the Somali fraud case is what then elevated it into the national discourse. And in Minnesota, this has been a huge story for years. Like, years, years, years. Like 2017, 2018, even before that. And when the New York Times covered it, my perspective as somebody on the right is this should have been a national story or more. More significant national story for a long time, just given the scale of the alleged fraud. It's so serious and significant and the charges are insane that it was downplayed. And when the New York Times comes in, elevates the story. You still have a lot of people on the right who are frustrated with a lack of, I think understandably frustrated with a lack of media coverage prior to the New York Times coming in. And that happens so often. The New York Times comes in, elevates a story. Springfield, Ohio is a really good example. And then people on the right will go berserk in response to that and it completely shifts the conversation to something different. And that's what with Nick Shirley. This kid's a YouTuber who went around with a DJI mic and an iPhone with a couple security dudes and was just like knocking on doors. Didn't have, presumably didn't have like an editor or a fact checker or anything like that. He put out a 40 minute YouTube video that was like fairly entertaining and went like caught like wildfire. And that's now the tone setting in politics. Like that's how the conversation is getting set going forward. And there's just nothing that we can. That's how it is, just the way it goes.

A (58:10)

Yeah, that's the last, the last thing I'll say that's been irritating me as well as I see all these posts that are like, where's the mainstream media coverage? I'm like, this literally all started because of a New York Times piece. Like y' all weren't doing anything on this until the New York like the establishment outlet that wrote this piece. And then I've also seen all these, oh, look at all these outlets that haven't covered it. And then you go and look and they have and you know, a bunch like there's a bunch of videos now, local news, even Barry Weiss's cbs, the CNN piece np like a bunch of these outlets have gone out now to be like, okay, well what's really going on here? But because those outlets aren't feeding the narrative that they want, then they discount that. Like that doesn't count because you're not just you know, feeding into this, this smear campaign that we, we want to see here.

B (59:03)

Well, I think he's the Andrew Callahan the right. I think it's incredible that they the right now has an ugly guy doing man on the street stuff. Uncovering. So I, I'm excited for the next investigation and the next national news story from Nick, Shirley, anything else that we need to cover in this, in this hour here? Crystal.

C (59:24)

What?

B (59:24)

Anything you're dying to get off your chest?

A (59:27)

I am dying to get a little bit into this billionaire meltdown just because I've been somewhat involved with it. So if we. So drama alert. Yeah, Drama billionaire. Yeah, I think I read that on your social media.

B (59:42)

So David Sachs here says as a response to socialism, Miami will replace NYC as the finance capital and Austin that replace SF as the tech capital.

A (59:53)

It's funny because Miami just elected a Democrat as mayor too. So that's lol. And Austin is always Democratic, but whatever. Anyway, this is all in response to. Okay, there is a possibility that there may be a ballot proposal on the ballots in California about a 5% wealth tax to be paid over five years. And it's a coalition of unions who are pushing this. And so Ro Khanna, who knows a lot of these guys, you know, David Sachs has actually hosted fundraisers for Ro Khanna came out and was like, this is good and I support it. Cue an absolute meltdown from these dudes. And I think it's because it's ROE and because he represents Silicon Valley and because like I said, they know him. It feels like more of a betrayal. Like I think if AOC said something similar, I don't think they would really care there. But because it's roe, they're like losing their minds over it. And then. And what you have up here, I think is you now have a bunch of these tech billionaires who very Ackman style are coming out online to announce that they're going to put all this money together to try to unseat roe. And they say primary him. I mean California has a jungle primary. Since they don't really have problems, whatever, they want to challenge him. Right. This is going to be unsuccessful, but they're throwing a complete temper tantrum about it. And so, you know, there's threats that they're going to leave the state and they're going to go to Austin or they're going to go to Miami. And the whole deal is saying, well.

B (61:28)

So like Howard, this guy's Martin Casado, he says ROE has done a speed run, alienating every moderate I know who supported him, including myself. Beyond being totally out of touch with that faction of his base, he's devolved into an obnoxious jerk. At least that makes voting him the fuck out all the more gratifying. And the leads. Time to primary him. Count me in. Happy to be involved at any level.

A (61:51)

Yeah, there was one of these I can't remember who it was from that was like, he's just acting like a full on Bernie bro now. And I'm like, my brother, my brother in Christ. He was literally co chair of Bernie Sanders campaign. Like, what are we talking about here?

C (62:07)

They're. And they're happy, to your point about David Sachs hosting fundraisers for Roe and then talking about Miami and Austin, relatively blue places, Austin in particular. They didn't care about that when they thought Democrats were on their side. I mean, that is the case with so many of them. They believed that they could kind of co opt Democrats and then realized that basically Trump was much, much easier to co opt. Was it Chamath who basically said that to who was it? It was like Pete Buttig or somebody who was on All In. He was like, that's right. I would try to call the Biden administration and get them to work with me and they weren't taking my calls. And it's just like, it's not about even like left or right. This, because this is like such a, we're tying a bow on the whole episode here. It's about who gives them power and how they can be like strong players in the economy. And they believe in their core that they know what is best. And what's best is them having a ton of control in the marketplace.

A (63:09)

And they're, they are deeply authoritarian people. I mean, they genuinely are. And that's what. So they hated the Biden administration for regulating crypto. They hated the Biden administration's anti trust push. I mean, the Biden ministry, like there was very little in terms of AI regulation that was actually done, but the little bit that was done, they absolutely hated it.

C (63:30)

They took it seriously. Yeah.

A (63:31)

Yes. And then you also have these sort of series of personal grievances. I recommend you guys watch the interview I did with Jacob Silverman about his book Gilded Rage, because he did all the, the fantastic reporting about these guys. You also have these personal things where like, you know, they were pissed off that their employees were woke, or in Elon's case, the fact that his son transitions to being a, you know, a girl, that really bothered him on a personal level. So you have. And then you have. I think it's Andreessen who's upset because his daughter goes to college and becomes a communist like you. So you have this sort of like upset over being regulated combined with these sort of like personal limitations on their power and domain over either their family members or their employees that leads to this absolute embrace of Trump. And so in any case, to take it back to California and Roe here. You know, if you look at the polling on this, it's like 70% of the country that thinks billionaires should be taxed more. Right. It is an overwhelming consensus, not just among Democrats, among the entire country, that billionaires are not tax taxed enough and should be taxed more, especially as AI is coming and the circles back to, you know, what I was talking about early on and thinking about what is this going to mean for our society and what could a social contract look like that would actually work? The track we're on right now is to have a handful of trillionaires and everybody else basically like, you know, lamps of slaughter, irrelevant, unneeded. That's where we're headed. And democracy can't survive that situation. There's just no doubt about that whatsoever. So in any case, this, in the grand scheme of all of that, is a very modest proposal. Right? They don't. But the fact that it's even potentially on the table, again, this hasn't even made it on the ballot yet, but even potentially on the table, and that their representative in Silicon Valley would champion it has led to total meltdown. And so, you know, for me, it reminds me a little bit of why there was such a freak out about Zoron in New York. Not only is he confronting capital, but also on the, you know, that he's an avowed anti Zionist. And there's this sense like, oh, you could never hold that position in New York City of all places. And so for Roe to hold this position in Silicon Valley of all places, places has a similar, a similar character and similar flavor and is why I think it's an important political, political battle that is brewing here.

C (65:59)

I mean, when the 2017 tax cut was passed, this is how serious the Republican Party is about actual, like closing loopholes and, you know, actually having a fair taxation system. Paul Ryan was out there talking about the proposal, it's long circulated on the right to get your taxes onto a postcard and essentially a version of the, the flat tax, some type of version of the flat tax. And it all this obviously was not happening. It's all out the window. They have this generational opportunity to close loopholes and create a more fair taxation system. They've then just repassed a version of that same bill and are expending no political capital to closing loopholes. There's a way, I mean, I'm, I'm a flat tax person and we've talked about this before, but if you, I think if you, if these like libertarian business supermen were serious about populism, and which they're obviously not, but were serious about opposing elites, then you can do taxation in a way that closes loopholes and is still to them free market friendly, but nobody has any appetite. They might say, like in the abstract, oh, that sounds good. But when push comes to shove and stuff's actually on the table, nobody ever, ever, ever, ever wants to do it. So you could even see from the right to do something like a flat tax if you have all of this generational political capital. But we didn't. And I think that tells you what type of system people really prefer.

A (67:32)

Yeah, I mean, I hate, hate a flat tax, but we can fight about that another day. Regressive, whatever. But your point, I mean, your point stands it. Here's one thing. I replied to one of these guys, I don't remember which one with, but I was like, listen, in a sense, sense, Ro Khanna is like kind of trying to save your ass here. Like he calls a wealth tax an anti revolution tax. And he's absolutely right. Like, do you think people are just going to stand by forever and watch you destroy their jobs, destroy their communities with your AI data centers, steal their water, hike their electric bills and they're just going to take it forever? Like, no, I mean, this is, this was the New Deal. The, the deal in the New Deal was that capital realized, okay, we're going to have to do something here or else we're going to end up with communism. Like, they're going to end up taking our shit. It's not going to be better for us if we don't do some sort of, you know, smoothing the rough edges of capitalism. And it's crazy to me that none of these guys see this. I mean, it really is genuinely insane to me that they don't recognize that if they don't cut the public in on the deal, and they don't, they already have more money they could ever spend in a lifetime. Like, if you don't strike some sort of a balance here, it's going to be way worse for you in the long term. The public, and I'm not just talking about Democrats, like, they hate you. They hate you. They think you are villains. Listen to, you know, listen to not only Democrats, listen to Steve Bannon, listen to Nick Fuentes. Like, there is a very Tim Dillon. Look, there is a very broad coalition of people who, by the way, rightly see you as genuine villains and despise you. So in the grand scheme of things, like a 1% for five years wealth tax or 5% in five years wealth tax is such small potatoes. And so for me, that's the other part of this that's important is like, it just shows you there is zero reckoning with that. Like, even something that is a relatively in the grand scheme of things, Modest Proposal, there's no like, oh, I don't think this is the right way to do it. Let's do this instead. It's just absolutely no. We will give you nothing. We will take our toys and leave. We will go. Some of them are like, we'll go to a different country. Zero loyalty.

B (69:53)

I don't buy any of.

A (69:54)

Yeah, I don't either buy that all because look what's happening.

C (69:57)

Lena Dunham.

A (69:58)

Yeah, after, after Zoron got elected, there were more luxury real estate sales. Right. Because there's reasons people want to be in New York, there's reasons people want to be in Silicon Valley. Those things are going to persist. So while, I mean, I don't, I.

B (70:13)

Got the Donnie effect here from the independent sales of maybe there will spike.

A (70:17)

In the Big Apple, maybe there'll be a handful of like high profile people who very dramatically like take their toys and go the way Elon left for Texas or whatever generous going. I don't put that, yeah, I don't put that out of the question. But overall, is Miami going to become the finest, like get out of town. Is Austin going to outdo Silicon Valley in terms of tech investment? And not, I mean, it's not nowhere close to that. It's preposterous. It's a fantasy. So anyway, I think this is the, this is the fight that the Democratic Party needs to take on. And if, if they want to win back the trust of the people, if they want to be able to deliver like meaningful change in the country and you know, a genuine populism that's actually going to be beneficial and help to bring the country back together. These are the types of fight fights that they're, they're going to have to take on. And you know, Gavin Newsom, by the way, is on the other side of this. Just to go back to Gavin Newsom takes money from these guys, is raising money to oppose this ballot proposition like, you know, is, is definitely on the wrong side of which way you would want the Democratic Party to go.

C (71:22)

But he mogs.

A (71:23)

But he, but he does mog. So what are you going to do?

B (71:26)

You know, me and, me and David Sacks, we're going to be in a Miami penthouse doing low grade Amounts of meth to create a new finance capital.

A (71:32)

Smashing your face with a hammer.

B (71:35)

Yeah. And while J.D. vance gets a catastrophic amount of Ozempic shipped to his house like he's. It's just gonna be insane for JD the next couple of years. There's gonna be another transformation. Well, folks, that's gonna do it for our Friday episode. Oh, yeah, it's gonna be. We're gonna see something but crazy before.

C (71:52)

After he's already had the transformation.

B (71:57)

The eyeshadow. Oh, the beard.

A (71:59)

The eyeshadow.

C (72:00)

He grew a beard. He lost probably like 30 pounds.

A (72:03)

I don't know how much, changed his name. Yeah. All right. I think with JD it's gonna be, it's gonna be tough for him because they, they banked so much on the vibes, you know, and like, he does it. The vibes are not with J.D. but we'll see.

B (72:21)

Yeah. All right. Well, folks, the vibes are good here on January 2, 2026. We're excited for a big year. Anything else that we need to mention before we sign off and see you back in studio on Monday?

A (72:33)

Yeah. Regular schedule next week. Whether I'm prepared for that or not, that early wake up call is gonna be. Gonna be rough. So, you know, the, the real problems, these are the real problems that I'm facing in my life.

C (72:45)

You know, who's ready for it? I bet Sagar is. He is just waiting for his alarm to go off in the dark. You know, he's so excited.

A (72:54)

Well, you know what? Now that he's a father, you start to like, work becomes easy once you have kids because, like, parenting is so much harder. Probably is looking forward to like, can I get away from this baby for a little bit of time? Just like, let me go and be an adult for a little bit of time.

B (73:12)

I love it. And to the, to the audience, we're so grateful for you. We hope you're having a great start to the new year. And in the comments of this video, let us know what you want us to cover this year. Anything that you think that we haven't covered enough. Things that you'd like us to look into things on the horizon. We're interested to hear what you think as well and that'll do it for us. We'll see you all Monday day. Bye. Bye.

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