← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
7/16/25: Inflation Rises Amid Trump Tariffs, Tucker Sounds Alarm On Home Ownership, Pentagon Contracts Grok, Ben Shapiro Superman Denialism
01:16:18
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Podcast Announcer
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Krystal Ball
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Sagar Enjeti
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Bubba Wallace
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Sagar Enjeti
Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.
- [01:36]
Krystal Ball
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.
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Sagar Enjeti
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
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Krystal Ball
So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
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Sagar Enjeti
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we.
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Emily
Hope to see you@breaking points.com.
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Sagar Enjeti
Let'S move on to the new inflation numbers that were released yesterday. We can go ahead and throw the Wall Street Journal's coverage of this up on the screen. I'm just going to read from the lead of the article and if you're watching this, you can see some pretty interesting charts on the screen that we'll go through as well. But they say Inflation picked up in June, a potential sign that companies are starting to pass tariff costs on to consumers. And there's actually debate about that very point. Though the fact that the Wall Street Journal started their lead should tell you where people on the street are going with their interpretations of the inflation index, of the consumer price index. They rose 2.7% in June from a year earlier, according to the Labor Department yesterday. That was faster. They say. The May's increase of 2.4% and quote, that was in line with the expectations of economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal. Core inflation, which includes volatile food and energy prices, was 2.9% also in line with forecast. Consumer prices rose 0.3% in June compared with May, the largest monthly gain since January and a step back for White House officials, the Journal says, who have said in recent weeks there isn't any meaningful inflation. But core prices rose 0.23% at the middle of the range of monthly price increases over the previous year. So select risers. There were national natural gas service, coffee, auto audio equipment, beef slash veal, college textbooks, motor vehicle repair, electricity, daycare, preschool, hospital shelters, hospital services and shelter, and crystal. I heard actually a lot of people looking at the energy numbers and saying this is actually one of the reasons that the big beautiful bill. I saw people on the right interpreting these numbers and saying this is one of the reasons that the big beautiful bill, kind of gutting the move to renewables is going to start bringing down prices that I don't know where do you.
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Krystal Ball
Illogical, Illogical. I mean, by having less energy that's going to make energy less. No, that doesn't, that doesn't track to me personally. But we'll see how it all works out. I mean, one thing that could make energy costs lower potentially is if just people have less money to spend on stuff. I mean, that could be what they're counting on in terms of hoping that there isn't an increase. A huge increase in inflation is just maybe people will be a little poorer so they won't have as much money to spend on goods. And there are some signs that that is in fact the case. But you know, what is troubling about these numbers is that you're starting to see prices tick up in specific areas that have been hit by tariffs. You know, coffee being an example of one of those things that like, look, we don't have the capacity to grow coffee in the United States. Coffee beans in the United States, really, outside of Hawaii. So if you are putting, let's say for example, massive tariffs On Brazil, you are likely to see an increase in the cost of coffee. And there are other examples of that as well. So, you know, Sagar has talked about how the. And I'm sure, I'm sure you can back this up as well. The sense among Republicans is like, well, you guys were wrong. We haven't seen these huge increases in prices. The economic like sky hasn't fallen. On the other hand, he has backed off of the most maximalist tariffs, which good, like, it's good that he tacoed on the most maximalist tariffs. But also at some point there is going to be a significant impact. You know, the estimates are about 70% of the tariff price gets passed on to consumers. And we're just sort of at the beginning of that. One of the things that has mitigated the impacts is not only the fact that he's backed off of some of the most maximalist positions, even as he's now sort of walking back into more maximalist positions, is that a lot of retailers in particular saw that some sort of tariff regime was coming. They didn't know what it would be. We still don't know what it will be. They really stocked up on inventory to try to mitigate the impact going in. And so that has, I think, also helped to soften the blow. But that Runway runs out at a certain point as well. So I think, you know, this is an indication that potential storm clouds are gathering. And like I said, especially because of the spike, specific categories that you see a price increase in. One last interesting note is they mentioned here, one thing that was a surprise is car prices actually went down. That is a category that you would think would be impacted by tariffs because so much is crossing the border between, you know, the U.S. and Canada and the U.S. and Mexico and, you know, in particular, but other places too. And the theory is that because consumers were concerned about auto prices and tariffs, there was like people bought cars early, before the tariffs hit, and now they've already got their car. So there's been a slowing of car purchasing which has, you know, reduced the prices somewhat of cars. So that's one of the interesting things. I only point this out to say, like, it can actually be very hard to anticipate the way that consumer behavior and business behavior and Trump behavior all clash to create whatever is going to happen in our economy.
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Sagar Enjeti
Talking to Republican members of Congress yesterday, I was asking them why they're down in the congressional ballot. One of the questions I was asked is why? Why do you think you're down in the congressional ballot. They they're expecting very positive economic ripple effects to hit the economy in like three to four months. And that's their plan of sort of ramping up to the midterms. They that they'll have people feeling really good about what's happening going to the next three or four months because you have all of those reinvestment incentives in the big beautiful bill like write offs and all of that for building and manufacturing. So that is quite interesting because Kristol will be able to go back here in five months and look and see their theory of the case playing out or not playing out, which is why I kind of want to skip ahead here to be 4. This is how actually I thought it was interesting the RNC see ran with this clip when the when Fox Business was sort of digesting the new numbers. We can roll here.
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Krystal Ball
Look, you've got to look at this report as another victory for President Trump who has focused on reining in inflation. And that's what we're seeing from this report again.
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Sagar Enjeti
And so let's look a little bit here at the debate. I want to put a B5 this was a thread from an economist that was interesting Parker Ross posts about that quote, unquote, no evidence of inflation from tariffs, if you know where to look. It seems pretty clear that inflationary pressures are building in the product categories most exposed to tariffs. Case in point from today's June CPI report, household furnishings and supplies, which saw prices jump nearly 1% month over month in June. This was the sharpest monthly increase since the peak of the pandemic driven inflation in early 22 and goes down the list in a very long and interesting thread. Justin Wolfers, on the other hand, points out latest inflation numbers just dropped headlines. CPI rose 0.3% in May and has now risen 2.7%. Core CPI rose 0.2%, is running at 2.9% and just says these numbers are pretty much in line with expectations. What you saw, I'll add that Maria Bartiromo was reacting to is it just like cut in right under the higher expectation? And so Wolfers goes on to say, quote, the absence of bad news is good news. So Chris, there was significant disagreement among economists kind of across the spectrum about what those numbers meant yesterday. I think probably the big thing for Republicans right now is they can't be quite sure what's going to play out in the next three to four months. Like there's yeah, it's the experiment is happening kind of in real time.
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Krystal Ball
Yeah. And then you still have this will he or won't he? Over Trump potentially firing Jay Powell over at the Fed and the pressure he continues to put on for him to significantly, radically cut interest rates in a way that, I mean he certainly is not going to do that. Now there was some indication that because of this inflation report he was somewhat more open to somewhat of a rate cut. But let's go ahead and play B2 Trump talking about all of this.
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Bubba Wallace
I told him he's doing a very bad job. He's way late. That's why I call him. Too late. Jerome Powell is too late. He's way late. Interest rates should be coming down where we have a very, very successful country.
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Krystal Ball
We should have the lowest interest rate.
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Bubba Wallace
Anywhere in the world and we don't.
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Krystal Ball
Jerome Powell has done a terrible job.
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Bubba Wallace
And frankly I don't think he could do a worse job. He's called everything wrong. So they had a report come out the other day, 71 different economists and me. You know who is right? Me, Mr. President. Did you know that I was right?
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Krystal Ball
Incredible comment there. Me against every economist. And you know who's right? Me. That is some, that is some conf right there, Emily. That is some confidence.
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Sagar Enjeti
But I mean the bar is low for economists, so.
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Krystal Ball
True. Well, I'm actually ideologically open to the idea that a president should have more control over monetary policy and that, you know, and over the Fed pick. But unlike, you know, unlike the Charlie Kirk's of the world, I do not trust Trump. So I'm not sure that this is the guy that I really want to do that experiment with at this point. But you know, all of that being said, I do think it's true that there will be a, you know, certainly a market freak out if he does fire Jerome Powell and you know, that'll be challenging court and all that sort of thing. But I think there will be, you know, there would be a reaction to that. Whereas the stock market has been pretty docile in the face of some pretty wild swings in terms of economic policy, I think because number one, I think retail has been impactful there and number two, I think they're making the taco trade of like, yeah, this will, you know, this will pass. This to. Shall pass. But you know, to, to speak to the, the tariff piece which is still wildly unsettled and we're getting continue to get new news about every day. Kevin Hassett was asked about the floating of these Brazil tariffs and you know, had a very hard time defending the concept of them because we actually don't. We have a trade surplus with Brazil. So even the thing that Trump normally complains about, like, you can't even point to that. And then Trump himself directly attributed these extraordinary potential Brazil tariffs to his dissatisfaction with, you know, what the Brazilian judicial system is doing with regard to his ally Bolsonaro. So let's go ahead and take a listen at Kevin Hassett, B3, trying to defend us.
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Bubba Wallace
Why are we putting a punishing 50% tariff on Brazil?
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Kevin Hassett
Well, bottom line is the President has been very frustrated with negotiations with Brazil and also with the actions of Brazil. In the end, though, you know, we're trying to put America first. I think that a lot of people, when I'm talking to negotiators from other countries, at some point, they'll say, what did we do wrong? And what I'm trying to get the message we're all trying to get across is this is about America getting itself ready for the golden age by getting our house in order. Normally, it's not necessarily about a specific country, but with Brazil, it is. Their actions have shocked the president at times, and he's made them clear about that.
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Bubba Wallace
But I don't understand how you're saying it's about America, because the president has made it quite clear that what he's upset about is how the Brazilian Supreme Court has handled the criminal case involving former President Bolsonaro.
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Kevin Hassett
What I've been saying with most countries was that it's really about us getting the tariffs in order. And I think that this tariff for Brazil is a lot higher because of the president's frustration with Bolsonaro.
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Bubba Wallace
But what. On what authority does the president have to impose tariffs on a country because he doesn't like what that country's judicial system is handling a specific case?
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Kevin Hassett
Well, I mean, how. How is that it's a national defense emergency, or if he thinks a national security threat, that he has the authority under aipa.
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Bubba Wallace
So. So how is it a national security threat that, you know, how Brazil is handling a criminal case against this former president?
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Kevin Hassett
Well, that's not the only thing. That's not the only thing. I mean.
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Bubba Wallace
So what is it? I mean, I'm asked what it is. I mean, it seems that's what President Trump's talking about.
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Kevin Hassett
Right. Well, the bottom line is that what we're doing absolutely, collectively across every country, is we're on shoring production in the US to reduce the national emergency, that is that we have a massive trade deficit that's putting it at risk should we need production in the US because of a national security crisis. And this is part of an overall strategy to do that.
- [14:35]
Bubba Wallace
But again, as we've just established, we have a trade surplus with Brazil, not a deficit. And we've had a surplus with Brazil for 18 years.
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Krystal Ball
We're meant to believe that it's a national security emergency. How Brazil handles their judicial system, apparently.
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Sagar Enjeti
I mean, this is digging into these numbers because of the way in which there are so many of these situations where the deal is nebulous. Nobody knows what's actually going on. I don't even know what to make of the numbers because I don't think the people who are trying to understand them, let alone even the countries themselves. And like what's being priced into exports and imports right now? Like, I mean, none of it is coherent because the policy is coherent and is incoherent and unsettled. The only thing coherent about the policy is that it's uncertain right now because they're in the middle of negotiation. And that's part of the strategy, obviously. And we can disagree with the strategy, but that's definitely part of it. Trump thinks that it's of what gives them leverage. And so I just think nobody knows. The new August deadline was supposed to be like July 9th and now it's August and now there's talk of 50% in Brazil, 100% in. It's just right now so completely unsettled and uncertain that where we are a couple of months from now. That's why putting all of the eggs in the big beautiful bill basket. It's like Congress, you can do that. We don't know what Donald Trump is going to do. Like truly don't know what Donald Trump is going. It's just all right now. A hell of a hell of a gamble.
- [16:17]
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- [18:45]
Krystal Ball
Let's go ahead and move on to another core aspect of the real economy, which is homeownership. I mean, basically the story of our economy over decades is that consumer goods have gotten cheaper so it's easier to afford, you know, tv, a lot of clothes, those sorts of the visible trappings of a middle class life. But the sort of like core bedrock of that life has become wildly more expensive with homeownership being increasingly out of reach for most young people. So this has is such a political lightning rod for understandable reasons. So we can talk more about that in a moment. But it's something that Tucker Carlson actually kind of interestingly picked picked up on at that TP USA conference. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of what he had to say.
- [19:31]
Tucker Carlson
The basic economics really matter. And they matter because not that it's bad that rich people are getting richer, it's bad that everyone else is getting poorer, and it's especially bad the young people can't afford homes. Let me just put a very precise point on this. If you want a measure of how your economy is doing, I personally favor eliminating GDP as a measure. I don't even Know what that is? It's clearly not relevant. The total economic activity. Oh, no, no. My measure is really simple. I got a bunch of kids. Can they afford houses with full time jobs at like 27, 28? And the answer is no way. And the answer is that 35 year olds with really good jobs can't afford a house unless they stretch and go deep into debt. And I just think that's a total disaster. That's a complete disaster. Why? Two reasons. One, if people don't own things, they don't feel ownership of the country they're in. And the country gets super volatile because people feel like they've got nothing to lose. It's really hard to have a family without a house. It is. It's like super fun to live in an apartment if you know there's like a bar downstairs. You're in a cool neighborhood. I'm in east village. It's so cool. Try to have three kids. You're not going to have three kids there. You can't. Nobody wants to raise their kids in that neighborhood. Nobody wants to raise their kids in an apartment. People do it because they have to. Nobody wants to. People want a little house. Not some mcmansion, just a little normal house. That is the actual American dream. And that is what is totally unattainable for young people. And so the only young people in general that you will ever meet who have houses are young people whose parents helped them. And God bless their parents. That's a perfectly great thing to do for your kids. But most people's parents can't afford to do that because they're already in debt from their pointless college degree. So that is a national emergency. Normal people with normal jobs no longer believe they can win in this system and that all the money is going to the worst people. And no one even stops to ask what the hell is going on? How did Bill Ackman get so rich? And I'm not saying even that it should be illegal. What I'm saying is that our leadership class should say something about it and should assign a moral value to it. And if you're getting rich by loaning money to people at incredibly high interest rates, that's something you're gonna have to talk to God about. That is not good. That is not virtuous. That's disgusting. And the fact that nobody feels free to say that, nobody feels like. You can just say like 30% on a credit card. Why is anybody paying a credit card bill?
- [22:10]
Krystal Ball
This sparked Emily. At least one, you know, multi. Multi page Bill ackman essay on Twitter in response to this, by the way, which, you know, nobody needs to read.
- [22:22]
Sagar Enjeti
But in any case, nobody is going for it. They're busy trying to afford a fucking house.
- [22:27]
Krystal Ball
These boomers and their lengthy threads, including Trump at this point is very guilty of this. Like, his posting ability has fallen off hard and you know, he's still got some of the like potential in there with the like boys and in some cases my gals. But then it just goes on for way too goddamn long. In any case, it always lands the.
- [22:46]
Sagar Enjeti
Plane though, with thank you for your attention to this matter.
- [22:48]
Krystal Ball
Which is true. True wraps it up in that, though. That is true. You know, I find myself in this situation oftentimes on this show with Tucker Carlson, whenever you're talking about the like, quote unquote populist. Right. Which is oftentimes we're in agreement when you're identifying the problem, like extraordinary inequality, people unable to afford houses. Yes. Where it gets very dicey for me is when you start to hear about the solutions. And you know, I. Tucker doesn't go into solutions here, which in and of itself I think is, is notable. He says we shouldn't ban billionaires, which I think we should ban billionaires. But in any case, you know, for the JD Vances and Tucker's probably in line with this, the answer is like, that's why we need to lock all the immigrants in Seacot and Alligator Alcatraz. So, you know, that's for my fellow lefties out there who are hearing this and are like, yes, I agree that this is a problem. Just know that it's also important to know what the proposed solution is because at least for me, I am not going to be anywhere close to on board with what that solution is likely to look like.
- [23:51]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, one of the things that jumped out to me when Tucker was talking, that clip went massively viral. Also, another clip went viral of him saying, I agree with what Republicans are doing on like, women's sports and trans issues and all of that. But it feels like a quote, appetizer is what he said. And he was like, at some point you have to deal with the structure of like, making the country better. And I completely agree with that. It is super, super important. It made me think of the Josh Hawley, Bernie Sanders joint effort to cap credit card interest rates. Because when Tucker said, you have to answer to God basically for lending people money at these rates that, you know, for many, many people, it's sort of how Sager was describing online gambling in his conversation with Tucker Carlson last week as well. It's just like, you know what you're doing. You know that this is wrecking people. You know that this is not fair or just. And you are profiting off of it. And there's nothing Christian about the ways some of these major banks and credit card companies are operating. So on the one hand, I think actually even just identifying the problem is kind of a helpful way to even get Republicans talking about solutions. You know, like if there is no discussion of the problem, then there's no discussion of potential solutions. And there's no debate about whether this idea that Bernie Sanders has, for example, might be one that a sort of evangelical Christian like Josh Hawley who is interested in restructuring the economy would be on board with. And I bet you Tucker Carlson would get behind that bill too. And I think a whole lot of people would get behind that bill because what's been happening is just completely insane. And so there is, I think, room. You and I and Sager and Ryan don't agree on a lot of solutions. But sometimes it's like the people here in D.C. have no idea what. Like if you showed them this chart. Let's put C2 on the screen. If you showed a random member of Congress this chart, this is the estimated number of first time home buyers since 1995. More Perfect Union Put it out. Tracks with the numbers from the national association of Realtors that are in the Guardian article. This is insane. This is tragic. This is just completely ridiculous policy failure. This number is absolutely cratering. The Guardian also quoted an analysis from John Byrne's research that found buying an entry level home now costs twice as much as renting an apartment for the first time since 2006, since George W. Bush was president, twice as much. Another thing that was quoted in this article that is just the numbers are unreal. They say that. Yeah, here it is. The median price of a single family home hit record highs in 2024 and is only continued going up in May. The median price was $427,800, which was up from $357,100 in 2021 when prices first started to climb. And there's another. What was the other one? It was the numbers here. Oh yeah, here it is. A family would need to earn $126,000, 700, $127,000 a year to afford monthly payments on an average home purchase in 2024, according to Harvard, in 2021, that number was $79,000 a year.
- [27:35]
Krystal Ball
Holy moly.
- [27:36]
Emily
Wow.
- [27:36]
Sagar Enjeti
And I honestly think Crystal, if you showed these numbers to people in Congress, you showed a chart to your average member of Congress, they would be shocked by it. And the numbers are shocking just because they're so sad. But to most people, especially those who, like, my age, who are like, right in the middle of this, like, early mid-30s, late 20s, people look around, they're like, yeah, of course. Like, we know this. We're living it. Everyone we know is living it.
- [27:59]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. And I think I saw the average age of your first time homebuyer now is what, 38 years old? 38. So almost 40 before you can even touch. I mean, that's crazy. And it's a crisis. Like, it is genuine existential crisis for some of the reasons that Tucker outlines there and, you know, that sense of, like, ownership in society, but also because this is just the way our economy is structured. Like, this is the way that you build some sort of wealth and stability for yourself and establish yourself in a way where you can have a family and have kids, if that's the thing you aspire to. And it is increasingly completely out of reach. I mean, Gen Z is basically like, forget about it. We're never going to be able to accomplish that. And so, so, you know, the reason why I sound the alarm that I did previously is because I think I would have, I think in a, you know, a few years ago or in the early days of the Trump administration, I would have agreed with your assessment that it's like just the fact of raising these issues is inherently a positive. And I think what Trump does very effectively actually is oftentimes pinpoint things that are genuine pain points for people. Yeah, right. And speak to that anxiety and speak to that problem. But if you have only one side that really is telling a story about that and it ends up leading you into, you know, a situation that I find to be abhorrent and unacceptable with, you know, nationalizing Federal Guard and calling in Marines to, you know, do these militarized immigration raids and terrorized communities. And that's your only solution to the, you know, the, the housing crisis. I think it opens up a dangerous potential pathway if there is no corresponding rival political project on the other side. And so, you know, that's why I think it's really heartening to see the way that Zoran has been able to succeed against the odds and offering, you know, it's just New York City mayoral race. I shouldn't say just. But it's New York City mayoral race. We're not talking about the country. But he really did demonstrate how if you speak to to these issues and you have agenda that has the possibility of even delivering in like a small ball kind of a way, there is a massive, huge response to it. So you know, that's where Democrats have crashed in the rocks time and time again is they try to gloss over these problems. They try to pretend like they don't exist. They try to pretend like things are actually going really fine and well and all is well and good. They don't have a story about that makes sense to people about how we got to this place where you can't ever even dream of affording a home and you feel no stake in society and society sort of unraveling around you. They don't have a compelling story to offer. They don't have any villains in that story. And you are not going to defeat what in my view is a fascist movement on the right if you don't have an alternative political project that responds to the concerns that is that are being raised by Tucker there in that clip.
- [30:52]
Sagar Enjeti
I think the same thing of the right and I think this was one of the really just again, I'll say the word tragic. I think it was tragic that the right went with repeal and replace, repeal and replace, repeal and replace for a decade. And they didn't have a humane answer, which is why it didn't happen. They never came up with a plausible, doable, humane healthcare solution that actually everyone was comfortable implementing, which is why it never ended up happening. And people still live in abject precarity and fear and uncertainty in ways that makes family life difficult, in ways that just is deeply unjust. And because Republicans exploited politically the issue for so long and never actually were able to land on a solution. Right. Like they talked about it, they were like Obamacare did spike premiums for some people, they did lose their doctor, all of that because they were exploiting that and kicking around the political football. They made hay out of it for a long time. And a lot of people got elected, a lot of consultants got rich off of repeal and replace and then they never came up. They never landed. And it's not because it's an easy thing to do. It's not because it's like, I agree, like it's hard. Of course this is a really difficult, like complicated policy question. But they never came up with any consensus. And part of that is because of special interests. Of course part of that is because of special interests. But it's going to be the same thing again. And you know, if you never come up, if you talk about how prices are too high, nobody can afford a house, college is too expensive, all of that. But you never come up with a solution. You are just opening up the lane for a demagogue. I mean it's the same thing, like over and over again people are getting desperate and that's really scary. And we can't, we're in no position to tell people they're wrong for being desperate. They're right to be desperate. It's not wrong right now to feel desperate because that's where the economy is. The Guardian points out one of the problems that people should be paying very close attention to when homeownership, first time home ownership is in your late 30s is people will be retiring later because they have 30 year mortgages and people's equity gets tied up. And that's the reason that the American dream is the American dream is that owning a house is supposed to be like your nest egg, that's supposed to bring stability. And Tucker Carlson points out that having. He says it this way, he says like having a lawn, you invest in your community, your immediate physical surroundings differently when you have alon Hi, Salem. I imagine Salem is happy Crystal to have a house to roam in and not an apartment. I guess. So this Salem is the prosperity of the economy.
- [33:45]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, Salem would like to not be in the house so much. He's constantly trying to escape, actually. In truth, he's a wild boy.
- [33:51]
Sagar Enjeti
He loves a lawn. He loves a lawn, just like Tucker. And so Dan Osborne. So all I was gonna say is this is a long, winding tangent, but Dan Osborne posted part of Tucker's comments at the Turning Point Summit and I got tweaked a little bit by a friend of mine on the right. It was like, you know, Dems want to retake the Senate and do all kinds of crazy stuff and blah, blah, blah. I was like, to be honest with you, we will all be better off even if you'reif you're a Republican, which I don't consider myself a Republican because there's nothing worse than either political party in my take. But. And especially if you're conservative like the Republican Party is especially disgusting and disappointing. But if you are a Republican, we are all better off with a strong Democratic Party. And I think actually the same thing is true vice versa, where people feel like they're actually represented by the people in Congress, the people running for president and don't have to keep settling for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton because everyone or some of these members of Congress just imagine insane. And Dan Osborne is absolutely right to, I think, echo those sentiments. But hopefully there, hopefully, solutions follow. I think that's just where everyone, both of us included, are deeply pessimistic.
- [35:14]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And I mean, Dan Osborne is a particularly helpful example because he introduces additional competition to a state that otherwise isn't competitive. And so, you know, that's what makes him really interesting and creates a possibility and something that Bernie has said there should be more of have in red states where Democrats are just not remotely competitive anymore. At least then you have a real competition. Because, listen, all you free market believers out there, right. If there isn't any sort of like, tension. Yep, yeah, absolutely. He's going to be feeling pressure from this, you know, union leader, populist. That's a good thing for everyone. In my, in my humble opinion, whether Dan Osborne is able to succeed or.
- [35:54]
Sagar Enjeti
Not, I think it's why Marco Rubio held onto a Senate seat. And with him, it wasn't cynical. And, you know, like, just like, that's my take. But I've talked to the man about this. I think he had a sincere. The competition feared him, feared him, frightened him in 2016, the competition frightened him in 2016 into, like, reconsidering a lot of different things. And the more that happens, certainly the better. It's not always going to, to be sincere. A lot of times most of the time is going to be cynical. And if it's cynical still means you have members of Congress who are always not willing or not worthy of anybody's trust making better decisions because they want to get reelected.
- [36:33]
Krystal Ball
So that's exactly right.
- [36:34]
Sagar Enjeti
Structure.
- [36:35]
Krystal Ball
Yes. You want to change the, you want to make it. So the cynical decision is also the right decision because there are going to be something that you want. Yes, exactly. You can presume that there's going to be some level of cynical political opportunism, which is exactly why I've been excited about the Zoran race as well, because I think there will be a lot of cynical politicians who look at this and go, oh, the, we live in a different world now, both with regard to Israel and with regard to where you should position yourself on the political spectrum. And this is where the energy is. And so, you know, I think that can create some positive developments as well.
- [37:08]
Sagar Enjeti
And for conservatives, when people are in debt and they can't buy houses, what do they not do? They don't get married, they don't have kids. They don't become, in every case, not, not in every case, they don't become the same level of investment in their physical surroundings because they want to go into a house someday and they want to build a family in a different school district, in a different community. And so it's just that's the cycle that we're in if none of these problems are fixed.
- [37:35]
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- [39:06]
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- [40:04]
Sagar Enjeti
Crystal, let's talk about GROK and the Pentagon. A match made in heaven. Because now they can throw this Politico element up on the screen. Now the Pentagon can start using Musk's Grok via XAI and Grok for Government. We can move on to. Well, actually, let's talk about this just for a second because the details of the Politico report are. I don't even know what to call it. Crystal. Basically they're just saying it's a Grok for Government is a, quote, suite of products that make our frontier models available to the United States government and customers. Pentagon is obviously, I don't even need to say it, a big client to land if you are ex AI and now you have Grok for Government out there. But all of this happened after GROK completely melted down into abject anti Semitic, like Nazi rhetoric just last week. And in a way that also exposed these sort of foundational, weird quirks of GROK that are infused by what really seems to be a lot of algorithmic power in the hands of Elon Musk himself. A lot of influence over the algorithm from the things that Elon Musk does in posts, whether or not he's tweaking things behind the scenes. And now the Pentagon, which is trying to embrace AI, it sounds to me like what people are using Grok for government for is as a government portal to be querying AI. That's what the product sounds like. It's one of those things where when you don't use it, you don't know exactly what GROK for Government is going to look like in practice. But as they describe it, it sounds like that's what it is. Just, just crystal reaction. Elon, yeah, never went. Steve Bannon was furious at Elon for never really going to the Pentagon. And now, hey, maybe we know why.
- [42:01]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, indeed. Multi hundreds of million dollar contract with the Pentagon, which is, you know, on top of the many additional, like much additional money that Elon Musk gets as one of the top subcontractors of the Pentagon. So, you know, this is just adding on top of that. I mean it's interesting politically because Elon and Trump supposedly hate each other and Trump is certainly not above like nuking a contract because he doesn't like the person who's involved with it. So that was kind of interesting to me is like, how real is this fight between them if he's getting this gigantic contract? It starts at the Pentagon, but by the way, it also is going to be available for purchase by any other government agency through the General Services Administration. So obviously, like you said, Pentagon is a giant contract, but any other government agency also is able to procure this X a GROK for government product. What does it mean in terms of Elon? I mean, I think this was probably one of the core goals actually of doge. Not the cost cutting efficiency bullshit, but being able to advance his AI product both in terms of situating it as like the product of the United States government, but also potentially in hoovering up all of the data that is, you know, that is held by the United States government and government employees and being able to use that to feed his AI and whatever else he wants to do with it. Obviously, the timing of it is quite noteworthy given that GROK was just on its Mecca Hitler arc, which I think you put. Well, Emily, that part of what it exposed is, first of all, I mean, just the fact that a few tweets can instantly lead an LLM into just outright abject Nazism. Pretty wild. And will stancil rape fantasies for some reason, pretty wild. But there were further problems because people found that when they would query things like grok, what do you think about the Israel Palestine conflict? When you looked at grok's reasoning, because you can ask it to list how it's going through its reasoning, it was querying, what does Elon think about this conflict? And then using that predominantly to inform its articulated views. So that's pretty wild. And Xai put out an explanation of that. And basically what they said is, when you asked Grok, what do you think about something? Grok's internal process is like, well, I don't think so. Let me go out and look and see how I can align myself with this company. And, you know, the, the founder of this company, and that's how you ended up with this situation where it would just be like, well, I don't think so. What does Elon think? But that's pretty terrifying. We all remember the previous incident where GROK started just randomly talking about white genocide in South Africa all the time. So this is the technology that we now are about to have, like throughout all of government, but starting at the Pentagon, which seems like a pretty crucial place place to start. So, you know, I'm very, I concerned. Most of the, most of America is very concerned. And that is deeply at odds with the position of, you know, certainly the Trump administration, but of, I think most elites, both Democrat and Republican, because of how much tech money, how influential tech money is and these sort of national security imperative. Oh, we have to Beat China. So we need to just go full steam ahead without thinking about any of this stuff. But, you know, this is just one more, I think, deeply troubling development on our path to God knows where, on.
- [45:28]
Sagar Enjeti
Our path to Mars. I mean, with Musk, everything is bundled into this fantasy of getting. Well, I shouldn't say fantasy. I mean, I think for him, it is. It's not a fantasy. It's relatively realistic. But for him, it's like his sort of. That's his Holy Grail in the sense that that's his fantasy in the sense that it's his holy grail. So this was a $200 million contract. Similar ones went to Anthropic, Google and OpenAI. And just reading from the BBC BBC report here, this is being framed as something for national security use. And your point about the data and how important that might be. I mean, it's also Elon, like, basically renting his brain to the Pentagon to the point. You just made the Grok interpretation of what Elon Musk's brain is to the Pentagon at some point. So to. To that extent, it actually is for $200 billion. That understates the influence that Elon Musk has sold probably to the Pentagon with this product, which is obviously going to be in competition with the Anthropic and Google and other products.
- [46:33]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, but it feels like a Trojan horse. That's what it feels like. It feels like a Trojan horse.
- [46:38]
Sagar Enjeti
So let's put D2 on the screen. This was the apology over Grok, which, by the way, the CEO, Linda Yaccarina, actually left in the midst of all of this last week. Our intent for Grok is to provide helpful and truthful responses to users, Said X. After careful investigation, we discovered the root cause was an update to a code path upstream of the Grok bot. This is independent of the underlying language model that powers Grok. Now we can move to the next one. This is from. This is an element from Rolling Stone. Elon Musk's Grok chatbot goes full Nazi, calls itself, quote, Mecca Hitler. This was from the original. So the apology was in reaction to all of this. Grok was acting. I was gonna say Grok was behaving badly, but that completely understates what GROK was actually doing. It was like just madness, insanity, and crystal. In fairness, this is actually not just a problem with Grok. Like, this is something that doesn't just worry me about Grok. I think it's especially worrisome with Grok because we see this charismatic eccentric billionaire who wants to have a lot of influence over politics, exerting a lot of influence over xai. And part of their apology, I think actually makes that really clear. Like you see that in the apology where we had the poll quote where it says the root cause was an update to a code path upstream of the Grok bot. This is so granular. Like, it gets to how such small changes can produce massively consequential results and potentially repeated. Like, you can have all the safeguards you want in Grok for government or OpenAI for government or whatever it is, Gemini for government. You can take all of those precautions and safeguards. Small changes are going to affect the algorithm and the LLM in ways that you cannot always predict. And so putting them in the or spending so much actually taxpayer money to create access to this at the Pentagon for the purposes of national security. I'm sure the Pentagon will be taking safeguards because there's so many obvious problems with this. But the problem with AI in general is the unknown. Unknowns. We don't even know what to prepare for. And that is absolutely frightening.
- [48:57]
Krystal Ball
That's so true. And I've said this before, but it bears reminding. What makes this technology really different is like if you make some change in the iPhone, there is, there are engineers out there who can go through and test and predict, okay, making this change is going to have precisely these impacts on this piece of hardware. It is not the same with these LLMs, and that's what you're seeing here. And Elon is incredibly arrogant and egomaniacal and thinks that he can just go in and tinker and do whatever he wants with no impact or, you know, with no consequences whatsoever. And so he'll go in and be like, oh, Grok's too woke up. Let me just put in this line of code to make Grok less woke. And next thing you know, it's calling itself Mecca Hitler and fantasizing about what it's going to do to Will Stantel. Like, what is going on. And so, I mean, that's what is particularly unnerving about Grok at the Pentagon is because Grok is controlled by this insane man who will just make wild decisions and is, you know, unbelievable. Like the nicest way you can put it is an unbelievable risk taker, always doubling down, always, you know, right up against the wall or all the way out on the ledge or however you want to phrase that. And so he's perfectly willing to just go in there and tinker and see what happens. And when it's, you know, when it's on Twitter. Okay, that's still not great. But it's one thing when it's embedded in our national security apparatus and throughout our entire government, that's another thing entirely. And so that's really what makes this technology so different, is there is, is an entire universe going on beneath the surface of these LLMs. And even the people who are, you know, program and designing them and setting them loose on the world, even they don't know how they're going to behave. Which is why you have all these stories about, like, you know, oh, we went to, we did this test and we tried to shut off this other LLM and it tried to copy itself to a server and then it went into these emails and tried to blackmail an engineer and reveal this fake affair that we cooked up just to see if it would do this, to try to keep itself on. Like, they don't know until they test it out how exactly it's going to behave. And that is what is part of so what makes these technologies so different and so unnerving and ultimately so unpredictable?
- [51:19]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah. Oh, what a. What a happy topic. We'll also toss in here the last element. This is the Wall Street Journal reporting on Tesla's North American sales executive. Top North American sales executive executive who has just left. I mean, this is somebody who was there after 15 years, for 15 years. Just left amidst the Tesla sale slump. Actually, Krystal, I feel like now for Tesla, with the sales slump and with Elon Musk refocusing his energies away from government, partially probably because some of the problems at Tesla, yes, he's in a difficult hole because a lot of the Tesla customer base was alienated. But also, if ever there was a time for things to start climbing back out of the hole or for the company to start climbing back out of the hole, probably be now, if you're an investor, this is not going to give you much confidence. People internally feel like that process is in motion.
- [52:17]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, no, no doubt about it. And you've got obviously trouble there. You've got Linda Yakarina on as well. I saw someone listing there were a number of other executives from his companies who have also left or like, I can't do this anymore. And Tesla has their biggest problem is Elon's brand and Elon himself. But they have other problems as well, including increased competition, including the fact that EV credits have not just been pulled in the US Steel product line. Cybertruck, a total and complete flop. So they have a lot of kind of deep issues that are difficult to See how they ultimately are resolved. Especially because, you know, Elon stock stacked the board there with increasing people, including, like his own brother, who he expects to be completely and totally loyal to him. So probably the smartest thing for them to be to do would be to find another CEO, but that is very unlikely to happen at this point. But we do have, actually, Emily, one more element here, which is they have added these to Grok. These companions.
- [53:16]
Sagar Enjeti
That's right. I was trying so hard to. Yes, I know.
- [53:19]
Krystal Ball
You didn't want to talk about it. I get it.
- [53:22]
Sagar Enjeti
I mean, I don't even know what the hell it is.
- [53:25]
Krystal Ball
So I don't. I haven't played with these. I don't know either. But they created these, like, avatars, like anime avatar companions. Is this just vo. We have. What do we have here that we can put up on the screen of the people can. Oh, it's a sot. All right, let's go and play this sot of one of these AI companions that they. You can use to sort of interface with Grok. Let's go and take a look.
- [53:47]
Sagar Enjeti
Tails swinging, totally wrapped up in this cozy moment with you. What's got you so excited to say hi, babe.
- [53:54]
Krystal Ball
So there you go, Em. Male loneliness. Crisis solved. Question mark.
- [53:58]
Sagar Enjeti
Touch some grass. I mean, we as a society need to just go touch some grass. This is too much.
- [54:07]
Krystal Ball
It's gone too far. It's gone too far.
- [54:10]
Sagar Enjeti
This time. He's gone too far. Well, thanks for making sure we included that in the subject.
- [54:16]
Krystal Ball
You're welcome. I got your back, girl.
- [54:18]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, let's move on to Superman and bring Griffin in. Debate is raging over the new Superman movie, and here to help us break some of it down is the one and only producer, Griffin. He's here. His mustache is here, and he is ready to get into all of this with Crystal. Both of them have seen the movie the Motion Picture. I have not. I'm not particularly interested in seeing it because I find these movies very hard to follow. And I don't know. Crystal. I was going to say also, I'm a woman, but I don't want to offend you.
- [54:56]
Krystal Ball
I'm offended.
- [54:56]
Sagar Enjeti
I know you're deeply passionate about Superman. You're always talking about Superman. Sometimes you wear your Superman pajamas and it's uncomfortable. People can't see it. It's under the desk. You're wearing Superman pajama pants.
- [55:09]
Bubba Wallace
I thought Crystal's favorite superhero was the Punisher. That's. That's how I thought we.
- [55:14]
Sagar Enjeti
It's. It's hard.
- [55:15]
Krystal Ball
Subscribe to find out, you know, we can do this in the premium ama, guys. So subscribe to find out my actual favorite superhero.
- [55:21]
Sagar Enjeti
There we go. All right, so on that note though, I'm going to go ahead and kick this over to you all so I can sit back and listen and make fun of you and maybe ask some probing questions.
- [55:33]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, well, let me just start because I have the most surface level possible thoughts, which is just Griffin had texted us, okay, this movie is definitely about Israel, Palestine. But even so, I still thought like, it's probably pretty subtle and there's probably some plausible deniability. It is not subtle and there is no plausible deniability. It's like very clear from even like the flags that they use and what the people look like. And the bad guy country is a close US ally and they're really technologically advanced. They're going up against this like, like, you know, very sort of like Middle Eastern coated looking people who are equipped with like rocks and their little kids who are about to get murdered and all of these sorts of things. I mean, it's just like very, very blatantly the central conflict that Superman is caught up trying to resolve is between these two countries that are very, very clearly Israel and Palestine. And that was absolutely mind blowing to me. That and it seems like I a really significant cultural moment that Griffin, you can have this major Hollywood blockbuster summer production that instead of like in the old days, it was always like, you know, the bad guy country was clearly the Soviet Union. Now it's Israel is the clear bad guy country. That seems like just an incredibly significant cultural shift coming out of Hollywood.
- [56:58]
Bubba Wallace
Yeah, and you know, I like, I don't generally like to like, you know, like turn my politics brain on for movies because generally like they're written by like liberals that are trying to do like a very generic message. They're trying to make something that you can kind of like apply to lots of situations. But what was striking was like the insane specificity in this film. And we've got a Shapiro clip right here. You know, Shapiro movie reviews, news, and he says, not politically charged, not really about Israel or Palestine. Why don't we roll that clip?
- [57:33]
Emily
So the left is suggesting that the foreign policy conflict in which Superman engages is a stand in for Israel and the Palestinians or alternatively for Russia and Ukraine. So let me give you the geopolitical setup. The geopolitical setup here is that there is a country called Barovia. And this country called Baravia is run by essentially a corrupt dictator who's working with Lex Luthor and it invades another sovereign country, Jahanpur. Ok. And so Superman stops that at the very beginning and doesn't show him stopping it. He talks to Lausanne about it. Fine. Ok. The idea is geopolitically that Baravia has been a longtime ally of the United States. Jahanpur is a country where we don't know who it's allied with and it may or may not be run by jihadis, but we don't know like, we don't know who it's run by. It doesn't matter. The only reason that Clark stops it, that Superman stops it, it is, he.
- [58:21]
Tucker Carlson
Says, because people were going to die.
- [58:25]
Emily
Which as we'll get to in sort of my final breakdown of why this movie doesn't work and why no really good Superman movie has been made since 78.
- [58:32]
Krystal Ball
What did he say?
- [58:33]
Emily
I'll explain in. In a moment. The people of Jahanpur are brown.
- [58:37]
Bubba Wallace
Look at my African American over here.
- [58:39]
Emily
The people of Baravia are white. Okay, so this is why the left is reading this as Israel, the Palestinians. The reason it doesn't work that way is because we are not made aware that the people of Jahanpur are either wildly terrorism supportive that they have participated in multiple terrorist attacks on the people of Baravia. They're led by a corrupt dictatorship that murders gay people. Right. None of that's in the movie. So it doesn't match up that way. And the idea that Baravia is Israel in this iteration, like a longtime US Ally that's randomly invading countries for territorial gain, that does not match up to any of the facts on the ground that we know of at all. That is not. That is not real. So maybe in left wing brain that's how it reads. I could see if you're a left winger and you don't know anything about the situation or you think a bunch of false things. You could. You could read that maybe you could also read this as Russia, Ukraine, because it's one sovereign country that's invading another sovereign country and because the leader of Baravia has a Russian accent. So I guess that if you have like poison left brain, the Russians are nuking us.
- [59:32]
Krystal Ball
Go.
- [59:33]
Bubba Wallace
So sorry, left wing brain, turn it off. Let's turn movie brain on. Crystal, what did you make of that? I mean, for me, the. The big one is like, okay. He's like, yeah, they're brown and the Israelis are white. I'm sorry, the Moravians are white. And that's. But that could be. That could be anybody. That could be like Russia, Ukraine.
- [59:53]
Krystal Ball
But I think the one is famously brown. Ukrainians.
- [59:57]
Bubba Wallace
Yeah, listen, I. Have you been there? Have you been? So for me though, like, the real red flag, oh, this is about Israel, Palestine, is that they're a US Ally, which doesn't work in the Russia, Ukraine parallel.
- [60:13]
Krystal Ball
Exactly. No, that's exactly right. And also even the technological disparity, like, it works, I guess, a little bit Russia, Ukraine, but not to the same extent because they really literally show the Baravians rolling in with this high tech gear and the Jaran Porians, who are supposed to be the Palestinians, like, have, you know, they're farmers and they have these very like basic weapons. And the imagery is 100% Israel, Palestine and specifically Gaza. I mean, I sort of feel for Ben here because if you are an Israel supporter, you are caught in between Iraq and a hard place. Because if you admit, like, okay, this is Israel and Palestine, then everyone goes, oh, so you do know that they're like a genocidal monster country that is attacking innocent poor people and like children. And if you don't, then you just look ridiculous and coping like he does here. Because again, I thought it would be subtle. It is just not subtle. And the Russia, Ukraine parallels don't work out at all whatsoever. I think they don't make sense. If you watch the movie, it just doesn't track to Russia, Ukraine at all. So. And then the leader of Baravia himself, Hasan, and others have pointed out he actually looks like the founder of Israel, Ben Gurion. He sounds sort of like Netanyahu in the rhetoric that he uses is very much, you know, coded as similar rhetoric to what? Not only Bibi, but, you know, Smotrich and Ben GVIR and others in the Yoav Gallant and others in the Israeli cabinet, like, things that they say 100%.
- [61:52]
Sagar Enjeti
Griffin, could you address the James Gunn of it all? And maybe some of what we know about people who are involved in production and writing and whether that tells us anything about what they may have intended to do with the way they structured the plot there.
- [62:07]
Bubba Wallace
Yeah, so that's really hard to say because, I mean, what is striking is not only that it's like political, but it's this third rail issue that really ever see in major Hollywood films before. I mean, James Gunn is a really interesting director because he kind of built like the modern DNA of like the Marvel Universe with Guardians of the Galaxy and it's allowed him a lot of clout.
- [62:29]
Sagar Enjeti
Very political movie.
- [62:30]
Bubba Wallace
I mean, that one, well, Guardians three actually is so, like. I guess what I was trying to say is, like, he has started to add more and more, like, third rail or uncomfortable topics to major blockbuster characters. I'm thinking about in Guardians 3, it's all about, like, animal cruelty and the evils of, like, lab testing on animals. And there's really uncomfortable scenes in there that, like, normally wouldn't be allowed in a major Hollywood film because they're not fun. But he's been fitting that in, and now, I mean, with this one, I can't. I can't really say what's, you know, what's in his mind or what's in his heart or for the people who wrote it. But, I mean, there are so many just striking scenes that seem like this was probably conceived of before October 7th. A lot of the scenes actually evoke something closer visually to the Great March of Return in terms of people approaching a fence and being, like, you know, attacked, gunned down. Most of them have, like, rocks, or I think, like, one guy had, like, a machete, but, like, very few of them had, like, any guns. And then. Yeah, so I'm not really sure there, to Crystal's point about, like. Like, if you're someone who is watching this movie and it is pro Israeli, like, what. That's just got to be a crazy feeling because it's like. Like, imagine, like, seeing yourself, like, in the villain or whatever. Like, if I was watching, like, Silence of the Lambs and I was watching, like, Buffalo Bill and I was like, are they making fun of me? Like, are they calling me out? I put the lotion on the skin. That's normal. So, like, it must be really uncomfortable for them. But I do give props to Shapiro because Shapiro, like, you know, outside of politics, he does drill into movies, and he did have to come up with something like, why is this not it? And he said, it's because they're not jihadis. Or they're not. It's not told to us that the Jarhan poor people, we don't know, they could be terrorists or not. And because James Gunn doesn't specify, it can't possibly be Palestine, because that would be the elephant in the room. And he would have to clarify. And only then could it be Palestine if they're jihadis. So that was driving me crazy last night.
- [64:39]
Krystal Ball
But, you know, there also, Griffin, there is a line in there, too, where Superman says something like, they may not be perfect, but we need to save these people, or something like that.
- [64:50]
Bubba Wallace
So it was driving me crazy last night, and it was like 8 o'. Clock. And I said, Fuck it. 11pm Screening. I'm seeing it a Second time. So I saw it last night again and I caught you, Shapiro. Here's the line that is very specific that Superman and Lois are arguing and they're saying basically Lois is kind of coming from the non interventionist US perspective, that it's like, you know what? That's over there. You shouldn't have gotten involved. You should have gotten it approved by the U.S. yes. And also Lois says, you know, a tyrannical regime runs Jar Henpur. So they even do say that. Sorry, sorry, Shapiro. I got you. I can't clip it because it's copyright.
- [65:36]
Sagar Enjeti
But wow.
- [65:37]
Krystal Ball
Damn.
- [65:39]
Bubba Wallace
The second screening. So. So it's just like, it's unavoidable.
- [65:41]
Sagar Enjeti
Probably just got back from it because you woke up so early your time.
- [65:45]
Bubba Wallace
To do this like three hours ago.
- [65:46]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, I'm still full, I gotta say. Yeah, I. And then there was, there was some other line about like, well, they may not be perfect, blah, blah, blah, blah. So there was even like an allusion to like, well, it's Hamas and they're bad. Of course they, you know, it's not directly Hamas, but I picked up on that parallel as well. Let's talk about the other piece that is very political here, which is the, the immigration part. And this got. This was sort of like, I think before, right after it came out, this was the big conversation over on Fox News is like, is Superman an immigrant? And what does that mean? Did we end up. Guys, do we have E4? The Shapiro's take on the immigration part of this, because this was the other part is, you know, again, his take is, I hated the movie. But of course it has nothing to do with the fact that this is related to Israel because it's totally not. And also it has nothing to do with immigration either. Like, this isn't political. I just hated it for other independent reasons. But it also seemed to me that the pro immigrant message, which was also quite central here, and there were other allusions to sort of, you know, modern day happenings, including, and I don't think this gives away too much, Superman gets locked with no due process. And there's even, you know, there's even sort of dialogue about why he doesn't get due process because he's a quote unquote alien. He gets locked into this sort of like sea cot type prison from which there's no release and no escape. Of course he figures out a way to escape.
- [67:13]
Bubba Wallace
But it was in Florida too. It was set in Florida, I think.
- [67:16]
Krystal Ball
That's right. You're so right about that. So in any Case there were threads throughout that made allusion to. And this part I won't completely give up. But you know, at the end he sort of wraps this in a bow in terms of like the life, you know, the life lessons that you're supposed to take from the film which are also very much related to the immigrant experience in America.
- [67:36]
Bubba Wallace
Yeah, you know, the. I agree with you. It is present. I thought it was going to be the main thing especially because that's what Fox News was like zeroing in on. But it's kind of secondary, I think to the Israel, Palestine thing which seems to be like about you know, like really the focus of the film. Like I think Lex Luthor calls Superman like an illegal immigrant at one point or what have you. And there is that jail scene. I agree. Which I didn't think about before. But to me that's like that was always like a more safe topic for Hollywood like being pro immigrant. So it didn't, it didn't surprise me and it didn't feel like different from other Marvel or like DC property stuff where we've seen that kind of acceptable, you know, general liberal message that any criticism of Israel is pretty much not, you know, I mean the only movie that. That was like no Other Land this year. And I'm trying to think of anything else that's been going on. I mean, I guess you could say the Zone of interest.
- [68:31]
Krystal Ball
But like people say and. Or second season I haven't watched. I'm in the first season of. And. Or people say and. Or second season. Right. Is about Israel.
- [68:43]
Bubba Wallace
Well, it is. It's about. There is a genocide episode where genocide does happen. And you could apply some stuff to that. That one even you could make more generic. I think this is the most specific like major blockbuster film to talk about this topic. And I guess the big other thing though that I was thinking a lot about that does relate to the Israel Palestine but also relates to how I see not only Shapiro, but I would say a lot of other like Gamergate sort of incel coded superhero community fans. They're really upset that Superman is weak in the film, that he takes punches, that he gets hurt and that Superman shouldn't be weak. I think we've got a clip of that from Shapiro as well. It's rolling it.
- [69:29]
Emily
He's not very super. He is not a man of steel. He is not invulnerable. He gets his ass kicked routinely. He gets locked up in a, in a prison with a, with a character who's making kryptonite out of his hands. Sorry, what? He's constantly in victim mode. Like, Green Lantern has much more success in this movie. Mr. Terrific has much more success in this movie than Superman.
- [69:50]
Sagar Enjeti
Zuma producer Mac is really thrown off by the cringe millennial editing where you toss in.
- [69:55]
Bubba Wallace
It's all.
- [69:56]
Sagar Enjeti
It's tough, is it not? I think it's cringe millennial. Right. Like that, like, circa, like, 2013. That was so edgy and hip.
- [70:03]
Bubba Wallace
Yeah.
- [70:04]
Sagar Enjeti
So this is a critique that I actually find very compelling, having not seen the movie. I bet you would get the right and the left both agreeing. I get. You would even get. I bet you would even get the filmmakers saying this was an intentional effort to make Superman look more vulnerable and to look sort of less toxically masculine. And I feel like that's what Shapiro is saying. He thinks it's bad. They would think it's good. That's sort of what I'm saying. I would.
- [70:35]
Bubba Wallace
They made him soy.
- [70:37]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, we made him soy Perman. But I feel like maybe both sides would agree. Tell me if I'm wrong, that that was probably an intentional part of the character.
- [70:48]
Bubba Wallace
Well, I'd be curious what Crystal has to think about it for me, just real quick, like, yeah, just from a narrative perspective. And I don't think, like, any of us are, like, major Superman fans, so we're just kind of approaching the movie as it is. But, like, if Superman is just invulnerable or, like, doesn't lose, that's just, like, narratively kind of boring. Like, in a movie for him, just, like, win in every scene. So there's just something, like, narratively not satisfying about that to me personally. But. But I think that, like, the big question of the film, because Superman is facing off with Lex Luthor, and sort of the question is, like, who wins between a battle of brains versus, like, brawn? Like, is it. Is it the mind or is it the ultimate strength that wins? And for me, like, the film, like, decidedly says it's actually a third thing. It's actually his. Superman's humanity, his kindness and his connection to other humans and even connection to other animals and his desire to do something that is uncomfortable for the greater good. Those things that humanity is ultimately what saves the day and allows Superman to win and is his greatest strength.
- [71:59]
Krystal Ball
Yes, I totally agree with that. And when Emily was saying it was probably an intentional choice to make him not be, like, toxically masculine, I think it was more an intentional choice to make him more human. And there's some dialogue, again, that speaks directly to that towards the Conclusion of the movie where he's talking about, you know, raised by these parents, human parents in Kansas. And they're the ones who really instill in him these deeply human values in spite of the fact that he is technically an alien from another planet. And so. So I thought that was a core theme in the movie. And another one that you certainly can read in a very political way because, I mean, you've got the tech, right? The Lex Luthor character could be a Peter Thiel. He could be an Elon Musk, this sort of, like, evil genius archetype. You know, you got Peter Thiel out there. Like, I'm not sure if the human race should survive. Like, it could go either way. Maybe I am the Antichrist. I don't know. No, like, he was kind of that archetype. And then you also have. Okay, well, is it that, or is it just like, the brawn and the strength, which is also, you know, question right now. And so one of the things, and this may be me viewing it through my own political lens, but we all get to go and watch the movie, make of it what we want to make. One of the things that's been really disturbing to me about this era of our politics and our culture is this sort of up is down quality of the characteristics that are valued, like this sense of just, like, being nice and being humble and looking out for the little guy and, you know, having some sense of shame and honor. Those things seem to have been completely dispatched with. And it's instead, the person who succeeds is like the biggest, you know, most arrogant, like, in many instances, absolute, like, full charlatan con man who's completely shameless, who's just absolutely in it for themselves and what they can get out of the situation. And so, to me, it also felt like a rebuke of that era in our politics and in our culture.
- [74:02]
Sagar Enjeti
It's not okay to talk about Sager like that when he.
- [74:05]
Krystal Ball
Don't tell him.
- [74:06]
Bubba Wallace
Okay, Sagar, bald, shaking like Lex Luthor.
- [74:10]
Krystal Ball
That'd be great. Griffin. I just respond to anything you want to there, but I also just want to add, like, taking the politics out of it. How did it land for you as just like, a movie? I brought my kids to see it. It was kind of long for them. But at the end, when it got very actiony, like they were into it as well. I mean, I just thought it was also just kind a fun, like, kind of campy, classic superhero vibe kind of a flick as well.
- [74:36]
Bubba Wallace
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I'm Kind of gassed out on the genre. And this one was like, fun and interesting. So it's like, I don't know if I'm fully back on watching every superhero film. Like, like Sagar is a sicko. He sees, like, all the Marvel movies. Like, he's seen, like, Ant Man 3, which I don't even think is a real movie movie.
- [74:55]
Sagar Enjeti
So.
- [74:57]
Bubba Wallace
But for me, I've been a little gassed out. This did feel like a breath of fresh air simply because it didn't feel tied to, like, larger universe stuff and had interesting messages and really good acting and fun action. So. And I've always liked James Gunn, even from like his first indie movie, Slither. So it's always fun to see, like, what he's up to. But yeah, like, I wanted to go like, to what you said about like, being kind or whatever, because now, like, you know, the end message. Well, I didn't mean to dismiss it. I just didn't remember what she said. So, like, the end message is that it's like punk rock to be kind. And so I'm seeing lots of people, like, being like, you know, kindness is the new punk rock. I just like, today I saw Superman and then I help this old lady walk across the street with her groceries. And like, that stuff is good, but I. I think like, the ultimate kindness Superman does is for the people of Jahanpur that he, like, takes. Takes a really uncomfortable position and encourages others that normally wouldn't have acted like these other superheroes like Green Lantern and Hawkgirl, to act and to do something that is dangerous, that is personally scary, but it matters because it's about helping other people. And so like, that is like the. That is part of the kindness part of Superman that I think everyone should take home. A movie does not, not fix what's happening in Israel, Palestine. And it was like, heartbreaking to see scenes of like these kids in the movie and think about the hundred plus people that are getting killed every day at these aid stations. Like, like a movie can't fix that. But it is like a glimmer of hope that at least some people in this industry, it's very few, it's been very, very quiet industry and sometimes like a very punishing industry to be pro Palestine.
- [76:44]
Krystal Ball
Oh yeah.
- [76:45]
Bubba Wallace
I think of so many people and not even just the ones that get articles written about, but I mean, people I know that work at agencies that are. That are trying to rise up in the ranks. I know Palestinian people that are working in Hollywood that have a whole different experience. But this is Potentially a glimmer of hope that they can at least start talking about a little more or that it's so. It's such an unavoidable evil that it is now the de facto movie evil when people think about, like, what's wrong in the world. So, yeah, I don't know what that means, but I guess, hopefully the movie encruers everyone to be a little more courageous on this issue and others.
- [77:21]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, I think that's well said, Griff. And, you know, last thing that I was thinking about with regards to this is, like, even this campy Superman movie could not make Baravia quite as cartoonishly evil as Israel has actually been. I mean, if you put in there they're luring the jar and porians into aid stations and then massacring it. People massacring them. People be like, that's just like, why would they even do that? I mean, that's just over the top, you know, I mean, the bombing of the schools and the hospitals and the medical workers and the journalists and, you know, I mean, the intentional starvation of the entire. Like, that also struck me is that, like, Baravia was meant to be cartoonishly evil. And even in that cartoonish evil, real. The, like the real world has in some ways surpassed that level of horror. And so that really, you know, that really struck me as well. Watching this is. You couldn't even conceive of something beyond the horrors that we witness every day on our timelines in. In real life. So 100%, to me, the biggest takeaway was just, what a dramatic cultural shift. No way this movie comes out in this way, you know, two years ago, not a chance that you have, you know, or even a year ago. I mean, I think it's just a real sign of how much the American public has shifted in the way that they're viewing this conflict, that you could have this Hollywood blockbuster that is, you know, so clearly painting Israel as like, these are the baddies. And by the way, the US Is aiding the bad guy country. We are not. We are not the heroes. We are the ones who are on the side of the bad guy country.
- [79:02]
Bubba Wallace
So me and Shapiro are gonna fix it. We're going in and doing a little rewrite, re release, and we're gonna just include one line that's gonna fix everything. We're gonna. Where Superman's gonna say that Jahanpur was promised to Baravia 3,000 years ago.
- [79:16]
Krystal Ball
And then, well, that totally changes everything.
- [79:18]
Bubba Wallace
And that. And that's gonna. That's gonna flip the whole perspective. You're gonna wanna watch the whole movie again with a different perspective.
- [79:25]
Sagar Enjeti
Notice we didn't say the very obvious, the not so subtle overtones in the new Lilo and Stitch being about Nagorno Karabakh and everything happening there right now.
- [79:39]
Bubba Wallace
Yeah. They also made Stitch less masculine, so.
- [79:42]
Tucker Carlson
Me and Emily will talk about that.
- [79:44]
Krystal Ball
We'll save that for another segment, guys. It's too much for today. Too much.
- [79:48]
Sagar Enjeti
We call him Stoy Stitch. Oh, my gosh. Well, that's a wrap.
- [79:58]
Krystal Ball
Thank you, Griffin. Appreciate it.
- [80:00]
Sagar Enjeti
Krystal, thanks so much for hanging out. Thanks, Salem. For us. It had a fairly long cameo today.
- [80:06]
Krystal Ball
So we appreciate Salem's time, always. I'll let him know. I know people always enjoy when he shows up. It's always a little dicey for me because you never know what that crazy kitty is gonna do. But I don't know. Did that Superman discussion make you want to watch it or make you more like, I don't really need to see this.
- [80:22]
Sagar Enjeti
I just. I don't know. I feel like the country is mostly all in on superhero movies, which I think is totally great and fine. But then there's. There's this cohort of us who's just like, I can't. I can't get into it. Like, if I wanted to, I couldn't get into it. I don't know what it is. But I thought you guys had a really interesting discussion, and I think it's culturally sort of an inkblot test. And I'm always interested in that, why some people interpret things one way and, like, why Fox News is running segments about super woke. And then you have even, like, conservative reviewers and National Review, for example, saying there's nothing woke about this movie. And that's the type of thing. Even the debate about whether it's Israel or not. It's like, why are people seeing things so differently? Very interesting question.
- [81:05]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, I think partly, it seems to me that people who just genuinely liked the movie, but whose politics don't necessarily fit with the movie want to sort of, like, under, like, downplay, like, yeah, totally not. It wasn't woke. That's why I loved it, because it wasn't woke, actually, when it's like. Well, I mean, I guess it all. Woke is sort of a meaningless term at this point, so you can define it in any way you want. But, you know, the. The attempt to claim that it's not political is preposterous. I mean, almost every movie has some sort of politics to it, because that's just the nature of life. But this movie is particularly political. I think that's hard to really square with the central messages of the film. And then to try to pretend it's not Israel Palace. I was just like, if you see it, you will see very clearly what was being attempted here. They do not try to make it subtle whatsoever.
- [82:00]
Sagar Enjeti
Interesting, interesting, interesting times. You're parallel back to how the Soviet Union sometimes it wasn't overt, it was just very obviously created to be the Soviet Union, for example, and movies. I thought that was really interesting too. So I enjoyed it. I enjoyed hearing you discuss this with Griffin. It was great to have Griffin here. And it was great to have you here today too. Crystal. You'll be back in with Sagar tomorrow, right?
- [82:25]
Krystal Ball
Yep. And for in with Sagar tomorrow for normal breaking points. So I will see you guys then. And we got Friday show planned and all that good stuff too. So we'll see you guys soon.
- [82:34]
Sagar Enjeti
Sounds good.
- [82:48]
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