← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
8/13/25: Trump Floats Jobs Numbers Coverup, MSNBC Says No DC Crime
01:12:24
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- [00:00]
Krystal Ball
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:05]
Sagar Enjeti
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Emily
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- [01:03]
Emily
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- [01:39]
Delano Squires
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.
- [01:46]
Emily
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
- [01:52]
Delano Squires
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.
- [02:03]
Emily
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breakingpoints.com Good morning everybody. Happy Wednesday. What type of show are we calling this? Emily? What is this?
- [02:16]
Krystal Ball
This is Breaking Democracy.
- [02:17]
Emily
Breaking Democracy.
- [02:18]
Krystal Ball
That's right. Sometimes it's Fascist Points.
- [02:20]
Emily
Fascist points. I would say. Yeah, Breaking Democracy because we've given up on democracy. Right, that's. Oh, I'm just joking. No, no, no, it's okay. No more quiet parts out loud. It's Happy Wednesday. Not used to saying that. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Oh, and to Ryan for switching in. We got some problems at home, but everything seems to be working out right now. All right, let's see. What do we have today on the show? Who usually sets this up? Is it Ryan or you?
- [02:43]
Krystal Ball
Who talks about comics? We just, we just. It's how the spirit moves us. We just flow with it. Nobody really knows. It's okay, don't worry.
- [02:51]
Emily
See, Grizzle and I are much more regimented.
- [02:53]
Krystal Ball
You totally are.
- [02:53]
Emily
You totally are. Okay. All right, well, why don't I do the first three and then you do the other three. In the spirit of the show, we're gonna talk about the economy and the new bls. The new Bureau of Labor Statistics has a new proposed commissioner who's got interesting changes and we're gonna check in on inflation. We're also gonna talk about a fascinating, in some ways, new deal between Donald Trump and Nvidia and amd, those chip making companies here in the United States. A crazy precedent that's being set there and also kind of what it tells us about AI. It's a good segue to talking about employment. And basically youth unemployment and or underemployment is going sky high here. There's a lot of AI indications in the overall job market. Obviously we wanna check in on that. Youth unemployment, not usually a good. And then we are going to have. What is his name? Delano Squire. Delano Squire. He's gonna be here in the studio. This is a friend of Emily's and he's gonna talk to us a little bit more. He's more of a conservative guest, but he's gonna talk to us. He's somebody knows quite a bit about D.C. crime and he's gonna tell us what he thinks about the Trump administration takeover here of mpd.
- [03:57]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, of course. And speaking of which, actually Donald Trump is reconsidering or he is considering a reclassification of marijuana. So our co host here, Stephen A. Smith, has lots of thoughts on that.
- [04:10]
Emily
One of Stephen's best takes, perhaps his only good take, some people say we're.
- [04:13]
Krystal Ball
Going to get into what's actually on the table and what it might mean. Donald, Donald Trump, I actually meant to say Tucker Carlson had a nun on his program who testified to the conditions that Christians experience in the Middle east more broadly, but also particularly in the west bank. And she spoke a bit to Gaza as well. So we're going to do a breakdown of some of the comments that were shared on Tucker's show and what it could mean if people, even administration are watching it. Sagar may have thoughts on that for sure. And Andrew Cuomo in the Epstein files, that's not a surprise to anyone. But Zoran Mamdani is now going after him hard for being in the Epstein files. So we have a fascinating Zoran ad to get to and a little bit of news on the Maxwell transcript front to get to as well. So, Sagar, let's start with that new inflation report that the White House was commenting on.
- [05:08]
Emily
Let's get to it. And that also includes this Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner. Oh, I forgo, by the way, breakingpoints.com if you are able to help us out monthly, yearly memberships, you can go ahead and sign up. And if you can't, no worries, just go ahead and subscribe button on YouTube. If you're listening on a podcast, just go ahead and send this episode or any of your favorite episodes to a friend. So with the BLS data, we now have a response here from the White House. After Trump fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner. Basically, remember the Bureau of Labor Statistics, their job is to compile all of the employment data. It is, however, very inaccurate, kind of has been over the last five years. There's a lot of complicated reasons that Crystal and I, I got into the last time that we covered it. But with the new commissioner, they're actually proposing actually just doing away with a monthly jobs report entirely. Here's what the White House had to say.
- [05:54]
Krystal Ball
If the jobs data is not reliable.
- [05:56]
Emily
Should Americans trust the inflation data?
- [05:58]
Krystal Ball
Well, look, the jobs data has had massive revisions. We want to ensure that all of the data, the inflation data, the jobs data, any data point that is coming out of the BLS is trustworthy and is accurate, which is why the president has restored new leadership at the bls.
- [06:13]
Emily
Trustworthy and accurate. And this is apparently the new justification. Let's go and put this up there on the screen from the Wall Street Journal. This was after the appointment of E.J. antony. He's now the chief. He was previously the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation. He has been a longtime critic of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But for our purposes, Emily, what he has proposed is doing away with the monthly jobs report entirely. And just to give, I guess, you know, I don't know if there's both sides of this, but I will at very least like Try to. What they are saying is that because the monthly jobs reports have been so inaccurate that they have proposed doing away with it entirely. Quote. In an interview on Fox News Digital on Monday, ahead of his nomination, E.J. antony criticized the monthly employment report as flawed, suggested it would be replaced, quote, with a more accurate, though less timely quarterly data. Now, the thing is, is that that monthly report is very closely watched by, by the stock market. It's obviously even last time. It's been known to move markets previously. And so the doing away with it and actually the way that they compile it would become a major point of scrutiny for kind of checking in on the economy. You know, the inflation numbers and the jobs numbers are two of the only measures that we really do have as to how things are going in real time. As I said last time around, look, you know, the idea that you're going to get a critical snapshot of what's actually happened in a month is preposterous. Especially since COVID we've had response rates decline. The sampling, there's so many different problems with the way that they do it, but it's much more of actually of a technical problem. And by the way, Doge fired the entire team who was trying to update the system in their very first week in office under Howard Lutnick. But so, yeah, that's where things are. I mean, the main problem is, is that now they're kind of sowing, quote, distrust in the numbers and whatever these new quarterly numbers are, what they're gonna have to do is prove their work and actually do this competently. Do I have full confidence that that's gon. I do not. But I'm curious what you think.
- [08:21]
Krystal Ball
I'm shocked to hear this. So let's put this next element on the screen. This is Joe Weisenthal's reaction. So to get a flavor of how people are reacting in Wall Street World Hero, basically, a lot of people would agree that the BLS does need to be shaken up in some way due to the increased cost of collecting data. And he says thanks to inflation as well as lower response rates to surveys and so on. As Sagar just mentioned, they're strange in the production of high quality economic data. And having high quality, trustworthy data is really important. But at this point, hoping that the new BLS chief will credibly modern economic data collection is a bit like believing that Doge was going to apply the world's most advanced statistical techniques to reducing billing fraud at Medicare and Medicaid. It was a nice idea, didn't happen. And it's hard to imagine it happening now with economic data collection. So Antonio was just until yesterday as Donald Trump plucked him at the Heritage foundation where he was a chief economist over there. And one reaction, interestingly, from someone at the American Enterprise Institute, Dave Hebert was on several programs with him at this point and have been impressed by two things. His inability to understand basic economics and the speed with which he's gone maga. Now, in the conservative world, there are some people who just say if you go full MAGA and you are an economic populist, then you don't understand basic economics. And the people who criticize him, just from my survey of the comments, appear to be pretty much libertarians whose main quibbles with him are over populism. They see him as overly populist. But if you're Joe Weisenthal, if you're on the street, you're looking at this Stephen Moore, I don't know if you saw this kind of poured cold water on the idea that they would pull the jobs reports.
- [10:09]
Emily
Okay.
- [10:09]
Krystal Ball
So it seems like they're trying to calm. It reminds me a little bit of the tariffs. They're trying to calm Wall Street a little bit.
- [10:16]
Emily
Yeah.
- [10:17]
Krystal Ball
I mean, because you can understand if you're Joe Wiesenthal and you're like, oh, you're taking the, this MAGA guy right off of Steve Bannon's war room and people now have to trade off of the information that he does or does not provide, I think it's entirely fair.
- [10:29]
Emily
And I mean, I think this is one again where it's about competence, showing your work, transparency, et cetera. Not exactly some of the hallmarks so far of Doge or the Trump administration. It's basically just been a slap shot approach. Like you may take a problem, you may diagnose it correctly, but then fixing the problem, if you don't fix it correctly, then people are obviously gonna still prefer the earlier one. To the BLS point, with all of those major revisions under Biden and then significantly under Donald Trump, just again, at a very technical level, the sampling and the way that it was collected was outdated and ridiculous. It is entirely fair to say, okay, that's going to be done. But one of the points that Wiesenthal makes is that the bls, at the end of the day, it's not a political job because it was just compiling data. Like at the end of the day, what your job should be, even if you wanna modernize it, if you wanna change it, is one that creates and corrects Sampling, you're gonna have to be active, very transparent, right, at the economy level and at the stock market level to make sure that everybody understands exactly how all of this is done. Taking away a monthly report is not, in my opinion, the definition of modernization. We're not sure yet, right, whether this is all going to go through, but the fact that it is open about it is going to make people very shaky about what the next one is, and they're really gonna have to go and to check their work. And the worst possible scenario is actual politicization of changing the way that the numbers are calcul and making it so. And then, you know, basically doing it in the, in the way that would make it so that it's overtly political. And already they have the appearance of that. So it's actually on them to assure any, you know, serious market analyst or whatever that that's not the case. They may get away with it, to be honest. I mean, if they actually do have some transparency, if it's the only number you can rely on, then what the hell are you supposed to do? Right? But their current justification, as I understand it as well, is that if you change the way, if the job numbers had been accurate, according to Secretary Scott Best, and I was just saying yesterday, he's like, then the Fed would have cut rates. So part of this is also trying to put pressure on the Federal Reserve. But again, if you juke your numbers initially to try and engineer some sort of other result, that's gonna look really bad. And I'm not gonna sit here in America as the greatest data collector or any of that in the world. Trust me, we're definitely not, if you look at, at all the revisions for everything. But the point is more about the trust in this specific person. And then, you know, it's not above the Trump administration to try to change things that are happening, to try and engineer some sort of stock market bump or, you know, a fall or a Fed cut or any of that. And that's where we starting to get into very, very dicey territory.
- [13:04]
Krystal Ball
It's dicey territory. But what's interesting about everything you just said is that it gets to how fake all of this stuff is to begin with. And that doesn't mean it's. That doesn't mean that in the process of, of fixing what you see as a bad situation, you sort of make this diagnosis. It doesn't mean that Trump can be trusted not to exploit the opportunity and the very real problem. But it does mean that, that doesn't mean that the problem isn't real. And this gets to, I think, a really fundamental question of policy in the Trump administration, because there's direction and there's process. And the distinction between direction and process, I think, gets lost so often in that, like, he's sometimes pointed in the right direction and the process is flawed, and the process is sometimes worse than actually trying to approach the problem.
- [13:52]
Emily
Well, we're gonna talk about this with D.C. i think it's a perfect example, a hundred percent, where it's like, you could take a problem of crime in Washington, D.C. and then you could say, okay, well, we're gonna deploy the federal troops or whatever. And you're like, okay, what are you gonna do? And it's like. And now there are videos coming out of FBI agents and HSI agents in the cleanest and nicest parts of Washington, D.C. emily, which you and I have spent time in. And any Washington, D.C. it'd be like having. It'd be like, we're gonna clean up crime in New York and then having the troops, like, strolling around, like, the Upper east side. What? Like, what are we doing here? You know, it's like, get out of here, bro. Like, there's nothing going on unless it's for journalists and for cameras and all of that. And their theory would be, like a grand show of force. And those of us who live here are like, what are you even talking about? It's like, we don't have any issues here.
- [14:41]
Krystal Ball
It's exactly the same situation.
- [14:42]
Emily
It's exactly the same. Same in la. I. Right. You know, the same type of thing.
- [14:47]
Krystal Ball
Deportation in general.
- [14:48]
Emily
Deportations, you know, going for the show. Yeah, Doge, same thing. Going for the show. Not actually being serious, just. By the way, if anybody's interested, our deficit payments significantly went up, outpacing all tariff revenue and everything by over 90%. Just in case anybody's interested in any of those numbers, the actual numbers. Let's go and put a four up on the screen, please. This is to the inflation numbers that you were talking about. And overall, I mean, this is a number that the Trump administration is very happy about, but there are some serious warning signs inside of it. So they say inflation held steady at 2.7% in July. Prices, excluding food and energy categories, rose some 3.1% over the last 12 months above forecast, so slightly above target, but 2.7 unchanged from June's gain below the 2.8 rise that was expected from the economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal. But the core inflation numbers, when you start to actually dig into it they start to get a little problematic. And I've talked about this before, about why trying to put it all in a single number is a problem because it ignores. It'd be like GDP numbers be like, well, GDP went up. I'm like, well, what about home prices and your ability to afford one, which is gonna impact you more. It's the same actually when you look at what categories are driving inflation or not. So let's put this up there, please. This is a six, which has the individual goods where you can see where you've had significant reduction. So eggs, yeah, great. Eggs are actually down by some 43% in terms of annualized gain, along with quote, non frozen, non carbonated juices, some 5.2. I don't even know what that is. Critical category, butter, snacks, rice, pasta, cornmeal, lunch meats, baby food, cheese and related products. All of those have gone down, not significantly, except for eggs. But the places where we have seen increase are at the very top. You can see coffee. What's interesting about the coffee number I dug into this is it is because of these tariffs on Brazil as a result of the Bolsonaro stuff, right? So some 50% tariff there. Brazil is a significant exporter of mass market coffee here in the United States, but broadly also just the general trade imbalance for a lot of the other countries that ship coffee to America. The disruption in supply chain has pushed it high as well as there's apparently been some bad weather down in Brazil and in Latin America that killed the crop. So those two things together have spiked the cost of coffee to some 25%. That's one of those things you could easily know because obviously I think the vast majority of Americans drink coffee every single day. Beef and veal remain some up 15%. Cookies, peanut butter, canned vegetables, canned fruit, all of them are over 10%. Ice cream, dried beans, fresh vegetables, significantly again up over 8%. So a decent number of categories there of everyday items which Americans are buying and getting some sticker shock. Coffee being the most noteworthy one. It all comes together, you know, in that 3.1% number. But it remains important, you know, just to look at exactly where things. Put a five, please on the screen as well. This is kind of gets to something we're about to talk about in a little bit. But the US has also hit the highest layoffs right now since COVID So in July there were some 62,000 job cuts announced, and that's a 29% jump from June, 140% higher than in July of 2024. Now, as you can see, a huge part of that is by the government and from Doge now specifically the reason, and I've said this to some people, shocked before, a lot of people don't know the US Government is the largest employer in the United States of America. And so if you trim, you know, even a little bit well, then you're gonna end up in that scenario where you have a major number of layoffs and you're also going to have all of these different layoffs and other categories that continue to hit. Technology's having a problem. Retail. That number is very interesting. I'm still, I did some research, not fully, you know, ready. Anyone in the industry is not ready to say it's all because of tariffs. There's like other downstream problems, inflation, consumer spending, services and warehous. But the problem is it's up everywhere and significantly up amongst the government. So overall it's kind of a shaky situation right now. It really is precarious. And the tariffs are one where yes, overall the tariff rate remains high, but it's targeted at its most insane levels at only a few countries, which is gonna lead to those wonky outcomes. So Brazil is the perfect example. That's how we have the 25% coffee bump. The other most tariff country right now by the United States States is India. So there's gonna be potential problems in the future on generic pharmaceuticals. It could change the oil business. I'm trying to think of the third most tariff country. I forget you just Rick Perry. Yeah, I did disrick Perry it. But China, our number one trading partner, there's been a suspension and a broad bring down of tariffs because they keep getting exemptions. And lo and behold, just yesterday Trump announced another 90 day pause. So we're gonna be coming up on 270 days, days basically of pauses on tariffs with China, which is really the entire ball game. So that's part of the reason why the Trump administration can say, see our tariffs are working. When it's like, dude, you don't even have real tariffs on like the original tariffs you announced, you took them all away. You can't say that it worked.
- [20:03]
Krystal Ball
Well, the 10% baseline's still there, right?
- [20:06]
Emily
10% baseline, but that's not the 130% which was announced. That's not the major changes or anything that was there. So yeah, of course things are where they are. And then finally the last thing I've heard from them is, well, what about the stock market? I'm like, well, Nvidia alone is 8% of the entire S&P 500. And a huge part of the S&P 500 is driven by tech stocks, which are generally not as impacted by tariffs. That's not where I would look. I would look at manufacturing employment and the deficit numbers as well as US Capex, like in terms of domestic investment investment. All three of those are down from what I was looking at just yesterday. So look, it's not the disaster scenario, but it's not the great success scenario.
- [20:47]
Krystal Ball
I was going to say I was talking to Republicans on Capitol Hill about a week before they left for recess and I think I mentioned this on the show before, but I was telling them, if you look at this, I think it was a Quinnipiac poll from last month that found Trump underwater on the economy, immigration, foreign policy. So three signature Trump issues. And on the economy. I asked them basically like, what do you think that says if Donald Trump is underwater on the economy? And they said, well, this is why we passed the one big beautiful bill when we did, because we now expect heading into the midterms that these economic changes are going to trickle towards the consumer. I don't think anyone actually used that word, I'm paraphrasing, but are going to trickle into different, different states, different communities. And people will start feeling the effects of both the tariffs and the big beautiful bill in a good way because they always saw the big beautiful bill as the necessary part two of the tariff agenda. Basically. Like they didn't believe that you could just keep doing the tariffs if the bill didn't pass. And that's an impossible hypothetical to revisit now. But basically that bill had all of what they would not describe but are accurately described as sort of industrial policy policy, industrial policy decisions that are aimed at bringing jobs back. So exemption write offs for retroactive to January for things like manufacturing and building and all of that. So saga right now they're in the middle of their own experiment and they don't have any control over the President who is using tariffs as a foreign policy tool in addition to an economic tool tool. And so that just leaves what's been there from the beginning, uncertainty. And with the uncertainty brings leverage, of course, and that's why you end up getting the EU to the table at a deal. It's how you end up getting Keir Starmer to the table on a deal, whatever else. But it's also how you end up with 90 day pauses recurring in the China case.
- [22:46]
Emily
Yeah, 90 day pauses. And I would say again, on these deals, and this is the other thing that drives me Crazy. You know, some sort of deal is not necessarily good if they're fake. So the $600 billion pledge from the European Union is complete bullshit. I mean, if you look at the European Union' announcement, they were like, yeah, we actually have no ability to compel, you know, our companies to do this, but we'll pledge it, I guess. Right. You know, same with the Japanese. They were shown, you know, some of the releases and they were like, well, that's not what we promised at all. And also at a certain point, you know, some of these numbers all just become fake. Like 400 billion, 500 billion. It's all about an execution. There's a reason. Just so everybody understands. I said this before, my wife worked in trade policy. These trade deals used to take years to put together. Now that's an indictment of the process, but part of the reason why they took years was because they would pass Congress and they would also pass legislature in wherever their home country was. And it became a legally binding agreement between these two countries with an arbitration process where if you violate said process, then you're gonna have to pay a fine or we're gonna have some dispute court or whatever. I'm not defending those previous ones, cuz I think a lot of those were bad deals. But I'm just saying at a very process level, you're not supposed to just sign some handshake agreement. It has no enforceability. Right. So whoever comes into office after Trump can do to his deals exactly what Trump did to the Iran deal. This was part of the problem with the Iran deal. They never really passed through Congress. Right. So the JCPO can just be ripped up by any executive. You're not supposed to really do stuff this way, especially with the US economy and with business, because we now know just have uncertainty for the next three and a half years. We have uncertainty basically forever. Like whoever becomes a president. Yeah. They get to do this, whatever they want. Last thing before we move on. I am told though, that as this moves up to the Supreme Court, that they are on very dicey territory. A couple of conservative court watchers have said that the court looks very skeptical, at least now so far on the way the Trump administration will handle some of these tariffs. The Trump administration is trying to buckle it all under the purview of foreign policy, but they don't think it's gonna pass legal scrutiny.
- [24:55]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, and yeah, emergency measures and the same thing. We'll talk about this in the deep BL DC block as well. But yet that's. And that's another huge variable factoring into the uncertainty. Because now you have to take into consideration when you're pricing markets how the Supreme Court potentially will react in a decision like that. So the more the uncertainty goes on, obviously the more we're likely to start seeing some of these, like egg prices will go down, but coffee prices will jump. These spotty indicators in reports, if we get reports if we start getting, if we continue to get the data.
- [25:32]
Emily
The.
- [25:33]
Sagar Enjeti
Reviews and ratings are in and Ice Cube's Big Three is the surprise hit of the summer. This Saturday, 4pm Eastern on CBS, with playoff elimination on the line, the stars will be flocking to Los Angeles to witness the most physical, fiercest and competitive basketball in the world. Miami's Michael Beasley and Lance Stevenson must win over Houston to make the playoffs, reeling from last week's savage beating at the hands of Chicago's possessed Montrez Harrell. Last time these teams met Miami, Miami beat Houston, but they are a dangerous team having their manhood at stake. Then breakout star Dwight Howard of the LA Riot will battle Gary Payton's Boston squad in a do or die match for both teams. Will LA avenge their previous shocking loss to perennial basketball Boston rivals? To survive, six teams are allowed for four spots and all must win. Don't miss the Big Three, the three on three basketball league everyone is talking about. There's no crying in the big three and the no hold spot action starts Saturday at 4pm Eastern, 1pm Pacific followed by two games on Vice starting at 6:30 to Eastern.
- [26:31]
Delano Squires
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- [27:33]
Emily
Riley Herbs from 2311 Racing here. And you know what grinds my gears? Waiting for coffee. But instead of counting frappes and lattes, I fire up Jumbo Casino. No apps, no fuss, just fun social casino games to pass the time. By the time my coffee's ready, I've already taken a few victory. Next time you're stuck waiting, make it entertaining. Play for free@chumbacasino.com let's Chumba Sponsored by Chumba Casino. NO purchase necessary VGW Group Void where prohibited by law 21/ terms and conditions apply this has been a story I've been watching. This is nerdy, but everybody stick with me. It's about Nvidia. So the company I just mentioned earlier, they manufacture the most advanced AI chips. Obviously that's what's made them a multi trillion dollar company. I believe Nvidia alone is worth more than the entire UK stock just for reference, continues to boom. So there has been a lot of question over Nvidia and being able to sell to China. Now there's been a China kind of hawk contingent including Steve Bannon and others part of the MAGA movement and actually a lot of former Trump administration officials from the first term who have heavily criticized Nvidia, their CEO Jensen Huang and kind of cozying up to the ccp. Nvidia sees it not as existential but as important to their future profit revenues to be able to sell their H20 chips, one of the kind of the their bread and butter chip for a lot of AI processing, a lot of the more basic open source models run on this H20 trip as well as the ability to preserve the future sales into China as core to their business and to growing. Right. So what Jensen has done is that he has heavily lobbied the Trump administration including paying a million dollars to attend a Mar A Lago dinner and now struck one of the most extraordinary business deals in American history where under the Trump administration he will be allow sell these H20 chips to China. In exchange he must cut 15% of those sales to the US government. An individual company must pay a portion to the US government. Here's Trump confirming that deal at the White House. Let's take a listen on China.
- [29:42]
Krystal Ball
Your administration agreed to send the most advanced or advanced Nvidia and AMD chips.
- [29:49]
Ryan Seacrest
No obsolete, no obsolete.
- [29:51]
Ice Cube
And then 15% of the problem 20s.
- [29:53]
Ryan Seacrest
No obsolete, no obsolete.
- [29:56]
Ice Cube
And then 15% of the problem in the 20s. No, no, that's. This is an old chip that China already has and I deal with Jensen who is a great guy and Nvidia, the chip that we're talking about, the H20, it's, it's an old chip. China already has it in a different form, different, different name. But they have it or they have a combination of two will make up for it and even then some. Now Jensen also has, Jensen's a very brilliant guy. And Jensen also has a new chip, the Blackwell. Do you know what the Blackwell is? The Blackwell is super duper advanced. I wouldn't make a deal with that, although it's possible I'd make a deal a somewhat enhanced, in a negative way, Blackwell. In other words, take 30% to 50% off of it. But that's the latest of the greatest in the world. Nobody has it. They won't have it for five years. But the age 20 is obsolete. You know, it's one of those things, but it still has a market. So I said, listen, I want 20%. If I'm going to prove this for you, for the country, for our country, for the U.S. i don't want it myself. You know, every time I say like, like 747, I want, I want. Yeah, for the Air Force. So I just wanted. So when I say I want 20, I want for the country. I only care about the country. I don't like. I don't know if you know it. We will sometimes sell fighter jets to a country and we'll give them 20% less than we have.
- [31:33]
Emily
All right, so just put this Wall Street Journal story up here. The details of this are so crazy. So, quote, with billions at risk, Nvidia buys his way out of the trade battle. So like I said, effectively what Jensen has done is he is allowing the feds. And by the way, it's not just Nvidia, it's also amd, by the way, which is run by his cousin, which is crazy that these two cousins of this family run the two of the largest chip manufacturers in the world. But so Jensen and AMD, these two companies are gonna have to cut some 15%, maybe even 20. The full details are not yet available to the government just of its chip sales to China in exchange for issuing export licenses. So basically, it's a pay to play model in China now. I mean, theoretically, I guess that's fine if it's applied across the board. But the process in which this all came about, as I said, effectively came down from Jensen desperately trying to get the Trump administration to lift export licenses of his sales to China. He has recently spent a lot of time in Beijing cozying up to the ccp. He's like, we're gonna do everything we can to preserve our business here in China because the Chinese companies, a lot of these deep seat models and others are desperate for some of these H20 trips. But the point really beyond all of this is that all of it came about in the same way that Tim Cook brought that solid bar of gold to Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Like basically providing, offering to the Great Khan, paying tribute, literally paying tribute to the Great Khan. That's the way this is working. And they're like, well, in exchange for you being allowed to do business, you must cut a portion of revenue to the state. And look again, it's fine if it was applied across the board, but the point being that there were significant geopolitical implications around this chip. Part of the reason why Americans, especially the more China hawks, wanted to stop the export of the H20 chip is it would not allow the continued development of these open source models which became a major threat. And according to the AI companies, ours, a lot of the technology and others was still. Well put a nine up there on the screen. Because what's important beyond all of this is that Chinese authorities have been doing talking out of two sides of their mouth. One is they're like, we want this H20 chip. It's critical for our industry. Second though, just yesterday they came out and they were like, hey everybody, we need to stop using the Nvidia H20 trip quote, particularly for government related purposes, because. Because they don't even want the pretense of a vulnerability. So effectively what they're doing, they flipped it around is they're playing us where they're like, yeah, oh yeah, we'll keep buying it for now. This is what they've done all the time. They're like, yeah, yeah, we'll keep buying it for now. We'll keep buying it for now. And at the same time using the full hammer of the Chinese government to say that we're gonna develop something new. So just to present the other side of the argument from a lot of people who defend selling age 20, they're like, well, we should keep selling it to them because if we don't, then they're gonna just use something else and develop their own AI chips and company.
- [34:42]
Krystal Ball
They're already doing it, which feeds into their argument.
- [34:44]
Emily
I just showed you the evidence. They're already doing it no matter what, because they're not stupid, unlike us. If they see even a single vulnerability, a critical one that could come down the road, like with all this trade uncertainty, they just solve it for themselves. They've done this with cars, they've done this with batteries, with minerals refining, I mean airplanes now with the chips, which is really the only area technologically where they continue to kind of ride behind. But they're pouring oceans of government backed money into developing their alternatives and to try and be chip independent from America in the next four to five years. And so I mean, the point then comes down to is like, well, if they're going to be independent, maybe make it a little complicated and difficult for them or at least negotiate some leverage here, you know, in the interim. But instead we got this weird corrupt bargain between Jensen Am and the government. And again, for a lot of libertarians and people out there, they've always complained about crony capitalism. I mean, there's no better example than this. It's pure just like pay to play and fluffing the ego. That's the problem I have around. It doesn't make any geopolitical or strategic sense. Either way, it should just make sense. Fine, if you want to let them sell it for the reasons I just said. Yeah, well, we don't want them to develop their own domestic manufacturer. They want them to remain reliant on us. Okay, well we should still have have some much more of a process. But that's not how this deal ended up coming about.
- [36:09]
Krystal Ball
No, that's the issue. No, it was completely pay to play. It was Jensen Huang cozying up to Trump and to others in the administration and getting basically what he wanted out of it. So Don Bacon, who I think did, he has formally announced he's not running for reelection.
- [36:24]
Emily
I think so, yeah.
- [36:25]
Krystal Ball
He's among the many China hawks that flipped out. So he said, we've got to realize we're in an intellectual war, a technology war with China and we're in an AI competition. Competition. Having Nvidia providing this tech to China is a mistake. He was on News Nation last night and said that. So it's Trump was like the great champion of a lot of the China hawks.
- [36:47]
Emily
Yes, that's true.
- [36:47]
Krystal Ball
Which is also hilarious for many reasons. We can talk about installing Elon Musk at the top of the government efficiency effort and all of Musk's various ties to China. We could talk about Trump's relationship with Xi Jinping, but the China hawks are in for such a wake up call to what Donald Trump actually thinks. And there's a non zero chance, by the way, that the way Trump approaches China would be better than a President Mike Pompeo because it's not belligerent and warmongering.
- [37:23]
Emily
Yet my issue around this is the lack of thought, and it's just all egotistical. That's my. Like I said, if you want to ship it to him, fine, do it for strategic sense. Main, make a case. But this is really just about. Because the thing is, it fits within the broader context of the way all the tech CEOs are approaching this. This is why Apple is making their fake announcement over $500 billion and presenting a solid bar of gold to Donald Trump. Right. Who do you think Jensen learned all this from? He looked at Bezos and at Zuckerberg and at Sundar Pichai and all these other guys who have been doing business with Trump, and they're like, okay, well, this is how I make sure that I get my exemption. You think Apple is freaking out? You know, yes, they're gonna have to pay, I think, a billion dollars in tariff charges. But they could have been nuked overnight. You know, with. Between China and India, they've gotten major exemptions from all of their tariffs. They basically have from day one. And then you'll recall, you know, in the early days, they were telling us, Howard Lutnick and others, how we're gonna build iPhones here in America. That's evaporated. You know, it's like now it's like a single piece of the glass, like right here, maybe come from Kentucky and depending on the phone that you get. And it pales in comparison to all of the investments that they remain making abroad as long as though as they give them. I mean, I can think of Sam Altman, that whole Stargate thing, $500 billion. It's like, yeah, where's the money? Is it happening? As Elon said, they don't even have the money. It's true. It's absolutely ridiculous, the idea that they're going to be spending all of this, but as long as they get a pretty conference and they're sucking up to him, they basically just continue business as usual. Remember the biggest problem.
- [38:57]
Krystal Ball
Do you remember the Foxconn deal and Trump? Yes, Foxconn is a great example. We were, yeah, 100%. Yeah. It's splashy public relations announcements and then doesn't necessarily pan out. Will that be the case with every single example? No. I think there's some anecdotes where we are seeing certain communities get good plants that are coming back, but it's too early to say if that's happening at scale and the indications are not universally positive, to say the very least.
- [39:24]
Emily
Yes, that's right.
- [39:26]
Sagar Enjeti
The reviews and ratings are in and Ice Cube's Big Three is the surprise hit of the summer. This Saturday, 4pm Eastern on CBS, with playoff elimination on the line, the Stars will be flocking to Los Angeles to witness the most physical, fiercest and competitive basketball in the world, Miami's Michael Beasley and Lance Stevenson. Stevenson must win over Houston to make the playoffs, reeling from last week's savage beating at the hands of Chicago's possessed Montrez Harold. Last time these teams met, Miami beat Houston, but they are a dangerous team having their manhood at stake. Then breakout star Dwight Howard of the LA Riot will battle Gary Payton's Boston squad in a do or die match for both teams. Will LA avenge their previous shocking loss to perennial basketball Boston rivals? To survive, six teams are allowed for four spots and all must win. Don't miss the Big Three, the three on three basketball league everyone is talking about. There's no crying in the big three and the no hold spot action starts Saturday at 4pm Eastern, 1pm Pacific followed by two games on Vice starting at 6:30 Eastern.
- [40:24]
Delano Squires
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- [41:26]
Riley Herbs
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- [41:51]
Emily
No purchase necessary. VGW Group void. We're prohibited by law 21 + terms and conditions apply. We're gonna turn now to youth unemployment underemployment. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Very closely watched numbers relying on the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So let's hope that they're right. But even according to the revisions you can see here, this chart quote is a generational jobs crisis brewing. The underemployment rate for young adults in America is up sharply. So if you look after 2010, after the great Recession, this is the story of like that lost generation which really got screwed. Underemployment was up some at one point in 2010. Basically all stayed high all the way to 2015 when the jobs market started becoming a little bit better. It started to trend down very nicely back to 2000 levels until the COVID pandemic of 2020. Massive spike after that, actually even surpassing 2010, it came back down during the whole like tight labor market era of 2021. But you're watching how very quickly, just in the last couple of years it's ticked up and now it's actually back to levels around 2 before that massive explosion in 2010. And something very closely to watch. You gotta ask like why? What exactly is happening? And I think there's a lot of reasons for it. Number one is AI, this is at the high levels of the job market. We're gonna talk about that in a little bit. Number two is what's at the low levels of entry. Yeah, it's funny, it's both at the low and high more. What I meant is it's impacting college graduates for entry level work. So by. But those are already people, they spent a lot of money on their education. They were probably gonna be higher earners. But there's a big question too at the lower levels as to why that's not happening for the non college graduate people who are in trades or in others. Remember in 2021 they had a major explosion. But problem what we've seen right now is with the unemployment figures and others, we're seeing like a softening of underemployment for a lot of those people as well. And so when you combine it together, you, you kind of have potentially another lost generation post Covid where just like in 2010, the elder millennials in particular, those who graduated in ONA, I mean they were just destroyed. There's no even. It's difficult to describe what it was like for a lot of those people. We're not there yet. But there are very troubling signs, and I think it goes to the shakiness of the overall labor market, especially for young people.
- [44:17]
Krystal Ball
Well, yeah, no, and I think that's a good point. And it also speaks to how much longer, so to speak. Some extent. If we look at the uncertainty that Trump says is strategically meant to show the United States has leverage, at a certain point, the uncertainty, the weight of the uncertainty on the economy starts to become, even by his own explanation. So if we're taking him at face value and saying, and I agree with him, I do think the uncertainty creates some leverage to a point.
- [44:43]
Emily
No, for sure.
- [44:43]
Krystal Ball
But then the weight on the economy becomes so significant that, that it has effects, like on unemployment for people who are coming out of college, that you have to look at it and say, even by what your argument is here, that you're bringing jobs back at a certain point. When does the bleeding stop? At a certain point. What is letting the blood just seep into the economy not worth what you're talking about anymore? At what point is the net cost, by your argument?
- [45:13]
Emily
Totally. And this was actually really driven home at the technological level and especially with the. The general breaking of the American dream by this story. It's an amazing story. It's been gone viral for a number of reasons. Put B2 up here on the screen. And the headline here is, quote, Goodbye $165,000 tech jobs. Student coders seek work at Chipotle.
- [45:33]
Krystal Ball
Quote.
- [45:34]
Emily
As companies like Amazon and Microsoft lay off workers and embrace AI coding tools, computer science graduates say they are struggling to land tech jobs. I would add H1B into this, by the way, because we talked previously, we did a segment here on the show about how Microsoft fired a bunch of workers and then applied for a bunch of H1B visas. But the point is basically this pursuit of cheap labor, AI and then also just a general softening of the overall market means that people like this woman who they profile here in the story are really getting screwed. So, you know, they lead off by basically talking about how this woman, Mansai Mishra, she is 21 years old, she grew up in California, graduated from Purdue with a degree in computer school science, basically did everything right, you know, but, quote, after a year of job hunting for tech jobs and internships, she graduated in May without any job offer. The only company that even called me for an interview, she said, was Chipotle. Since the early 2010s, you know, they've talked about kind of the booms of how it was so awesome in 2014, 2015 to go work at Google and Facebook with all this free stuff and healthcares, et cetera. But a lot of these AI programming tools basically have eliminated all of the original scut work that people, people like this were put into the pipeline for. And I'm not denigrating it because Scott work is important. I did a lot of Scott work after I graduated. That's what you do because you do it so that you're around, you do it, you do these basic menial tasks while you learn bigger skills and you get promoted up into the company. But at the beginning they're like, well, we have everybody who has all the higher level skills already. We don't need to put any more people into the pipeline or pay them. We can just use our AI tools to basically eliminate 10 to 15, 15% of our payroll. And that's basically what's happening. They even point actually to a survey more recently. State schools, Maryland, Texas, Washington, these are decent colleges as well as private universities. Cornell and Stanford. Many tech graduates, computer science graduates, said that they had applied to hundreds and in several cases thousands of tech jobs at companies, nonprofits and at government agencies. All of them were given coding assistance assignments. Many of these other things, even with these month long jobs quests, the vast majority of them, they either ended up ghosted, they didn't end up being hired. I actually did warn about this a few months ago after Liberation Day in April because I had heard for a lot of those people who are graduating in May that people were pulling their offers. This was like, sorry, we can't do it. The stock market is down, we just, we're not, we can't make any major commitments now. The summer is coming to an end, people are about to start going back to school and that next month or two. And if you think like that's devastating, you know, for people who graduated, they even say here that one individual who graduated in 2023 had applied for 5762 tech jobs. Diligence resulted in 13 job interviews and no full time offers. I mean that is devastating. Later on, quote, he applied for a job at McDonald's to help cover expenses, was rejected for his lack of experience, has moved back to Shorewood, Oregon and is now receiving unemployment benefits from previous. I mean that's, that's, that's terrible, right? Yeah. This is exactly the story from 09. I remember hearing it, is reading about it of people who graduate again, did everything right. There's even a lot of stories about the law school class of 2009.
- [48:52]
Krystal Ball
I'm just going to say they.
- [48:53]
Emily
They had it grad school and law school. They went in expecting to make $175,000 or whatever in 2008. Money. They were going to be bawling, like, when they graduated. They had offers at the banks or the major corporate law firms. By the time they were out, they were like, you're done. You have nothing. I have. A lot of people had to move home. Some of them, it ended up working out okay, but it just created, like, mass chaos and, of course, debt, you know, for a lot of these people. So, look, the point, I think, in all of this is that it's at both levels of the economy, but if it starts getting so dicey at the higher level of labor, that is, again, these are people saddled so statistically with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, no promise to pay it off. And then you wonder why Zoron is happening or any of these other political effects of what youth unemployment look like in our economy. I just thought it was a really sad story when you look at it broadly.
- [49:46]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, it is. And I think those parallels are really important to point out. So I have this other headline. I should have added it to the rundown, but this is from last month. This is unfortunate. The headline here is Gen Z men with college degrees now have the same unemployment unemployment rate as non grads. A sign that the higher education payoff is debt. Well, we've had plenty of those signs over the years. But this is. I mean, that's not just a sign. That's your example that the higher education payoff is dead. It's not just a sign that it's going to happen. It's clearly the indication that it has happened. And so you then have this massive debt hangover. We saw it with millennials after the Great Recession. That lasts into your 30s and 40s student loan debt. You're not able to pay it off because you're not making the money that you thought you would make when you took out the loans. And those jobs just don't exist. And so millennials, it looked like there was a trend of Gen Z getting married, potentially buying houses earlier after the pandemic. And actually, what we could end up seeing from this is something similar to millennials, where they were getting married later than they said they wanted to, having children later than they said they wanted to. And all of this is just to say we aren't only looking at costs on the economy. We're also looking at people's lives and happiness. And that's. It's not just numbers on a page or on the screen. There are all kinds of cultural effects that come on with this that people remember vividly from the recession. And so if, you know, if that's what we're looking at, and there's some really troubling signs, we kind of have already run the play.
- [51:21]
Emily
I think it's really devastating. The AI part of it, it has been overstated about mass job loss. But the lot layoffs are here and we knew part of that was going to happen. Let's put B4, for example, on the screen. So this is about AI driven, AI driven layoffs, shrinking the job market specifically for recent graduates. So what they say, as I have said here, these entry level roles are being harmed. Companies are automating tasks traditionally handled by the most junior staff. And at the same time, the broader job market is slowing rising employment with recent graduates and with young tech workers. And you know, even if you look at some of the Federal Reserve data, so there was some more recently data, I think it was from the Federal Reserve bank of Atlanta. And what they showed in the Federal Reserve bank of Atlanta was a similar kind of softening of the overall job market. I'm trying to look specifically at the unemployment, unemployment rate. But what they showed was that this software engineering and computer science degree in particular saw major changes just over the last couple of years. And it just makes it again where I've seen for examples I'm trying to think about, I talked about one somebody who I know who works in consulting. And they were like, well, when I came into consulting, he's like 10 years into his career now, but he's like, my initial job was just no note taking and arranging minutes and all these other things. It was, it sucks, but it's like that's how you start your climb up the ladder. He's like, we don't even need somebody to do that anymore. We just have Microsoft Teams which has the OpenAI ChatGPT AI function or whatever built into it. It automates everything. It does summaries. And so we're just not giving offers to nearly the same number of people. Well, that sucks for a lot of people, similarly, especially when they quote, did every everything right. And then they just get smacked, you know, initially by this mass social change. And I can definitely think at the white collar level is where we're gonna see the most impact in law, in consulting, in technology. But don't make a mistake to say that it's not coming for blue collar workers as well. Like if you're a tradesman with a house skill, that's gonna be one thing. But everyone talks about the McDonald's kiosks, more automation, all those things. It just reduces the overall headcount that a lot of people need. Or it just means that the type of job you're going to get is not necessarily the one that is going to pay very much in the future or give you any upward mobility or advancement.
- [53:40]
Krystal Ball
Well, and trade shops also support admin roles that are going to be hit by AI as well. So I mean, it's. Yeah, that's, that's significant and underscores to me the incredible urgency of having our pipeline from high school to college or to the job market is probably a better way to put it. Adapt. And I don't know, Sagar. I mean, it's like we're still, it seems like we're still on autopilot and still doing the same thing over and over again. When, you know, when you look at the consulting example, do I think it's probably better that a lot of people aren't going to be at McKinsey?
- [54:16]
Emily
Yeah, that's so funny that I do look, but it's real easy for me to say sitting here. Of course, it's not so easy to say to somebody who graduated with an expectation of actually getting a job.
- [54:24]
Krystal Ball
And where else do they go?
- [54:25]
Emily
Yeah, exactly. Where else are you going to go?
- [54:26]
Krystal Ball
Because what just happened is the bottom rung, and this is slightly different than the recession, the bottom rung of the ladder was kicked out and you have no way to get to the middle rung, let alone to the top rung. So what do you do? I mean, seriously, what do you do? You know, we're right now, it seems like just continuing on the autopilot default of sending people through this normal college to white collar job pipeline that it's changed so much that it's. The rote reflex is outdated.
- [55:01]
Emily
Yeah, I totally agree. Okay, why don't we move on to D.C. let's see what's going on.
- [55:04]
Krystal Ball
Let's do it.
- [55:06]
Sagar Enjeti
The reviews and ratings are in and ice Cube's big three is the surprise hit of the summer. This Saturday, 4pm Eastern on CBS. With playoff elimination on the line, the stars will be flocking to Los Angeles to witness the most physical, fiercest and competitive basketball in the world. Miami's Michael Beasley and Lance Stevenson must win over Houston to make the playoffs, reeling from last week's savage beating at the hands of Chicago's possessed Montrez Harold. Last time these teams met, Miami beat Houston. But they are a dangerous team having their manhood at stake. Then breakout star Dwight Howard of the LA Riot will battle Gary Payton's Boston squad in a do or die match for both teams. Will LA avenge their previous shocking look to perennial basketball Boston rivals? To survive, six teams are allowed for four spots and all must win. Don't miss the Big Three, the three on three basketball league everyone is talking about. There's no crying in the Big Three and the no hold spot action starts Saturday at 4pm Eastern, 1pm Pacific, followed by two games on Vice starting at 6:30 Eastern.
- [56:05]
Delano Squires
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- [57:07]
Riley Herbs
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- [57:33]
Emily
VGW Group void we're prohibited by law 21 + terms and conditions.
- [57:38]
Krystal Ball
This morning videos are rolling in of law enforcement taking to the streets of Segregate this Georgetown. So if you've been here to dc, you know Georgetown as one of the more upscale neighborhoods, although it certainly had its problems, smashing grabs and all of that during the pandemic. So joining us to discuss all of this is Delano Squires. He is a research fellow over at the Heritage foundation, but also somebody who has spent, unlike many considerations, conservatives who are now frothing at the mouth to talk about all of this and people on the left as well. We're going to get into that. Delano has put in a lot of time actually working in dc. So Delano, first of all, thank you for coming. And secondly, just tell people, give them a little background on your career working for DC before you ended up at Heritage.
- [58:21]
Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, so I worked in D.C. d.C. Government for about 15 years starting in 2007. Always sort of in a public face arena for most of that. I manage a technology program called Connect DC where we help low income residents get access to technology. So that means I spent a lot of time in public housing. I've been to D.C. jail at least four times talking to guys who as they were ready to transition back into the community, you know, doing a lot of stuff with senior citizens, with K12 students. And then the last year I was in the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which was a newly created office in the city. I think this was around 2020, 2021. Obviously, you know, with everything around George Floyd and BLM riots, the city wanted to approach gun violence from sort of a public health perspective. And they pulled together people from all across district agencies. So I was there again, 2021 into 2022, interfacing with residents, as they would call and complain about shootings and violence in neighborhoods.
- [59:26]
Krystal Ball
That was during the spike in DC.
- [59:27]
Ryan Seacrest
Yes. Yes. One gentleman sent 10 videos from his security camera to the city capturing shootings in his neighborhood. I figured he lived in a house that cost at least $750,000.
- [59:41]
Emily
Right.
- [59:41]
Ryan Seacrest
So there were frustrations there from residents all across the city, you know, about shootings and gun violence. So it really showed me the difference between what the activist class says, you know, remember when they were on the defund the police train and what residents sometimes in the poorest parts of the city were saying, which is, we want more police on the streets.
- [60:01]
Emily
Yeah. And I wanna focus specifically on that actually, because there's quite a bit of armchair quarterbacking going on and even, frankly, even probably from us. Right. I've lived in D.C. for 15 years. I lived in, you know, went to college in Foggy Bottom, which is, you know, where the State Department is. And Northwest Washington never lived really outside of that, which traditionally has always been college of the home of lesser crime. Although it did get quite a bit worse over like a 10 year period. So I'm curious because at the end of the day that doesn't matter. It really matters for the permanent Residents and particularly people in the poor areas. So I'm curious before we even get to some of the media reaction, for your reaction to the way, first, the Trump administration's deployment, the conception behind it, and then how you have seen it played out. Now, so far, we've only had one day, but there's been a lot of show of force, right? Yes. So what do you think so far?
- [60:52]
Ryan Seacrest
Yes, definitely not. And I'll say this. Not only did I live in DC for 15 years.
- [60:55]
Emily
Years.
- [60:55]
Ryan Seacrest
But work in DC for 15 years. I lived in DC for 5 years in Northeast DC in Ward 7 with my wife and our kids. So let me put my cards on the table. I was in favor of Operation Legend in the first Trump term. That married.
- [61:11]
Emily
Explain what that is.
- [61:12]
Ryan Seacrest
Federal resources. So atf, doj, dea, and took those resources into a handful of cities. I think it was eight cities across the the country to address violent street crime. I supported that. In fact, I said if I was advising the President, I would talk about that five times as much as the First Step Act.
- [61:32]
Emily
Okay.
- [61:32]
Ryan Seacrest
So I'm not opposed to sort of federal involvement in addressing local crime. Generally speaking. I think the takeover, the fact that it was sort of precipitated by, obviously, the incident involving the Doge staffer, to me, feels somewhat disjointed because it's not that, oh, There have been 45 minors under the age of 18 who've been shot and killed in D.C. over the last two years. We're marshaling federal resources to address that. Yeah, it's been, I think, a lot of the complaints, oftentimes for people who don't actually live in the city, that have been driving the narrative, that sort of rubs me the wrong way. But, I mean, if it leads to better results for the residents and for people who work in the city and for people who visit the city, then I'm all for it. The show of force. And again, I've seen a few videos, you know, ATF agents walking around Georgetown.
- [62:28]
Emily
Okay.
- [62:29]
Ryan Seacrest
I mean.
- [62:29]
Emily
Or the National Mall. This is hard to explain because for most people on television or what, you know, like House of Cards, they're like, oh, it's the National Mall. I'm like, nobody who lives? It's like Times Square. Nobody lives. I haven't been there in five years. Okay. I have no reason to go.
- [62:44]
Krystal Ball
What are you doing?
- [62:44]
Emily
I've been down there. Okay. All right. Other than exercise, like, there's no reason to go down there. It's a place for tourists and for visitors. That's fine. Hey, they need to be safe as well. But there is no crime there either. Okay. And there hasn't been for many years, generally speaking.
- [62:57]
Ryan Seacrest
And I think that's what people, a lot of people don't. Don't think about when they think about D.C. they think about the Mall and the Capitol and the White House and the Mint. But this is a city of 700,000 people and eight wards, you know, spread out across four different quadrants. And the violent crime tends to be clustered in a handful of neighborhoods, particularly the homicides and the shootings.
- [63:16]
Emily
Yes.
- [63:16]
Ryan Seacrest
60% happened, you know, east of the Anacostia river in Ward 7 and Ward 8, the poorest parts of the city, the most. The most disproportionately black parts of the city. And other parts of the city, again, you may have certainly assaults, robbery, carjacking, that sort of spread out a little bit more, but it's not the same as what you get sort of east of the river. So if the federal resources were being used to address crime in the highest crime parts of D.C. i think that would be something different. And in fact, two years ago, council member Treyon White, who represents Ward 8 once again, once again called for the National Guard in August. I think that request was ultimately declined. But it's not to say that there aren't city leaders who have brought this issue up. But obviously, what you hear from the left is that, well, crime, violent crime, is on a, you know, steep decline. And while that may be the case, even including homicides and shootings, the question is, okay, where are we starting from?
- [64:18]
Emily
Yeah.
- [64:18]
Ryan Seacrest
Like, I grew up in New York. In 19, call it 92, there were 2,500 murders in New York.
- [64:24]
Krystal Ball
Yeah.
- [64:24]
Ryan Seacrest
Now they're about, in a given year, 375 to 420, which obviously is a steep decline from the 19th, 1990s. But it's still. You're talking about concentrated areas where that is part of the local rhythm, like the everyday rhythm of life is hearing gunshots and knowing somebody, including children, who get shot and killed in the streets.
- [64:49]
Krystal Ball
Well, that's exactly what I want to focus on, because the Washington Post before this was hyperpolarized because Trump took it on, did a couple months ago, a sweeping investigation into the spirit spike in truancy. And it's significant. I mean, it's still not back down below pandemic levels. It was already high before the pandemic. Huge problem. We've seen the, like, quote, teen takeovers of Navy Yard three, four times just in the last couple of months, where if people haven't if you're not a local, you probably haven't seen the footage or the images from it, but it's literally hundreds of teenagers who go into, like, the lobbies of apartment buildings that were shooting Roman candles at the windows during the Fourth of July, but at actually, like, creating a situation where the cops could not control the seat, the streets, because they were totally overrun, basically. So that to me, I look at the truancy, I look at what Donald Trump is doing with the show of force. Delano, it's what you were saying. What is going to address the kind of root cause? So basically, my question for you is I actually think the show of force can probably do something. I think pushing the Metropolitan Police Department here to do something probably will make them better and will force them to finally confront some of their own failures. The statistics are being debated right now. There's a police commander who was suspended. This is C4. We can put it on the screen for cooking the books. The police union says the books are being cooked. It's hard to know exactly what the numbers are. But all that to say is there. I mean, it seems like there's just a lot more that the Trump administration could be doing that's not sending people in neck gaiters and bulletproof vests onto the National Mall.
- [66:29]
Ryan Seacrest
And let me say this because I want to be fair to the Bowser administration.
- [66:34]
Emily
Right.
- [66:36]
Ryan Seacrest
Mayor Bowser, to her credit, and I think she's on her third term now. To her credit, is not Bill de Blasio. I don't think she uttered the words defund the police one time in 2020. Now, I will be critical in this sense. I think she caved to the BLM activists by making Black Lives Matter Plaza, which I saw as somewhat of a troll for president, totally towards President Trump in 2020. And they hate her anyway. Right. Partly because she is pro police. So I think the city has tried to do a lot to address gun violence and again, spent millions of dollars in resources to try to bring these numbers down. And they have come down. But from my perspective, and just given the things that I research in terms of, you know, family structure, the stuff about truancy and chronic absenteeism, while an issue nationwide, when you have schools, high schools in D.C. where the chronic absenteeism, the truancy rate is like 90%, it's insane. That is first and foremost a problem with the family.
- [67:37]
Emily
Right? Yeah.
- [67:38]
Ryan Seacrest
And part of the issue, and I addressed this, and I would bring this up periodically, even when I was in the city, is like okay, we have 12, 13, 14, 15 year olds carjacking people, shooting people. But the first adults that come up for an accountability check are the mayor, the police chief, and, you know, the school superintendent. That is completely out of order. Right. So what I would love to hear an elected official say is something to the effect that, look, we're doing everything we can to address crime, but. But it is not our responsibility to parent your children. That's your job. Because if you can't control them, how would you expect me to control them? They live in your house, they're under your rules. I would hope at some point some mayor somewhere, some police chief somewhere would say something to that effect and galvanize the community to take responsibility for their children, our children, in ways that help, help address some of these issues. Because it can't just be root causes being a euphemism for more spending on the library, 24 hour rec center, you know, just keeping kids busy 24, 7. Which again, look, I know what it's like.
- [68:49]
Emily
Yeah, not a horrible thing, but not gonna solve the problem.
- [68:52]
Ryan Seacrest
But that's, that is we. Let me say it this way, we do not apply that same framework when it's other types of crimes. I've never heard a Democrat or progressive say, man, you know, if only those, you know, Klan members had more jobs and economic opportunity in 1940s, maybe they wouldn't have terrorized black neighborhoods. No, nobody says that. They only do it when it comes to urban crime and when it comes to low income black populations. And I believe people have more agency than that. But they have to be called up and activated to do what needs to be done.
- [69:26]
Emily
Well, at the same time. And see, I appreciate this. This is actually more of a nuanced conversation. We're not sitting here fluffing the Trump administration. We're like, yeah, there's some major issues happening, but, you know, we're not gonna sit here and gaslight everybody and say there's no problem. But that's unfortunately what a lot of the media has done on this. So here we have msnbc, Simone Sanders, let's take a listen. We'll get your reaction that it is.
- [69:45]
H
Perceived violence amplified by some actual real acts of violence. But the way I've heard DC Being described this morning is like, it a city under siege, like it's a dangerous place. Clutching your pearls, you gotta keep your bag under your dress when you leave the house. And that's just not true. What we are talking about though, is these instances of juvenile crime. But my concern is that the president is using instances of juvenile crime in the city of Washington, D.C. as a pretext for what I would describe as his authoritarian overreach. When you walk down the streets of Georgetown, you don't see a police officer on every corner, but you don't feel unsafe. So what is it about talking about places like Southeast D.C. right. Ward 8, if you will, that people say, well, we need more officers to make us safe. I think we have to rethink what safety means in America.
- [70:36]
Emily
All right, so this is why the pretext of this matters. Right? So she said, when you walk down the streets of Georgetown, again, the richest neighborhood, probably statistically the richest neighborhood in all of Washington, D.C. you don't see a cop on every corner. Now, apparently you do, because the Trump administration, they don't need to be there. There's nothing going on. But that is a level of not just like paternalism, but also of denial, which just completely absconds the entire problem. Right.
- [71:03]
Ryan Seacrest
And my frustration when I see that is these are the same people that claim that they speak for the black community right? Now, again, most of the homicides, I mean, when I worked in the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, every morning we would start with a call from the assistant police chief going through the contact shooting, the last, you know, last 24 or 72 hours, if you're coming off a weekend every. I mean, 99% of the time, young, black male, Young black male, young black male. But when Simone Sanders and Roland Martin and other people in sort of the aristocracy, right, the sort of black progressive elites, when they talk, they are only interested in mobilizing federal resources. If you are investigating, you know, what you think is a noose in a NASCAR garage with Bubba Walls Wallace, if you're investigating Jussie Smollett, if Joe Biden is saying that the greatest threat to America is white domestic terrorism, then they'll say we need the federal government to marshal all of its resources to address these problems. So they are more concerned with fake hate crimes than real street crimes. And the reason is because for the left and the right, the primary role that the black community plays within sort of the. The criminal justice ecosystem is often victims of a racist system and not victims of violent crime. And that's why people like Simone Sanders can say with a straight face, it's not that bad. And why are there more police in Southeast than there are in Georgetown? Well, that's where the shootings occur. That is where the shootings occur. So when I see that type of thing, it frustrates me deeply. I'll give you a quick story. When I was still in D.C. there was an activist, he went by the name C. Webb, who had been tracking homicides just in his neighborhood over by the convention center, right since the 1990s. He had a brick wall full of names and faces of guys who had been shot and killed just in that sort of two block radius. And he told me part of the reason he does it is because he mentors some of these guys children and these are some of the only photos and videos that they've ever seen. Scene of their father. So he had been doing it 20 plus years. So when I hear again these sort of, you know, pundits trying to sweep these issues under the rug, it frustrates me deeply.
- [73:21]
Emily
Well then let's talk about this 30 year. So this is a new talking point. D.C. violent crime is at a 30 year low. Now, first of all, as you just said, the police commanders are investigation for juke and the stats. So who knows whether that's even true. But at the context that you've laid out, we still have a lot of murders. Compared to New York, I believe it's the highest in the entire United or one of the highest among US Cities at a per capita basis. And even then, just focusing on murders does not address quality of life crime. I've always talked about this with San Francisco. San Francisco doesn't have a ton of murders. Go visit. It's not nice. Why is it not nice? Car crime, property theft, heroin, drug addiction, everywhere. So just contextualize, I think, what it means for the D.C. resident and for others for what the problem is at a crime level, at a quality of life level. And then what does a solution actually look like? Because look, the show of force and the activists and all that, that's going to happen no matter what. But people here, if you actually want to know what you could do about it, what do you think?
- [74:23]
Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, I mean, I think you raise a good point. Right. The quality of life stuff is separate and related, but separate from the violent crime. You know, as you said, I mean, they're porch pirates. So every, if you go on ring in the community, it's like, okay, another package is stolen, it's the carjackings, right? It's the assaults. Sometimes it's just the intimidation, it's the homelessness, it's the vagrancy. These are things that frustrate people and these are things that drive people away and make them move to Virginia or Maryland. I think addressing each of the issues, you know, sort of comprehensively Makes sense. But each of them has their own set of root causes. Again with the youth crime, parents have to be held to account. I'm not saying that they have to be arrested, but I mean, a mayor or a police chief can at least start by talking about the importance of family as it relates to addressing this particular issue. Some of the other stuff, I might be more radical than most.
- [75:22]
Emily
That's fine, lay it out.
- [75:24]
Ryan Seacrest
I have and certain ideas, I only talk about my wife. I'm like, look, I would be open to at least putting the idea on the table of rounding up known gang members and saying, look, guys, if you guys are hell bent on hurting each other, we'll go somewhere else where you can do that. You can sign the way, you can have whatever level of force you all agree to, we can have it out, but we're not going to allow you to terrorize this neighborhood where 3 year olds and toddlers and senior citizens are the ones who get caught in a crossfire because you guys one have no respect for yourself.
- [76:04]
Emily
I mean, you're talking about the Wire. This is season three of the Wire.
- [76:07]
Krystal Ball
It's season now in Anacostia.
- [76:08]
Sagar Enjeti
Right.
- [76:09]
Ryan Seacrest
So I would be open to that.
- [76:11]
Emily
Right.
- [76:11]
Ryan Seacrest
Might not pass a legal muster, but I'd at least be open to, to the idea. And I think again, I'm fine with the zero tolerance policy for vagrancy and some of these other quality of life crimes. I know a lot of people don't like that, but I think law abiding, taxpaying citizens have a right to live in neighborhoods that are clean and orderly. And getting there is not always going to feel comfortable. Like I saw one of the videos that was circling yesterday. You know, you had some federal agents look like they're walking through an alley. They can come up on, you know, a group of might have been two or three young black men and you know, hey guys, you have your id now, most people don't carry ID when they're, you know, on the porch. It was a very respectful interaction. You know, the federal officer was basically explaining what this initiative was, but I've seen many that aren't nearly as respectful. Yeah, and that seems to be exactly. This is where the nuance comes in. And part of my, my concern is that you have conservatives talking about life in blue cities the way liberals talk about life in the deep South.
- [77:15]
Emily
I think that's very smart. Right.
- [77:17]
Ryan Seacrest
And what it does is it conditions not just a sense of fear, which I felt palpably when I was driving my family from D.C. to Texas through Mississippi and saying, oh my gosh, what if I get stopped in the sun downtown that had been conditioned in me? I grew up in New York. I don't know anything about Mississippi.
- [77:31]
Emily
Yeah.
- [77:32]
Ryan Seacrest
But I don't want families who are coming here from Iowa or Wisconsin to think as soon as I step off the Greyhound or the Amtrak, then I'm gonna get mugged and murdered.
- [77:41]
Emily
Greyhound.
- [77:41]
Sagar Enjeti
That might happen.
- [77:42]
Krystal Ball
Well, yeah, I'm the Greyhound. Yeah.
- [77:45]
Ryan Seacrest
But it's not just the fear that it conditions, but it makes it easier to say, these are not real Americans like us.
- [77:52]
Emily
I understand.
- [77:53]
Ryan Seacrest
And we're willing to do whatever it takes to sort of make this problem go away.
- [77:58]
Emily
Yeah.
- [77:59]
Krystal Ball
And so this is my last question because one of the things that Simone's Sanders gets at is the age old debate between the sort of presence of law enforcement and whether or not crime is going to go down because you have more cops in the street with stop and frisk or whatever it is, broken windows, all of these. I mean, the progressive left basically tried their experiment as backlash to those policies in San Francisco and Oakland, and the experiment has been a failure to the point where even its own proponents have walked back. Muriel Bowser here in D.C. gave in to a lot of progressing political policing policy ideas and walked some of them back. She's even walking back the sanctuary city status now as well, to the extent that she kind of can. So is there, though a risk, I mean, just steel Manning the way that we, and probably all three of us think about this, is there a risk that a militarized police force, which a lot of like libertarian leaning conservatives already don't like, is there a risk that that makes the problem worse in any way? Or is it, is it only going to, from your perspective. Perspective help?
- [79:00]
Ryan Seacrest
I don't see it making the problem worse. That doesn't mean that it'll necessarily help. Again, one of the things I liked about Operation Legend again back in the first Trump term is that they were using it wasn't just to show a force on the streets. It was the intelligence, it was the prosecution that was getting not just bad guys, but murderers off the street. So if federal resources were used sort of to help in investigations, closing cases, I think that's a lot different than just the show of force and having agents on the street, particularly if they're just walking around with their hands in their pockets, you know, in Georgetown or Navy Yard. So I don't think it'll necessarily make it worse. That doesn't mean it'll make it better. One of the things that I've often said is like, look, people like Simone Sanders and you know, other folks on the left are very much pro puppies. They either live in gated communities. Right. Or they have security guards or they pay for private security. The only people who I legitimately believe are open to the police going away are guys who are in the streets. So whether you're street gang organized crime or you're related to someone or friends with someone who handles their own business in the streets, everybody else from noise complaints complaints, if a homeless person is sitting on your front porch, 911 can you. So I don't believe this notion that they don't think that police matter. It takes more than just police on the streets because I mean, criminals are not smart in the sense that they're engaging in dangerous activities, but they're smart enough to know, okay, we know the Police surge between 3pm and 7pm when the sun goes down, they go home, we come out and we, we terrorize the streets. So I think a lot of it is about the coordination. And when I was in D.C. they would say this frequently that D.C. is resource rich but coordination poor.
- [80:52]
Emily
Yeah.
- [80:53]
Ryan Seacrest
When you add the federal layer on top of that, that could make the problem worse in that no one knows exactly what it is that they're supposed to be doing. But I think there's a potential to make it better if again, those federal resources, the advanced technology, more prosecution can help close cases and bring some level of closure to victims and their families.
- [81:14]
Emily
Well, I really appreciate joining us, man. I really learned a lot and I hope the audience found it helpful. So thank you for joining us. We appreciate it.
- [81:19]
Ryan Seacrest
Thank you.
- [81:32]
Sagar Enjeti
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Emily
A woohoo? A hand clapper?
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Krystal Ball
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