3617 - Trump Effectively Threatens to Nuke Iran; Fixing America's Wage Problem w/ Arindrajit Dube

Summary

The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Episode 3617: Trump Effectively Threatens to Nuke Iran; Fixing America's Wage Problem w/ Arindrajit Dube
Date: April 7, 2026
Host: Emma Vigeland (in for Sam Seder)
Guest: Arindrajit (Aaron) Dube, economist, author of The Wage Standard: What's Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It

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Episode Overview

This episode blends a deeply critical discussion of President Trump’s escalating rhetoric and policies in the Iran conflict with a substantive interview on wage stagnation and labor market reform in America. Emma Vigeland leads the panel in dissecting Trump’s genocidal threats and the political landscape, before hosting Arindrajit Dube to explore why American wages have stagnated and what can be done to fix the system.

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1. Trump’s Escalating Rhetoric: Threats of Genocide Against Iran

Key Segment: [00:17] – [24:39]

Core Themes

• Trump’s Threat to Nuke Iran:
  Trump’s ominous Truth Social post declaring, “A whole civilization will die tonight if Iran doesn’t surrender,” is dissected as both a literal threat of nuclear/total war and a chilling display of ultranationalist rhetoric.

  • Quote:
    “A whole civilization will die tonight… I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” – Trump’s post, read by Emma [00:40]
  • Emma:
    “He bookends that with a blessing to the people of Iran after opening with saying their whole civilization will die tonight… We’re trying to liberate the Iranian girls from the repressive religious regime by bombing them and killing them.” [01:50]

• Commentary on Genocidal Logic & Social Darwinism:
  The hosts argue Trump’s civilizational war narrative is “Nazi stuff, ultra nationalism, Christian nationalism,” and liken the U.S. and Israel to imperial aggressors, not liberators.

  • “These are Darwinists, social Darwinists… They don’t believe in collaboration, they believe in dominance.” – Emma [03:27]
  • “We are the bad guys.” – Emma [09:14]
  • “This is a Fourth Reich situation.” – Panelist [11:20]

• Historical Context & Blame:
  The conversation reframes the Iran conflict with reminders of the U.S.’s disastrous interventions (1953 coup, support of the Shah) and enduring Orientalism and double standards in foreign policy.

  • “The Iranian government is in place because of blowback from United States policy in the 1950s.” – Emma [12:15]

• Military Escalation and Budget Priorities:
  Critique of Trump’s budget prioritizing the Pentagon at the expense of everything else.

  • “A terrorist nation. The Pentagon is a big terror cell.” – Panelist [14:16]

Notable Quotes and Moments

• On U.S. and Israel’s Actions:
  “If there wasn’t this completely racist orientalism… we would be talking about America and Israel right now as the perpetrators, the axis of evil in a world war.” – Emma [09:14]

• On U.S. Lecturing Iran About Women’s Rights:
  “The Republican Party is going to lecture the world on how to treat fucking women. We are the bad guys.” – Panelist [10:38]

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2. Domestic Political Fallout and Media Critique

Key Segment: [19:10] – [24:39]

• Democratic Complicity:
  Criticism of Democratic “Zionist” leadership for failing to act meaningfully against Trump’s war posture.

  • “The party is controlled at the top by Zionists. Corey, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer support this war.” – Panelist [19:10]
  • “There’s a very sizable element in the Democratic Party that is still captured by the Zionist lobby… they are a cancer.” – Emma [20:19]

• Media Distraction Tactics and Misplaced Outrage:
  Commentary about efforts to distract from substantive debate (e.g., by focusing media attention on leftist commentators like Hasan Piker).

  • “It’s the conversation we should be having instead of the bullshit about Hasan.” – Panelist [21:48]

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3. Christian Nationalism and Propaganda

Key Segment: [22:15] – [24:39]

• Hegseth’s Easter Message:
  A soundbite and criticism of the Pentagon Secretary comparing a rescued airman’s story to Jesus’s resurrection, exemplifying Christian nationalist propaganda.

  • “Shot down on a Friday, Good Friday… rescued on Sunday. Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday… Reborn.” – Pete Hegseth [22:47]
  • “That is the Secretary of War comparing the rescued airmen to Jesus Christ. But you know it’s the crazy Iranians motivated by religion.” – Emma [23:40]

• Skepticism About the Christian Right’s Opposition:
  “The Christians I know, they’re on Trump’s side and they have been since the assassination attempt in particular.” – Panelist [24:02]

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4. Interview: Arindrajit (Aaron) Dube on Fixing America’s Wage Problem

Key Segment: [30:28] – [58:17]

Overview

Emma interviews economist Arindrajit Dube about his book, "The Wage Standard," which explores why wage growth stagnated in the U.S. since 1980 and how policy choices—not inevitabilities—created this crisis.

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a. The Collapse of the Wage Standard

• Definition and Historical Framing:
  Dube defines the “wage standard”—the expectation that jobs should pay a certain minimum—and describes its postwar expansion and long decline.

  • “Most Americans deserve a raise… and the research shows why they haven’t been getting one for so long. This really began in the 1980s.” – Dube [31:03]
  • “The median wage… grew only by about 25%, while the economy grew by 75% [since 1980].” – Dube [31:15]

• Where Did the Money Go?
  Wealth shifted upward, with managerial and C-suite wages outpacing everyone else; this wasn’t an inevitable result of technology, but of choices.

  • “Wages and productivity actually grew quite similarly in the 1950s–‘70s. It didn’t used to be true that the top just runs away.” – Dube [32:55]

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b. Monopsony Power and Policy Choices

• What is Monopsony?
  Most workers have only 3-4 effective employers in any labor market, giving employers tremendous wage-setting power.

  • “Employers… set their own wage policy… That gives enormous power to firms to set pay unless there are countervailing forces.” – Dube [34:08]

• Breakdown of Worker Leverage:
  The decline of unions and policy shifts (like the failure to update the minimum wage) significantly weakened worker bargaining power.

  • “A third of American private workforce used to be union members... now it’s barely over 5%.” – Dube [34:53]
  • “Minimum wage… stopped increasing for extended periods of time starting in the 80s. That really took a hit on lower wages.” – Dube [35:26]

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c. Immigration and Wage Myths

• Debunking Right-Wing Wage Arguments:
  Research shows that removing immigrant workers does not boost American citizens’ wages; the problem is structural and policy-driven.
  • “We have some choices… we can make the market work better and regulate it better… even in the context of immigrants being present.” – Dube [36:58]

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d. When Wages Grew—and Why They Stopped

• Boom Years and the Importance of Full Employment:
  Full employment policies in tight labor markets benefited low- and middle-income workers (e.g., late 1990s, post-pandemic years).

  • “Seven years of tight labor markets were responsible for almost all the pay growth in the middle and bottom since 1979.” – Dube [38:40]

• Fed’s Role—Mistaken Fear of Inflation:
  Central banking orthodoxy led to unnecessarily high unemployment and suppressed wage growth for decades.

  • “We’ve spent too much time in slack labor markets, and that’s taken a bite out of working people’s paychecks.” – Dube [41:29]

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e. Rethinking the Minimum Wage

• Evidence on Raising the Minimum Wage:
  Decades of “natural experiments” (some states raise the minimum, others don’t) show wage gains without job loss.
  • “Minimum wages have been highly effective in raising bottom pay without the worrying job losses we’ve heard so much about.” – Dube [46:34]

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f. Unionization and Sectoral Bargaining

• American Deunionization vs. Other Models:
  Other developed countries maintain wage floors for nearly all jobs using sectoral bargaining or wage boards, even with low union density.

  • “France has 10% union membership but 95% of jobs are covered by those contracts.” – Dube [50:48]

• State-Level Action:
  Minnesota is experimenting with wage boards for nursing homes, setting sector-wide floors irrespective of union membership.

  • “We can do this at the state level… raise pay for those in the middle and bottom.” – Dube [52:35]

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g. The Problem with U.S. Labor Law

• Enterprise-Level Bargaining is Limiting:
  Unionization here happens store-by-store, making sectoral standards rare outside of strong guilds like the Writers Guild.
  • “Every single election only leads to one store being organized… Enterprise-level bargaining is a real anomaly.” – Dube [53:30]

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h. AI and Future Labor Risks

• Cautious Skepticism on AI’s Disruption:
  Dube questions dire warnings about AI; the real challenge is ensuring productivity gains are shared, not monopolized.
  • “We don’t have to simply take this as something that happens to us… It’s so important to have institutions in place that can regulate how AI is used.” – Dube [57:01]
  • “Commissions could set not only sectoral pay, but also how technology is used and adopted.” – Dube [57:40]

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Notable Quotes

• “The job market’s not this well-oiled machine… there’s really an element of choice involved.” – Dube [31:30]
• “It’s a terrible way to set policy… more than a generation without raising the federal minimum wage.” – Dube [43:09]
• “If you actually care about, say, the people that are dying and the destabilizing elements… then perhaps you should reassess which constituency is more representative of an antiwar coalition because it’s always been on the left.” – Emma [18:40]

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5. Closing and Fun Half Transition

Key Segment: [58:28] – [64:50+]
The group teases lighter, irreverent content for the paid “fun half,” jokes about “twerk, sushi and poker with the boys,” and discusses left media feuds, but these are more comedic asides and not central to the political content.

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Episode Takeaways

• Foreign Policy:
  The U.S. approach to Iran, as articulated by Trump’s administration, is roundly condemned as genocidal, imperial, and driven by ultranationalist, Christian nationalist ideology, with complicity from the Democratic establishment.

• Labor and Wages:
  Decades of intentional policy choices gutted wage growth, weakened unions, and increased inequality. Dube’s research advocates for sectoral wage-setting (as practiced in Europe/Australia), robust minimum wage policies, and pro-full employment macro policies.

• Action:
  Many reforms can be enacted at the state level—minimum wage increases, wage boards, sectoral standards—and do not need to wait for federal action.

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Important Timestamps

• 00:40 – Emma reads Trump’s Truth Social nuke threat
• 07:58 – Trump defends war crimes in Iran
• 09:14 – Hosts discuss U.S. as aggressors in the region
• 14:16 – Pentagon called “a big terror cell”
• 22:26 – Pete Hegseth compares rescued pilot to Jesus Christ
• 30:28 – Dube interview begins
• 31:03 – Dube explains the “wage standard”
• 38:04 – When and why wages grew
• 46:34 – Research on minimum wage hikes and job loss myths
• 50:48 – France’s wage floor system explained
• 57:01 – Dube on AI and labor regulation

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Memorable Quotes

• “We are the bad guys.” – Emma [09:14]
• “This is a Fourth Reich situation.” – Panelist [11:22]
• “A terrorist nation. The Pentagon is a big terror cell.” – [14:16]
• “Most Americans deserve a raise.” – Dube [31:03]
• “We don’t have to simply take this as something that happens to us.” – Dube [57:01]

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Summary

This episode forcefully argues that the U.S. is the aggressor in the Iran conflict—both rhetorically and materially—and that America’s wage crisis is the product of deliberate policy and declining worker power. Dube’s interview offers both a hopeful and practical roadmap to reversing wage stagnation through pro-worker, state-level reforms and a rejection of fatalistic economic narratives. Fierce, irreverent, and insightful, the episode is a must-listen (or must-read summary) for those tracking both crisis foreign policy and the ongoing battle for economic justice in America.

Transcript

[A]

You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this [e-mail] and get an extra hour of content daily.

[B]

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.

[A]

It is Tuesday, April 7, 2026. My name is Emma Viglund in for Sam Cedar and this is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Aaron Dube, author of the Wage Standard, what's Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It. Also on the program, Trump's Morning Truth Social says, quote, a whole civilization will die tonight if Iran doesn't surrender, threatening genocide. And yesterday, Trump repeatedly said that God supports his war crimes in Iran. And Hegseth compared the rescue of a US Airman to Jesus Christ's resurrection. Speaking of Hegseth, Democratic Representative Ansari of Arizona pledges to introduce articles of impeachment against him next week. Iran rejects another temporary ceasefire, you know, the ones Israel and the United States continuously violates, demanding a permanent one, plus concessions. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alex Jones of all people say invoke the 25th Amendment on Trump. Europe begins to openly questions its close economic and defense ties to the United States. Israeli airstrikes kill at least 10 Palestinians near a school in Gaza. Dozens more killed in Lebanon. Violence escalating in the West Bank. A Marshall Project analysis finds that ICE has detained 6,200 children in Trump's second term, a tenfold increase from Biden's time. Trump's new budget proposes cutting the TSA workforce by 15%. You know, just being in touch with the mood of the country. Longer lines at airports, please. Graham Platner's campaign apparently already feels Mills is finished in the Senate primary and is turning the focus to the general. And lastly, Representatives Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Jonathan Jackson of Illinois visit Cuba, denouncing Trump's collective punishment of the island. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome to the show, everybody. It is an AM Majority Report Tuesday, or as we say here on the program, it is News Day Tuesday. Sam is out this week. I will be with you this week here to talk about the horrors that we wake up to every day in this escalating war with Iran. So this morning, the president of the United States, the esteemed leader and most powerful person on the planet, tweeted, oh, I'm sorry, truthed on his personal, personal social media platform, a threat to effectively nuke Iran or commit mass murder. Here it Is this is what we all woke up to this morning. We could put this up. A whole civilization will die tonight, he wrote, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have complete and total regime change where different, smarter and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionary wonderful can revolutionarily wonderful can happen. Who knows? So I'll unpack this in a sec. We will find out. Tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world. 47 years of extortion, corruption and death will finally end. God bless the great people of Iran. So he bookends that with a blessing to the people of Iran. After opening with saying that their whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. You know, we're trying to liberate the Iranian girls from the repressive religious regime by bombing them and killing them. Kind of a very similar logic here. This is the guy that was just snubbed for that Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, we saw he blessed the Iranian people at the end after promising to nuke them if they don't agree to his demands. It's hard to joke because of what we're talking about here. I'm praying that this is some sort of posture because Iran is winning this and he feels the only thing that he can do is escalate threats. But we obviously cannot rule out the possibility of the use of a nuclear weapon. And this is exactly why Iran. The hardliners in Iran wanted a nuclear weapon. And Trump killed the elder Ayatollah Khamenei, who was had had a fatwa on the construction of a nuclear weapon, was not interested in pursuing it, and also was in agreement and was abiding by the terms of the JCPOA that Obama negotiated. But the Zionist lobby effectively lobbied against, got their leader of the Democrats in the Senate that opposed it, and got a president in Donald Trump in the first term that scrapped it because diplomacy is a threat to Israel's aims of regional hegemony. The more that the region is in turmoil, the more opportunity Israel sees for expansion. And him talking about this as a civilizational war. This is Nazi stuff, ultra nationalism, white nationalism, Christian nationalism. This is like looking at global conflict and international relations through prisms of hierarchies of race and social structure. These are Darwinists, social Darwinists. They don't believe in the concept of collaboration. They believe in dominance, whether that be in the form of religion, ethnicity, or nation states. This is that ideology distilled. I Saw that. Representative Jim McGovern called this genocidal. That's exactly what this is. And Iran has shown time and time again that they don't believe Trump's social media threats because they know that they are causing great pain to the west right now, particularly European, with their effective closure of the strait. So this is supposedly for the good of the Iranian people, the effective threat to nuke them. This was yesterday at the Easter celebration in the holiday spirit, when Trump was asked about how the United States has been with Israel, been bombing bridges and power stations. This is how he spoke about the Iranian people. Mr. President, how would it not be

[C]

a war crime to strike Iran's bridges and power plants?

[B]

Because they killed 40, 45,000 people in the last month. More than that, could be as much as 60. They kill protesters, they're animals. And we have to stop them. And we can't let them have a nuclear weapon. Very simple. They want a nuclear weapon. They've been trying for a long time. I stopped them with the Obama horrible Iran nuclear deal. I stopped them in a lot of different ways.

[A]

If they had a nuclear weapon right now, this would not be happening. How can you make that case? This is what the most rational response would be. Two nuclear armed powers, Israel and the United States, have lulled Iran into a variety of different negotiations as a way to lull them into a false sense of security so that they can be bombed. Why wouldn't they pursue a nuclear weapon as a deterrent? That's a. I mean, when you're looking at the way that the state would behave rationally, why would they not do so? Why does Israel get to have nukes and Iran doesn't? Because Israel wants to expand and that would be a threat to them. And Iran is the most effective regional threat in that way. We are the bad guys. We are the bad guys. And if there wasn't this completely racist orientalism, the way that we talk about the people of Iran and then also the people of the Middle east, we would be talking about America and Israel right now as the perpetrators, the axis of evil in a world war. Because Israel is now seizing territory in Lebanon, invading different countries. They've already created buffer zones in Syria. They have stolen over half of the land in the Gaza Strip. They are right now stealing Palestinian land in the west bank and they're participating in carpet bombing of Iran.

[D]

We had an entire conversation about how could Hasan Piker ever suggest something like, or say something like, America deserves 9, 11. How do people understand that? What's the context for that? This is the context for that. And Sarah Longwell and people like at the Bulwark don't understand it because they sit down with people like Liz Cheney who in fact do provoke these types of actions against America with this evil foreign policy like the. So let's support Al Qaeda because it's a proxy. We can start a civil war in, in for Russia, right? We could start like a war in the periphery for Russia. Like let's, let's do coups, let's do all this stuff. These people, Trump saying this stuff. But the Dick Cheney's previously, they provoke violence against America because they inflict it on the rest of the world. Everyone understands that in 2026, we bombed a girls school at the start of this fucking thing. We blew up 160 little girls. And we do this supposedly because of how they treat women. Because, yeah, they don't treat women here. The Republican Party is going to lecture the world on how to treat fucking women. We are the bad guys. This is a Fourth Reich situation.

[A]

But when they talk about feminism in that way, it's exactly the more coded language that Trump used earlier about this basically being a war of civilizations. They try to use the fact that the west has the privilege to be cosmopolitan and is at the center of the imperial core and all the wealth that that allows, which means more free artistic expression, more ability for. Even though of course in the United States we do not have very good class mobility. But either way, in the ways that liberalism defines freedom, we have those. And that's not the case in Iran because of the theocratic regime there. But they will naturalize those differences and as a way to make racialized arguments when we know that Iran's government is in place because of blowback from United States policy in the 1950s, the US overthrew, along with the British, the democratically elected leader of Iran, because he dared to question whether or not the Iranian people were being ripped off by BP when they were drilling in Iran. We did a couple, we installed the Shah and then there was a counter revolution which brought this government, put this government in place which has major human rights violations, is oppressive towards women, all of that. But at the very least, the Iranian people are like, well, this isn't some sort of puppet for the west that's going to extract from us. And there are revolutionary elements in Iran right now that could be helped if you wanted to do this in like a soft power US Empire way. But, but, but, but they're too belligerent. They want blood and they want destabilization. That's it.

[D]

They want, I mean, what we're going to see tonight. And remember the first day after this started, when I came in, I said, I'm worried this is going to lead to us lobbing a nuke because there's no chance that we're going to accomplish the objectives because of just the geography here. But even short of a nuke, if tonight what we do is just blow up a whole bunch of their bridges and power stations, it's fucking disgusting. And I, like, never considered myself as somebody who'd, like, leave this country for, like, that reason. It disgusts me to pay taxes to this shit.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

It's so fucking gross.

[A]

And the. The Trump budget wants. He wants a $1.5 trillion budget. He wants to cut from essentially everything except for this massive expansion of the Pentagon budget. It wasn't enough, apparently, for Israel to be our aircraft carrier in the Middle East. Apparently all this country is good for is shipping out weapons of war and death.

[D]

A terrorist nation. The Pentagon is a big terrorist terror cell.

[A]

Yeah. And it's not even like the weaponry that we are producing and giving gobs of money to the defense industry for. For are actually even that effective right now. We're seeing how these cheap drones are making such an impact. And our hundreds of millions of dollars that we pour into one particular surveillance jet. Oh, what do you know? Gone in a second because of some explosion from overhead. Because of the democratization of warfare via drones. It's both an aircraft carrier and a slush fund for Nazis, basically. Yeah. And even, like, via outdated military strategy, let alone the retrograde, racist nationalist views that are held in this administration. Here is Trump at a press conference yesterday. You know, the guy who could. Can't name a Bible passage off the top of his head, even when he isn't filled with dementia and, I don't know, whatever the hell he's taking. The most godly man in America is asked about whether or not God supports this war, and you'll be shocked to know that Trump thinks he does. Thank you very much.

[C]

You've said, glory be to God in this conflict. Do you believe that God supports the

[A]

United States actions in this conflict?

[B]

I do. Because God is good. Because God is good and God wants to see people taken care of. God doesn't like what's happening. I don't like what's happening. Everyone says, I enjoy. I don't enjoy this. I don't enjoy. These two guys don't enjoy it. You know, people say, oh, boy, they're so tough. They don't want, they don't like. I don't like seeing people killed. I've ended eight wars. Nobody's ever done it. The person who won the Nobel Prize came to me and said, you deserve the Nobel Prize. She announced that. When they announced, they said, goes to Maria. She's great person, really a good person. She said, no, no, no, this is ridiculous. They gave me the Nobel Prize. President Trump aimed at eight wars. I could go over every one of them, including India and Pakistan, where the Prime Minister of Pakistan said President Trump saved from 30 to 50 million lives. That makes me much happier than what we're doing right now. That makes me much happier. We have one more to end, by the way.

[A]

To end. And how do you end it? This is where. If you are somebody that got suckered by the so called anti war branding of the Republican Party, please look, or I should say the Trump campaign. I saw Tim Dillon was calling it a scam too. And whatever, whatever is getting that kind of thought out there is fine by me because he did scam everybody. Even though you had to just kind of remember and have a, have a, not a goldfish brain to remember Trump 1.0, if you wanted to understand that, like he had John Bolton in his cabinet, for example. But this is when you, when you're an America Firster and you don't have a view of human rights that is universal, it's one that's based in kind of like isolationism or America first, which can mean anything. It can mean removing our obligations to the rest of the world in terms of like humanism and protecting rights, which I don't think a country that is a global power like the United States should abdicate that responsibility. An America first kind of ideology versus one that's based in universalism, human rights, and that respects that as an ethic. Because when you have somebody like Trump that, that says he's anti war, what he really means is we have a monopoly of force because we are the largest military on the planet by many times over and we can use our lethality to bully people into submission and end wars via slaughter. So if that's your definition of anti war, you win. You got the president that you wanted and the president he was always going to be. But if you actually care about, like say the people that are dying and the destabilizing elements that are going to come from this, then perhaps you should reassess which constituency is more representative of an anti war coalition because it's always been on the left, always on the left, historically Every time. And that's why it's important for the. To make sure that the anti war movement, that constituency is a part of the constituency that elevates the people in power. So they have to listen to us. I mean, and in part, that's why the Democrats lost in 2024, because naturally that's where that constituency should have been and they refused to listen.

[D]

Well, and because the party is controlled at the top by Zionists. Corey Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer support this war. And the question isn't why they haven't done more to stop it, or it's why the Democrats that know what's going on and aren't corrupted by this, whether it's belief in Zionism or belief in the campaign money that the Zionist lobby spends. Why aren't they speaking out against their leadership more? Because this is cataclysmic. And there's a certain type of folk who. It's the same people that were saying Kamala is doing just fine with her pivot to the middle because women are so upset about Roe vs. Wade being overturned that we got this in the bag. There's a certain type of Democrat at the very top that sees things go bad and just thinks, well, this will passively benefit us.

[A]

And you know who that might. That might be as well. And Ryan Graham's been all over. This is Gregory Meeks and Hakeem Jeffries who decided not to bring up the War Powers Resolution prior to the recess, which ends next Monday.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Because they, even though they had all the votes and the no votes on the Democrats had all flipped and said, we're gonna support this. They had every Democrat on board Pl at the very least, Massie and Nancy Mace, who came out publicly, they could have forced this. They didn't want to, but they didn't want to because. We'll play a clip of Josh Gottheimer later talking about how once again, it's just that Trump didn't give the enough details to Congress. There's a very sizable element in the Democratic Party that is still captured by the Zionist lobby that is in favor of this genocidal talk, forthright and war crime and these war crimes, and they are a cancer. And they thought that they could have their cake and eat it too, because it's like that lay down in the grass strategy. If Trump's going to mess up, and obviously he is, this is hurting him politically. But what does this do to the rest of the world? Can we have some sort of opposition party that isn't just thinking about what can we do to maximize our strategy of absolutely standing for nothing by making the world worse and having Trump hurt himself instead of using your political capital to change the narrative proactively. Because there are lives at stake here. It's amazing. There was a poll of like the Iranian diaspora. They're against this now too. There's nobody here domestically that's in favor of this except for like the brain dead MAGA people who are always gonna be on board with whatever Trump does. It's insane.

[D]

It's the conversation we should be having instead of the bullshit about Hasan.

[A]

Oh my God.

[C]

Well, that's exactly why.

[D]

Exactly. It's why they redirected everyone's attention. As Ilhan Omar said, they have hypnotized the world and people again looking in the wrong direction. But it's time that everyone. When people start pointing the finger at you for being against this sort of thing, it's you do not get defensive at all. You point the finger right back at them and go on offense.

[A]

Yep. Lastly, before we go to break, this is just Pete Hegseth with some more Christian nationalism for you.

[E]

One downed airman evaded capture for more than a day, scaling rugged ridges while hunted by the enemy. When he was finally able to activate his emergency transponder, his first message was simple.

[D]

Ain't nothing gonna break.

[E]

Sent a message.

[B]

God is good.

[E]

In that moment of isolation and danger, his faith and fighting spirit shone through. You see. Shot down on a Friday, Good Friday, hidden in a cave, a crevice all of Saturday and rescued on Sunday. Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday.

[D]

ChatGPT write me a pilot.

[E]

Reborn.

[A]

Oh my God.

[E]

All home and accounted for. A nation rejoicing.

[A]

And his chatbot is obsessed with like the frickin sunsets, the vistages, the vistas. No vistas. God. I'm keep. I'm combining vestiges and vistas. The vistas, that's what his chatgpt kind of settings. They know that that's what he's interested in.

[D]

Saw the vestiges of a vista.

[A]

Yeah, that was an amazing sound job Matt. Thank you for the comic relief. But yes, that is the Secretary of War comparing the rescued airmen to Jesus Christ. But you know it's the crazy Iranians motivated by religion. They can't even see reason, those savages.

[D]

Yeah, I know it's crazy. Tucker Carlson is making this play. Good luck to him. About the appealing to Christian sense of reason and like pride in not letting their religion be used in such like blatantly propagandistic ways for war crimes. The Christians I know they're on Trump's side and they have been since the assassination attempt in particular. I don't think Tucker's gonna win on that. I hope he does. I hope he's able to peel away Christians that think like this is disgusting to talk about this way on Easter. I hope that works. I don't think it's going to agree.

[A]

In a moment we will be talking to Aaron Dube about his book where we're going to be discussing called the Wage, what's Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix it. But first a word from some of our sponsors. Diamond in the Rough that's the doctor that you're trying to look for here. Finding a doctor that you that actually feels like finding a doctor you actually like feels like discovering a diamond in the rough. Sure, you want to find in network doctors someone nearby, someone with open time slots, but let's be honest, that's just the start. You also deserve someone who really listens, makes you feel comfortable, explains things clearly, and still gives you a lollipop even though you're a full grown adult. Your diamond in the Rough doctor exists and finding them is easy on zocdoc. Zocdoc is a free app and website that helps you find and book high quality in network doctors so you can find someone you love. We're talking about booking in network appointments with more than 150,000 providers across all 50 states. Whether you're looking for dermatology, dentistry, primary care, eye care or one of the other 200 plus specialties offered on Zocdoc, you can easily search by specialty or symptom to build the care team that's right for you. Want to see a doctor in person? Great. Prefer a video visit? You can do that too. When you're ready you can see their real time availability and click to book instantly. No phone tag, no waiting around. Appointments made through Zocdoc happen fast, typically within just 24 to 72 hours of booking. You can even score some same day appointments. I just two or three weeks ago went to my dentist that I found on Zocdoc. I am a huge fan of his as much as you can love a dentist. Even though dentists are not my favorite thing to do. So some people agree here. But I found him through Zocdoc and he's awesome. I'd like to thank Zocdoc for sponsoring today's episode. Stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to Zocdoc.com majority to find and instantly book a doctor you love today. That's Zocdoc.com Majority Zocdoc.com Majority thanks to Zocdoc for sponsoring this message. We will put a link down below in the video and episode descriptions and at Majority fm. And lastly, did you know? Fast Growing Trees is America's largest and most trusted online nursery with thousands of trees and plants and over 2 million happy customers. They have all the plants your yard or home needs, including fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs and houseplants, all grown with care and guaranteed to arrive healthy. It's like your local nursery, but anywhere you live with more plants than you'll find anywhere else. Whatever space you're looking for, Fast Growing Trees has options for you, for your climate, for space, for your lifestyle. Fast Growing Trees makes it easy to get your dream yard. Just click order Grow. Get healthy, thriving plants delivered to your door and their alive and thrive guarantee promises that your plants arrive happy and healthy. No green thumb required, just quality plants you can count on. Plus get ongoing support from trained plant experts who can help you plan your landscape, choose the right plants and learn how to care for them every step of the way. Fast Growing Trees has been great because I was able to get a really wonderful houseplant still Thriving that is safe for my cats. That works with the light situation where it's located and it's really easy and you don't have to feel overwhelmed and not know what you're looking for. When you go to a store. It's just great because you're supported by the experts on there and you can input all your information and and figure out exactly what works for you. Right now they have great deals on spring planting essentials, up to half off select plants and Our audience gets 20% off your first purchase when using the code Majority at checkout. That's an additional 20% off. Better plants and better growing at fast growingtrees.com using the code majority at checkout fastgrowingtrees.com code majority now's the perfect time to plant. Let's grow together. Use Majority to Save today. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. Link down below in the video and episode descriptions and at Majority fm. Quick break and when we come back we are going to be joined by our guest, Aaron Dube.

[C]

It. Sam.

[A]

We are back and we are joined now by Aaron Dube, Provost, professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, author of the Wage what's Wrong in the Labor Market and how to fix it. Aaron, thanks so much for coming on the show.

[C]

Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

[A]

Of course. So the term, the wage standard, you talk about how the 1980s and 1990s was the period where the wage standard that you write about really eroded. If you could define that for us and just talk about that period in history.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. So let me begin by saying the book has a really simple message, which is that most Americans deserve a raise. And you know, and I think the research really shows us that why they haven't been getting one for so long. And this really began in 1980s. Just to kind of give a sense of this, since 1980, the economy grew by about 75%. Okay. But the median wage, so the wage going to someone in the middle grew only by about 25% and wages at the bottom even less. So. So we have the sense that jobs should at least pay a certain amount. And that's really the core idea of the wage standard, that wages are not natural numbers. The job market's not this well oiled machine that just matches workers and companies. You know, there's really an element of choice involved. And starting in the 80s, a lot of choices were made that ended up costing a lot of workers their pay. And so that's the key idea of the book. But the book is also not just about the doom and gloom, because what I really show is that we know how we can do better, and in some ways we have been doing better, but we have a lot to do.

[A]

And in terms of the lack of growth there and where the wealth kind of went during that period, your book also kind of looks at the difference between managerial and non managerial wage growth. Can you talk about how that dynamic played out?

[C]

Yeah, so wages really started growing apart starting about 1980. And just before we think, well, maybe that's just the nature of capitalism. It always does. That didn't used to be true. Wages and productivity actually grew quite similarly in the post Second World War period of the 50s and 60s and 70s. And wages actually for the bottom and the middle really kind of grew similarly to those at the top. And then we went through, for a variety of reasons, extended period where wages just started going apart. So people at the top, like the CEOs or CFOs just saw enormous pay increases. At the same time, those at the middle and the bottom did not. And these didn't just happen because of sort of inexorable forces beyond our control, like technological change. They really mattered based on choices, including corporate choices, policy choices, and even choices about, as I argued, my own economics profession. But what we really need to pay attention to

[A]

define monopsony power in the labor market. What does it mean, what does it look like and how has it impacted this kind of wage stagnation?

[C]

Yeah, so monopsony is a funny word, but it's basically a simple idea. The employers don't just take the market wage, but rather they have some choices. They set their own wage policy. And that's kind of a central insight about why some of these things happen is that unlike what we sometimes think of in a Econ 101 highly competitive market, if a company chooses to pay, let's say 10% less than some going rate, it's not like everyone quits, quits do fall, but it turns out only by 2% from a 10% reduction. So that just means employers have considerable amount of choice and power. Here's a really interesting fact. Most Americans are in labor markets where there's effectively like three to four employers that are likely to hire them. That gives enormous amount of power to work firms to actually have some choice in setting pay unless there are other countervailing forces. And what started happening in the 80s and 90s is that we really lost a lot of those countervailing forces. And that includes institutions like unions where a third of American private workforce used to be union members. That affected pay not only for those workers, but also for non union workers. Today in the private sector it's barely over 5%. That makes a big difference. We also have policy changes starting in the 80s. Interesting fact, after the Second World War the minimum wage rose fairly regularly, keeping up again with overall economy wide productivity. Starting in the 80s we stopped increasing the minimum wage for extended periods of time. That really took where lower wages really took a hit from basically failure to update the minimum wage. So these are some of the choices that I talk about.

[A]

And it also kind of undercuts some of the right wing arguments right now about immigration, which there have been studies about this as well, where the idea that removing or kind of ethnically cleansing a certain population of lower wage workers is going to elevate the wages of say American citizens. That's not how this like this body of research that in part you analyze or like that's not what the evidence shows.

[C]

Yeah, I mean we have a lot of tools in our toolkit and it's important to understand that we can make the market work better and we can regulate it better. And that can be done in the context of immigrants being present in this country, which we have had, of course, a long tradition of. What it's really important to understand is we have some choices, both at the macro level as well as at the policy, what I call them micro level, as well as the, the middle level, the metal level. And you know, when we are act, when we actually use those toolkits, we've actually done well. And that's been true, consistent with presence of, you know, of immigration in this country.

[A]

When was. We can kind of start maybe from chapter one where you look at some of this. When was the last significant period of wage growth? Because we point to the 80s as the beginning of wage stagnation and the explosion of inequality. But when was the last significant period of wage growth? And what can we learn from that time?

[C]

Yeah, so what's interesting is that actually we've had better wage growth in the last 10 years than we had in the 40 years prior. It's a funny thing to think about because it's also happening in the context of a lot of challenges. And the challenges are that we have had high cost of living increases and we've had, of course, a pandemic. But we actually, after the pandemic, in a very tight labor market, ended up raising pay at the bottom of the distribution. And this is one of the lessons of the book, is that if we choose to pursue full employment policies, we can certainly have better wage outcomes for those at the bottom and the middle of the pay scale. It's really interesting if you look at when wages grew between 1980 and the present day, certainly let's say before the pandemic, between 1979 and 2019, there were only seven years of tight labor market. And that was responsible for almost entirety of the actual pay growth in the middle and the bottom of the distribution. So that sort of highlights how important a full employment policy is. So this is what I say, like in what I think we need to do, we can start with making sure we do ensure that we have plentiful jobs, because that particularly matters for raising pay by increasing worker leverage in the middle and the bottom of the distribution.

[A]

Full employment sounds like something that would make every Fed chair in history have some sort of mental episode over. Can you explain their thinking has been flawed and where your theory of full employment diverges?

[C]

Yeah, so it's really interesting. We, after 1980, we went through an extended period where we had pretty elevated unemployment rate. Unemployment rate was rarely as low as 4% after 1980 than before. So one of the reasons is because after the inflation episode of 1970, the Fed became very wary of reducing unemployment rate. And this was a problem because that actually took a real bite out of the paycheck for working Americans until the late 1990s. And this was a really interesting period because the Fed initially was going to start raising the interest rates very quickly because unemployment rate looked like it was too low. And at that time too was like even under 5%, which is even now. That would just be kind of a good idea. But then they're like, wait, unemployment is falling, but it's not like inflation is going out of control, so maybe we should let it continue. And this was the first time we saw a couple of years, about three, four years of strong wage growth for the bottom and the middle of the pay scale in the late 1990s. And this was some learning happened here, the Fed for the first time. So okay, maybe this is all right, maybe we should allow this. And a similar thing happened in the late 2010s where again there was a lot of concern like unemployment rate is maybe getting too low. But again, there was some learning. So I think that there is of course a balancing act where there is some amount of unemployment. Is it possible that it could be too low? It's possible, but in my mind we've rarely been there. The problem has been largely the opposite. You've spent too much time in slack labor markets and that's really again taken a bite out of working people's paycheck.

[A]

It's also important in analyzing the state of the current economy where you can have really low unemployment, but there can be mass underemployment because we really have like this whole part of our economy that is reliant on part time work, gig work, people taking second jobs to supplement things. I saw that a majority of teachers in this country have second jobs now, let alone the people that maybe are reliant on gig work as their full time profession. It doesn't seem like our traditional metrics have caught up to that reality in the economy that is such a sizable portion.

[C]

So this is one of the things that I talk about in the book, is that the macro policy, like pursuing full employment is a really important part, but it's not going to get you all the way there. We can't simply stop there. And this is exactly the kind of issues that you raised exactly highlight why we need other ways to make sure pay stays. And that includes in the gig economy, for example. And this is where really policy that really actually sets wage floors is so important. The starting point is the minimum wage. Okay, and here it is just really, you know, a telling fact that we have gone for more than a generation, more than a generation without raising the federal minimum wage. That's never happened since the minimum wage was introduced back in 1938. And so this is, you know, a terrible way to set policy. Thankfully, we do have 30 states that have state minimum wages, but that means 20 states, nearly half the country effectively only has 725, which, by the way, is essentially like not having a minimum wage because it's so low that, you know, there's less than 1% of the workforce that is actually paid that amount. So this is a natural starting place. And what I show is that, you know, we can do well to pursue a more robust minimum wage policy. And I can talk more about the evidence of what we know from that.

[A]

Please do.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. So, of course, you know, the first worry that you hear about, and not unreasonably perhaps, is that, well, if you make companies pay a minimum wage, won't they just stop hiring? And that logic kind of makes sense in a simple kind of Econ 101 supply and demand framework. Well, you're raising wage so employers are hiring less. But the reality is that that's not exactly how the labor market works. Because when employers have a lot of monophony power. Here's that funny word again. They're choosing to keep pay low even though they realize that that means a lot of workers are turning over. Right, every month. It may be hard to even fill vacancies, but. But it's still worth it for the maximizing profit, because otherwise you have to raise the wages for everyone. So in that world, when the government comes in that sets the minimum wage, you may not actually kill jobs, you may actually kill vacancies because it becomes easier to attract and retain workers. And that's exactly what we find. So there's a large volume of literature that has really studied this question. Unfortunately, it's actually, ironically, I should say that the dysfunction of our minimum wage setting has been a bonanza for nerds like me who want to study the minimum wage. Because here we have, for example, 30 states that have raised the minimum wage. Twenty states have not, and we've gone for over a generation. Well, you can look to see what happened. Do we actually see jobs really booming in those 20 states that didn't raise minimum wage and jobs just disappearing in the 30 that did? Absolutely not. We find that, in fact, jobs have grown fairly similarly in these two states, including for lower wage workers, even though pay has grown a lot more in the 30 states that have raised it. So in some of my work, for example, you know, I study what happens in one side of the border when the minimum wage rises in one state and not the other, because these are relatively similar areas. So it's like a natural experiment. It's like I kind of went in, you know, in a lab like here I'm going to raise wage here and not there. Let's see what happens. Of course we don't do that in reality, but this approximates that sort of an experiment. And the reality is that these suggest that minimum wages have been highly effective in raising bottom pay without really the worrying job losses that we have heard so much about.

[A]

And of course the role of unions is really important. And you write about that as well. Talk about the deunionization of the country that coincided with this period of wage stagnation and the important role that unions had played and why they were undercut.

[C]

Yeah, so unions played the most critical role in my mind in creating the post second world war wage standard. And what we see is in the late 30s and early 40s we have a huge increase in union density, the share of workforce that are unionized. And that exactly is when inequality fell, really driving wage increase in the middle and the bottom, creating what was called in the early 50s as the treaty of Detroit. So basically this was a labor piece. Major employers like General Motors and worker representatives like the United Autoworker decided to have a agreement that set pay both for union workers, but indirectly also for many others, making sure that there was a path to a middle class for working Americans. And that lasted for a number of decades. But over time union density has fallen a lot. So like I said, it was around a third. About a third of the workforce in the private sector used to be organized, meaning members of unions. And back in the 50s and today it's barely over 5%. And this has been shown to have a huge impact on reducing pay and increasing inequality. It doesn't have to be this way. A lot of our peer countries of other systems and ways, and this is the important thing, sometimes people don't realize this, that what if I told you that not just for those workers, for example in fast food and other lower paying sector, but what about what if I told you most jobs could have a minimum standard, a wage standard? Well, if that sounds like a radical idea, it turns out most of our high income peer countries have some version of that. And in fact we can do this in America as well. A lot of them do it through sectoral Bargaining. So for example, in Sweden at the national level, unions and employers agree on a set of pay standards for different jobs. Now you and your employer could negotiate and pay more than that, but you can't pay any less. So it sets a floor. And this is exactly what we can do in this country as well. And had we done something like that, the fall in union density would not have led to this huge reduction in pay. Because in many countries these standards that are negotiated apply broadly, not just union members, but setting standards throughout the economy.

[A]

Can you give some specific examples about other countries that you think are illustrative when you compare it to the United States?

[C]

Yeah. So for example, in France, France actually has about 10% union membership. That sounds very low, but it turns out 95% of jobs are covered by those contracts. As a result, that puts a floor for pay. Take another country, a different system, Australia. Australia actually sets these kind of wage standards using wage boards, not through collective bargaining. They have collective bargaining as well, but these floors are set by the government. I actually think that's a very interesting system for America to think about because given our really low Union membership, like 5% in private sector, 10% overall, it's going to be difficult to get moved to a sectoral bargaining system in the very near future. But what we can do is to have, for example, an Australia like system where we set wage floors for different types of jobs. Here's the really interesting thing. We're actually starting to see some experiments on that kind of experiments here in this country. For example, in Minnesota, nursing homes have a broad based floor by different types of jobs. So you could be a registered nurse or a DNA. In Minnesota, whether you're in a unionized job or not, you are covered by a wage floor, much like in the Australian context. If we were to take this to scale, and again, it's so important we can do this at the state level. We don't have to worry about the broken Politics in Washington D.C. we can do this today. We could raise pay for those in the middle and the bottom of the distribution and really try to make up for the lost raises over so many decades.

[A]

It's. Is there a way for. I'm just trying to think about the union's perspective on that, like what gets in the way of that here? Is there something that has to do with the strength of unions or the way that dues are structured or the way that the law is that makes that less, like this Minnesota example, more of an anomaly?

[C]

Yeah. So the problem in some ways goes back to Our National Labor Relations act. Because in this country, union organizing happens store by store. Okay, Company by company. For example, Starbucks is a really interesting example. There's been a lot of activism. Workers have been organizing Starbucks stores and you know, many stores are organized, but it's still less than 10% of the workforce. And every single election only leads to one store being organized and they still don't have a collective bargain. That sort of highlights why these enterprise level bargaining, as it's called in the United States, is a real anomaly in some ways compared to many of our peer countries. That makes it very difficult to, to have these sectoral standards. There are some places where the unions are strong. A really interesting example is the Writers Guild, the Writers Guild of America, who write the TV shows. And so what you watch, they have a sectoral agreement. So when that agreement is signed, as it happened after a strike a couple years ago, that set floors for anyone, including whether you're a union member or not. But those are the rare examples where the unions are strong enough to be able to actually obtain that sort of agreement. In the meantime, what we can do is besides changing labor law at the federal level, which, who knows, but meanwhile, we can set these standards at the state level. So for example, in Minnesota, unions and employers have a commission. They sit on a commission and they decide on a particular standard that then is passed. So this is actually feasible. We can do this at the state level even without having to wait to change labor law at the federal level.

[A]

Lastly, these AI efforts to kind of replace the workforce force. I know you've expressed some skepticism. We're seeing a real overvaluation of it in the economy. And with this war in Iran, who knows when that bubble is going to burst. We've been saying that it's going to for a while and it hasn't yet, but just. We shall see. What's your assessment of how that plays into the way the labor market. Is it being overstated? What are the concerns? What are the less pertinent concerns?

[C]

Yeah, so you can't really have a conversation about the labor market in 2026 without talking about AI. And I talk about it a bit in the book, but here's the thing. First of all, we don't know. We really don't know what the impact of AI might be. There are some concerns it's going to take over all jobs. I think some of those claims are sort of based on very little actual evidence. But look, there may be disruptions that are in the future. But the most important thing in my mind is the following. We don't have to simply take this as something that happens to us. We have done too much of that. And this is not the first technological change where there's been worries. Right. For example, automation has been around and people have concerns about automation more broadly. We can regulate this and we can choose to a certain extent how we share any increase in productivity that arise from AI. The Writers Guild of America example that I gave actually is really interesting because in their last agreement, they precisely struck some deals to make sure that some of the gains from use of AI is actually shared more broadly. It's not the last word, but this highlights why it's so important to have institutions in place that can make sure that can regulate how AI is used. For example, if it's going to be used in the healthcare sector, how are nurses and other health professionals going to be affected by it? Imagine having commissions that actually set not only sectoral pay, but also sectoral standards for how technology is used and adopted. This can actually go a long way to really make sure that whatever is the impact, right, that we have some say over it and we make sure that any gains are actually shared broadly and don't just accrue to those at the very top.

[A]

Aaron Dube, the book is called the Wage what's Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. Really appreciate it.

[C]

Thanks so much for having me.

[A]

Of course. With that, folks, we're going to wrap up the free part of this show and head into the fun half of this show.

[D]

So much fun.

[A]

Have some fun. Talking about the war in Iran and more. Matt, was what's happening on your shows?

[D]

Yeah, there is a left reckoning this afternoon. Remember we got drinks like a couple years ago and I said, I want to be like a. I want to transition into. Didn't mean to catch off guard there.

[A]

Choked on what?

[D]

But I said, as I'm Gathers himself

[A]

there, I'm good, I'm good.

[D]

I said that I wanted to transition into being a wife sage type of fellow. Well, that does not start today at all.

[A]

How far into the drinks was that? Wait, when did you say this to me? You said this to me years ago. I don't remember.

[D]

I was, I was like 35. I remember feeling old and, and. And I'm like, I think I need to stop being so. So you know how I am. But I'll say I did not start that today. Here's the thumbnail I made for today's left reckoning. If you could put this up. And the episode is the ludicrous wartime Hasan panic and bursting the bulwarks bubble where we go for about 45 minutes about Sarah Longwell and this whole cul de sac we've been lit into by third way. And basically people who want to attack Abdullah said so that McMarrow can be the senator in Michigan talking about. Cancel Hasan for saying all these. How dare you. How dare you. How dare you, Sarah Longwell, act like you're the one people should listen to. Sitting down with Liz Cheney blaming progressives for Kamala Harris losing. So we go deep into that and if you want to see me at my most vituperative and poorly measured and angry, that will be today at 2:30 right after. After the show.

[A]

All right, we are going to head into the fun half now. Just a reminder, this show relies on your support jointhemajorityreport.com so you can support this show. Keep us resilient in the face of that.

[F]

You are creation indeed.

[A]

You know, I mean, speaking of the bulwark, like they're, they're. They're probably pretty set. They probably got a funder too. You want to keep us out there.

[D]

Apparently Sarah Longwell has taken money from the Koch brothers.

[A]

Interesting. Interesting bunch of former Republicans. I'm surprised.

[D]

Huh?

[A]

We don't take money from the Koch brothers.

[D]

No, I'm aware of.

[A]

We rely on your support. Join the Majority report dot com. All right, guys, see you in the fun half.

[F]

Okay. Emma, please.

[A]

Well, I just. I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the majority report.

[F]

Wait, look, Sam is unpopular. I do deserve a vacation at Disney World, so. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show.

[A]

It is Thursday.

[D]

I think you need to take a bit for Sam.

[F]

Yes, please.

[B]

No, no, no.

[C]

I'm gonna.

[F]

I'm gonna pause you right there.

[B]

Wait, what?

[F]

You can't encourage Emma to live like this. And I'll tell you why. Who was offered a tour? Sushi and poker with boys. Twerk, sushi and poker with boys. Who was offered a tour?

[A]

Yeah.

[F]

Sushi and poker with boys. What tour? Sushi and poker.

[A]

Tim's upset.

[F]

Twerk, sushi and poker with poker boys was offered with twerk, sushi and. That's what we call biz. Twerk, sushi and poker boys.

[A]

Right, twerp?

[F]

Sushi and poker.

[A]

We're going to get demonetized.

[F]

I just think that what you did to Tim Pool was making mean free speech. That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about it. I think you're responsible.

[A]

I probably am in a certain way. But let's get to the meltdown here.

[F]

Sushi and poker with the boys. Oh, my God. Wow. Sushi. I'm sorry. I'm losing my mind. Someone's offered a tour. Sushi and poker with the boys. Logic. Sushi and poker with the boys. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a kid. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. Had this debate 7,000 times. A little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. A little kid. I'm losing my mind.

[D]

Some people just don't understand.

[F]

So I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but, like, I absolutely think the US should be providing me with a wife and kids.

[A]

That's not what we're talking about here.

[F]

It's not a fun job. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. Real thing. Willy Wonka. That's a real thing. That's that real thing. That's a real thing. That's got a real thing. Real thing. That's a real thing that's offered. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rogan has done it again. That's a real thing. I think he might be blowing it out of proportion. Real thing that's got offered. That's a real thing. That's. That's poker. Let's go, Joey. Twerk, Sushi and poker. Take it easy. Twerk, sushi and poker. Things have really gotten out of hand. Sushi and poker with the boys.

[B]

Illusional.

[F]

We're looting Sushi. You don't have a clue as to what's going on.

[C]

The weight of the world on his shoulders.

[A]

Sam doesn't want to do this show anymore.

[F]

Anymore.

[A]

It was so much easier when the majority were. Before it was just you.

[F]

Let's change the subject.

[C]

Rangers and Nicks are doing great.

[A]

Now shut up. Don't want people saying reckless things on your program.

[B]

That's one of the most difficult parts about this show.

[A]

This is the Pro Killing podcast.

[F]

I'm thinking maybe it's time we bury the hatchet.

[A]

Left his best.

[C]

Violet.

[F]

Don't be foolish and don't tweet at me. And don't. The way Emma has cucked all of these people. Love.

[A]

That's where my heart is. So I wrote my honors thesis about it.

[F]

Oh, sorry. She wrote an honors thesis. I guess I should hand the main mic to you now. You are to the right of me on foreign policy.

[A]

We already fund Israel, dude. Are you against that?

[F]

That's a tougher question I have an answer to. Incredible theme song.

[A]

Hi, bumbler.

[B]

Emma Vilan.

[F]

Absolutely one of my favorite people, actually. Not just in the game, like, period.